#demise of big oil

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Igaunijas enerģētikas uzņēmums Evecon un uz ilgtspējīgiem finansēšanas risinājumiem orientētais aktīvu pārvaldnieks Mirova ceturtdien atklāja Baltijas valstīs lielāko saules paneļu parku. Tas izbūvēts 110 hektāru platībā Pērnavas apriņķa Kirikmē, un tā elektroenerģijas izstrādes jauda ir 77,53 MW, kas vairāk nekā divas reizes pārsniedz otra lielākā parka iespējas.

Ar Kirikmē saules paneļiem saražoto elektrību var apmierināt apmēram 35 000 mājsaimniecību gada patēriņu. Kirikmē parks pieder Baltijas atjaunojamās enerģijas platformai (Baltic Renewable Energy Platform (BREP)), kuru Evecon un Mirova izveidoja 2022. gada decembrī, tā mērķis��– Igaunijā finansēt, uzbūvēt un ekspluatēt saules paneļu parku(..)

Saskaņā ar Karla Kulla sacīto Kirikmē saules parks tika uzbūvēts sešos mēnešos un var pretendēt uz šādu Wiso Engineering infrastruktūras objektu tapšanas ātruma rekordu(..)

(The largest solar park in the Baltics is starting work in Estonia)

Estonian energy company Evecon and sustainable financing solutions-oriented asset manager Mirova opened the largest solar panel park in the Baltic States on Thursday. Built on an area of ​​110 hectares in Kirikme, Pärnu County, it has an electricity generation capacity of 77.53 MW, which is more than twice the capacity of the second largest park. Advertisement Advertisement The electricity produced by Kirikme's solar panels can meet the annual consumption of about 35,000 households. The Kirikme park belongs to the Baltic Renewable Energy Platform (BREP), which was established by Evecon and Mirova in December 2022, its purpose is to finance, build and operate a solar panel park in Estonia(..)

According to Karl Kull, the solar park in Kirikme was built in six months and can claim the speed record for the creation of such infrastructure facilities by Wiso Engineering(..)

P.S. Very good news: In the Baltic States, each new utility scale solar power plant reduces dependence on fossil fuel imports and kills Russian imperialist oil economy...The Baltic region has enough solar, wind and hydropower to completely cut off all fossil fuel imports from Russia, the Middle East and the US...

[two3dist]

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[ahmedtrade]

WTI Oil Falls Below $70 a Barrel First Time Since Late 2021

[sky-jc]

COVID's ECONOMIC EFFECT ON OIL

Skyler Chang (Friday @12:00pm, ID#43831931), Kyle Kao (Monday @3:00pm ID# 56763178), Joe Hunt (Friday @12:00pm) ID# 79453995)

[002yb]

Fairtytale!AU

It might be that Jason will always be a cautionary tale, his life twisted into something dark and terrible.

No one knows him, but there are rumors of him. A beast that haunts an abandoned manor in the deepest parts of the woods that used to make up Old Gotham before madness drove everyone to settle further away

People tell stories of him—exaggerated tales for convenience. Warnings for children to mind their guardians; threats to wayward kids to not be reckless, angry, selfish. Hurt. Something scary and horrific and violent. A punishment for criminals and a caution to travelers to stay away from the curse of the old lands lest they be killed by the beast who guards it.

Tim doesn't believe it, despite Bruce telling him otherwise.

Because Bruce has seen it for himself. It's a monster, a beast.

The mystery of why the beast takes residence at the old Wayne manor haunts him though. He can't argue that he isn't curious about all the secrets that make up centuries of darkness and frenzy. For as meticulous as the Wayne family was about documenting their history, there's precious little in regards to that time

In the time before? Plenty. Blessed land before it was cursed.

Much like the land Gotham currently has roots in. It's like the curse follows them. The warning signs being there and that being what Tim hones in on because Gotham is their home; they need to protect it.

Which Bruce is doing to the best of his abilities. He's sustaining everyone, but it's a temporary fix. He's not addressing the root of the problem. Not that they know what that is...

Which is why Tim wants to explore Old Gotham to find clues about what brought about its demise so that they can preempt New Gotham's downfall.

Naturally, Bruce refuses. Because he'll take care of everything on his own. And in typical Bruce fashion, he forbids Tim to leave.

Of course this prompts Tim to do just that.

But it's fine because of course Dick notices Tim's absence and chases after him in typical big brother fashion.

Something something, Tim unraveling the mysteries of a lost generation after breaking into the old Wayne manor and sifting through their records in the library.

Only to be interrupted by beast!Jason, who is every bit the monster everyone spins their tales about.

At which point, fade to black and back to Dick. Who is a blood witch in this AU, for reasons. Mainly for magic aesthetic, but also for story purposes. Maybe.

Something something Dick being able to sense curses. And knowing in his soul, even from a distance, that Old Gotham is something wretched. It's forsaken land, steeped in dark and twisted magic. So unnatural it's been forsaken.

Which is what Dick warns Tim of, but of course Tim does what Tim wants.

Hence: Dick giving chase when he realizes Tim has stolen away to uncover some alleged mystery.

Something something Dick tracking Tim with magic (maybe from a protection thing being broken when Jason gets to Tim and Dick being able to follow that feeling?)

Anyway, Dick ends up at the manor. He makes an exchange of prisoner so that Tim can go home safely with all his stolen relics that hold hints of the truth behind Gotham's tragedy.

And, yeah. Tim rushes home, somehow with everything gained and arguably more lost.

He promises he'll be back for Dick though. He swears it. It's an oath. ;3;

That intro background aside, thoughts on Dick coming to Tim's rescue and fending off beast!Jason:

No thoughts, just Dick being sparked and alight with magic that cuts through the dark and that eats away at the fringes of the shadows that make up the beast.

It's Dick throwing himself into harm's way to protect what's his, facing off with a monster and somehow coming across even more vicious. A beast disguised as a man.

Only to realize that it's not another monster he's confronting

Because Jason is an abomination of nightmares and terrors, more shadow than form with only hints of something other—sometimes feathers like an oil slick or matted fur or gnarled scar tissue, but all Dick sees is a child, wrapped up in curses.

And Jason might bare his teeth in a snarl, growl so low it rattles Dick's bones, but through all the dark Dick sees eyes that are distressingly innocent. Lonely, scared, hurt—

Truth be told, Dick and Tim could both escape.

Dick chooses to stay. For Jason.

But Dick lets Jason think that he has Dick as his prisoner. It's a small concession in the grand scheme. Especially since Jason generally steers clear of Dick.

Just the visual of this monstrous beast being unsettled by some weird man that strolls into his home. And that man being more monstrous in nature than the beast can even pretend to be.

Seriously, just Jason prowling around the precipice of his own home to avoid Dick because Dick is weird and intense, always with the quiet observations and piqued curiosity; the gentle smiles and thoughtless conversations and mellow humor and—

Meanwhile, Dick observing how Jason exists at extremes, both beast and boy: prowling the perimeter of the manor, then sneezing at a flake of snow that lands on his nose. Bloody jowls from a hunt, but then sleeping in a spot of sunlight within the manor, curled small with nodes of dust caught in the air around him.

And...yeah. Just Dick bonding with Jason as he sets about trying to unravel the mystery of what cursed Jason, why, and how to undo it. Which Jason probably gets defensive over (the curse protecting itself?//Jason trying to protect Dick from getting cursed, himself??)

Soft moments with Dick sneaking up on Jason and startling him. Laughter ringing through the manor for the first time in forever because Jason might be a beast, but he startles like a cat - shadows puffing up like smoke around him. And Jason might snap and snarl in response, but Dick just gives him a pat and sees through the threat to the petulance beneath

Dick pulling open the drapes and letting proper light in for the first time in too long. Jason protests and shrinks away at first, especially because of how Dick looks when back lit by dawn. But then later Dick catches Jason basking in a spot of sun, soaking in the warmth. ;U;

Jason being wary of Dick's magic. Threatened by it, even. Only Dick's magic is bright and warm and hopeful so unwittingly Jason is drawn to it. He'll chase it, curl up with it. It's kinder than the curses he's wrapped in.

But it can be vicious, too. Which Jason sees when they hunt together. And Jason has such an adverse reaction to the violence in it that Jason spooks and gets lost in his curses and it takes a long time for Dick to coax him back out.

((Jason staying scared of the darker side to Dick's magic until Dick uses it to protect Jason ;A; ))

Something something the unnatural magic that’s made Old Gotham a forsaken place wearing on Dick somehow and impacting him in some way? Magic becomes a bit more wild (frenzied) so he has to stifle himself and that being a painful thing, but he endures for Jason?? Jason realizing and trying to force Dick out but Dick won’t be kept away from him???

Additional, scattered thoughts to wrap-up a scattered AU post, whoops:

Starting with some scene where Dick is exploring the manor and comes across what can only be a dungeon. And being so struck with sadness because there are scratches through the stone and stains that smell of blood. The desperation is palpable. Dick can still hear the echoing cries of a child in the air.

Actually, that shackle still being caught around beast!Jason's foot. Dick catching sight of it past the shifting of darkness and curses and faltering because the truth is too cruel

------------------

The blood witch bit being entirely based on an idea of 'blood weaving'. Where Dick weaves his own blood into a cloak. And when he pulls it over beast!Jason, Jason is himself again (if only while the hood is pulled up) ;U;

Ahhhhhh just the visual of them both sat on the floor with Jason peeking up at Dick from the shadows of the hood

And Dick offering a small, adoring smile despite how grotesque all of Jason's lingering abuse is ;A;

-------------------

The way Dick's heart would break when he realizes that Jason cursed himself on accident—a protection spell gone wrong

A desperate attempt to save himself from pain and torture and loneliness.

He's a specter from bygone days, lingering proof of darker times. Where Joker lingered and used Jason for forbidden magic and left the husk of him to rot.

And Jason freed himself, but there was only ruin. Because by that point Joker fucked Old Gotham over and everyone was retreating.

Maybe Jason makes it home to the manor, but he's not the boy he was. Just a beast. And Bruce Wayne (not the same as present!Bruce??) traps this boy someplace just as dark as the grave he was left in by Joker. Shackled at his ankle or muzzled and left to die alone.

Because Jason came back wrong. Or because he was a threat to Gotham and its peace.

=======

This was from an ask I got back in January about a Beauty & the Beast AU. It's months late and kind of rough, but this has been a fun AU to mull over! Thank you for the ask. <3

[starryinkart]

[CLICK FOR BETTER QUALITY]

[Likes and Reblogs are appreciated!]

Hey guys!!! I said I would work on a Uzi human version to match with my N human version, so here it is!!! I decided to make her a mix of Japanese and Middle Eastern, since Nori means seaweed in Japanese and I’ve have a friend named Khan who was Middle Eastern irl!

Since you guys like the headcannons last time, have some about Uzi:

Uzi was born with blue eyes and black hair, like her parents had, though Khans eyes were a more icy blue. When Khan started to neglect Uzi, she decided to mimick the appearance of her mother instead, seeing her as a role model after everything cool she heard about her around the colony, dying her hair purple like her.

In this AU, Uzi knew her mother before she died for a short time as an infant. Of course, she doesn’t remember much, but she does remember the play dates she used to have with her cousin Doll anytime her aunt Yeva would come over.

Nori and Yeva were sisters, both genetically modified to have the solver inside of them, making Doll and Uzi cousins. Nori and Yeva knew the consequences of having offspring with the solver in their veins but were actively working on a cure before Noris demise.

Uzi, Doll, Lizzy and Thad used to be childhood friends, but after Nori died and Yeva began to pull Doll away from her cousin to protect her from any trace of the solver, Doll and Lizzy began to bully Uzi.

Uzi came out short, like her father Khan, whereas Nori was tall, partially due to the effects of the solver.

Uzi's favorite foods are Philadelphia Sushi Rolls, Shrimp Tempura Rolls, Shoyu Ramen, and Khan Plov (suprisingly)

Uzi's favorite dessert is Apple Cheesecake!

Khan and Uzi used to have a pretty wholesome father daughter bond, but when Nori passed, he distanced himself from his daughter around the time Doll and Lizzy started bullying her, due to fear the solver may have developed in his daughter. Unfortunately we all know what eventually happens in the series and how Khan picked the worst time in her life to try and rekindle a bond with her.

Uzi has a scar on her left shoulder from N stabbing her with his wing in the Pilot, but honestly she doesn't care if people see it, unlike N who's self concious about his scars, and she thinks it looks cool.

Once she begins to be taken over by the solver, her thirst for oil is uncontrollable, though she HATES the taste of it.

