News Articles | July 17, 2022
Cover art: "GLOBAL WARMING" by Janusz Orzechowski
Yves here. Below is the text of a new Micael Hudson speech for China’s Global University, which he delivered Monday morning. It’s already gotten 200,000 views in China and is getting coverage in the Chinese press. It focuses on how neoliberalism is a major culprit in the West’s wrong turn. Michael has graciously given us the first English transcript.
By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is The Destiny of Civilization. Originally published at his website
The greatest challenge facing societies has always been how to conduct trade and credit without letting merchants and creditors make money by exploiting their customers and debtors. All antiquity recognized that the drive to acquire money is addictive and indeed tends to be exploitative and hence socially injurious. The moral values of most societies opposed selfishness, above all in the form of avarice and wealth addiction, which the Greeks called philarguria– love of money, silver-mania. Individuals and families indulging in conspicuous consumption tended to be ostracized, because it was recognized that wealth often was obtained at the expense of others, especially the weak.
How is it that our fate can be in the hands of a single corrupt fossil fuel profiteer? We cannot accept a system in which Joe Manchin gets to decide our future for us.
Joe Manchin has scuppered Democratic plans for climate legislation, after leading other senators on for months and suggesting he would support it. As the New York Times tells us, while Democrats have “contorted themselves to suit his often-changing dictates and have scaled back their ambitions repeatedly to stay within his red lines,” Manchin “led his party through months of tortured negotiations that collapsed on Thursday night, a yearlong wild goose chase that produced nothing as the Earth warms to dangerous levels”:
[First he] killed a plan that would have forced power plants to clean up their climate-warming pollution. Then, he shattered an effort to help consumers pay for electric vehicles. And, finally, he said he could not support government incentives for solar and wind companies or any of the other provisions that the rest of his party and his president say are vital to ensure a livable planet…. Mr. Manchin’s refusal to support the climate legislation, along with steadfast Republican opposition, effectively dooms the chances that Congress will pass any new law to tackle global warming for the foreseeable future—at a moment when scientists say the planet is nearly out of time to prevent average global temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
The Times notes that Manchin has received more campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry than anyone else in the Senate and has personally made millions from the coal business. Manchin is essentially openly corrupt. As Jeff Goodell of Rolling Stone noted in an investigation, Manchin’s
"[T]he monopoly which our manufacturers have obtained against us … like an overgrown standing army, has become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature."
—Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776
There's lots of speculation about what may be causing today's terrible inflation to continue to rise. Is it rebound demand from Covid? Too much "quantitative easing" stimulus from the Fed? Chinese botched-Covid supply chain issues? Saudi Arabia withholding oil from world markets? Russia's terrorist campaign against Ukraine?
Obviously, all are contributing factors. But the price of oil is now below $95 and our economy is on the verge of recession, both major factors that should be cutting inflation. Yet inflation continues, nonetheless, to rise here in the US (9.1% this month) while, Bloomberg reported yesterday, the EU is down to 7.1% inflation and predicting 4% for next year.
How is it possible that the rest of the world is recovering from the Covid/Oil/War inflation bump, but things are getting worse here in the USA?
The one variable nobody seems to be positing—but I'm going to go there—is that it's political, at least in part.
The Supreme Court's disastrous rulings on prayer on public school property and abortion rights have finally focused proper attention on the role of religious extremism in undermining democratic self-rule. For decades, not only has it been underestimated, most of the media has misunderstood Christian fundamentalism's goals.
Katherine Stewart, who has written on the religious right for many years, has redressed this misunderstanding in a New York Times piece. She straightforwardly says that Christian fundamentalism's goal is "breaking American democracy," and that this is not an unintended byproduct of fundamentalism's political activity. No, it "is the point of the project."
From my former staff position in Congress, I observed the infiltration of the Republican Party by the religious right. In particular, I became alarmed at the shadowy undertakings of GOP congressman belonging to "the Family," a secretive group that believes in imposing theocracy on America. Having left the Hill partly as a result of what I saw as the religious right's subversion of the Party of Lincoln, I've spent the last decade attempting to warn the public about the existential danger the GOP poses.
“The hardest thing I’ve ever seen the Democrats fight for is to keep a disabled Marine combat veteran off the ballot.”
– Matthew Hoh, Green Party candidate for U.S. Senator in North Carolina
The last week of June 2022 brought more strikes against an American democracy already in deep crisis. Democrats blocked access to the ballot for the Green Party of North Carolina and seven independent gubernatorial tickets in New York.
Meanwhile, the Republican-majority U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the Moore v. Harper case on North Carolina gerrymandering in which the court is likely in 2023 to affirm the “independent state legislature” doctrine. That formerly fringe legal theory claims that the U.S. Constitution’s election clause empowers state legislatures to administer federal elections as they see fit, no matter what state governors, state constitutions, or state courts say. It would enable state legislatures to rig elections through partisan gerrymandering, partisan voter suppression, and partisan vote counting. Republican-controlled state legislatures could name their own Electoral College slates if they lose their states’ popular vote in order to steal the 2024 presidential election.
Voters in the United States overwhelmingly support Democratic proposals to expand Social Security for all recipients to cover higher costs of living and oppose Republican proposals to completely end the federal program—established during the New Deal era to improve economic security for retirees, people with disabilities, and widows and widowers—before the end of the decade.
That's according to a new survey conducted from June 17-21 and published Monday by Data for Progress, which found that a whopping 83% of likely voters support expanding Social Security benefits to keep up with rising costs, including 86% of Democrats, 84% of Republicans, and 79% of independents.
Nearly two-thirds (65%) of likely voters are very concerned about Congress cutting monthly cash transfers for the program's 66 million current beneficiaries, and more than half (53%) are very concerned about lawmakers privatizing Social Security.
Privatization of the program remains unpopular across the political spectrum, with 68% of likely voters—including 75% of Democrats, 70% of Republicans, and 59% of independents—opposed to Wall Street-backed schemes that would facilitate the movement of Social Security benefits from a guaranteed government fund into the volatile stock market.
