Tom Crowley retweeted
Returning to the issue of these new times where there is no horizon.
It no longer matters today how much you spend on your children’s education. Besides the great mess in the world, there is also a mess in the minds of this generation.
What is tangible to them are the gains from the internet. These gains have also brought a new kind of paradigm in which this generation does not want to give up its freedom.
They want to do what they like, when they want, and get paid for it. It is an evolution of labor relations that has advanced faster in their minds than in the real world.
Factory-floor workloads no longer seem to fit this new generation, children of social media.
There are parents pouring bags of money into their children’s education, only for them to have no idea where they fit in the job market at the end.
There is an accumulation of capital outside of job creation and productivity, and that is a fact. Nobody seems to care. Something concerning.
Bets, influencers, speculators, or some app-based activity, in what world do the minds and the future of your children revolve?
Never in history has there been such a strong trend toward mergers and acquisitions, shrinking the market in every sector.
The logic seems the same: land a big payday, buy the competition, raise profits, and keep new players out.
Just as the new generation avoids the effort of production, companies do the same, and unfortunately the world does not seem to reward the exceptions.
A large part of the global political crisis comes from this m, from the uncertainties and the high anxiety it generates, since few can see the problem, which goes far beyond immigration and other issues.
We are living through a moment of revolution, but one in which the well-being and future of generations is not the priority.
Tom Crowley retweeted
I used to supervise Euroclear and Clearstream so this @FT story caught my attention. @MESandbu suggests Euroclear is too big to destabilise and Belgium is to small to bear the risks of $360 billion restoration costs if ever the Central Bank of the Russian Federation succeeds in regaining rights to frozen or expropriated assets - which it will regain in any settlement of the Ukraine war.
What he fails to address entirely is Rule of Law and Private Property Rights. Sure these are inconvenient to thieves, but they are essential to global securities markets. Securities are called securities because they convey secure property interests and claims to their owners at law.
What will destabilise Euroclear is global perception that $44 TRILLION in securities assets under custody are now UNSAFE because the EU can decide to steal them.
Also, it’s irritating to see him suggest ECB can force Euroclear ‘to split off the risky part of its balance sheet into a separate entity’. That is just another form of theft.
Euroclear is licensed as a bank, but its core business in its charter and under specific Belgian legislation is as a fiduciary or trustee of OTHER PEOPLES’ ASSETS. Because it is so central to European and global markets, it is forbidden to take normal commercial risks. Fiduciary, custodian, and trust assets under Euroclear custody are NOT on Euroclear’s balance sheet because 100% ownership remains with the depositors. Even if Euroclear goes bust, customer assets will NOT form any part of the insolvency estate and can be reclaimed by depositors.
I designed and modernised the laws protecting Euroclear and Clearstream depositors. I pray they withstand these lawless attacks by would-be thieves.
Break Rule of Law and Property Rights and you break global securities markets.
Europe must liberate Belgium from its huge Russian assets risk ft.trib.al/phaWM4E | opinion
Tom Crowley retweeted
Great to live on a island where every aspect of our lives is being stripped out and priced out by US vultures.
Ireland’s biggest private landlord is set to be bought out by US investment firm Barings -what happens then will be a live test case of the impact of Ireland’s new rent rules.
jrnl.ie/7195825
Tom Crowley retweeted
Not only does China have "proper toilets", it has many things the US DOESN'T.
High-speed trains, zero extreme poverty, affordable healthcare, 90 percent home ownership.
Zacharia is just another fool who's gotten rich off humanity's exploitation.
She will be forgotten.
Tom Crowley retweeted
“What we are witnessing in France — and, in different forms, in many other European countries by now (Spain, Portugal, Albania, Belgium and, since yesterday, Italy too) — is anything but an irrational event. There are historical events that appear irrational only from close up, but which possess an evident rationality when viewed from a sufficient height.
Rational does not mean painless, nor does it mean free of injustice.
We must train ourselves to hold two levels of analysis together: one at which specific acts and specific individuals can be judged barbaric, uncivilised, vandalistic; and one at which we can (and must) understand that history is always a river carrying debris and corpses — but one that cannot be stopped by sermons.
What is happening has an iron collective rationality, even if those taking part in it often have only a limited understanding of it, or none at all”.