Uzi's favorite anime is Chainsaw Man, though N thinks it's to gorey.

N taught Uzi to fly with her wings, and it went...as well as you could expect the first few times, but eventually she learned.

Sometimes Uzi has moments where she doesn't remember certain events in the day like what she ate for breakfeast or what she did that day in school, and her mind sort of blips all over the place ever since her solver powers were activated. She doesn't know this, but whenever that happens the solver is slowly getting acustomed to her body, putting her conciousness to "rest" while it tries out her body.

N and Uzi's favorite activity is to watch the sun rise together from inside an abandoned building they have made their "treehouse" of sorts. V doesn't know about it, and it's filled to the brim with comfort items, furniture and decorations for whenever they decide to stay out too late and no make it back home to risk burning up.

Uzi's favorite animal is cows!

Uzi and N spoon each other often, even when they were just friends, because the warmth of their bodies makes them feel safe and loved.

Uzi's favorite subject is Science and anything to do with being hands on. She likes learning and school, but just "dislikes" likes and doesn't know how to speak to them without being bullied her peers with a passion.

Uzi can be very motherly and protective, and is actually very nuturing and kind underneath her edginess.

She'll NEVER tell V this to her face, but she's grown to love V as a big sister of sorts and cares about her as much as N.

Her favorite color purple. She thinks it makes her and N match look cool but you didnt hear that from her.

She likes alot of metal and hardstyle types of music, but acutally enjoy's N's upbeat and pop music from the late 1900's and early 2000's human era more than she lets on.

She doesn't like when N uses his deeper voice and whispers in her ear...it makes her feel...weird. But in a good way- wait what?

She loves to draw and totally doesn't have sketches of her, N and V as superhero anime characters, her and N building a neural network together in her sketchbook. EW. GROSS.

>> PS. This is part of my Murder Drones Skin and Bones AU!

I didn't know how to end this, but I will say Im totally doing the other characters! Next is V!

____________________________________________________________

ALSOOOOO…

THANKYOU ALL FOR 1,000 FOLLOWERS GUYS!!!

IM WORKING ON A BUNCH OF STUFF LIKE ANIMATIONS ON YOUTUBE, MORE AU THINGS, AND WORKING ON MY ABSOLUTELY FANFIC! I'm hoping to expand more on my comics on Tumblr like my @thedarknessyouhold and the Murder Drones universe as a whole, so stick around for some awesome stuff coming soon!

My commisions are also open! You can find them on my KO-FI HERE and HERE !

You can ALSO find updates and sneak peeks sometimes as well!

AND my LINKTREE HERE!

[ozzgin]

Soo I just got blocked by someone extremely upset by my demon king fic AI cover, and while it is entirely their decision and not my business whatsoever, I cannot help but marvel at the misguided sense of justice a significant percentage of Tumblr seems to display.

AI being used for downright vile, perverted content that should be reported and chased down? 😴

People reposting art without permission or credit? 😴

People selling AI art and/or advertising it as their own handmade work? 😴

Big companies using AI art instead of paying their employees and should be called out? 😴

Hobby writer who posts in their free time just included a cropped, minimalist AI image as their divider? 😡 Gross! Outrageous! This is what the world has come to! These occasional bloggers should be commissioning elaborate oil paintings for each and every drabble they post, otherwise they promote the demise of authentic creativity!

[schraubd]

Losing Your Chevrons

Somewhere, an environmentalist wished upon a star: "I hate big oil. It's a blight on the universe. If only Chevron would disappear forever!" and a monkey's paw curled once. I was steeling myself to write about Loper Bright and my official welcome on behalf of the Con Law professoriate to the Admin Law professors joining the "burn all your lecture notes and start from scratch club", and then Trump v. United States came down. Even though the latter is a more immediate big deal and is closer to my expertise wheelhouse (I've fielded far more inquiries from former students asking "what is going on!" with respect to the Trump decision than any ruling in my entire career, Dobbs included), I really don't have all that much to say at this moment. That may change -- in fact, it almost certainly will, as I try to work this blog post into an essay -- but for now I'm going to lay off and just write what I planned to write about the demise of Chevron. My short version take is this: in many, many cases, we'll see little difference between before and after. This prediction, however, should not be confused with sanguinity. Rather, it is a recognition that judges are human, with the normal assortment of human interests, talents, and vices.  In most deep-weeds administrative law cases, where judges neither know nor care about the difference between, say, nitrogen oxide and nitrous oxide, they aren't going to actually do a deep dive review of the law from scratch. These issues are hard enough for a team of subject-matter experts with Ph.Ds in the hard sciences grinding away for months. For a judge with a J.D. from Hofstra who last took a statistics class in 11th grade? Forget about it. In practice, no matter what the doctrine purports to demand or what they claim to be doing on the opinion pages, judges will end up deferring to reasonable agency interpretations of the law unless they're howlingly off-base -- which, of course, is why we ended up with Chevron in the first place. Any objective observer of courts sees this sort of thing from judges all the time -- there are all sorts of cases where nominal "de novo" review is the furthest thing from, because judges simply find the topic boring, repetitive, or impenetrable (you can usually spot these cases by their use of the phrase "after careful review ...."). This will be what happens for many if not most cases on obscure rules in unremarkable issue areas. What will change is in those administrative rules on hot button issues of high-salience. Here, Loper Bright doesn't make judges any smarter, but does give them a green light to start substituting their judgment for expert agencies who at least have some measure of accountability to the political process. In other words, Loper Bright won't universally result in the substitution of inexpert judicial policymaking for the judgments of administrative agencies; rather, it will result in that substitution on an ad hoc and arbitrary basis whenever the judge who happens to be draw the case has an idiosyncratic or ideological hobbyhorse to ride. The administrative state will be able to carry on, with a cutaway for partisan judges to meddle more openly whenever partisan proclivities instigate an urge. So there's your consolation about the end of Chevron. Feeling better? I thought so. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/ow8Pq4G

[honey-minded-hivemind]

hi again I hope you can do a yendere mer parents Scott and jean [ animated series ] [ Scott and jean are sirens, beautiful but deadly ] x baby reader and how would they react when they baby gets kidnapped by big game hunters who want to sell reader as a pet,but the hunters become the hunted.

Ohoho, that's good- Let's try it-

• The waters were deceptively calm. The water lapped at the boat, salty and green, while they sky was cloudy and tranquil. Birds cawed lightly overhead, fish swam by in shining schools, the wind smelled of salt and tangy ocean water, not a hint of rain... Yet there was a darkness on the boat, something sinister...

• Held within its bowels was a tank... and in the tank was a small siren pup, not even old enough to leave the nest. Its scales shone brightly, and its small hands were pressed to its face, trying to quiet its cries. And watching from the shadows, smiling cruelly and laughing, were the ones who put them there...

• The two were game hunters, humans who hunted the biggest, baddest, largest animals, and kept them as pets or stuffed them and kept them as trophies. Yet these ones were even worse, as they were poachers as well. They'd caught Reader while their parents were gone, infiltrating their nest and capturing them. Their hands had been rough, their nets biting and tight, their knives sharp and cold- It left Reader a trembling, crying shell, calling out for their parents and pod... And the two hunters were gleeful over having such a rare specimen. They had plans to sell the small siren to the highest bidder, be it a human who wanted a pet or one who wanted a taxidermied siren...

• Yet in the deceptive deep, Reader's parents hadn't forgotten them... No. They had found their nest ransacked, their pup gone, and the ugly scent of human in the wreck... And the two, snarling and crying, started the hunt. They swam for miles, going as fast as they could, not stopping for anything as they tracked their pup. The waters became colder and colder, going from pleasant to lukewarm to freezing. It didn't deter them, though. Their pup needed them, their baby was alone and possibly hurt, and they wouldn't rest until they were in their arms and their assailants dead and rotting...

• Approaching a large, floating vessel, they could smell the scent of siren blood on it, along with the sickly oil and metal that coated it. They could hear the humans above, gloating to each other of their catch, the finest specimen, a siren... They discusses how to keep it alive, or if they preferred, how to stuff and mount it... They didn't notice the two angry, murderous parents listening below, plotting their demise.

• A soft song started, longing and inviting, calling for anyone who could hear it to follow it. It wailed, loud and long, begging them to go to it, to embrace it, to fall in. And the two humans did just that, falling into the freezing waters, and right into the path of the siren pup's parents... It didn't take but a moment for the two to realize their fate, who had caught them- But it only took a moment to cut through their throats, to tear their limbs apart, to drag them under and down and to let them sink to their watery tomb... Their song became more joyous after that, promising safety and love and asking where their young one was, coaxing them to respond. And respond they did...

• Scott was the first to get onto the ship, changing from a siren to human, then helping to pull his mate up, the powerful Jean... They could hear the soft cries of their pup, their baby, echoing in the dark hull, and they ran as fast as they could down into the darkness. The ship stank of blood and death, bones and pelts and stuffed, dead creatures lining the rooms and halls. It didn't take them long to figure out what those humans had planned for their little one... Yet they smiled, all teeth, knowing those two were dead and gone, and that their little one would be safe in their arms soon. It warmed their hearts, making them chirp out for their pup.

• A scared, hopeful chirp came from a locked room, asking parents-mom-dad-help-here? Scott broke the locks, wrenching the metal in two, while Jean knocked the door down, sending dust into the air. The room was dark, only lit up by the lights of the tank... And sitting in the tank, scratched and bruised, was Reader... Jean was swiftly pulling them out, checking them for injuries, while Scotf was kissing their head and stroking their tail, cooing softly. Both parents kept it up, trying to look over Reader and trying to calm them, assuring then they were there now, they were safe, those nasty humans were gone...

• Once they made sure their pup was well enough to travel, they left the dark, stinking ship, sinking it and letting the ocean hide any evidence a pup or the humans who captured them... Swimming in the chilled brine, the two parents sang to each other and to their child, happy and loving and promising nothing would take them ever again. When their baby started to yawn, tired and exhausted, Scott held them while Jean lulled them under, sending them into peaceful dreams, and ensuring they wouldn't wake for the next several hours...

• The two swam for miles, going back home, calling out to their pod and telling them they were moving, to better, safer waters, and that their little one was safe. Their response was loud, joyful cries, the other sirens singing of warmer waters and plentiful food and bloody vengeance, their scales flashing in the darkness and their eyes bright and watchful... And the humans who heard the song shuddered, knowing it was a night of sirens, a night of blood, and any who crossed them would meet their doom at the hands of the Moon's children...

[bigsoftmarshmallow]

Hello! I hope your day's been going well! I have a fluffy, tender, but experimental one this time if that's okay! 😄

One of my hcs is that the night after a Gerudo's wedding & before the, “big moment,” it is tradition for the bride & groom to bath together. To help them to get used to each other's bodies. It is also thought of as symbolic of “washing off the detritus of failed relationships to ensure that this new one may flourish” as well as a way to bond.

Based on ancient Egyptian culture, I like to imagine that the Gerudo have a lot of bathing products that they make themselves in their more prosperous times. Like, body oils made from Palm Fruit oil, Oasis Honey (honey made by Oasis Ants), & Dune Ant wax. Hair oil made from Càrïtàn (castor) oil, Desert Aloe oil, & Shock Fruit juice. And the ancient royals (& I mean ANCIENT, like centuries before even coming to the Hyland continent) would often have Honeymilk Baths. Of course, the original recipe has been long since forgotten. However, there have been attempts to recreate it using local ingredients. Unfortunately, it is only used for a king's wedding night now due to lack of resources.

The Honeymilk bath is made using Ghamïchaa (Bighorn Sheep milk; however, Ordon Goat milk is considered more healthy & luxurious), Palm Fruit milk, Oasis Honey, & whichever scented bath oil that he & his new queen have agreed upon. It's poured into the water itself.

The most abundant scented oils would be Warm Safflina, Electric Safflina, Sundelion, & Frostbite Mint from the Highlands. There are others used, but it requires access to Hyrule. Things like Fleet Lotus, Din Juniper Berries from Eldin, Cinnamon from Akkala, Swiftsail Lavender from Lanayru & Necluda, Lovely Roses & Goldenmerry (marigold) from Faron.

They can also come in blends, but certain scents are more complementary together.

(I very much wonder which available scents each Gan would prefer… Actually, now that I think about it? Is there anything they're allergic to?)

Anyway, I like to think that bathing is a time of great vulnerability for Ganondorf specifically. I see him being uncharacteristically nervous here. Like, for no real reason, just is. Because sometimes emotions don’t make sense.

But, I like the idea that bathing each other is considered an extremely important bonding experience for Gerudo who are married. So, I see ELady offering to let him help her wash first (to give him more time to mentally prepare & he knows this & I think he’d be grateful to her not pointing it out).