Article
Dismantling the Constitution: Police No Longer Have to Honor the Right to Remain Silent
By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead
“That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn’t even an enemy you could put your finger on.”—Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
We are witnessing the gradual dismantling of every constitutional principle that serves as a bulwark against government tyranny, overreach and abuse.
As usual, the latest assault comes from the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a 6-3 ruling in Vega v. Tekoh, the Supreme Court took aim at the Miranda warnings, which require that police inform suspects that they have a right against self-incrimination when in police custody: namely, that they have a right to remain silent, to have an attorney present, and that anything they say and do can and will be used against them in a court of law.
When people fear that the police are about to break the law, they pull out their phones and hit “record.” Doing so promotes police accountability and public discussion of important issues. So, it is great news that yet another federal appellate court has ruled that people have a First Amendment right to record on-duty police. With this ruling, the Tenth Circuit has joined six other federal appellate courts: the First, Third, Fifth, Seventh, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits.
The case is Irizarry v. Yehia. Mr. Irizarry is a journalist who records on-duty police. In 2019, while he was recording a traffic stop, Officer Yehia arrived, stood in front of Mr. Irizarry’s camera, and shined a flashlight into the camera. The Tenth Circuit ruled that “Mr. Irizarry was engaged in protected First Amendment activity when he filmed the traffic stop,” and that he “suffered an injury when Officer Yehia stood in front of his camera and shined a flashlight into it …”
We agree. Police violate the First Amendment when they interfere with people who are recording them. As we explained in our amicus brief filed in the case:
Examples of interference abound. Officers have destroyed civilians’ devices, confiscated their devices and footage, commanded them to delete their footage on threat of arrest, slapped their devices to misdirect their recording, menaced them with guns, and detained or arrested them.
Dear millennials: back in the 1980s a lot of us worked like hell to try to stop the Reagan revolution. We failed. This may be our last chance to save American democracy and the American middle-class.
When my boomer generation was the same average age as your millennial generation is today, back in 1990, our generation held 21.3% of the nation's wealth. Louise and I shared in that wealth; although we were still in our 30s, in 1990 we owned a profitable small business (our fourth) and a nice home in suburban Atlanta.
That was, in fact, the "American dream." It was normal then. My dad (born 1928), who worked in a tool-and-die shop, was able to buy a house, a new car every two years, and take a two-week vacation every year because the middle class in America before Reagan had a pretty damn good life. He retired in the 1990s with a full pension that let him and my mom travel the world.
Everybody’s heard about the importance of protecting the Amazon rainforest. But when it comes to protecting forests here in the United States, a lot of people in business, government and the environmental movement seem to have a willful ignorance. That needs to change.
U.S. forests need protection, now. We must end government policies shaped by the logging and wood products industries that sound sensible but are actually meant to expand logging, rather than contain it. We are calling out big, influential environmental organizations whose efforts end up furthering the interests of industry. Forests — and people and the planet — are paying too high a price for the wood product sector’s profits.
Forests are the only proven, large-scale system we have for soaking up carbon and locking it away for centuries. But logging is slashing U.S. forests’ ability to accumulate carbon by over one-third. And because felled trees immediately release most of the carbon they store, logging in the United States releases about 723 million tons of carbon dioxide every year.
“With 35% loss globally since 1970, wetlands are our most threatened ecosystem, disappearing three times faster than forests. Wetlands’ services for climate mitigation, adaptation biodiversity, and human health outweigh all other terrestrial ecosystems.” (Source: Wetlands are Being Lost at Alarming Rates, Global Wetland Outlook, 2021)
Sudd is Africa’s largest freshwater wetland at roughly 3,500 square miles in an otherwise dry region of South Sudan. It’s under threat by a megaproject named Jonglei Canal that has the potential to devastate this ecological gem.
According to conservationists: “Even a partial loss of the Sudd would be an ecological disaster, desiccating the world’s second largest swamp and ending seasonal flooding of the surrounding grasslands, which comprise Africa’s largest intact area of savannah.” (Source: Will Nile Canal Project Dry Up Africa’s Largest Wetland? Grist, July 8, 2022)
Egypt has Sudd’s water in its sights, some of it or all of it, only time will tell. Its plans involve a 40-yr disrupted work-in-progress that is now moving ahead once again, diverting water from the Sudd watershed to Egypt.
Drought and Scarcity
“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is only halfway descriptive of the planet’s current water situation. Water is drying up everywhere; oceans and rivers are becoming more polluted and poisoned; watersheds are being drained at a phenomenal rate to meet the needs of industry, sports, and agriculture. Quality drinking water, especially in developing countries, is becoming a major challenge. And everywhere, good water, access to which should be a human right, is becoming expensive and privately owned.
First, the basic facts on the global water crisis, as provided by UNICEF:
* Four billion people — almost two thirds of the world’s population — experience severe water scarcity for at least one month each year.
* Over two billion people live in countries where water supply is inadequate.
* Half of the world’s population could be living in areas facing water scarcity by as early as 2025.
* Some 700 million people could be displaced by intense water scarcity by 2030.
* By 2040, roughly 1 in 4 children worldwide will be living in areas of extremely high water stress.
Reports from around the world bring home these trends.
China rises while the U.S. recedes, along with the global order it created at the end of World War II. This has become a common narrative. Historian Alfred McCoy put it forward in his 2017 work, In the Shadows of the American Century. But, as McCoy points out in his latest work, China’s day in the sun may be brief, overwhelmed by cataclysmic climate disruption that could shatter world order itself as the century unfolds.
The first truly global order originated when Portugal began the European age of exploration around 1420. With the European invasion of the Western Hemisphere and opening of a sea route to Asia by the end of the century, “Europe’s overseas empires finally brought all the continents into sustained contact, allowing the formation of history’s first true world order,” McCoy writes in To Govern the Globe: World Orders & Catastrophic Change. Together, Spain and Portugal created what McCoy describes as the Iberian order. It was to last beyond the height of their empires until the British world order succeeded it with the final defeat of Napoleon, consummated in the 1815 peace conference known as the Congress of Vienna.