Read the article by Andrea Zhok here: thomasfazi.com/p/fasten-your…
Tom Crowley retweeted
I spent 35 years building banking systems for banks worldwide, including central banks. I know how banks decide where their money goes.
When you build systems, you have to make them work, so you have to know how they work.
The Basel Committee de-industrialised the countries that adopted its rules. It's that simple: I explain the whole complicated mechanism in my essay. They simply regulated it away because that was the most profitable thing to do. It was implemented in such a systemic global way, and nobody seemed to notice
Capital is what a bank must hold before it can lend, the way a manufacturer or miner must hold supplies before it can sell. No miner doubles their costs to serve one group of customers. But that's what the banking system does to miners and manufacturers. Since 1988, the Basel rules have required banks to hold twice the capital against a factory loan as against a home loan, and under Basel III the gap reaches five times. So banks lend less to industry and more against houses. It should be stopped tomorrow.
Manufacturing's share of GDP fell in ten of the eleven countries I examined. In Australia it fell from 13.7% to 5.4%. Every other country that followed fell as well. The only truly crafty ones were the Koreans, who did a good job of offsetting it.
Regulators were warned in writing that the rule would steer credit, and they adopted it anyway. No parliament voted for it, and it's simply too dumb to keep doing, but we do . Not today; there is no justification. Yet from India, across Europe, across the US, including Australia, sanctions against industrial capacity. Financialization has gone too far it needs to be reviewed .
The charge is manslaughter by gross negligence. The mechanism is proven.
Same Rules, Different Ruins:ctindale.substack.com/p/same…
Tom Crowley retweeted
We held the latest episode in our series with Michael Hudson and @Kathleen_Tyson_
You can see the full video here:
youtube.com/watch?v=SV8aN91b…
Tom Crowley retweeted
It seems clear that the decision has already been made within the bowels of the British establishment that direct conflict with Russia will take place. Now it's about frightening the public into supporting the idea, or at the very least accepting it as inevitable.
This is the march to WWI redux, and as then so now, much of what passes for the left in Britain will go along to get along to become willing participants in the patriot game.
And such is the parlous state of life for our young working class men on our housing estates and schemes -- looking out at a future of no future at all -- the generals, the arms manufacturers, and the Eton wankers will have no shortage of willing pawns in their game.
Lambs to the slaughter.
They need this war. They need it in order to maintain control over a system that has create far more problems than it could ever solve. Eduardo Galeano said it best: 'The marketplace of fear requires a steady supply of monsters.'
Putin's Russia is the monster being used to scare us now, like children being red a bedtime story. Back then our parents would tell us that if we were bad, the bogeyman will come. Now our supposed leaders are telling us that it's the Russians who will come, unless we obey.
Russia is the enemy 'without' being used to try maintain control 'within'. It's not Putin or Russia they truly fear, it is us. They can feel the winds of discord blowing in their faces, and now it's about turning that discord into war fever.
They lied to us about Yugoslavia. They lied to us about Iraq. They lied to us about Libya. They lied to us about Syria. They are lying to us now about Russia.
Siegfried Sassoon reminds us that war is 'The hell where youth and laughter go.'
The fight of our lives is upon us to prevent them sending the youth of our time into the same hell as the youth of Sassoon's time was sent.
Never again.
Tom Crowley retweeted
The planet's immediate future — predicted, mapped, and voted on — based on the forecasts of a Beijing high school teacher who mysteriously keeps being right.
Tom Crowley retweeted
Western analysts on Washington: western leaders do not appreciate that the "middle east" will be unrecognisable in two years. Former British diplomat Alastair Crooke.
Tom Crowley retweeted
Europe chooses economic suicide. Prof Michael Hudson explains how the EU locked itself into expensive U.S. energy and sold its diesel reserves cheap — while destroying its own industry.
Watch the conversation:
youtu.be/6sEBuMocGZo
#Europe #Energy #Economics
🤖 Made with AI
Tom Crowley retweeted
Europe, a continent under occupation.
My speech at first edition of the East-West Forum in Istanbul on September 26.
