Would you be the ghost of Governor Milner, sir ?
Suppose your submission goes to form, then, to respond to Russian own bioweapons agitprop.
72 karma · joined December 17, 2021
Suppose your submission goes to form, then, to respond to Russian own bioweapons agitprop.
That's my point and OP's : they didn't prevent it, just the messaging through SWIFTnet. TARGET2 and STEP2 still fully work.
Also, you can transfer batches of messages through FTP cronjobs and automated import at night, like it was done 20+ years ago. It just slows settlement from 1-2 days on average to 4-7 business days, depending on the correspondent bank.
Also, you can easily automate use the plenty free MT103 fields for additional routing data ex-SWIFTnet.
It's something which is often done - source : been there, done that, in my youthful days.
> “high finance” for Russian corporations and international corps doing business there slower and more risky.
Yes, anything in regards to transnational money. More expensive, too, but what's that in this inflationary world. A drop in the bucket of Moloch.
> "named by a totally informal group"
I used the term "informal" from the legal point of view. I'll have a box of cookies of your choice delivered to your home if you can find me the treaty basis, or any other legally formal basis for its existence.
> "EU Commissars"
That was tongue-in-cheek from me, as related to Bolchevik buraucratic komissars - lovers of all things centralized.
> had nothing to do with the SWIFT ban
The Eurogroup didn't have it, correct, but the people it chose did very much so.
Similarly, what's that about waging war, which happened in the same bureaucratic breath yeasterday ? I don't remember J.Borell or Ch.Michel having been chosen as commanders in chief.
> So they are still under democratic control [...] (it does have a bunch of issues from a democratic perspective)
In the end, I'm partly Swiss, so I abhor my democracy being representative with a separation degree larger than n=1, or directly myself.
This SWIFT ban only really affects the usual IBAN to IBAN transfer of the plebs and SMB's. Large payment processing and gross settlement transfers will just change to accomodating intermediary banks in China within a couple days, and that'll be that. Further fund movement will be done through the Russian-Chinese CIPS.
Never forget EU commissars are not elected officials, they are named by an totally informal group called "Eurogroup", to which supposedly only 15 EU presidents participate. However, as it's not formal, it's completely opaque how they get chosen.
That's the point.
If we follow NY's recent disclosures though, virtually all were incident, not the cause.
They created a power of themselves, out of expedience, but there still doesn't seem to be any justification or grounds for it according to the basic principles of the Canadian legal order, except it formally comes from the PM, and he has cops.
They created a false legal reality (grave danger of violence to Canada and its people), which isn't objectively observable, to justify a power to solve that false reality, where in fact they are using it for something else (forcing people to move parked trucks).
They could have just arrested all the truckers for a variety of traffic laws or public-order laws (honking, noise), and then moved the trucks one by one. Instead, Emergency powers...
As my administrative and fiscal law professor taught us, after listing for two weeks all the principles which can be used to craft a law (not Canadian law school, European) :
There's one very old legal principle left, according to which laws are sometimes made, wrongly, but well, that's the real world for you : "I'mma the state, I do it because I can, or I'mma gonna crush you".What Canada already has (compelled speach laws) and is planning to do certainly is unique, except maybe a couple dictatorships if you criticize the regime.
While the proposed text defines hatred as
"[...] the emotion that involves detestation or vilification and that is stronger than dislike or disdain",
"A person may, with the Attorney General’s consent, lay an information before a provincial court judge if the person fears on reasonable grounds that another person will commit [...]
(c) an offence motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other similar factor."
I can only remember, being from ex-yugoslavia, which used to be a diverse ex-communist country, a similar set of "terrorizing of free speech" laws, right after WWII by Tito. They had been deemed necessary to use fear of Communists to quell any desire for any kind of revenge for the massacres and exterminations in death camps from WWII, and suffocate any nationalism.
They were rescinded in the mid 1950's because of the harm they had caused back then. It was used to send 75K people in gulag, a lot innocent, just denounced by people who didn't like them. 54K never came back, 60K more were sent to regular prison for 1-5 years.