Photograph by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash
During late April and early May, South Asia experienced the terrible impacts of global warming. Temperatures reached almost 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in some cities in the region. These high temperatures came alongside dangerous flooding in Northeast India and in Bangladesh, as the rivers burst their banks, with flash floods taking place in places like Sunamganj in Sylhet, Bangladesh.
Saleemul Haq, the director of the International Center of Climate Change and Development, is from Bangladesh. He is a veteran of the UN climate change negotiations. When Haq read a tweet by Marianne Karlsen, the co-chair of the UN’s Adaptation Committee, which said that “[m]ore time is needed to reach an agreement,” while referring to the negotiations on loss and damage finance, he tweeted: “The one thing we have run out of is Time! Climate change impacts are already happening, and poor people are suffering losses and damages due to the emissions of the rich. Talk is no longer an acceptable substitute for action (money!)” Karlsen’s comment came in light of the treacle-slow process of agreement on the “loss and damage” agenda for the 27th Conference of Parties or COP27 meeting to be held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November 2022.
Noam Chomsky's opening remarks to the World Social Forum, April 29, 2022:
For 20 years, the motto of the world social forum has been another world is possible… As we meet today that question is overshadowed by another one. Is this world possible? And the answer is "no." This world is not possible. This world is hurdling to self-annihilation. And only the creation of another world can reverse this course. Luckily, another world is still possible, though the chances of achieving it are diminishing at an ominous rate.
The fate of humanity is at a crossroads. Humanity is confronted with two imminent existential crises: climate catastrophe and nuclear war. The corporate capitalist system is producing an assault on the earth's ecology, perpetual war, ever-widening inequality, an attack on democracy, and a rise in fascism. If humanity does not address these crises NOW, human civilization is unlikely to survive for future generations.
Capitalism is complex and produces a multitude of oppressions. There are thousands of liberatory organizations working on important issues. But we cannot assume these projects are going to organically coalesce into a whole capable of taking power from greed-driven corporate capitalists. In the face of these existential crises, our time for "organizing the organized" is short.
The fundamental question facing humanity is: "how can ordinary working people organize on the mass scale necessary to contest for power with the corporate capitalist elite and force the change needed to save the future?"
Several countries across Europe are enduring the dangerous hot conditions that climate scientists have longed warned of and meteorologists project the brutal heatwave could last in some areas through next month.
Spain and Portugal have faced high temperatures since last Friday. According to CNN, at least three Spanish cities set records this week: Ourense at 43.2°C (109.76°F); Soria at 38.7°C (101.66°F); and Zamora at 41.1°C (105.98°F).
In Portugal, the network noted, "eight out of the country's 18 mainland districts have been placed under a red weather warning by the Portuguese Institute for the Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA)."
Both nations plus France are also battling wildfires that have forced evacuations and destroyed thousands of acres across the region. Blazes have also hit Croatia's Adriatic Sea coast, where firefighter Boris Dukić told state television that "it's hell, we don't know where to go first."
If Congress doesn’t act quickly to pass climate legislation, the U.S. will likely only meet a fraction of the goal of reducing emissions by 50 percent below 2005 levels by the end of the decade, a new report warns.
The Rhodium Group found that, without further action from Congress or state legislators, the U.S. is only on track to reduce emissions by 24 to 35 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. While this is marginally better than the reductions of merely 17 to 30 percent that the group found the country was on track for last year, it still falls “significantly short” of the U.S.’s Paris Agreement pledge and President Joe Biden’s goals, the report says.
The emission goal won’t even be met by 2035, the researchers found. The level of emissions reductions by 2035 under current legislation would still only be about 26 to 41 percent below 2005 levels, with greenhouse gas emissions “remain[ing] stubbornly high,” the group wrote.
It seems only yesterday we leather-lunged Portland Occupiers were in front of the Wells-Fargo bank shouting “The banks got bailed out! We got sold out!!” The reference was to the Treasury Department giving nine of the country’s largest banks—Bank of America to Goldman Sachs—$700 billion to appear solvent to the public despite the 2008 financial crash. We were going to spend the day picketing their downtown branches.
Most of us had no idea who the bank and investment CEOs were, whose criminal or misguided decisions set off this national financial catastrophe. They were the ones who did take the Federal Reserve bailout millions and promised top-to-bottom operational reforms.
Nobody in our group had bothered to Google their identities because pillorying CEOs would have taken the focus off their institutions. CEOs might come and go, but the company’s culture and policies would live on. And that’s what we wanted to change even if the outfit went under.
For many years, substantial military operations have been conducted by mercenaries, ranging from professional soldiers hired to fight wars for European potentates in the 14th century to the combat forces of Blackwater, a private company employed by the U.S. government to undertake violent activities in the “War on Terror” of the early 21st century.
Today, the Wagner Group, a shadowy Russian company engaged in the thriving mercenary business, is perhaps the leading private enterprise partner in global military ventures. Employing as many as 10,000 military personnel, it is headquartered in the Russian town of Molkino, right beside a military base run by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. It relies heavily on the Russian government’s approval and military infrastructure for its far-flung operations.
The Wagner Group was reportedly founded in 2014 by Dmitri Utkin, a Russian military veteran who so admired Hitler that he named the mercenary organization after the führer’s favorite composer. The financial backing for the Wagner Group, however, came from Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch with close ties to President Vladimir Putin. With many Russian veterans eager to pay off debts and secure employment, recruitment proceeded rapidly. The Wagner Group’s first significant operation came later that year, as the Russian government dispatched about a thousand of the company’s armed soldiers, wearing unmarked uniforms, into the Luhansk and Donetsk regions of Ukraine to bolster an uprising of pro-Russian separatists.