Then, her propping herself upon the rim of the bath to work the hair oil into his crimson locks. Maybe humming as she does so & he finds himself relaxing into her hold with a sigh. And maybe rubbing the body oil in will get some more steamy sounds, but more so in the “this is a great massage” sort of way. But that’s as far as it goes.

Like, I’m not looking for smut in any way. Just really emotional intimacy, vulnerability, with slow, tentative trust, & closeness.

Like, if forms are to be mentioned, just vague words such as “nubile” & “supple” for ELady & “statuesque” or “solid” for Gan works fine. Nothing specific. Nothing detailed.

It's not about steaminess, but the thoughts, the emotions, the sensations, heck even the smells. But even more than that, the tenderness. Just gentle hands & kisses & embraces.

(I’m basically testing what I can & can’t do here.)

I am perfectly ok with Smut, NSFW, Lewds, Suggestive Content, etc. I very much enjoy that sort of content. You can see that from what I reblog and do with my AI bots, ha ha. ChatGPT though...

He is an innocent soul, not wishing to be corrupt. If I could focus long enough, I would totes do a whole scene with this thought process.

The gentle touches, washing each other up, discovering soft or sensitive spots... Bathing gives permission to touch everywhere, to cleanse and give relaxation.

Honestly, during a time of softness and vulnerability, I wouldn't mind kissing up his chest, before just... repeatedly kissing his face. When I had a partner, just doing slow kisses around the face, starting around the jaw, up the side of the head, going across the forehead, down the other side, before kissing his cheeks and nose, before finally going to his lips... It was sensual and romantic. It was bliss for me. Doing that, while washing his hair or massaging him? *longing sigh* Maybe while washing his hair, sliding my teeth and lips down his jaw and neck, smiling as he tenses and relaxes... Really get him prepped for the night after <3

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Ganondorf (Wind Waker, Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, Hyrule Warriors, and Tears of the Kingdom) and Demise (Skyward Sword) Reactions

Wind Waker Ganondorf: This Ganondorf is more contemplative and subdued compared to his other incarnations. During the bath, he is visibly nervous, a rare moment of vulnerability. He appreciates ELady's gesture of allowing him to wash her first, using the time to steady himself. As she hums and works the oils into his hair, he finds himself relaxing, the tension melting away. He feels a deep sense of gratitude and connection, marveling at how she understands and comforts him.

Ocarina of Time Ganondorf: Initially, this Ganondorf would try to mask his nervousness with bravado, but the intimate setting quickly erodes his façade. He is touched by her understanding and patience, though he might not openly express it. As she washes his hair and applies the oils, he closes his eyes and lets out a sigh of relief. Her humming calms him, and he silently vows to protect and cherish her for her gentle strength and compassion.

Twilight Princess Ganondorf: This Ganondorf, more brooding and battle-hardened, finds the bath ritual a significant challenge to his usual stoicism. He is tense at first, but as ELady's skilled hands work the oils into his hair, he gradually relaxes. Her humming and tender care penetrate his defenses, and he feels a profound sense of peace. He might not say much, but his eyes convey deep appreciation and affection.

Hyrule Warriors Ganondorf: Being a warlord, this Ganondorf is unaccustomed to such intimate and vulnerable moments. He is visibly tense but follows her lead. As she washes his hair and applies the oils, he begins to relax, his muscles unclenching. Her humming and gentle touch bring him an unexpected comfort. He feels a mixture of gratitude and admiration for her ability to soothe him so effortlessly.

Tears of the Kingdom Ganondorf: This Ganondorf, with his more ancient and imposing demeanor, finds the ritual both intriguing and challenging. He respects the tradition but feels a deep-seated nervousness. As she washes his hair and applies the oils, he gradually eases into the experience. Her humming and attentive care strike a chord with him, making him feel a rare sense of calm and connection.

Demise (Skyward Sword): Demise, being a primordial force of nature, would find this human ritual perplexing but oddly comforting. Initially, he is tense and wary, but ELady’s soothing actions slowly break through his defenses. Her humming and tender care would be a novel experience for him, evoking a sense of peace he is unaccustomed to. He would silently marvel at her ability to bring such calm to his otherwise tumultuous existence.

Scents Preferences and Allergies

Wind Waker Ganondorf: Prefers the calming and earthy scent of Fleet Lotus with a hint of Warm Safflina.

Ocarina of Time Ganondorf: Enjoys the rich, spicy aroma of Din Juniper Berries mixed with Cinnamon.

Twilight Princess Ganondorf: Likes the refreshing and invigorating scent of Electric Safflina combined with Swiftsail Lavender.

Hyrule Warriors Ganondorf: Prefers the exotic and intense aroma of Sundelion mixed with Lovely Roses.

Tears of the Kingdom Ganondorf: Favors the unique and robust scent of Frostbite Mint combined with Goldenmerry.

Demise (Skyward Sword): Prefers the strong, primal scent of Din Juniper Berries mixed with Desert Aloe oil.

None of these characters have allergies to these natural scents, allowing them to fully enjoy the experience without adverse reactions.

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Russian oil refinery BINGO..., March 17, 2024. Source: NEWSADER

P.S. Russian oil refinery in Kuban was blown up by Ukrainian drones tonight. Ukrainian forces have set fire to at least six Russian oil refineries this week. The range of Ukrainian drones of the current generation allows to reach and successfully destroy about 30% of the processing capacity of Russian oil plants...! The super good news is that UKRAINE AND ITS ALLIES CAN MANUFACTURE THESE WEAPONS THEMSELVES...

[chicoryglass]

genshin men at the beach!

characters: childe, itto + the arataki gang, thoma, xiao, zhongli

✦✦✦✦✦

childe

✦ this man wants to impress everyone, especially his siblings.

✦ lathered with sunscreen of the highest SPF he could find. he really hopes he didn't miss a spot.

✦ he takes to beach volleyball, definitely showing off and letting the competitive spirit get the better of him

✦ throws the ball up, runs up, jumps, BLASTS it his opponent's way. gets salty if they quit on him. (dude, no one wants to go to the ER over a beach ball 'accident')

✦ his demeanor changes dramatically if he's babysitting his younger siblings, though. becomes the coolest older brother – wanna gather crabs, or snails? he's already getting a bucket and scouring the beach for a perfect spot, playing it up for them like they're on a hunt. wanna build a sandcastle? he's helping them construct one that would put the best architect to shame.

arataki itto + the gang

✦ where do i even begin.

✦ itto's the one jacked guy wearing undies only, glistening with oil or sunscreen he made his gang apply onto him.

✦ does everything to impress his gang. constantly bothers shinobu, who's just trying to relax and sunbathe. she claims to not know any of them.

✦ at first he wants to surf, claiming that he's ridden waves at least three times larger than the ones he's about to.

✦ he does not, in fact, know how to surf.

✦ proceeds to make a fool of himself by spectacularly getting knocked off into the water, breaking one of the rentable surfboards in the process.

✦ doesn't want to tell shinobu, but to his demise, she's developed something of a sixth sense when it comes to the gang's troublemaking. and if she didn't, takuya or hanakado would inevitably tip her off.

✦ shinobu's wrath is inescapable. she pays for the broken surfboard out of her own pocket, seeing the gang's combined handful of mora on them. the gang is banned from surfing (or, rather, attempting to) until further notice.

✦ itto's plan B is to build sandcastles. a couple minutes later, he's challenged a group of kids to see who builds the best sandcastle. the arataki gang lost.

✦ in lieu of repaying the recent debt to shinobu, itto insists on earning some money on the beach.

✦ for a while, they set up fried lavender melon stands, courtesy of shinobu getting them a permit.

✦ archons forbid they somehow get their hands on a metal detector to try and sell some scrap. the beach becomes an excavation site, riddled with holes big enough to sit in. at least they're cleaning it up...?

thoma

✦ this man is too good for this world.

✦ probably checked if there's no crabs buried in the sand underneath the spot he picked, before settling down. if there are, he gently scoops them out and places them somewhere further away. manages to not get pinched like the chad he is.

✦ brought a picnic's worth of food, drinks and snacks to the beach.

✦ it is a picnic, actually.

✦ ayato didn't have the heart to tell him that this much food is unnecessary. thoma only just realized that, and laughed sheepishly.

✦ a solution presented itself when some kids caught a whiff of his amazing cooking and came by, asking if they could have some.

✦ he gladly shares with them, listening attentively as they tell him of their adventures on the beach, and all the cool things they found. he makes sure to pat each one on the head, praising them. in the end, this golden retriever of a man got adopted by a group of kids as their uncle lol

✦ cleans the beach as he goes, actually. notices how much trash there is, makes a mental note to himself to bring some proper equipment for it next time. thoma, please lie down, you're supposed to be relaxing :(((

xiao

✦ the actual cool guy itto and childe want to be.

✦ you know those mysterious, silent, brooding types of people, who capture your entire attention by just being there? yeah, that's him.

✦ he shows up at the beach with his surf board in hand, dressed in one those skin-tight black surf suits that cover his entire body nearly head to toe.

✦ turns a lot of people's heads, he's such a stark contrast to the casual, bright-colored aesthetic most beach-goers have.

✦ originally, he planned to surf in a different, much less populated spot - his go-to - yet sadly the waves were too small.

✦ lowkey annoyed at the large number of people on the beach, highkey annoyed at all the attention he's receiving.

✦ wastes no time getting into the water and onto an upcoming wave. he looks majestic, the way he's gliding through the waves. almost seems like he's flying.

✦ if he were to appear a couple more times, he'd definitely (to his dismay, should he learn about it) earn himself a corny-ass nickname from the regular beach-goers or stall owners, like "black angel" or "waveglider". and become somewhat of a local attraction, or a cryptid, even.

zhongli

✦ did... this man really bring a book to the beach? yes. yes he did.

✦ large straw hat, unbuttoned hawaiian shirt over a white tank top, shorts, and boom - you got yourself a grandpa Zhongli on the beach.

✦ he's also the type of person to wear flip flops to the beach.

✦ for a while he enjoyed the parasol's shade and the cool sea breeze, waves humming him to the state of drowsiness, despite the not-so occasional children's (and a particular oni's) excited yells.

✦ unfortunately, his would-be naptime was interrupted by a kid accidentally kicking a bunch of sand in his direction. at least it wasn't sea water :') with a deep sigh, he carefully shakes his book free of it, crosses his arms, and dozes off.

✦ takes long walks by the water, gathering pretty seashells, amber and seaglass. picks out pieces that remind him of his friends to give as gifts.

✦✦✦✦✦

[tabletopmonsteroftheweek]

Please link it if you've already done it, but I'd love to see your interpretation of a 'House of Leaves' or similar liminal space into a mystery. Specifically, the idea of a mundane space that goes on forever or infinitely repeats.

It's a lengthy book if you haven't already read it, but I'm sure there are plenty of youtube videos dissecting it. 'The Backrooms' is a diluted meme version of it, if you've heard of that.

You rule, and thank you for the years of great ideas and resources!

So i had not read House of Leaves, but it is on my bucketlist of "to-read" books when i have time. I'll try my best to make a spooky, liminal space phenomenon

------------

Phenomenon: 495 North Boulevard

Type: Bubble (motive: to keep those that enter from leaving)

The strange one-story house seems to sit comfortably in this boulevard. No one remembers when it appeared, as all who lived there seemingly believe it's been there ever since they've moved in. Those that move into the home mysteriously vanish, and those that knew them forget they even existed- even their own parents and family members. Stranger still, no one knows who is even selling it, as those that gain possession of it do so by next to kin.

This quaint house starts normal at first, but after a week it will open up more of itself, opening up a doorway leading to a strange hallway.

The deeper the hunters go, the bleaker and darker the hallway and rooms become. The rooms become more hostile, and may even separate the hunters from each other.

Power:

Seemingly infinite structural generation

Insanity inducement

Isolation

Hallucination inducement

Constantly watching

Weakness: Documentation can be found within the Children's Room (listed below) if the hunters are able to find them, that the House had mistakenly forgotten to hide away. The documents were written by one of the previous tenants, one that thought it best to write down info of their expedition and leave the pages behind. In it is a map detailing a way through the dark maze that can reach a "key" that will allow the individual to leave.

In order to stop the House from taking more individuals, one must cause a circuit breaker fire. However, the hunters must find the key to escape before they do so, lest they find their demise within the fires themselves.