Also, seeing the 1990's, they quite obviously didn't work, people just kept their fear of the other and desire for revenge inside, not talking, slowly simmering to a boiling point.
Not saying Trudeau's opening polar work camps, but he certainly stepped on (over ?) the border of that territory.
Also, see this comment [1] about the data. Horrendous paper, very manipulative.
It doesn't exist in the normal course of judicial business, how does it get created here ?
Is Canada throwing the market efficiency and equity principles baby with the trucker's protest bathwater ?
Then again, when he was a student, it didn't help even later in that regard having family give a huge shush payout to some underage girl's parent's for an undisclosed bad act.
Hmm, seeing how things are evolving it was the politically astute thing to do. It's win win, cynical but insures a greated measure of electoral survival.
They'll maybe lose the city center voters who couldn't sleep, but that's more or less that. However this concludes, most of it'll land on Trudeau's lap, no so much theirs.
Guess we were all a little asymmetrical with our "reply" button pushes.
You can't just have the executive decide they can do that using pure administrative action to seize property. Also, you generally also have to prove in a court of law there was a crime before you can do anything at all.
The US civilian asset forfeiture (and now in Canada too, it seems) are actually quite unique in that regard outside of maybe China (not sure even you can do that there anymore), and at most couple other dystopian very authoritarian nations.
The same way I feel for them paying for my care the day I drove drunk and crashed, or when despite vaccines, I still got Covid Delta.
Because I was obese, vaccines didn't help much. I had a lot more problems, and for several months longer than I would have had, had I : lost 35 Kg/75 lbs, lowered my blood sugar level (no diabetes but consistently high), eaten less meat, and had a regular life rythm to lower my blood pressure, as my family doctor implored me to do last three and a half years.
Now I learned my lesson in really being responsible first of myself, and then acting according to principles of solidarity (as you imply the unvaccinated don't do).
I now walk 10+ km a day, see a nutritionist and go to the gym three times a week. I also pay attention to my vitamin intake, and take blood samples every three months.
Or, hear me out :
- Russia is using it's yearly February military exercise as a massive psyop to drive up oil/gas prices and rack-in reserves, all the while peacefully breaking NATO cohesion.
- Their US opposites play ball to drive their own profits up, prop-up their voting demographic, justify trillion dollar military budget pork and gravy, as traditional media follows suit to save itself from oblivion, seeing how viewership tanked last 2 years.
Meanwhile, worldwide economy is slowly going round the drain of a major inflationary shock.
This "massing of troops" has been there since the cold war. It's still showing the same framing of the photograph without the barracks which have been there for 60 years.
And as a fun fact, this location is on the direct straight-line approach to Moscow when coming from Berlin, not Moscow to Kiev...
The current policies in the west have done nothing to proactively protect the fragile, and everything to restrain the non-fragile.
As an example of what I mean : I spent a couple of lockdowns in a relatively poor country (Serbia) which for example allowed the 60+, fragile and immunocompromised exclusive access to shops, malls and other commerce until 9, a 30 minute pause to ventilate with nobody inside, and then normal access for the rest of the population. Subsidised delivery services were organised, etc. 16 hospitals with 900 ICU bed each (pop 6 million) were built chinese-style in 6 months, so the local healthcare system could go back to normal.
Also, health insurance has a basic public option, with price-controlled drugs, generally 10-15x smaller than the US retail price, even for US-made drugs, new or old.
Watching the US figuratively struggle for air for two years has been quite demoralizing.
Also I just noticed in my original comment I had made without realizing it a subtle "bullet" joke when talking about the US...
Other countries, even much poorer ones, which much lower rate of vaccination than the US have lower death rates.
IMHO, there is also a tremendous amount of value dilution going on, and not just due to the action of the US FED or Treasury, or other central banks.
The problems are systemic and global, and conjoined with the problem of value distribution.