In a tyrannical move that will have lasting consequences for everyone alive and their progeny, conservative coal baron Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) told Democratic leaders on Thursday that he will not support a reconciliation package that contains provisions to mitigate the climate crisis.
This is a major blow to the Democrats — as well as to the planet’s dying species and anyone invested in inhabiting a livable planet — who were hoping to get about $300 billion or more in funding for climate and energy spending aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions with tax incentives for clean energy and electric vehicle expansion. The bill is modeled after last year’s Build Back Better Act, which Manchin also killed after months of stringing Democrats along in negotiations.
This was likely Democrats’ last chance to pass climate action before the midterm elections, in which early analyses predict that Democrats will lose at least one chamber of Congress. Thanks to Republicans working to nearly outright rig elections and the rapidly waning popularity of President Joe Biden, Democrats could also lose the presidency in 2024. Having a Republican in the White House would essentially ensure that the country doesn’t pass major federal climate bills until at least 2029.
As U.S. President Joe Biden visits the Middle East this week, three senators introduced a joint resolution to end the United States’ involvement in the Saudi-led war on Yemen.
The resolution is sponsored by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — and, according to the trio, it is already backed by a bipartisan group of over 100 House members.
“We must put an end to the unauthorized and unconstitutional involvement of U.S. armed forces in the catastrophic Saudi-led war in Yemen and Congress must take back its authority over war,” Sanders said in a statement, detailing the dire conditions in the region.
or her birthday every October, Grace Gibson-Snyder and her family explore the Lamar Valley just inside the northern border of Yellowstone National Park.
Carved long ago by meandering glaciers, the valley is home to bison and bald eagles, grizzly bears and gray wolves. Gibson-Snyder has seen them all. She calls it “my favorite place.”
“I know how special it is to have this in my life,” said Gibson-Snyder, an 18-year-old from Missoula, Montana, “and I don’t want it to go away.”
That concern, hypothetical not so long ago, turned tangible in June when unprecedented flooding washed out bridges, ravaged roads, forced the evacuation of thousands of tourists, and temporarily closed the park.
Although park officials described the flooding as a rare event, scientists say this type of extreme weather should be expected as the climate continues to warm.
It also illustrates why Gibson-Snyder and 15 other Montana young adults and children are suing their state.
We live in dangerous and disconcerting times. Humanity is facing two existential threats that could end civilization as we know it — as well as other life on Earth. Yet, in the case of both global warming and nuclear weapons, international cooperation is sorely missing. What is even worse with regard to nuclear weapons is that since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there is a growing trend toward normalizing the idea of nuclear war. In fact, as Noam Chomsky argues in this exclusive interview for Truthout, dismissals of the true threat of nuclear annihilation have grown to highly dangerous levels and “the means for reducing the threat of terminal war are being cast out the window.” But it doesn’t have to be that way.
“Human agency has not ended,” Chomsky points out. “There are realistic ways to protect humanity from the existential threat that nuclear weapons pose.”
Chomsky is institute professor emeritus in the department of linguistics and philosophy at MIT and laureate professor of linguistics and Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in the Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona. One of the world’s most-cited scholars and a public intellectual regarded by millions of people as a national and international treasure, Chomsky has published more than 150 books in linguistics, political and social thought, political economy, media studies, U.S. foreign policy and world affairs. His latest books are The Secrets of Words (with Andrea Moro; MIT Press, 2022); The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power (with Vijay Prashad; The New Press, 2022); and The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the Urgent Need for Social Change (with C. J. Polychroniou; Haymarket Books, 2021).
While reproductive rights advocates and many Democrats on Friday welcomed the U.S. House of Representatives' passage of a bill protecting the right to travel for abortion care, Congressman Bill Pascrell Jr. called out GOP lawmakers who opposed the legislation.
"Today 99% of House Republicans made clear they support forcing raped children to give birth to their rapist's child," declared the New Jersey Democrat after the House approved the Ensuring Access to Abortion Act in a 223-205 vote.
Just three Republicans—Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), and Fred Upton (Mich.)—joined Democrats in supporting the bill, and another three—Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), Anthony Gonzalez (Ohio), and Nancy Mace (S.C.)—did not vote on it.
The development comes as the story of a 10-year-old rape victim forced to travel from Ohio to Indiana for an abortion has garnered national attention, and as anti-choice groups and state lawmakers are crafting legislation to try to prevent people from traveling for such care.
Zero House Republicans on Wednesday supported a measure requiring the Pentagon and federal law enforcement agencies to publish a report on countering white supremacist and neo-Nazi activity in their ranks.
Rep. Brad Schneider's (D-Ill.) amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2023 directing the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Defense "to publish a report that analyzes and sets out strategies to combat white supremacist and neo-Nazi activity in the uniformed services and federal law enforcement agencies" passed in a party-line 218-208 vote.
Among present lawmakers, Democrats were unified in support and Republicans in opposition. Reps. Theodore Deutch (D-Fla.), Kevin Brady (R-Texas), Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) did not vote.
Democratic leaders and reproductive rights advocates swiftly blasted anti-choice Republican lawmakers on Thursday after U.S. Sen. James Lankford blocked a bill intended to protect the right of pregnant people across the country to travel for abortion services.
The GOP senator from Oklahoma—which banned nearly all abortions this year even before the Roe v. Wade reversal—objected to Democrats' effort to pass by unanimous consent the Freedom to Travel for Health Care Act of 2022.
Introduced this week by Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Patty Murray (Wash.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), the bill would make clear that patients can cross state lines for abortion care and empower the U.S. attorney general and affected individuals to take legal action against those who attempt to restrict that right.
While Lankford took action to block the bill, its sponsors and other supporters emphasized that his party is behind the ongoing and sweeping assault on reproductive rights on a national scale.