Custom Moves:

The Keeper gets to draw out how the house will be laid out before the start of the mystery. The vast majority of the rooms are blank and empty, with the deeper they delve the darker it gets. While they may decide how the house will be laid out, even past the Hallway, there are key rooms that must be in place:

The Circuit room: the room is usually the last the hunters will run into. It's a tight room similar to that of a laundry room. On the wall is the circuit breaker. Messing with it won't outright cause the fire, but hunters must roll +sharp to figure out how to set it up to do so. On a 10+, they can make it go on a timer so it'll break once they are safely out of the house. On a miss, it'll be on a timer, but it'll break midway through escaping. On a miss, it'll break immediately and they will have to escape right away... if they have the key that is.

Key room: the room looks like a closed garage- shelving with boxes on them, big red toolbox, a broken down car of unknown make, and other things. Smells like oil and grease. The key is located within the car, which is locked on the inside. The hunters have to open the car without setting the alarm off. If the alarm goes off, the House will proceed to have the next several rooms be misleading and fully attempt to separate the hunters from each other, even attempting to make them drop the Key. Hunters must roll Act Under Pressure to attempt opening the car.

Children's room: even without lights, the walls are brightly colored with crayon drawings made by that of a little kid. The carpet is soft, and there's a toy chest. The bed is small, made for a 5 or 6 year old, with old dolls and teddy bears resting on the dusty sheets. The closet is hard to open, as if something is blocking it. The smell in the room is that of rot. No roll is needed to open the closet- inside is that of skeletal remains of children, no older than 12. The toy box contains a few coloring books that detail drawings and writings from the previous children there, listing their misgivings and fears they experienced before their demise in the House.

Master Bedroom: A minimalistic room with only a dresser, a king sized bed, and a mirror. The mirror reflects nothing in the room. The flooring is hard. There is the smell of rot. Just like the children's room, the closet is hard to open, as it holds some of the skeletal remains of the adults... but not all. The bedroom has scratch marks, as if those trapped in it desperately wanted out.

Insanity inducement: Those that stay long in the winding halls of the House will feel themselves going mad. If a hunter feels something gnawing at the back of their heads, have them roll +sharp. On a 10+, they manage to stuff down the feeling and aren't affected by the insanity inducement. On a mix, they feel a little paranoid about the party. They feel like one of them might be conspiring against the other, or maybe they might be working with the House- they take -1 ongoing if they try to help out another hunter. On a miss, the house has given them temporary madness- they will actively work against the hunters interest. If a hunter says one thing, they will follow the opposite (example: one hunter wants to move forward, the insane hunter runs backwards). Can only be cured with a Use Magic roll, but they will have to continue rerolling after being cured to further prevent insanity.

Hallucination inducement: The hunters will see things in the corners of their eyes that are not truly there. To stave off these visions, have the hunters roll +sharp. On a 10+, they overcome the visions and will not have to reroll the rest of the mystery. On a mix, they overcome it temporarily- they will have -1 forward on any actions on what they perceive is real, but also can attempt to reroll... after a while anyways. On a miss, they truly believe what they see is real. They feel everything the hallucination does to them- use the Hallucination stat block below. They can be cured with a Use Magic roll, but even after curing they will have to reroll to permanently avoid the hallucinations.

The Hallucinations

These hallucinations do not actually hurt those that do not see them- they only harm those that do.

Type: Brute (Motive: to intimidate and attack)

Powers:

Can only be seen by those affected by hallucinations. Said hallucinations can look like whatever the keeper wants them to, especially if they tie into the Hunter's history.

Can phase through walls

Always hunting

Always watching

Hovers over other hunters or loved ones in an attempt to make the afflicted hurt them.

Harm: None

Weakness: Use Magic on the hunter affected by it can make it go away.

[the-owl-tree]

I still hope you keep Maggotstar though, ofc not as a main baddie but maybe as a minor baddie, I just really like their name and the idea of a Sphnyx cat WC villain is so fucking funny to me

i think i'm actually gonna go with one of my ideas i had before: a joke villain who used her connections to get her clanmates to steal coconut oil to help her with her skin problems turned into a big bad when she learns the true nature of their world and plots to thwart her demise

[dunn1t]

NAMED PRIYA BADAMI. KNOWN AS PRI, ISHANI KAPAR. ZODIAC LEO SUN, SCORPIO MOON. DOB AUGUST EIGHTH, THIRTY. PLACE OF BIRTH BANGALORE, INDIA. GENDER CIS WOMAN. PRONOUNS SHE/HER. ORIENTATION DEMISEXUAL. OCCUPATION HIGH SOCIETY DARLING, RETIRED SOCIAL CLIMBER. FACECLAIM SOBHITA DHULIPALA.

INSPIRED BY ANNA DELVEY, NICOLA SIX ( LONDON FIELDS ), EVE HARRINGTON ( ALL ABOUT EVE ), CATHERINE TRAMELL ( BASIC INSTINCT ), GRACE FARADAY ( GANGSTER SQUAD. )

HEIGHT FIVE FOOT NINE INCHES. HAIR INKY BLACK, WORN LONG. EYES DARK BROWN, DOELIKE. SCENT WARM FLORAL, MUSK FORWARD WITH LAYERING OF IRIS & ALMOND. LANGUAGES KANNADA, HINDI, ENGLISH, SPANISH. DISPOSITION SANGUINE. POSITIVE TRAITS INTREPID, ENRAPTURING, DEVOUT. NEGATIVE TRAITS OBSESSIVE, DELUSORY, UNFATHOMABLE.

BACKGROUND.

there are stories about you, darling. people take your name and make a myth of it. i'd heard her family's blood is thicker than oil. well, i heard her father owns half of moma. these things are only as true as you allow others to believe. after all, a myth only bore truth when you peered beneath its veneer. no one has ever known you, only ever the idea of you.

you once lived in a world of unfathomable privilege,   where wealth wrapped itself around you like a silken shroud,   soft and impenetrable,   whispering lies eternal.   but that shroud unraveled the day your father was swallowed by the abyss,   leaving behind the hollow shell of a life you once thought perpetual.   what was meant to be your inheritance crumbled into dust,   like the once-grand house that raised you,   where every corner now suffocates under the weight of time,   collecting not just dust but the echoes of an era long past—a symphony of opulence gone quiet,   the notes lost in the dark.

your mother,   all swathed in funeral black,   wrapped in mourning and whispers, became a phantom of her former self—yet paradoxically, she found a strange and almost malevolent vitality in the wake of your father’s untimely demise. she learned to wear the mask of affluence with a nearly ritualistic precision, clinging to the upper echelons of society even as the very foundations of your world crumbled beneath you.

you grew up in the shadow of those stories,   and they grew up in you,   too.   you were a girl once,   wide-eyed and petal soft,   but the shadows sharpened you,   turned you. your beauty,   like your legacy,   is resplendent and haunting,   a façade hiding a heart as cold and unyielding as the marble floors beneath your feet.   you are a contradiction in motion,   a deadly nightshade blooming with toxic allure in a garden overrun with ruin.

you rose from the ashes of your past,   not as a phoenix but as a ghost of your own making,   weaving yourself into the glittering tapestry of high society.   you reign there,   a modern-day tastemaker. one who doesn’t follow trends but conjures them from the ether, leaving the world at arm’s length, always yearning. always entranced by the myth of you.   you’ve spent years perfecting your art,   turning whispers into currency,   hubris into the fabric of your existence.   in this labyrinth of power and decadence,   you move with lethal grace,   every step a calculated trapaise in a world where secrets hold more weight than gold.

HEADCANONS.

her and her mother's relationship is very grey gardens, big edie and little edie inspired. except they have gone to a far greater length to maintain the sheen of their once hollowed out wealth.

tom ripley in a pair of stiletto manolo blahniks. high society darling, known for doing nothing spectacular in particular besides her taste in mediterranean summering & clove cigarettes.

quite solitary, calls hotlines or takes a lover when she's feeling lonely.

currently staying on the estate grounds to avoid the press since the legitimacy of her fortune has recently been called into question by the public.

does not know who she is when she's not performing. only remembers the feeling of nonexistence and pledges to be acknowledged in every room she's set foot in since then.

high maitenance™. glutton for life, if it is to be had, it will be lived splendidly. and if it is to be taken, death too will be a treasure.

[theculturedmarxist]

Posted onFebruary 6, 2023 by Yves Smith

Yves here. Get a cup of coffee. This is a meaty talk, hosted by Danny Haiphong, on the economic and geopolitical effects of the war in Ukraine. One place where I beg to differ is that the sanctions were intended to increase European Union dependence on the US. The intent was to break Russia and secondarily to assure cheap access to Western resources while having a US/Collective West compliant government in charge. The fact that European leaders and even EU businesses have meekly gone along with the damage to their economies from sanctions blowback and only bleated a bit about US exploitation means the sanctions have served as a what we in finance call a price discovery event. It may not have been apparent before to what degree EU members we US vassal states, but now it’s awfully hard to deny that.

By Danny Haiphong at the Left Lens channel

Transcript under the break

   Danny: Greetings everyone. [We] have two very special guests today.

[This] is the first conversation of a series that we will be having on The Left Lens leading into the one year anniversary of the official beginning — or at least what the mainstream may say is the beginning — of the Ukraine proxy war — really the beginning of Russia’s special military operation — but we’re gonna have great conversations here.

And our first two guests are two premier [geopolitical] economists. They are Radhika Desai, who is a friend of the show and former guest, as well as Michael Hudson, also a friend of the show and prior guest. They also are doing a podcast together on Geopolitical Economy Report bi-weekly (every two weeks).

You can catch their books in the links in the description because they are also prolific authors on the very questions we will speak about today.

Good afternoon Radhika. Good afternoon Michael. Thanks for joining me.

Radhika: Thanks very much Danny, great to be here.

Danny: Great, great. So I wanted to just kick off and ask [if] you could give us some reflections on the economic impact of the Ukraine proxy war; because [this] is not talked about so often.

Much has been made about, of course, things like the energy crisis, things like Ukraine’s economic situation, but there hasn’t been really in-depth analysis, at least from the perspective of where you two may come from with this question.

What do you feel like are the most important economic impacts of the Ukraine proxy war, and what has changed?

Maybe we can start with Michael and then Radhika you can follow up right after.

Michael: Well the whole purpose of the war is economic, but it’s not economic just about Ukraine and the winners and losers of the United States and Europe.

President Biden has said this is a ten- or a twenty-year war, and it’s [a war] for what kind of economy [the world is] going to have.

Is it going to be a finance-based neoliberal rentier economy centered in the United States, with the United States controlling all of the monopoly rents: for oil, for raw materials, for technology, for computer information, for pharmaceuticals?

[Or, on the other hand,] will other countries have a chance to be independent?

Ukraine is just sort of the first joust in this long long war and [the war is] over the economy.

Everything that’s happening right now is just sort of a squiggle over the really big picture, which is how the world is going to be structured economically.

Radhika: Absolutely. I think I’d just like to add that, if you look at the biggest picture, basically the world is dividing — exactly as Michael says — into two.

What’s really interesting now, [compared to the] centuries-long dominance of the West — which basically is coterminous with the rise of capitalism — [is that] in a certain sense you’re beginning to see its demise.

Because, if you look at a map of the world, of all the countries in the world that are imposing sanctions on Russia [and] supplying arms to Ukraine — what you see is essentially the core of world capitalism as it was in 1914, with a few little additions — very tiny, very insignificant, not very economically important [additions].

Whereas the entire rest of the world is going in the other direction, and the divide between this “West” and “the rest” is growing precisely in the ways that Michael is saying.

The West [has basically been] in a long-term trend of decline, but the Western leaders have continued to pursue the policies that are responsible for the decline, because even though [those policies] are not good for the economy, they are great for the monopoly financialized corporations of the West which, as Michael says, have become more and more reliant on rentier income — on rent and interest — rather than profits from production.

That’s really the key. [The world economy] is dividing [because so many countries in] the rest of the world — in the third world, etc. — are not doing so well, thanks to the pandemic crisis, thanks to the economic difficulties created by the Ukraine war.

Nevertheless the one thing that that is happening is that — even though they may not be doing well — what they are beginning to realize is that the West has very little to offer them.

Meanwhile, particularly China, and of course, given the energy situation, Russia, may have a lot more to offer them, and they are beginning to exercise their national sovereignty, and [make] choices which are actually not very favorable to continuing Western dominance.

Michael: Well that’s the whole point. The war, in terms of the long perspective, is: How does the United States prevent other countries from developing their own sovereignty and becoming independent of Reliance on the United States for oil, for technology, for credit, for money, for using the dollar. How does the U.S prevent them? 

