Why not turn the UK parliament into a holocaust memorial?

Source

http://www.redressonline.com

By Gilad Atzmon

17th May 2019   

Britain’s prime minister and four of her predecessors, some of whom are renowned war criminals, have united in calling for a holocaust memorial to be built in proximity to parliament. “A sacred, national mission” is how Theresa May described the idea and, for once, I totally agree with this tragic, sad woman. I would take it further: don’t just build a holocaust shrine in Westminster, make the UK parliament itself a holocaust monument. We don’t really need a House of Commons; as things stand, it would be more transparent if we were to be governed by our true rulers in Tel Aviv.

But there is a deeper ethical rationale that justifies the erection of a holocaust memorial instead of our dysfunctional parliament. Every political commentator in Britain knows by now that the more Jewish pressure groups terrorise Britain, its human rights campaigners, artists, writers and poets, the more Britons become aware of the crimes of Zionism, Israel and their ruthless lobby. The more British politicians join parliamentary friends of Israel clubs, the less Britons will trust their political system. The more holocaust indoctrination is shoved down our throats, the more suspicious Britons become of the manner in which history is told.

Watch Britain’s compromised prime minister and her predecessors in this video:

According to May: “By putting our national holocaust memorial and education centre next to our parliament, we make a solemn and eternal promise that Britain will never forget what happened in the holocaust.” Is that true Mrs May? Do you really mean what you say? Will our holocaust memorial bring to light the embarrassing fact that Britain made it very difficult for Jewish refugees to seek a safe haven in the UK or in other parts of the empire?

In Zionist history, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin (Labour) is remembered as one of the bitterest enemies of the Jewish people. This senior Labour politician had opposed removing the limiting of Jewish immigration to Palestine. Is this Zionist chronicle of Labour anti-Jewish politics going to be explored in the holocaust monument?

In 1937, as the rate of Jewish refugees looking to immigrate to Britain increased, the British government created stricter standards for those whom they would admit. One was that refugees had to have ₤50 deposited in an overseas bank, but in Germany it was against the law to possess foreign currency. If this was not enough to stop Jewish immigration from Germany, the British government limited the number of immigrants in 1938 and 1939. Practically speaking, the British government turned its back on German and Austrian Jews.

The prime minister vowed that “in the face of despicable holocaust denial, this memorial will stand to preserve the truth forever”. I am here to tell you with confidence that the British holocaust memorial will in fact conceal British complicity in the destruction of European Jewry.

Mrs May was joined by all the living former UK prime ministers: David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and John Major. With the exception of Major, all the other living ex-prime ministers have been involved in a lot of death and carnage. While Blair and Brown led this country to a disastrous criminal war in Iraq that resulted in millions of casualties, it was Cameron who managed to pull this country into a chain of disasters in Libya, Syria and beyond.

Blair, whom a third of the British people see as a war criminal, said in his message that “anti-Semitism and hate did not end in 1945. Unfortunately, today some of this poison is back from the political fringe to parts of the political mainstream.” Blair was probably referring to his own party, which is struggling to disown the criminal past he himself inflicted on it. But the truth of the matter is that anti-Semitism didn’t die in 1945, certainly not in Britain. The postwar Labour government went out of its way to make the lives of Jewish holocaust survivors impossible. In Zionist history, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin (Labour) is remembered as one of the bitterest enemies of the Jewish people. This senior Labour politician had opposed removing the limiting of Jewish immigration to Palestine. Is this Zionist chronicle of Labour anti-Jewish politics going to be explored in the holocaust monument? 

Millions of innocent people lost their lives due to the crimes of the empire, yet our ethically compromised prime minister and her predecessors are committed to the commemoration of crimes that were committed by another people. Is this the ethical message we are supposed to pass to the next generations? Is zero self-reflection a new British value?

It doesn’t take a genius to gather why Blair and Brown are so enthusiastic about a museum that chronicles Nazi crimes rather than a proper and timely institute that would explore their own crimes in Iraq. It is pretty clear why Cameron prefers to divert attention from his own blunders in Syria and Libya. But it goes further. Britain and its empire have a long list of crimes against humanity to account for: slavery, concentration camps in the Boer war, the partitioning of India, the destruction of Palestine, famines in Ireland and Bengal. Millions of innocent people lost their lives due to the crimes of the empire, yet our ethically compromised prime minister and her predecessors are committed to the commemoration of crimes that were committed by another people. Is this the ethical message we are supposed to pass to the next generations? Is zero self-reflection a new British value?