No lines of poetry are more resonant with our time than the celebrated lines of William Butler Yeats’ famous poem ‘The Second Coming’:
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
This is especially true here in the United States, as it was in post-World War I Germany’s nurturing the rise of Naziism and its demonic voice, Adolph Hitler, the consummate outsider who managed to crawl up the mountain to ascend its peak. The core disabling affliction of the United States in the 21st Century is an energized and armed extreme right-wing and a listless, passive center, a development lamented by liberals who would sell their souls long before parting with their stocks and bonds, all for a non-voting seat at various illiberal tables of power. This lack of humane passion at the political center serves as a reinforcing complement to the violent forces of alienation waiting around the country for their marching orders, as the January 6th insurrectionary foray foretells. Together these contrasting modes of ‘citizenship’ signal the death of constitutional democracy as it has functioned, with ups and downs, flawed by slavery, genocide, and patriarchy at birth, indeed ever since the republic was established in 1787 as ‘a more perfect union.’ In 2022 a fascist alternative is assuming institutional, ideological, and populist prominence with the active support of many American oligarchs who fund by night what they disavow when the sun shines (again recalling the behavior of German industrialists who thought of Hitler as their vehicle, whereas it turned out the other war around).
Europe must understand that if it loses Ukraine it will never be the same again. It will no longer be Europe. Rather it will be a defeated and humiliated and a pathetic version of its former self. I want a strong and resolute Europe.
— Mateusz Morawiecki, Prime Minister of Poland, 15 March 2022
Where has Europe been before Russia lost patience on 24 February? Playing Russian Roulette with the fate of Ukraine. With the disastrous outcome that we know.
The strict European hierarchy
The European Union is run on a day-to-day basis by Germany for German interests. Except when it’s kowtowing to American interests. An academic literature (played up by The Economist in 2013) has Germany as ‘reluctant hegemon’ – just so much palaver. Yet for this crucial issue of Ukraine, German leaders have failed to look not only after the interests of Europe over which it exercises tutelage but those of Germany itself.
One would imagine that Germany has common interests in mutual security accords with Russia, complemented by common interests in enhanced trade and investment relations. But no. Even apart from the unhinged warmongering German Greens, Washington DC has decreed that the pursuit of such common interests should not take place. Given that the German elite takes German economic self-interest very seriously, the subjugation to Washington is powerful indeed.
While the political balance between progressive and reactionary states south of the Rio Grande continues to tip to the left, even the corporate press pronounced Biden’s June Summit of the Americas meeting in Los Angeles a flop. Most recently, Colombia elected its first left-leaning president, following similar victories in Chile, Peru, and Honduras, which in turn followed Bolivia, Argentina, and Mexico. And the frontrunner in Brazil’s presidential contest slated for October is a leftist. However, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and especially Cuba – countries led by explicitly socialist parties – are critically threatened by US imperialism, subjected to severe sanctions. In short, the geopolitical situation in the Western Hemisphere remains volatile. What does this portend for US hegemony and for socialism?
Ebb and flow of the class struggle in Latin America
The tidal metaphor describes the shifting constellations of governments in what Washington long considered its exclusive domain ever since the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. The Pink Tide is a reaction to and a struggle against neoliberalism, which is the contemporary form of capitalism. The Pink Tide first entered its flow phase in 1998 with the election of Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela. What followed was truly a sea change with a developing expression of sovereignty and independence. An alphabet soup of regionally integrated entities arose: ALBA, UNASUR, MERCOSUR, Petrocaribe, CELAC, etc.
BÜCHEL, Germany
This pointed insult was shouted without a trace of irony through a chain-link fence toward a group of nuclear weapons opponents last Tuesday by a military guard equipped with binoculars and wearing a camera strapped around his neck.
The protest group was at the perimeter of Büchel Air Force Base in west-central Germany on July 12, the 205th anniversary of the birth of Henry David Thoreau — the naturalist and theorist of conscientious defiance of illegitimate authority.
It’s safe to say no one was paying much attention to Thoreau either when he went to jail in July 1846 rather than pay poll taxes that were going to support the expansion of slavery into the western United States and President James Polk’s war on Mexico. It was only later that attention was paid, as Thoreau’s essay “On Resistance to Civil Government” would become a world literary classic regarding principled individual refusal to obey orders in violation of one’s personal integrity. After the Concord, Mass. constable demanded he pay his back taxes, Thoreau explained, “I cannot for an instant recognize … as my government [that] which is the slave’s government also.”
Seattle, WA — On a Sunday afternoon in June of 2017, a pregnant mother’s 911 call to police ended tragically after cops showed up to her home and killed her. Since that fateful day, the family of Charleena Lyles has been fighting for justice, and this month, they found out there will be none.
According to reports, a two-week long inquest that began on June 21, ended last week when both officers who gunned down Lyles were ruled justified in their actions — 5 years after killing her.
“You killed my daughter!” Lyles’ father yelled out after the findings were revealed. Inquest jurors determined that officers Jason Anderson and Steven McNew had no other choice but to kill Lyles after she called 911 to report a burglary.
A week before she was killed, Lyles, 30, called police because she feared her ex-boyfriend might try to harm her. Lyles, who reportedly suffered from mental-health issues, was arrested for allegedly arming herself with a pair of scissors when police responded. After the arrest, she was released under the condition that she get some help with her mental health issues.
The idea that there is an agenda for global government among the financial and political elites of the world has long been called a “conspiracy theory” within the mainstream and the establishment media. And sadly, even when you can convince people to look at and accept the evidence that banking institutions and certain politicians work together for their own purposes, many folks will STILL not entertain the notion that the ultimate goal of these power mongers is one-world empire. They just can’t wrap their heads around such a thing.
People will say that the establishment is driven by greed alone and that their associations are fragile and based only on individual self-interest. They will say that crisis events and shifts in social and political trends are random, not the product of deliberate engineering. They will say that elitists will never be able to work together because they are too narcissistic, etc.
All of these arguments are a coping mechanism for the public to deal with evidence they cannot otherwise refute. When the facts become concrete and the powers-that-be admit to their schemes openly, some people will revert to confused denial. They don’t want to believe that organized evil on such a scale could actually be real. If it did, then everything they thought they knew about the world might be wrong.