Ukraine is sort of just sort of the opening statement saying: “Just as we’re fighting to the last last Ukrainian, if anybody else wants to go it alone we can fight to [for instance] the last Taiwanese, the last Japanese. So who wants to be our ally?”

Danny: Well let’s bring in sanctions here because, early on, after Russia launched a special military operation there was a flurry and they’re still — they’re still piling on the sanctions as we speak but the EU and the United States especially began to pile on sanctions onto Russia, which made Russia the most sanctioned country in the world.

There was a lot made about the impact of these sanctions, especially on energy, [and] especially when it comes to Europe, since Europe depends a lot on Russian gas and Russian oil. What has been the impact of these sanctions?

Can you talk about this maybe historically over the course of the last year? Because it felt like there’s been waves of various interpretations of how it would go — there was a lot of Doomsday about it. There was a lot of [talk that] Europe was going to be in big trouble — it seems like there’s been just a lot of various shifts in how this has gone for Europe and how this has gone for the world.

What is your take on the impact of the sanctions — such a big economic weapon — as a part of this war?

Michael: We’d have to discuss sanctions on a region by region basis.

Obviously the United States has become the big winner in all of this, in the sense that the sanctions have turned Western Europe into a dependency. Western Europe is now an economic colony.

It’s dependent on the United States for oil and gas and for fertilizer that is so much more expensive than what was available in Russia. German, French, and Italian industry are saying: “Well in order to remain in business we have to move to the United States.”

They’re not talking about moving to Russia or moving to other places, but the United States, [which] because of the sanctions has solidified its economic stranglehold on Europe.

The [other] big winner of the sanctions, next to the U.S, is of course Russia. [Despite] the fact that President Putin has wanted to break away from the neoliberal philosophy, he [hasn’t been] willing to impose protective tariffs and to really protect Russian agriculture, Russian industry, [or] Russian manufacturing.

The sanctioning basically has [been like saying]: “We want to help you develop, Russia. Because you won’t protect your agriculture — like the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) protected the European Community — we’re going to sanction you and we’re going to force you to become independent, grow your own food. We’re going to force you to produce everything that you were dependent on the West [for], before, so that you won’t need the West anymore, so that you can work with China and Iran and the rest of the world. We’re really helping you to become independent from all of this. We’ll take Europe — you won’t have Europe anymore — but Europe isn’t going to count for very much because it’s sort of a dead zone now.”

So basically there’s been this shift of Russia eastward.

Of course [what’s] up for grabs — and I think what we should talk about in this show — is the southern countries [in] South America, Africa, the rest of Asia, [where] energy prices, food prices, and fertilizer prices [have gone] up so much. The U.S dollar — in which all of these goods are priced —[has gone] up so much.

What are they going to do? Are they going to essentially realize that [they’re] going to [be able] to survive only by not repaying the foreign debt, only by protecting [their] own agriculture? Or are they going to succumb?

That’s the real aim of the war in Ukraine. it’s not fought over Ukraine. It’s fought over Africa, South America, and East Asia.

Radhika: There’s a lot of really good points there Michael, and I would add a few things.

If you were to just say one word about the sanctions which are imposed by the West, I would say that the word that simply describes what has happened as a result of sanctions is: Boomerang. The sanctions were advertised as [a way to] lay waste to [the] Russian economy, [and make its economy a] basket case, [and] the big nuclear option of freezing Russia’s reserves [were] going to bring Russia to its knees. None of this has happened. I think this is really interesting to sit back and observe why that is so.

If you look back at the history of sanctions — which goes back to the early days of the First World War, what you find is that, basically, the application of sanctions was an attempt to bring to Europe — and essentially an attempt to use everywhere else — measures that had been used by imperial countries against their colonies to bring them to submission.

But the fact of the matter is that we have come a long way from that world, and even the relatively weaker economies of the world are not so easily damaged without inflicting damage on yourself.

Of course, Russia is not at all a weak economy. Russia is not only a strong economy but remember, given that the West has been imposing sanctions on Russia at least since 2014, the Russians have become used to handling sanctions. They have become used to responding to sanctions by finding alternatives, and by strengthening domestic production.

One really good example of this is that, after the agricultural sanctions imposed on Russia in 2014 —and later basically — Russian agriculture has turned right around. These sanctions have made Russia into a major agricultural exporter.

I agree of course with Michael and I think Michael’s done a great job of explaining how much Europe is hurting. But the United States is also hurting. The inflation in the United States is directly connected with the disruption of supply chains which has to do with sanctions.

The United States tried to create a world in which it could dominate, imposing on it various so-called globalization rules. But what’s happening now is that particularly China, but a few other countries as well, are basically beating the U.S. at its own game. The United States is now having to disrupt those rules and to impose sanctions and engage in protectionism. So I would say the U.S is also a loser.

I would also say a couple of other things about Europe. To this day, Europe and various European countries are applying sanctions selectively in ways that make a big bang, but the buck is small, so to speak. So they don’t lose that much. For example, today’s headline — the Europeans still can’t decide what sort of oil price cap to put on Russian oil, because each country has different considerations and so on. So they’re applying sanctions selectively. But yes, Europe is hurting.

[European countries] have been helped a great deal by a mild winter. Everybody thought, if the winter is bad, Europe is going to have a really tough time. But [there turned out to be a] mild winter. But mild winter is not going to save Europe for a long time, because these sanctions have forced Europe to buy more expensive gas.

Right now their coffers are full, their gas reserves are full, but a lot of people are saying that, come next winter, that will be the real test of all this. Will they actually be able to continue to cooperate — or even appearing to cooperate — with American sanctions, as they seem to be doing right now?

Remember, all the major European countries know who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline. [They know] that the United States is so ruthless in its efforts to achieve the goals that Michael just outlined that they are willing to go as far as actually blow up a [so-called] friendly country’s infrastructure. So that’s what you’re looking at.

One final thing I’ll say. In recent months — I think it’s [been] a couple of months since Merkel’s interview took place — everybody is telling us that Merkel said, “We only engaged in the Minsk Accords in order to buy time for Ukrainians.” I have read the German version of that interview. Merkel does not say that. What Merkel says is, “Yes, in retrospect, signing those Accords gave Ukraine time.” [That] is a very different statement from saying, “We intended to fool Russia all along.”

Because if [they intended to fool Russia all along,] why would Merkel have engaged in Nord Stream One, Nord Stream Two, and various other measures to make friendly relations with Russia?

Remember, the desire to connect Germany to lands eastward — to Eastern Europe and Russia — goes back at least a century, if not more. Just the other day I was reading about the Dreikaiserbund [also known as the League of the Three Emperors] which is, the [German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires] would create a sort of alliance, which would actually make Germany unbeatable because Germany [had] all this technology, plus all these resources of these big parts of the world.

So I don’t think that these divisions are going to remain underwater for long. They are going to surface. I think in the coming year the big headline that everybody should be looking for is: the disruption of the much-trumpeted Unity of the West

Danny: All of those are really good points. Continuing on with this discussion of sanctions it seems like you both outlined winners and losers and also kind of the dialectic between the two — you can both be a winner and you can be a loser — the United States seemingly fitting that description. But I wanted to ask you, what made Europe and the United States so confident about this form of economic Warfare against Russia?

Because we know there are twenty-plus, [or] thirty-plus countries around the world that experience some form of sanctions imposed on them by the U.S, the EU, or some attendant institution connected to them. but at the same time it seems like there was so much confidence that Russia was going to fall, that its economy would become a basket case, and therefore that would greatly facilitate the U.S.’s and the E.U.’s goals when it came to this proxy war in Ukraine, which was to destabilize Russia.

What happened? Why did that not happen? You touched a little bit on this, Radhika, but maybe Michael if you want to take that question and any other further reflections on that.

Michael: How on earth can we explain how Americans or anyone else make a mistake about viewing the future? We can’t explain the logic behind their mistake. There is no particular logic behind it. The fact is, they didn’t care about Russia. This isn’t about Russia. They didn’t care whether Russia would recover.

I think they sat down in Washington, they [realized] that there’s no way that they can prevent what is happening now — [that is, prevent] the Russia-China-Iran-India axis from developing — and they’ve decided, What we’re going to do is a holding operation. [That is:] What can we hold? We can hold on to Europe.

The one economic effect of the war in Ukraine is to completely disarm Europe. Europe has no more tanks, no more rifles, no more ammunition. It’s a huge market now for American arms, if the United States can continue to keep the current European political leaders in power. The United States has solidified its hold on Europe, and it had hoped that the sanctions would put such an economic squeeze on debtor countries — on Latin America, Africa, and South Asia — that they would be forced into higher reliance on the dollar

It’s sort of a myth to think they say we’ll break up Russia. That’s simply political talk to sell it in the United States. They keep talking about dividing Russia into five or six countries, but that’s so unrealistic that you have to look at that as distracting patter talk. They’re looking at what they can absolutely hold on to, and they’re trying to hold on to the world outside of Russia, not to defeat Russia itself.

It’s a fight over how America can control and essentially dominate its allies, not it’s non-allies

Radhika: I’d actually like to add a couple of things that I’m always just struck by.

We’ve now been watching this conflict for nearly a year. What I’m just amazed at is the extent to which the United States is — you know you talked about U.S confidence, but I think U.S confidence is itself a bit of a con.

What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is that, first of all, different parts of the U.S. state are pulling in different directions. Different parts of the Western Alliance are pulling in different directions.

For example, whatever confidence there may be [is] basically a result of the pronouncements made by those in whose material interests — you know if you go by the “follow the money” principle — in whose material interest the war is. So they of course want to sound totally confident that, yes, the war can be won.

And of course, as you know, recently there has been a Rand Corporation report — the Rand Corporation being very close to the U.S. administration— which has been interpreted in very different ways. The warmongers say [that] the Rand Corporation says, we have to continue this war and intensify it and prolong it and so on. Others are saying it means something completely different

So I think that what we have to realize is that the U.S. is trying to achieve a whole range of conflicting objectives. I think one [objective] is obviously to try and retain its purchase on world affairs, [and] try and retain its dominance on world affairs. It’s not succeeding but that’s what the effort is about.

At the same time the US is also trying to profit. The military-industrial complex is profiting. It’s making money hand over fist. Not only right now, but we should watch the coming U.S. budget. Basically it looks as though the Pentagon and associated interests are going to use the Ukraine war as a way of essentially increasing the contracts being given to the five major U.S corporations [which have dominated] over the 20 years or 30 years since the end of the Cold War.

What used to be dozens and dozens of military suppliers have become condensed into five. You can imagine if there are only five, they find it very easy to talk to the American government. They are making money, [and] they are going to take long term contracts under the guise of — Obviously people like them want to prolong the Ukraine war.

But there are also a whole bunch of other things. For example, we are being told [that] the United States is “aiding Ukraine.” And in order to aid Ukraine the United States has passed a new version of the Lend-Lease Act through which it had “aided” European countries during the [Second] World War. But if you look more closely at the Lend-Lease Act, what you see very clearly is the opposite of that.

Most people, when they hear the word “aid,” they think that the United States is giving money to Ukraine. It’s not giving money to Ukraine. If you look at this text of the [Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022] that was passed and look at clause 3, it says very clearly,

“(3) CONDITION.—Any loan or lease of defense articles to the Government of Ukraine under paragraph (1) shall be subject to all applicable laws concerning the return of and reimbursement and repayment for defense articles loaned or leased to foreign governments.”

Ukraine is going to have to pay for this.

Now let me also tell you one other thing. In any such situation — as was the case in the First and Second World Wars, so it is now — the United States is profiting from Wars very far away. 

The United States is also sending two kinds of weapons. Number one: obsolete weapons that it needs to get rid of anyway. This way it gets to make money out of assets that they would have had to write off otherwise. [Number two:] it wants to send those weapons which its military industrial complex corporations want to have tested in “battle conditions.”

In all of these ways the United States under the rhetoric of “aid” is actually using Ukraine.

I don’t think it cares a farthing about what happens to Ukrainians, as Michael has also said and reminded us, as John Mearsheimer keeps saying, the Americans want to fight the Ukraine war against Russia to the last Ukrainian.

So I think these sorts of things should give us an idea that different parts of the U.S. administration are pulling in different directions. As always, there are many pigs feeding at the trough and they are all getting their bid. But in the meantime, the trough is Ukraine. They are emptying Ukraine.

Michael: Well let’s take that to the next step. You mentioned the effect of Lend-Lease especially on England in the Second World War. The Lend-Lease made England pay by essentially emptying out the Sterling Area reserves that India and other raw materials producers had put in London during the war. 

All this money that was accumulated by the British colonies ended up opening up the Sterling Area to the United States [by] saying, these countries can spend their money anywhere, not only in England. So there was a huge [increase in foreign] demand for the United States. Essentially the Lend-Lease broke the British Empire.