“In the simplest terms, Europe — by which I mean virtually all EU countries and the entire Brussels establishment — has been hijacked by a transnationalised transatlantic elite that doesn’t care in the slightest about the concrete interests of their own countries and is in fact beholden to completely different interests: private interest, i.e., the interests of a narrow oligarchy — today, mainly the interests of transnational financial circles and military-industrial structures — and foreign interests, namely those of Washington’s imperial core (and, as a by-product, of Israel)”.
Tom Crowley retweeted
I know several former Soviet dissidents, such as Edward Lozansky, who moved to the United States, where he worked with former American presidents. Lozansky asked me if I could produce some recorded online lectures on geoeconomics. I asked my university here in Norway, but they were opposed to the idea because it could cause a lot of problems. I told Lozansky that I could not contribute, as recording online lectures for an American-Russian university established to improve relations between Russia and the West would give Norwegian journalists too much ammunition for smears and to threaten the reputation of my university.
What is the purpose of articles like this? What exactly have they managed to catch me out on? This is a continuation of six years of intimidation since I returned to Norway. Always go after the person, never the argument. Make life as difficult as possible for your opponent, and do it publicly, so that everyone stays in line.
My great crime is arguing that Russia considers NATO expansion an existential threat, something that should be entirely uncontroversial given the extensive documentation supporting this position. Why do I believe it is important to acknowledge this? Russia will use force to push NATO back, and for Ukraine, this means that without a diplomatic solution that takes Russian security concerns into account, Russia will seize strategically important territory and destroy the remaining infrastructure so that Ukraine cannot be used by NATO as a front line. If I am right, NATO's policies will lead to the destruction of Ukraine and potentially to a nuclear war between NATO and Russia.
It is not easy to determine whether I am right, because debate in Norway has been criminalized by labelling dissenting voices as “Russian propaganda.” Unfortunately, arguments and evidence no longer matter in Norway today, where we are only allowed to discuss the supposed evil intentions of those who disagree with us. The freedom of academic discourse must be restricted because all dissent is dismissed as an attempt to “legitimize” the enemy.
In the past, we had journalists who discussed the security concerns of the opposing side. Today, we have journalists who investigate those who discuss the security concerns of the opposing side. How can we improve our own security in Norway when we are not even allowed to discuss the security concerns of Russia, China, Iran, and other countries of that kind? When acceptable debate is reduced to a narrative of a struggle between good and evil, weapons become the path to peace, while diplomacy and mutual understanding are portrayed as weakness and betrayal.
The punishment for academic dissent in Norway is endless personal attacks and derogatory name-calling. Journalists and NGOs affiliated with the state repeatedly contact my employer. Every time I am invited to give a talk, the event is cancelled. Journalists only email me to demand that I respond to accusations without providing any serious justification for them. Journalists investigating me in search of something they can use against me recently gained access to my university records. The only thing they had to use against me was that I had asked about producing some online lectures for Lozansky on political economy. Other recent articles about me have focused on my request to reduce my position at the university to 80% after journalists complained about my outside activities, as well as fake news claiming that I congratulated Putin on the election victory.
I do not believe it is a coincidence that "An Enemy of the People" was written by one of our own, Henrik Ibsen. Outside Norway, there are academic debates in which opposing arguments are presented without vicious personal attacks. Outside Norway, there is political opposition in which every member of parliament is not required to support arms shipments to a war and boycott diplomacy. Outside Norway, there are diplomats who believe in diplomacy and journalists who believe in journalism.
My advice to young Norwegian academics in security studies or political economy who argue for positions that are not supported by the political and media bubble is this: Get out of the country.
Tom Crowley retweeted
A British man has been arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 after being found with a haul of books by banned author Sally Rooney. The man was stopped by counter-terrorism police while driving a Ford Transit through Stoke, listening to Macklemore. It’s unclear why they didn’t shoot him on the spot.
A search of his vehicle found 15 copies of the terrorist manifesto “Normal People” in a rucksack. It’s believed he intended to distribute those books to impressionable locals who could be duped into thinking that reading is a good idea.
Andy Burnham has explained Iran was definitely behind the attack, even though he has no evidence to support this claim. Thankfully, the suspect has not been released on bail because we can’t have police undermining the narrative again. It’s clear that Iran plans to nick our diesel and flood the UK with illegal books.