Dutch farmers have called on the world’s blue-collar workers to come together for a Day of International Demonstrations against radical climate policies on July 23.
In a video that’s gaining traction and going viral, the creators call for “Dutch Lions [to] Rise Up Now” before launching into a compilation of civil rights movements featuring the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi.
Interspersed throughout the video is footage of Dutch farmers, fishermen, truckers, and general protesters in the Netherlands taking to the streets and blockading highways and distribution centres.
As MLK’s voice plays in the background, the words “Let’s unite, stand up & rise” fades in and out.
As the Netherlands farmer protest rages on, the pushback against governments enforcing ‘green’ policies has become a global phenomenon.
Earlier in the day, Australian farmers brought their tractors to the streets of Ballarat and formed a convoy to protest the government’s green energy agenda.
Meanwhile, Spanish farmers reportedly held demonstrations against climate policies and stood in solidarity with Dutch farmers in Granada, Badajoz, and Albacete.
The Italians were again out on the streets, this time in Milan.
The surveillance state continues to expand with British police conducting live facial and license plate recognition operations in busy public spaces hoping to catch criminals accused of “violent and other serious crime.” However, the net effect of these operations serves to intimidate and condition the public into the acceptance of non-stop surveillance. This intrusion of privacy cannot be accepted under the guise of trying to catch violent criminals, as police and other authorities are notorious for collecting biometric data from the innocent as well.
Biometric Update has more on the story:
British police operating in London and the northwest of England recently used live facial recognition (LFR), operator initiated facial recognition and automatic number plate recognition (ANPR or license plate recognition, LPR, in North America). The operations, a week apart, resulted in three arrests in London via LFR (despite four matches) and algorithm testing and eight arrests in the northwest where the emphasis was on identifying vehicles.
Story at-a-glance
- Adam Tooze, a financial crisis historian and director of the European Institute at Columbia University, warns the world is facing a “polycrisis” — a perfect storm of multiple global socioeconomic influences.
- Polycrisis is not merely the presence of several crises at once. Rather, it refers to a situation where the whole is more dangerous than the sum of the parts, as each individual crisis escalates, compounds and worsens other simultaneous crises.
- Tooze predicts several crises may erupt and converge over the next six to 18 months, including a food crisis, pandemic outbreaks, stagflation, a Eurozone sovereign debt crisis and potential nuclear war.
- While a majority of economists are optimistic and predict only a mild and temporary recession to hit the United States in 2023, real-time evidence doesn’t look good. Consumer spending, domestic investments, mortgage applications, manufacturing and U.S. railroad cyclical cargo loads are all declining, while inflation and interest rates are rising. Consumer sentiment, an indication of people’s confidence in the economy and their willingness to spend, is also tanking at a record rate.
- Two strategies that can strengthen individual and local resilience to the stresses facing us are the creation of local food systems and the strengthening of neighborhood and community connections. Both reduce individuals’ reliance on government handouts, and by extension, they’re less likely to be forced into these new Great Reset slave systems.
Speaking at Saturday's Jeddah summit of Middle East leaders the day following his closed-door meeting with Biden, MbS stressed investing in fossil energy but according to "clean techniques" - saying at a moment the war in Ukraine and resulting oil supply crisis is on everyone's minds (or rather the soaring price boomerang in the wake of the West seeking to "punish" Putin), "It’s important to reassure investors that the policies adopted don’t threaten their investments, to avoid discouraging them from investing causing a shortage in energy supplies."
"The kingdom has announced an increase in its energy capacity to 13 million barrels a day. After that the kingdom will have no further capacity to increase production," the Saudi ruler unveiled, per Bloomberg.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband purchased up to $5 million in stock options on a computer-chip company ahead of a vote on legislation next week that would deliver billions of dollars in subsidies to boost the chip-manufacturing industry, new financial disclosures show.
Paul Pelosi purchased on June 17, 20,000 shares of Nvidia, a top semiconductor company, worth between $1 million and $5 million, the Daily Caller reported, citing disclosure reports filed by the House speaker.
Senators are expected to convene as early as Tuesday to vote on a bipartisan competition bill to set aside $52 billion to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing and give tax credits for production, Reuters reported.
“It certainly raises the specter that Paul Pelosi could have access to some insider legislative information,” Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for the left-wing think tank Public Citizen, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “This is the reason why there is a stock trading app that exclusively monitors Paul’s trading activity and then its followers do likewise.”
Perhaps the biggest lie peddled by the global “development” mafia is that they have our consent to destroy nature and community.
In truth nearly every step they take in their crazed quest for profit and control meets with opposition.
People don’t want to see green fields near where they live turned into supermarkets or industrial estates.
People don’t want to see a motorway tear through the woodland where they walk their dog every morning.
People don’t want to see the countryside around them scarred and polluted by the toxic infrastructure of fracking.
Because the financial interests behind these projects have all the power that money can buy, they usually manage to get official permission to go ahead despite public hostility.
"Hours after President Joe Biden ended a three-day visit to the region, Israel's military said Saturday that it had attacked what it said was a Hamas military site in the Gaza Strip in response to a pair of rocket attacks," NBC reports.
"In response to the attacks from the Gaza Strip on Israeli territory, the IDF is continuing to target Hamas weapons manufacturing sites in the Gaza Strip," the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said.
Specifically the IDF said it targeted a Hamas rocket production facility located underground. This in response to Hamas rockets said to have been launched at around 1am.
"The site targeted was one of the largest and most important sites in the Strip for the production of base materials for rockets by terror groups," the IDF added. An additional two rockets were later reported fired from Gaza toward an Israeli settlement just northeast of the Strip, however they landed in open areas without injuring anyone.
Russia is developing a new anti-satellite weapon that could soon disrupt Western spy satellites flying over its territory.