Let’s look at what’s happening in Ukraine. How could Ukraine possibly repay more than ten dollars of the debt that it owes for the arms and others? Well, the idea is that — obviously there’s a reason that in the last couple of weeks you’ve had Blackstone going back and forth to Ukraine, you’ve had Lincoln going around, you’ve had George Soros talking. In the last year of the war, Ukraine has sold its farmland, its mineral resources — it’s sold almost all of its raw materials and agriculture to American firms.

Now the problem is, how can a puppet government such as Zelenskyy actually have the authority to sell [those resources]? You’ve had in the last week hilarious talks, suggestions, even in the Washington Post by supposed leaks, saying that, “Well the United States State Department is willing to talk to Russia to make a settlement on all of this. And maybe [the State Department is] even willing to give Russia the Luhansk and the Donetsk regions.

I can imagine what the discussion would be between the State Department and Russia.

[Secretary of State] Blinken would say, “Well, Russia, you can have these regions. It’s okay if they’re part of Russia now. But you have to respect the international private property rules, and you have to realize that the the titanium resources in this region that we need for our airlines, the agricultural land that’s so fertile that we need to control the export trade, that your oil and gas and all of your minerals, have really been bought up by the Americans from Mr. Zelenskyy’s regime. Are you willing to obey the rules-based order that says we stole it fair and square?”

Well obviously Russia is not going to do this. It’s only a ploy to pretend to Europe, to pretend to the world that the United States is willing to give Luhansk and Donetsk to Russia. Of course it’s even willing to let it keep Crimea as long as the United States private sector owns most of this property, which of course is inconceivable in principle.

Radhika: People don’t understand what imperialism is really about, and also what control of territory is about. Let me explain.

Russia is generally portrayed in the Western media [as attacking,] taking over Ukraine, [expanding], as [imperialistic]. But what Russia is trying to do is defend its national community. That’s what it’s trying to do, [to defend] those members of its national community which are part of Ukraine.

It tried through the Minsk Accords — Minsk One, Minsk Two — to secure their interests within Ukraine. It was not insisting that it wants to incorporate them into Russia. Since this has proved impossible they are now doing the next best thing, which is to incorporate them in Russia and consolidate that national community. 

But the United States, which is the real imperialist — it doesn’t care about controlling territory. In fact, controlling territory is a bit of a headache. [For example] you have to take responsibility for people.

What [the U.S. actually wants] — this is what Michael says — is that other countries should simply do [the U.S.’s] bidding and deal with the political consequences of that. For example, by repressing their national population because [the population is] bound to oppose the policies that the United States wants these countries to impose, [because those policies] are not in the interests of ordinary people of any country.

Quite frankly they’re not even in the interest of ordinary Americans, as ordinary Americans are finding out with all these demands, [asking, for example,] Why are we sending so many billions to Ukraine?

Of course the United States is not sending billions to Ukraine. It’s indebting the Ukrainians, but it is certainly refusing to address domestic problems, including those of shocking and scandalous levels of poverty.

That’s the first thing I wanted to say, which is this contrast — we’ve been running a national economy which is kind of what Russia is doing to some, to significant extent — and essentially running an imperial economy which is at the expense of your own people as well as the people of the rest of the world.

When we talk about the political economy of the Ukraine war one can talk about a lot of things, as we have.

Indeed, we’ve talked about the effects on the United States, on Europe, on the rest of the world, on China and Russia relations, and so many different things.

But one really important piece of this puzzle is what’s going on domestically in Ukraine. 

Since the end of the Soviet Union — of course there was “shock therapy” and privatizations and so on — but you also have to remember that as these things unfolded — and particularly as people realized — people were actually disillusioned by the end of the Soviet Union — because one thing people forget is that people of the Soviet Union did not want the end of the Soviet Union.

In early 1991, at the end of which year the Soviet Union was dissolved, there was a poll conducted in the Soviet Union and 80% of the people voted to retain the Soviet Union. They did not want its breakup.

Ukrainians have also fought back against privatization and neoliberalism and shock therapy and so on.

One very important consequence of this fight back was to stop the sale of land. Foreigners couldn’t buy land in Ukraine. But in 2021 —precisely around the time when the Americans started stepping up their attention to Ukraine and so on — this law was repealed and since then you can buy land.

What’s really shocking is that in the context of the war, where you might think that — normally when nations fight wars they actually pass solidaristic legislation to help the weakest, rationing, to tax the strongest, and so on — so that the nation is united and it’s more equal.

In Britain for example this went so far that actually longevity increased during [WWII] — when Britain was losing lives in the war, longevity increased because people were getting enough to eat.

If you’re looking at Ukraine and looking for this sort of solidarity, you don’t find it. In fact, the war is being used as an excuse to do the opposite. All sorts of extremely anti-labor legislation has been passed, privatization legislation has been passed, and of course, amid all this, opposition has been silenced. Zelenskyy has banned a number of the left-wing parties. 

This is in a context where Ukraine was already, next to Moldova, the second poorest nation in Europe. In the name of de-sovietization, there is even more privatization going on.

In the design of this privatization — what I read for example in an article in Open Democracy — is that some of the most recent legislation was — and this is just one little instance — it was developed and designed by a Ukrainian NGO which calls itself — listen to this — the Office of Simple Solutions and Results. 

It is set up by the former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, along with Ukrainian employers associations, and — get this — a USAID program. If you actually read the whole article, NGOs — which basically represent the interests of big multinationals abroad who want a piece of Ukraine — they are helping design these legislations, scrapping labor protections, increasing working hours, increasing privatization including of land. Really horrific.

Michael: So you’ve described Ukraine as a dress rehearsal for what the United States would like to promote all over the rest of the world.

Radhika: Absolutely. So for example in the middle of the war, Zelenskyy — and I’m reading one of the articles that I found —Zelenskyy announced government plans to launch large-scale privatizations beginning September 1.

Subsequently on 28 July the Ukrainian Parliament adopted draft No. 7451 on amendments to the Law of Ukraine “On the Privatization of State and Communal Property, which is intended to simplify the privatization process. It will make large-scale privatizations and online auctions, shortening the terms of conducting privatization auctions.

And then we are told later on that all of this is very good because it will help municipalities and local governments make up for the revenue shortfall caused by the war. Go figure.

So now, if you go back, follow the money. How is the war being financed and funded? Privatizations have now become essentially a way — allegedly — of financing this war which is destroying Ukraine in the name of saving it. The hypocrisy just makes me cry sometimes.

Danny: Those are great points. I think you both outlined just how much this proxy war has affected Ukraine. That’s not talked about so much.

Sometimes you get in the media that [for instance] the economy contracted by [about] a third. You get this information haphazardly about just how much foreign aid, [in particular U.S. aid], has been so important now to the government’s entire budget.

It is just astounding. You outlined, Radhika, quite clearly in that Lend-Lease Act that these are debts that will be paid back, or at least if they’re not paid back, there will be heavy costs to Ukraine in the future. Of course right now there are huge consequences.

Maybe we can segue to a topic that you two have been covering a lot lately which is, this kind of broader macroeconomic situation with inflation, but in particular the U.S. dollar. One thing I’ve noticed over the course of the last year is that more and more countries are being very vocal, and even starting to put together the foundations for de-dollarization.

So, while the U.S. dollar has indeed strengthened off the backs of Europe there’s also been a lot of talks — even from countries like Saudi Arabia trading in RMB with China around the oil trade between the two countries — you also have BRICS expanding over the course of the last year including countries, not only Saudi Arabia having interest, but Türkiye, Algeria, Argentina, Iran —

I’m wondering what you make of this trend toward de-dollarization. Maybe Michael you can begin when it comes to how the Ukraine proxy war has affected it.

Michael: Well the sanction that we did not mention of course was the Americans grabbing all of Russia’s foreign exchange dollar holdings in the United States and Europe. Whatever Russia held — or Russian agencies held — in Europe or the United States was simply confiscated, and the American State Department said, “We are going to give that to Ukraine.”

Well of course, you give it to Ukraine to do what? To pay back the United States for all of the foreign aid that we’ve given it and letting them fight our proxy war. 

What this has done, in conjunction with the Bank of England’s seizure of Venezuela’s gold stock, is letting every country know: “You’ve seen what we’ve done to Ukraine if you get us angry at you, if you don’t play by our “rules-based order”, then we can simply grab your money. We grabbed Iran’s money right after the Shah was overthrown and made it a financial pariah. If you continue to use the U.S. dollar we’re holding you hostage, we’re holding the dollars hostage.”

This has led every country outside of the United States and Western Europe to say, “How do we handle our trade without using the dollar?” Well obviously the very first attempts are currency swaps: “Let’s do trade in our own currencies.”

And then they’re trying to create some means of mutual obligations for deficits in the trade between, let’s say, the Near East, South Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The problem is, if you de-dollarize, how can you create a currency to take its place?

You can’t do it through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) because the United States has veto power in it, and the IMF is really a branch of the U.S State Department and military. That’s why the IMF is giving grants to Ukraine.

But one of the nice things about the IMF’s new loans to Ukraine is the IMF said, “We don’t have to obey our rules at all if we’re doing something that the United States wants. Our rules say that we cannot make a loan to a country in a war. But Ukraine, we can make a loan to Ukraine.”

“Our second other rule — which is what led to much of our staff resigning in the Argentine financial crisis a few decades ago — was, we cannot make a loan to a country that can’t afford to pay back.”

Well obviously Ukraine is not going to be in any position at all to pay back.

This double standard [with] Ukraine enables all of the countries who owe the the IMF money — Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, South Asia — to say, “Well now that you’ve made it clear that the IMF is simply a branch of the United States Treasury and, we can’t afford to pay you and still afford to import our oil and gas, now that you’ve imposed sanctions that have raised the prices, now that we we can’t afford to pay the dollar debts [since] the dollar has raised its interest rates and gone way up against Global South currencies — in order to survive we’re going to make trade among ourselves and we can get the money to finance our our trade among [ourselves] by not paying the dollar debts.”

Well the United States is going to respond by saying, “If you go to other means of payments besides the dollar then we will simply sanction you like we’ve sanctioned Russia and we will cut you off from World Trade.”

So that in order to de-dollarize, given the military and the political maneuvering that the United States is going to do, they have to become commercially independent of the United States and Western Europe for almost all of their imports: their food, their cars, their telephones, their electronics

Everything that they basically need they have to be able to make sure that there is no choke point in their trade, of dependency on the United States, that enables the United States to say, “We can use this choke point to make your economy halt if you don’t agree to trade in dollars and open your markets to the United States and pay these unpayably-high dollarized debts by essentially privatizing your industry and selling it off. You can pay the debts by selling what’s left of your public infrastructure, your land, your raw materials resources, your oil and gas and minerals — you’ll get that money and you’ll use that money to pay American bondholders and the IMF and the World Bank that has been giving you all the bad advice to become dependent on U.S grain exports and general economic trade.”

The de-dollarization isn’t simply a technical issue of what kind of currency or arrangement you are going to make. It involves the whole economic system, which is why the Ukraine war has become so much more than a military confrontation and has forced countries to think in terms of totally restructuring their economy in a way that’s independent from Western Europe and the United States — from the “golden billion” as President Putin likes to call them.

Radhika: I’d like to say something about de-dollarization as well. But before I do that I just want to say one thing about a subject we were discussing earlier because it’s really pertinent.

Everybody will remember that some months ago, Western powers were making a big deal about permitting grain shipments from Ukraine. Everything was couched in terms [of] Ukraine [being] the “breadbasket of Europe” [and] all these poor third world countries depend on Ukrainian grain shipments.

What was the real reason? It’s not like Western countries’ hearts are bleeding for Third World countries — I mean, they’ve been squeezing Third World countries for two centuries now. [The point is], the main reason why they are so eager to get grain shipments out of Ukraine is a fact that few people know.

A large part of the farming — even before Ukrainian land could be sold it was allowed to be leased. As a consequence, big Western agribusiness corporations are heavily invested in Ukraine and even many corporations that are apparently Ukrainian [and] are [even] headquartered [there] involve Western interests. So it was the grain of this agribusiness that had to get out. We always have to look for the real motivations.

I think people should really understand [that] all these pronouncements about aiding Ukraine and so on — they’re all hollow in some respect or another.

Anyway, coming to de-dollarization, let me also plug the fact that [around this time] next week Michael and I are going to record our program on de-dollarization, so if you’re interested please listen to that.

