davel

More than 100 BBC employees have written to the director general, Tim Davie, to complain about the corporation becoming a mouthpiece for Israel.

The open letter (available below), which was signed by a further 300 media professionals including Miriam Margolyes, Charles Dance, and Mike Leigh, represents a deepening of the crisis engulfing the BBC over its coverage of the war in Gaza. It follows widespread revulsion over the BBC platforming Glastonbury Festival act Bob Vylan, a punk band who chanted “death to the IDF” on a live iPlayer stream.

And of course fascist billionaire Palmer Luckey intends to name it after another Tolkien creation, Erebor.

Luckey and Lonsdale — who were big donors to Donald Trump in the 2024 US presidential election — want the bank to take over the niche once occupied by SVB as the go-to lender for riskier companies and cryptocurrency players that traditional banks might reject.

Erebor has applied for a national bank charter in the US, a licence that allows a financial institution to operate as a bank…

Its target market would be businesses that were part of the US “innovation economy”, in particular tech companies focused on virtual currencies, artificial intelligence, defence and manufacturing, the filing said. It would also serve individuals who work for or invest in these companies.

It also planned to work with non-US companies “seeking access to the US banking system”….

Erebor said in the filing it would “differentiate itself” by working with customers that “are not well served by traditional or disruptive financial institutions, in particular with respect to insufficient access to credit”.

Cryptocurrencies known as “stablecoins”, which are pegged to real-life assets such as the dollar, are expected to be a significant part of the bank’s operations. The application states Erebor aims to be “the most regulated entity conducting and facilitating stablecoin transactions”.

Yeah they’re going to be the most regulated: their goal is regulatory capture of bank cryptocurrencies.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many red flags before.

https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt

Best I can do is minimum wage for grueling, dangerous work.

The ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia has been driven by internal and external factors. Those factors constitute two blades of a scissors, and explaining the conflict requires taking account of both blades. The external factors center on post-Cold War U.S. geopolitical strategy and the concomitant U.S.-sponsored eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). That expansion can only be understood by reference to the fractures (internal factors) created by the Soviet Union’s disintegration. The external factors reveal the role of the United States, which is implicated to the point of provoking the conflict and obstructing peace.

The external and internal factors come into play at different moments and take time to work their full effect, which is why history is so important to understanding the conflict. The two sets of factors play out over a timeline involving three key events. The first is Ukraine’s declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in August 1991. The second is the Maidan coup in February 2014 that overthrew democratically elected Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, who advocated Ukrainian autonomy and a nonaligned defense policy. The third is Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, launched on February 24, 2022. This timeline is dramatically revealing. The United States and its NATO allies view the conflict as beginning in February 2022 (though sometimes saying it began when Russia first “invaded” Ukraine with the annexation of Crimea in 2014—an event following the coup), enabling them to ignore history. Russia views the conflict, more straightforwardly, as beginning with the February 2014 coup, which makes history and the onset of Civil War in Ukraine central to its political position. That fundamental difference in understanding hinders the possibility of a negotiated political settlement, and it is very hard to see how the difference can be reconciled, as accounting for history (namely the coup and the subsequent Civil War) yields a completely different narrative.

The U.S./NATO denial of history and penchant for explaining the conflict as simply an outgrowth of the February 2022 Russian “invasion,” confers a significant advantage in the accompanying propaganda war. Having the conflict begin with Russia’s military intervention is a simple, easily understood narrative. The Western public has little knowledge of or interest in history; this is especially true in the United States on the other side of the Atlantic, which is completely isolated from the conflict. Nor is Western media interested in history, which is difficult to explain and a commercial dud given a disinterested public. That configuration helps explain the resilience in the West of the U.S./NATO narrative. However, whereas denial of history works well for propaganda, it does not serve the cause of either truth or peace, as it denies the causes of the conflict which must be addressed if peace is to prevail.

Understanding the Ukraine Conflict: Internal and External Drivers

The Western U.S./NATO account of the conflict is history-light. The little bit of history that has managed to surface acknowledges, and then dismisses, NATO’s post-1990 eastward expansion. A proper historical understanding begins with the breakup of the Soviet Union. That breakup is recounted by Vladislav Zubok in his book Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union. The collapse is critical because it created the terrain for conflict.

As noted above, the conflict can be understood via the metaphor of a scissors. One blade is the internal, conflict-prone environment created by the Soviet Union’s breakup. The other blade is the continuing intervention by the United States, including the external eastward expansion of NATO. Both blades are necessary for understanding the causes of the conflict, its gradual escalation, and its political intractability.

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Relevant rant:
📺 Why the Democratic Party CANNOT and WILL NOT be Reformed
Democrats would rather lose to a Republican, to a conservative, to a fascist, to Trump, than address the material conditions of the American people.