As the UK is a freedom-loving democracy, we literally never ban books unless we have no choice. You can even buy a copy of Hitler’s book in Waterstones, but to be fair, those ideas aren’t far off our current foreign policy.
It shows just serious a threat Rooney poses to national security that we’ve been forced to ban her books. Yes, those books have nothing to do with Palestine Action, and yes, she isn’t bound by British laws when expressing opinions in Ireland, but that’s beside the point.
Rooney is understood to be a key figure in the European wing of Hamas, along with the rap group known as “Kneecap”. She has publicly supported extremist grandmas who hold up signs the government doesn’t like and she once liked an Instagram post from Ms Rachel.
If we listened to people like Rooney, this genocide would be over by now and parts of Gaza would still be intact. It’s a good job our government is standing up to this monster. A formal extradition request has been made, and if Ireland doesn’t comply, we will identify terror tunnels under every building in Dublin. The sooner the better, I say.
Tom Crowley retweeted
Neither Cartier-Bresson, Banksy nor Cold War Steve could have come up with such an image. Absolutely perfect composition and lighting (even the road signs are perfect)! 😍
Tom Crowley retweeted
I’m publishing my investigation today into why Dublin, not London, has become the European headquarters of choice for so many of America’s biggest tech companies, and why that’s bad news for Ireland and everyone who cares about digital privacy and online anonymity.
The UK has a much stronger startup ecosystem, but Ireland hosts the European operations of Google, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, LinkedIn, Oracle, OpenAI and many others. It started off with low corporation taxes, but it now runs deeper and it’s more sinister.
🛎️ If just 3 multinational companies pulled out, Ireland would go from a €10.7 billion surplus to a €2.3 billion deficit. Who do you think leads the meeting between politicians in a country with a population of 5.2 million and no natural resources or backup plan, and sociopathic tech CEOs who run companies worth trillions of dollars, can move their profits to another country with a single board decision and know exactly how much Ireland stands to lose?
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission is also responsible for enforcing EU privacy laws against them, affecting hundreds of millions of Europeans. Tech companies have enormous financial leverage over the government responsible for regulating them on behalf of the EU.
My investigation connects their tax payments, government decisions, regulatory appointments, invitations to Peter Thiel’s secretive private gathering, corporate lobbying, proposed GDPR changes that would remove the most important privacy protections, and billions being spent subsidising data centres that consume 23% of Ireland’s electricity, a bigger share of national electricity than in any other country in the world.
These companies get the red carpet and champagne behind closed doors while politicians and tech executives pretend to disagree in public.
Politicians care about child safety as much as Mark Zuckerberg. They’re demanding more surveillance, identity verification, VPN restrictions, device-based scanning and in-app monitoring, while claiming they’re protecting children from addictive design, pornography, grooming and harmful content.
Over the past 48 hours, the Irish and British governments launched social media campaigns pressuring businesses to adopt AI under the pretext of national security. The US government is doing the same.
Everyone must buy more AI to protect themselves from dangerous AI built by the same companies.
MI5 is now on Instagram urging businesses to adopt more AI from American tech companies in the name of national security.
Britain’s domestic intelligence agency is encouraging businesses to put US AI technology inside critical systems containing sensitive information, giving a foreign government access to data while claiming it’s necessary to protect national security.
A British spy agency is promoting greater dependence on foreign tech companies as a national security strategy. Why? They get more access to everyone’s private thoughts and communications.
AI companies need businesses to spend billions on their products to justify trillion dollar valuations and IPOs. The Irish (and by extension, the EU), British and US governments are helping them by telling businesses that buying AI is critical to national security, that dangerous AI poses an urgent threat, and that companies that don’t adopt AI immediately will be left behind.
Governments are telling everyone to hand more sensitive information to the same tech companies they accuse of addictive design and mass surveillance.
I’ll publish what I can here. The full investigation, including the evidence and sources, will be on my free Substack. Link in my bio.
Follow instead of subscribing. I rarely send emails. I’m building a community of people who want to expose what governments, intelligence agencies and tech companies are doing behind closed doors.
London is Europe's tech capital, and I’m proud that leading tech firms choose our city to invest in - creating jobs and supporting our economy.
@NVIDIA and @JensenHuang's continued commitment to London reflects the strength of our world-class research institutions, exceptional talent and thriving tech sector.