I would like to start at a very fundamental level, because we we will not understand what is happening under the rubric of de- dollarization — or not fully understand it — unless we consider a very simple point, [which is]: it is not possible to have the currency of one country be the currency of the world.

People say, “What about the dollar and what about Sterling?” Well, the point is, each of these has not only had special circumstances — in the case of Sterling, Britain was [essentially] providing the world with liquidity by exporting the surpluses it extracted from its Empire — both directly as taxation and indirectly in the sense that all the trade surpluses that its Empire was incurring with the rest of the World by essentially producing their guts out to send food and tea and all sorts of raw materials and cotton to the rest of the world market.

India was the second biggest exporter in the world at the time and so it was earning a lot of foreign exchange and capital for Britain. All of this was being sent — so Britain could do it because it had an Empire, otherwise what was tiny little Britain ever going to do even at the height of its industrial power?

[Likewise,] the dollar never really succeeded in the post-war period. It spent basically a crisis-ridden period in the 1950s and 1960s and then the gold link had to be broken. Since then, the dollar has only remained the world’s currency by creating artificial demand for the dollar by expanding financialization.

[Of course another] thing, which is essentially preventing Third World development, because what Third World development would do — if Third World countries really develop — is increase the competition to purchase commodities. Increased competition to purchase commodities would mean higher prices of commodities. Higher prices of commodities, as those who have watched these things know, is inversely related to the value of the dollar. So in this sense, this is the most fundamental point I want to make.

And then of course I would say I completely agree with everything that Michael said. I would add to it that, basically: What is it about the Ukraine war that has done this? If you take what I said seriously, then you will also understand that the dollar’s position has been weakening for some time now.

[The Ukraine war] has accelerated that position, and that weakening comes from a multitude of sources, including the fact that the financialization scheme — the idea that we can simply expand international demand for the dollar by expanding financialization and inviting everybody into the giant casino that is the dollar-denominated financial system — even this is not working, because after 2008 foreign money has basically not been coming in, which is partly why the Federal Reserve has had to support all these asset markets. So in that sense [the dollar’s position] has been weakening.

What has also happened is that the rest of the world has seen — that the rest of the world had many complaints about the dollar system anyway because it works completely in ways that are governed by the U.S requirements. [For instance,] when U.S interest rates are low, money floods out of the U.S. into the so-called “emerging markets,” driving up the value of “emerging market” currencies. Then, when [the Federal Reserve] increases interest rates, the money rushes back to the United States.

So this kind of dollar system is no good. It does not provide stable finance.

The big thing that’s driving the de-dollarization is that now there are alternatives. China is an alternative source of finance which is far superior to anything the U.S. can offer.

And, as Michael says, countries are also realizing that they cannot rely on this crazy casino system and they need more stable arrangements amongst themselves, and they are creating them.

One final point [is] that the weaponization of the dollar system, not only in the case of Russia, but remember [that] they sequestered Afghan reserves and they are subjecting Afghanistan to the most inhuman forms of starvation, lack of medical equipment, etc. They’ve done similar things to Venezuela, Argentina, and so on.

Danny: Those are all great points. It just goes to show how connected what’s going on Ukraine is to the rest of the world and how much — China calls them headwinds — there’s been a huge fallout from the Ukraine proxy war, and de-dollarization is for sure one of them.

Michael, how do you think this will play out? There’s a lot of different theories about how fast this will go — whether the dollar will be replaced the next five, ten, years, or maybe it’ll take several decades.

How do you see this development moving forward, given that it feels like we’re going to be in the midst of this proxy war for some time, despite whatever references to a peace deal, and to peace, that the U.S. and NATO have been making of late?

It feels like this is going to go on for quite a while, so how do you see this going? I know we can’t predict the future but there are some trends that maybe can point the way forward?

Michael: The dollar is not going to be replaced [or] disappear. The dollar will remain the center of the American and the European trade. The problem is, what can take its place?

Well, what can take its place has to be a systemic answer. Any foreign currency is given value by being accepted as payment for debt or payment to the government. If the government accepts the currency, that creates a demand for the money that [the government itself] creates.

If the key is [that] you establish a currency’s value by taxes, [then] taxes are something that are political. In order to have a common currency, you need to have an intergovernmental arrangement or a political agreement on what the taxes will be paid for [and] who will receive the taxes.

It almost imposes a political union among the countries that are using a foreign currency, unless what they arrange is simply a group of bilateral swap agreements like Saudi Arabia is making with Russia and various countries are making with China. Or [if what they arrange is] a kind of artificial — something like Keynes’s proposal for Special Drawing Rights (SDR) — new alternative to the IMF that will create artificial currency.

The question is, how do you give this artificial currency a value outside of the countries that are using it?

You’re going to have two different —  you can almost say two different civilizations, which is how Lavrov and Putin have been saying it. You’re going to have one part of the world — developing independently of the United States — with a mixed economy, basically moving towards socialism, and [for the other part of the world], the neoliberalized, financialized United States.

These will be rival political systems and really a whole different way of organizing the economy, politics, and values. That’s going to be much harder to put in place than simply doing a technical financial arrangement.

It was easy for countries to break away from the SWIFT bank clearing system, [especially since] the United States’s threats had given Russia and China time to put in place their own bank currency system, their own credit card system, [and] all of the financial details.

But to have the balance of debt between countries — when countries have an imbalance in trade and investment — [for instance, if] China is going to develop infrastructure all along the Belt and Road Initiative, other countries are not going to be able to pay immediately. Ultimately these equity investments that China is making will generate enough revenue to pay them off, but how are you going to handle this in currency — these mutual debts — in the interim?

That’s what has to be developed, and it’s a political question that most countries have not asked, especially if they’ve sent their students to the United States or England to learn economics, [where] the economic curriculum doesn’t even discuss the kind of things that we’ve been discussing here for the last hour.

They don’t discuss the political context for what a market is. They don’t discuss how a group of governments can create their own market relations and means of payment and means of debt settlement.

All of this is going to be linked to: How do you handle the imbalances in trade and investment that develop among countries that decide, “We’ve got to go it by ourselves. We’ve got to be independent from the United States.”

If the United States says, “If you don’t use the dollar then you can’t import anything from us and Europe,” [those countries have] to be prepared to really start all over. The good thing is, if they start all over, it doesn’t have to be the way that the United States and Europe developed. It doesn’t have to be Margaret Thatcher’s way that Europe and Ukraine and the United States have followed. Iit doesn’t have to be the neoliberal way.

It can be the way in which socialists have talked about for the last 150 years.

Radhika: If I may add to that: Danny, your original question was, Do you think the dollar system will go away now sooner or later?

Part of Michael’s answer was that it’s quite possible that it will remain the currency of this Western bloc. But remember, the Western bloc already has in it the Euro and also of course other stronger currencies, so I think that that’s something we have to bear in mind. [Also], financial relations between Europe and the United States are not as strong as you might think.

In the first decade of the 21st century, as the U.S financial system was inflating those crazy asset bubbles based on the mortgage-backed securities and so on, the big buyers of these asset-backed securities, these toxic securities — of course American corporations and and financial corporations were among the big buyers — but, outside the United States, U.K. and Eurozone financial institutions bought into this market in a big way.

And in fact, that is why they were the ones that were hurt the most [in the 2008 financial crisis]. So, when people refer to what happened in 2008 as the “global” financial crisis, I always say. there was nothing “global” about it. It was a “North Atlantic” financial crisis.

Interestingly, as the English expression goes, “once bitten, twice shy,” what we have seen thereafter, as various reports have pointed out, is that European countries have not been investing in American financial markets quite as much. They have sort of retracted. The flow of money from Europe to the United States is massively down.

That means that the United States — for the U.S to function as a dollar system it has to actually have inflows from elsewhere, which are not coming. which [in turn] requires the Federal Reserve to support asset markets. Now that is proving difficult in the present inflationary context. The U.S is caught in a vice, and as a result of that I think there may be some dysfunction there which may lead to a collapse of the dollar. We don’t know.

I also agree with Michael that of course the other thing that is accelerating the move away from the dollar — and that acceleration can suddenly become very significant — is the availability of alternatives.

Earlier I had said that a national currency cannot be the world currency. Keynes knew that, and he arrived at the Bretton Woods conference with proposals for the bancor — not SDR, bancor — which is just the name he gave to this currency. The key thing about this currency was that it was not a currency you and I could use to buy a chocolate bar, [for instance]. It was a currency only to be used between central banks.

I think this kind of arrangement can be made on a bilateral, multilateral — many different types of — of basis. For example, the Argentine and Brazilian arrangement that has recently been made has been criticized by people who don’t know these sorts of things and say that it’s just a central bank currency, it can’t be worth much.

But no, money is national. Keynes understood this. What we need is a way of settling imbalances between central banks. That’s what world money needs to do primarily. We don’t need world money to pay for restaurant meals or buy a chocolate bar or shop for shoes or whatever. That money can remain national, and I think that that’s what Keynes understood.

That has been forgotten with all the hype about how natural it is for the U.S to be the world’s money. It’s not natural at all. It’s based on a whole bunch of shenanigans, some of which we don’t even know about.

I think that as these arrangements multiply, which I think they will for reasons we’ve already talked about, there’s also going to be a move away from the dollar, and at that point we will not really even care what the dollar is worth. [In the sense of,] how much do we care about the worth of the Korean [currency, the] won? We don’t worry about it. Koreans worry about it. And that’s what will happen.

Michael: Well, what are we going to do about the backlog of dollarized debt that countries have? Their foreign debt has been denominated in dollars. These debts cannot be repaid and [at the same time] have these countries develop independence from the United States: something has to give.

[If] not paying the foreign debt [is given priority] — because you’re using your money to develop your own economic independence, your agricultural independence, your industrial independence — if that is given priority, then the United States is going to force a split. That’s the problem that has to be solved.

Radhika: Yes, and I think that you’re right, the United States will try to resolve this by force. I think what may also happen is that, if countries stop incurring new debt in dollars, then this will look very different.

Michael: Yes, that’s true.

Danny: We’ve gone through the specifics and now we’re getting to the general. I’d like your reactions to [the fact that] the IMF, major financial institutions, and big banks are all predicting a very slow 2023 economically.

When it comes to the US’s numbers in particular, if we just take the mainstream definition of a recession we would say that the condition of the United States — given that it’ll have less than one percent growth predicted in 2023 — is recession. How do you feel like this global economic — or world economic — slowdown is related? How has the Ukraine proxy war impacted this, and how do you see the U.S. and the E.U. in particular reacting?

China for example is going to grow four or five times the rate. Russia, although it may not experience that kind of growth, it’s not falling apart, so it seems like big trouble in terms of the geopolitical agenda moving forward on this economic point alone.

Michael: Well, we’re not in a world of business cycles anymore. We have entered a period — by “we” I mean the United States and Western Europe — are in a permanent chronic debt deflation — a chronic depression.

I think we’ve discussed before [that] every business cycle recovery since1945 has started from a higher and higher amount of debt. Usually the function of a business cycle crash is that you wipe out the debts. Bankruptcies transfer property from weak to strong hands. That didn’t happen after 2008 — you can call it the Obama Depression.

Obama had a choice. The bank fraud in the United States — as Bill Black at [UMKC] has explained — was so great that — Citibank was insolvent, all the big New York Banks and firms were technically insolvent. Normally they would have gone broke. They would have wiped out all of the One Percenter holdings. They would have wiped out the stockholders. They’d end up basically with a debt cancellation. 

But Obama said, “No. We’re going to save the banks, but we’re going to kick 10 million American families out [of their homes]. The economic war is on and the race war is on. All of these victimized Black, Hispanic, and low-income borrowers with junk mortgages are going to be evicted and wiped out.”

“We’re going to impose a depression on the American economy to bail out the Democratic party’s backers — the large Wall Street firms and the One Percent.”

And so, since 2008, the One Percent have had an enormous increase in wealth in the value of stocks, bonds — you’ve had the largest bond rally in history — since 2008 an enormous wealth at the top.

And what form does this wealth take? It takes the form of the debt of 90% of the population. In the United States now, 90% of the people cannot afford to increase their purchase of goods and services  —which is what a recovery is —  and at the same time pay their mortgage debt, their credit card debt, their auto debt, their student loans. All of these debts are increasing, making a recovery of the real economy impossible.

The same thing of course is happening in Germany, now that you have the industrial sector basically wiped out by the American sanctions. You’re going to have the West in a shrinking economy.

The only way that the One Percent — and 10% — can continue to get rich is by exploiting the rest of the world economy and the rest of the world. If [the rest of the world] lets this happen, it is going to itself be forced into a chronic depression and that really is the political issue.