The Space Review published a new report indicating "strong evidence that a space surveillance complex in Russia's northern Caucasus is being outfitted with a new laser system called Kalina that will target optical systems of foreign imaging satellites flying over Russian territory."
Construction of the Kalina project began in 2011. In a 2014 financial document, Kalina's stated purpose was to "create a system for the functional suppression of electro-optical systems of satellites" using high-powered laser pulses.
Another document from 2017 described Kalina as a "laser system for electro-optical warfare" and said it was a special quantum-optical system" being developed by the Rosatom state corporation.
Kalina can permanently blind optical sensors on satellites, and this is different than other laser weapons known as "dazzlers," which can temporarily blind optic systems).
Russia's desire to target satellites via a so-called 'soft kill' approach is a much different strategy than launching an anti-satellite missile, as it recklessly did in November 2021, knocking a defunct satellite out of orbit and, in return, generating 1,500 pieces of space junk.
Former White House physician Ronny Jackson says that Joe Biden “won’t finish his term” because “his mind is too far gone.”
Jackson, who served on the White House medical team in the mid-2000s and served as personal physician to both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, made the remarks on Twitter.
“Biden won’t finish his term. EVERYONE knows he’s unfit for the job. His mind is too far gone. This can’t go on any longer. He needs to RESIGN!” tweeted Jackson.
The former physician, who is now a Texas Congressman, made the comments after it was revealed that Barack Obama had sent Jackson an email chastising him for questioning Biden’s cognitive ability.
“I have to express my disappointment at the cheap shot you took at Joe Biden via Twitter,” Obama wrote, adding, “It was unprofessional and beneath the office that you once held. It was also disrespectful to me and the many friends you had in our administration.”
“You were the personal physician to the President of the United States as well as an admiral in the U.S. Navy,” Obama noted, asserting “I expect better, and I hope upon reflection that you will expect more of yourself in the future.”
Jackson responded to the email further during an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show.
The “anti-disinformation” industry has nothing to do with protecting a gullible public from information that might cause them to make bad or unhealthy choices — it’s about directing a narrative to control the population and promote a one-world government.
Story at a glance:
- The “anti-disinformation” industry has nothing to do with protecting a gullible public from information that might cause them to make bad or unhealthy choices. It’s about creating and directing a narrative to control the population and hide truths that might overthrow the ruling cabal and its plans for a one-world government.
- In 1948, the CIA’s Office of Special Projects launched Operation Mockingbird, a clandestine CIA media infiltration campaign that involved bribing hundreds of journalists to publish fake stories at the CIA’s request.
- During the Cold War, CIA propaganda disparaged communist ideologies. Today, it promotes radical ideas that bring us closer to The Great Reset — which is based on a technocratic economic system — instead.
- Most of the organizations claiming to promote truth and counter disinformation are in fact doing the exact opposite. The latest and most blatant example of this was the Biden administration’s “Ministry of Truth” — the Disinformation Governance Board, set up by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
- Evidence shows scholars and academics who speak out against the establishment narrative on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine are being targeted by media personalities working hand-in-hand with the intelligence apparatus.
The June 21 Grayzone article, “British Security State Collaborator Paul Mason’s War on ‘Rogue Academics’ Exposed,” shines a great big light on what the “anti-disinformation” industry is really all about.
Article | Video
Central Bank Digital Currencies Are Coming – What Will the Consequences Be?
SOURCE: ALT-MARKET.US
This article was written by Brandon Smith and originally published at Birch Gold Group
Currencies are the lifeblood of trade and the economy; if a currency fails, the entire economy fails. Yet, most people rarely think about the health or buying power of the money in their pocket. People don’t research how often currencies actually falter and how common it is for inflation or stagflation to strike nations. They just assume that the money they have will be as useful tomorrow as it is today. They also assume that money will never change in a dramatic way.
This lack of interest in how money works is likely due to the fact that people are not taught how their money is created. It’s not discussed in schools, the truth is avoided in colleges and the mainstream news rarely mentions it. People think our government and treasury handles all of that, but the reality is that our government does NOT create our money; at least, it’s not in charge of the process. Central bankers are, and they operate from a “quasi-independent” position.
For example, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan once openly admitted that the central bank “answers to no one” and does not follow orders from the government. They do what they want when they want.
Doctors and authorities are at odds as to the cause of mysterious collective ailments affecting Afghan women and girls.
Top: A female patient who has been diagnosed with conversion disorder on the female ward at Herat Regional Hospital’s Psychiatric Department in Herat Province, Afghanistan.
APRIL 2021, Anita was lying on a stained bed in the women’s room of the psychiatric ward in Herat Regional Hospital, a government-run facility in western Afghanistan. Stiff and covered in sweat, the 20-year-old was unresponsive. It was 8 a.m. and all eight beds in the ward were occupied. Unconscious patients, shrouded in cloth, lay in the dappled morning sunlight, tended to by anxious relatives.
The night before, government forces had clashed with Taliban fighters. The hospital’s neighboring wards showed the cost of the violence: They were flooded with crashes and shouting as staff hurried down narrow corridors, pushing gurneys. But in the women’s room of the psychiatric ward, there was silence. No one moved.
Before Anita was admitted to the hospital, she had gotten into a fight with her brother. After the fight, she fell unconscious. “It was like she lost her balance,” her mother, Saeeda, said. (Saeeda opted to only disclose her and her daughter’s first names.) Then Anita started seizing. When she arrived at the hospital, though, doctors did not see any sign of a neurological condition or other physical cause that could explain the sudden collapse.
The coffee chain has announced it’s closing 16 stores, including some that have recently unionized. Workers say it’s coercion against labor organizing.
After Starbucks announced Monday that it plans to shutter 16 U.S. stores as part of a strategy for addressing store safety, the chain’s rapidly expanding union filed a complaint alleging that the move is a form of union-busting.
The coffee chain said that by the end of the month it would close six stores each in the Seattle and Los Angeles areas, two in Portland, Oregon, as well as locations in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia. On Wednesday, Seattle workers from Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) — the union that has been organizing stores across the country — filed an unfair labor practice charge arguing that the closures amount to retaliation and illegal coercion against union activity.
Of the 16 stores set for closure, two locations in Seattle have successfully unionized and one store in Portland is set for a union vote in August.
Workers are leading. Unions should support them or get out of the way.
“Workers are reaching out to our union in unprecedented numbers,” says Alan Hanson, organizing director for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 in the Washington, D.C., area. “And they’re coming to us in a way I’ve never seen.
“The checklist that staff organizers have — get a list, identify leaders, make sure the organizing committee is diverse and represents all departments and classifications — these workers are coming to us and they have already done all of that. I haven’t had four successful worker-generated organizing campaigns in my entire career and we just had four in four months.”
At one of those shops, Union Kitchen, a D.C.-based grocery store, workers went on a three-day strike before their union was even certified, a level of militancy that seemed all but extinct but has now begun reappearing in nascent organizing campaigns. After the strike and before the election, four Union Kitchen activists were fired, Hanson says — a scorched earth union-busting tactic that is usually the death knell for a certification vote — but workers voted overwhelmingly for their union anyway.
The right wing is starving the government of its ability to guarantee worker rights. Will we let them get away with it?
The American labor movement finds itself in a “good news, bad news” situation — which is better than the standard “bad news, bad news” situation, but just as perilous. This week, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced that in the past nine months, petitions that workers have filed to unionize with the agency have risen by 56% over the previous year. This is a clear and tangible sign of what public opinion polls have already told us: In the aftermath of the pandemic, with a union-friendly president in the White House, workers are more enthusiastic to form unions than they have been in many years. Organized labor is always pining for a moment of opportunity, and that opportunity is here. Right now.
Then there’s the bad news. In the same press release trumpeting the boom in union election filings, NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo made a pointed case that the institution is starved for resources. “The increase in cases comes during a period of critical funding and staffing shortages for the Agency,” a release from the agency said. The NLRB’s budget from Congress has been flat for a decade, meaning that a quarter of its budget has been lost to inflation during that time — since 2002, its staffing levels have fallen by nearly 40%. Demand for union elections, and the enforcement of labor law violations, is up, and the government’s ability to handle that demand is down. This is how moments of opportunity get strangled in the crib.
Genocide walrus John Bolton outright admitted to planning foreign coups with the US government in conversation with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday. That’s coups, plural.
While arguing that the Capitol riot on January 6th of last year was not an attempted coup but rather just Trump stumbling around trying to look after his own interests, Bolton hastened to pull authority on the matter when Tapper suggested that he might not be correct about how coups work.
“I disagree with that,” Bolton said. “As somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat — not here, but, you know, other places — it takes a lot of work, and that’s not what [Trump] did.”
Places. Plural.
Two powerful leaders met beneath the hot Jeddah sun to discuss oil and killing and friendship.
One of the leaders rules a tyrannical regime which funds terrorists, murders journalists, suppresses civil rights and commits war crimes. The other, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, is no better.
They greeted not with the traditional handshake, nor with a stern finger wag from the American for the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, but with the most epic fistbump in the history of civilization.
Since the invention of the fistbump there have been none so pure, so affectionate, so expressive of perfect union and harmony. Observers said they thought they heard angels singing.
Where their two fists connected, their souls merged. Their eyes locked with an intimacy poets and lovers have spent their whole lives trying to capture. Their dick chakras burned with the intensity of a thousand stars.
“This is who we are,” the fistbump roared to the heavens. “This is who we have always been. Our sacred bond presides over an empire that is fueled by oil and blood, and we rule as one in holy communion with the great kings of old. Nothing shall ever come between us: not bone saw nor mass beheading nor strained lip service to human rights values on the presidential campaign trail.”
The United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel, responsible for military fiascos, hundreds of thousands of deaths and innumerable war crimes in the Middle East, are now plotting to attack Iran.
The United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia are plotting a war with Iran. The 2015 Iranian nuclear arms accord, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which Donald Trump sabotaged, does not look like it will be revived. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) is reviewing options to attack if Teheran looks poised to obtain a nuclear weapon and Israel, which opposes U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations, carries out military strikes.
During his visit to Israel, Biden assured Prime Minister Yair Lapid that the U.S. is “prepared to use all elements of its national power,” including military force, to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon.
Saudi Arabia, Israel and the U.S. function as a troika in the Middle East. The Israeli government has built a close alliance with Saudi Arabia, which produced 15 of the 19 hijackers in the September 11 attacks and has been a prolific sponsor of international terrorism, supporting Salafi jihadism, the basis of al-Qaeda, and such groups as the Afghanistan Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Al-Nusra Front.
NEARLY TWO DECADES before Israeli forces killed Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, shooting a single bullet into her head while she was reporting from the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, an Israeli soldier drove a bulldozer over American peace activist Rachel Corrie, crushing her to death.
Both killings left little real doubt about the dynamics at play. Abu Akleh was standing with a group of colleagues, wearing a vest clearly marked “PRESS,” nowhere near the fighting that had taken place earlier that morning. Corrie was nonviolently protesting the demolition of a Palestinian family’s home in Gaza. She was wearing a fluorescent orange jacket with reflective stripes and had been on the scene for several hours, at times speaking into a megaphone.
In the moments before her death, Corrie was standing in the path of the bulldozer as other activists had been doing throughout the day. As the driver pushed the machine forward, she climbed onto a mound of dirt so she would be clearly visible, according to witness testimony reviewed by The Intercept. The driver kept advancing. When she fell to the ground, the dirt engulfed her, but the driver moved several feet forward before backing off, effectively crushing her twice. The possibility that he did not see her, as he later claimed, defies all credibility. Still, the Israeli government never took responsibility for her death, and while the U.S. government rejected the results of the Israeli investigation, it did nothing to ensure that such a killing would not happen again. So it did.
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