In terms of the coming year I can guarantee you that there’s not going to be a recovery, because how can you have a recovery in goods and services if your money is going to pay debts, to pay higher monopoly rent for oil and gas, higher monopoly rent for food prices, for healthcare?

How can the economy do all of these things at once? It can’t. And I think most of Wall Street knows it, and certainly, the United States State Department and Treasury people know it. All they can try to do is say, “Well let’s get everything we can to the last minute and then take what we have and basically take the money and run.”

“Where do we run? Maybe we can buy Ukrainian land or New Zealand land or Australian land. What can we do?” That’s the question they have.

There’s all of these American dollars that are going to want to convert into Chinese currency, Indian currency, Turkish currency, to buy foreign assets in countries that are not subject to the same debt deflation that is plaguing the West.

The question is, how are the countries going to avoid their own debt deflation, that is completely or not domestic so much, as owed to their foreign creditors for bad debts? The only answer that I can see is, these bad debts are really bad loans. They’re bad loans because they can’t be paid, and a loan that can’t be paid should be wiped out, [which] is what has been happening for the last three thousand years of civilization.

The dollar debts will have to go, and if that goes, there goes the underpinning of the American banking system, the financial system, and there’s really nothing that the United States can do about it.

It doesn’t have a military solution, it doesn’t have an acceptable economic solution. There’s really nothing that their economies can do. Except, the upper 10% knows that the economy can’t recover, so [for them] the trick is to convince the 99% or the 90% percent that somehow everything’s going to be alright, [that] the economy can indeed recover — even though we’re going to cut back Social Security and Medicare.

To answer your question, you’re now seeing the Republicans joined by the right wing of the political spectrum, which is the Democratic Party, wanting to cut back Social Security and Medicare in order to balance the budget. Imagine what’s going to happen in the United States, if the United States says, “Now we have to have an enormous military expenditure because of the war against Russia. We have to defend Europe and re-arm Europe. We’re going to have to vastly increase the American military budget so that Russia can’t do to us what it did to Ukraine.”

That’s how President Biden will speak, and if there’s this increase in military spending of the United States budget then something has to give. The Democrats have agreed with the Republicans that what has to give is Social Security, just like [French President] Macron is raising the retirement age in France. You’ve seen the riots over there. You’re going to have all sorts of gimmicks in cutting back Social Security, the post office that’ll be privatized, medical care.

What they are not going to do is make Social Security payments be paid by the One Percent. There will be a cut off. Only the wage earners and the middle class have to make Social Security contributions at present. The rentier class — the wealthy people — do not have to pay social security in proportion to their own income, unlike the rest. 

So you’re going to have the class war in the United States back in business, and as usual it’ll probably take a racial form. It’ll be an ethnic war. It’ll be a geographic war between various parts of the United States.

So all of this is going to be the backlog of having basically followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union with a “cold war economy” instead of an economy of economic growth. 

Finally the Americans and Europeans are going to say, “Do we want to grow or do we want a military economy?” The vote will be overwhelming: We [(the elites)] would rather have a military economy and sacrifice and not grow, as long as all of the pain is felt by the 99% and by the wage earners, but not us.

Radhika: I just want to say, Michael said the class war is back. The class war never went away. Neoliberalism has been nothing but a class war by the One Percent — by the rich against the working people of the United States. We are probably going to, at least now, begin finally to see — I mean the class war has never been completely unresisted — that is, the capitalists’ class war has been resisted by working people — but I think now we are going to see a turnaround.

For example, this morning I [saw] that in the United Kingdom, where there have been a series of strikes, yesterday they had a sort of mini general strike. It has just been reported that Shell made some astronomical amount of profit — meanwhile ordinary British people do not have the money to buy enough heat, enough electricity, to heat themselves.

Electricity companies are sending people to barge into poor people’s homes and install these meters into which you have to pay in advance. You put coins into it. It’s coin-operated. It’s horrific. But it’s a coin-operated electricity meter and poor people have to use that, and if they don’t have the coins to put in that machine they don’t get heat.

Ordinary people can see the obscenity of this and of a government that refuses to increase corporate taxes on these huge monopolistic rentier profits, which needs to happen.

Nurses, railway workers, teachers, and everybody who is striking are basically asking, “You’re telling us there is no money? Look at these profits. That’s where the money is. If you want the money, [you know] where to get it.” So I think that there’s no doubt that there will be an intensification of the class struggle right now, and it will be now more two-sided than it’s been through the bulk of neoliberalism.

Your original question was, How seriously do we take the IMF’s very very dire projections about world growth? I’d just like to say one thing. In this world growth, whatever projections the IMF is making, the bulk of the contribution to growth will be from China.

Why? For the simple reason — if I were to summarize all the different things that Michael is saying — it is because the overwhelming majority of countries — and that includes, I’m sorry to say, many countries that are part of “the rest” so to speak, for example India — are pursuing horrifically neoliberal policies, and neoliberal policies are not about growth, they are about transferring income from ordinary people to a tiny ever-narrower elite. This is what’s happening in India on a massive scale, and on a tragic scale.

By contrast, the election of Lula in Brazil has been a breath of fresh air — and I think as more and more people realize that they have to elect governments that are going to run economic policy in the interests of the majority as opposed to a tiny minority, in the interest of production and environmentally sustainable production as against environmentally ravaging predation and rentier income —

Because, one thing people don’t realize — people oppose production versus environment. Actually that’s not it.

If you look at the graph of practically any environmental damage that you may see, it shoots up in the neoliberal period. The neoliberal period has been a period of low growth, but the environmental devastation has actually gone up. What this tells you is that you can have a better pattern of growth. By “growth” we don’t mean that we should consume more and more resources. We just mean there must be ways to increase people’s welfare — their access to the basics: food, education, housing.

I think as more and more people around the world realize that there is nothing to be gained from the neoliberal model and they start demanding other economic policies, I think that things will change.

In the Russian case — to come back to our political economy of the Ukraine conflict — what’s really interesting to me, if you focus on Russia for a second, President Putin said things like, “Those who do not lament the demise of the Soviet Union have no heart, but those who want to bring it back have no head.” So you can see a complex view. But he has always been basically running the economy for oligarchs on a broadly neoliberal model.

But what the sanctions — and subsequently now the war sanctions from 2014 — have forced him to do is to actually pay attention to the productive aspects of the economy and make the Russian economy more resilient.

Now that [Russia] is coming so close to China in many ways, I am sure that the “demonstration effect” of running essentially what is a socialist economy — yes, there are capitalists in China but they are under the overall direction of the Communist Party and the economic policies it makes — as this model which has proven so successful is also seen as a something to, if not emulate, [then] at least to learn from. I think that this is where things will change.

The next year is nothing. I mean, the next year is not going to be particularly pretty in terms of growth, but I think in the long run this is the source of hope, if I may put it that way.

Michael: Two days ago Foreign Secretary Lavrov made an interesting point about this. He said that this alternative to the neoliberal model has to be based on historical analysis. He pointed to an article that [Jake Sullivan] wrote in 2019 in the Atlantic. Sullivan said, “No vision of American exceptionalism can succeed if the United States does not defeat the emerging vision that emphasizes ethnic and cultural identity.”

Well, Lavrov called this remark terrible because he said this denies other people the right to remember their history, and their cultural identity is the culture of not letting the financial sector dominate the entire country — the identity of having a society that is more egalitarian and does not permit a whole class of landlords and monopolists and bankers to have a free lunch of exploiting income without producing anything.

That’s the basically the United States — to prevent any alternative to this neoliberalism, to say the market means that the rich people get to control what’s bought,,to control politics, to control the tax laws, and to control the country just like the United States does. That’s what America does and we have to spread that all over the world and any country that does not accept what we’re doing can look at Ukraine to see what might happen to them.

Danny: I want to ask one final question for both of you before we end the interview portion and then I’ll get to some announcements.

We’ve had Jens Stoltenberg — he’s traveling all around Asia, he’s been making this connection between Russia and China and their strategic partnership as being a huge threat to the values of NATO and the values of this “rules-based international order.” 

Of course throughout this special military operation waged by Russia we’ve heard a lot also about China and Russia and their closeness, their relationship, and what it means in connection not only to the political and military situation around the world but specifically economically as well.

So what exactly is the thread here? What do they mean by “values and interests”? What are Russia and China doing together — [or] maybe apart as well — that sparks this huge concern? Of course, this predates the Ukraine proxy war, but it feels like it has accelerated this fear, this sounding the alarm. and even at times I think scapegoating as well. 

Radhika: So your question is, “What is the concern vis-a-vis China?”

Danny: Yes, China and Russia. Their strategic partnership — what’s the threat here?

Radhika: [Throughout] the whole last decade, more and more what you find in official documents of the United States, there is this creeping intensification of identifying China as a threat.

The reason is very simple. China is a threat because [in] particular in the 1980s and 1990s, as the United States and China seemed to be sort of working together cooperatively after Nixon’s visit and the normalization of relations at the end of the 1970s — the expectation of the U.S ruling establishment was that China [would] simply become almost like a colony — a subordinated neoliberal economy.

But it soon became clear — actually it was already becoming clear from the middle of the first decade of the 21st century but certainly after 2008 and the increasing talk of multipolarity and so on — it became very clear that in fact China was sticking to its own guns. It was going its way.

Yes, it was happy to cooperate with the United States, happy to get investment, happy to get export markets, and all these things, but as far as it was concerned it was continuing its a socialist path. The socialist path was paying big dividends in terms of increasing — basically the Communist Party of China has executed over the past many decades the greatest Industrial Revolution in the world. No country has become so industrialized, not only in terms of quantity but in terms of quality of products in such a short period.

So basically China has emerged as a rival to the United States and that is what the United States cannot suffer. So of course people in the United States who particularly want to keep the military industrial complex going and don’t have too many gray cells to figure out that they are actually endangering the world —  they are going to talk up [this] coming war [with] China.

Recently, two or three days ago, a major — like a general in the U.S Army — was talking in really lurid terms about how Americans should prepare for war with China in the next two or three years and so on. They think that they’re going to provoke — just as they are creating a proxy war against Russia over Ukraine — they’re going to create a proxy war against China over Taiwan. But I think they will find that the scenario is very very different.

Number one: China is a much more formidable enemy. Number two: I don’t think Taiwan will be that easily manipulated. Number three: I don’t think the Europeans who have been — as I have underlined — reluctant to go along even on the Ukraine matter — although they have gone along sort of — I think they [will] be even more reluctant to go along on the Taiwan issue.

[This does] not preclude the possibility that the United States will initiate some sort of war, try to provoke China in various ways and so on — but honestly — and that can have horrific consequences — but I would say that the picture is very complex.

Michael: I think the threat is not simply GDP growth, but it’s systemic economic organization.

The threat of China is: not letting U.S investors buy control of their economy, not letting U.S banks create their bank credit at interest, but keeping money and banking as a public utility by the state, not private creditors, and for creating money to essentially create new means of production, not simply for creditors to buy existing housing, existing plant and equipment, existing production, and then loading it down with debt to extract all of its surplus value.

And the threat is that China will tax away the free lunch, it’ll tax away economic rent, it will prevent super billionaires from developing — unlike the United States, it won’t favor absentee landlords and favor monopolists and financial investors and let them take over the economy. All of these things are what the United States says is a free market and is a work of nature itself. So the real threat is doing things in a different way than the United States’s self-destructive finance-oriented way has been developing.

Danny: Well we have covered a lot in this conversation and I really appreciate you two taking the time out this afternoon. As a reminder you can find the links to Michael’s website, it’s a link to his latest book. And you can find also a link to Radhika’s latest book as well, which is free on Open Access.

Do you two want to just let people know where they can find you and anything else you’d like to to mention?

Michael: www.michael-hudson.com is my website, and I’m on a number of others. 

I’ve outlined most of these ideas in the recent book The Destiny of Civilization and I’m about to have another book out next month, The Collapse of Antiquity, which is really how Western civilization itself took a wrong track 2500 years ago.

Radhika and I are frequently together, as you mentioned at the beginning, on our geopolitical discussions on the Ben Norton site.

Radhika: The discussion that Michael mentioned, it’s called Geopolitical Economy Hour. It appears on the website of Geopolitical Economy Report, which is the recast version of Ben Norton’s website.

As far as I’m concerned, please check out my book. It’s called Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy. It was just published in December and it’s available, as Danny said, Open Access. If you’re interested further please also check out Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire which was published by Pluto in 2013, and I think its analysis has really stood the test of time.

Or google my name and you will see a lot of YouTube videos, a lot of articles, many of which are available open access.

Danny: Okay well thanks so much to both of you.