I have learned that Jeremy Corbyn, the person who according to the polls is destined to become Britain’s next prime minister, is not at all different from his predecessors. Corbyn, who at a certain point claimed to care for the many, is now subscribing to the primacy of Jewish suffering. Corbyn was quick to announce that he also would “strongly support permanent commemoration, including a national memorial, alongside extra investment in educational programmes”. I guess that supporting a holocaust memorial is an entry ticket to 10 Downing Street.

US-China: the hardcore is yet to come

Source

http://www.asiatimes.com

ByPEPE ESCOBAR

MAY 10, 2019

A container ship unloads cargo at the port terminal in Long Beach, California on May 10, as talks to resolve the US-China trade battle ended Friday with no deal, but no breakdown. Photo: Mark Ralston / AFP

The Trump administration’s response to China’s emergence has been to throw all sorts of spanners in the works, but tariffs won’t bring back manufacturing jobs

Let’s start with the “long” 16th Century – which, as with the 21st, also saw a turbulent process of marketization. At that time, the Jesuits and the Counter-Reformation were trying to rebound across Asia – but within a context where the rivalry between the Iberian superpowers of the age, Spain and Portugal, still lingered.

The Reformation first attached itself to the Dutch trade thalassocracy – a seaborne empire, under which commerce was paramount – over strict propaganda of religious dogma. Britain’s maritime realm was still biding its time. The emergence of Protestantism proceeded in parallel to the emergence of neo-Confucianism in East Asia.

Fast forward to our turbulent times. Marketization – renamed as globalization – seems to be in crisis. But not in the Middle Kingdom, which is now investing in globalization 2.0 amid increasing rivalry with the other superpower, the US.

The American thalassocracy is being superseded by the Revenge of the Heartland, in the form of the Russia-China strategic partnership – for whom Eurasian trade integration, as expressed by the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is paramount over the Make America Great Again (MAGA) dogma.

Meanwhile, the re-emergence of Right populism in the West mirrors the re-emergence of pragmatic neo-Confucianism across Asia.

BRI – the prime vehicle for Eurasia integration – would have never come to light without China’s four decades of breakneck economic development.

My sharpest and most informed geopolitical readers, such as the wonderfully enigmatic Larchmonter, are in synch with my running conversations – for years now – with top analysts in Russia, China, Iran, Turkey and Pakistan; following the Obama administration’s fuzzy “pivot to Asia”, the Trump administration’s response to China’s emergence has been to throw all sorts of spanners in the works.

Thus, the current hysteria over tariffs, the trade offensive, the demonization of BRI, Made in China 2025 and Huawei’s 5G dominance, and all manner of disruptive Hybrid War tactics such as repeatedly claiming “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea to progressive weaponizing of Taiwan.

All that duly fueled by non-stop hatchet jobs on media outlets, as in branding Huawei as “suspect” or “permanently untrustworthy”.

From the point of view of the hyperpower, there can be only one possible endgame: an amputated, permanently crippled and preferably non-stop aching Chinese economy – with unfavorable demographics to boot. 

Soybeans from Ukraine are unloaded at the port in Nantong, in eastern China. Imports of soy used to come from the US, but have slumped since the trade war began. Photo: AFP

Where are our jobs?

Pause on the sound and fury for necessary precision. Even if the Trump administration slaps 25% tariffs on all Chinese exports to the US, the IMF has projected that would trim just a meager slither – 0.55% – off China’s GDP. And America is unlikely to profit, because the extra tariffs won’t bring back manufacturing jobs to the US – something that Steve Jobs told Barack Obama eons ago.

What happens is that global supply chains will be redirected to economies that offer comparative advantages in relation to China, such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Laos. And this redirection is already happening anyway – including by Chinese companies.

BRI represents a massive geopolitical and financial investment by China, as well as its partners; over 130 states and territories have signed on. Beijing is using its immense pool of capital to make its own transition towards a consumer-based economy while advancing the necessary pan-Eurasian infrastructure development – with all those ports, high-speed rail, fiber optics, electrical grids expanding to most Global South latitudes.

The end result, up to 2049 – BRI’s time span – will be the advent of an integrated market of no less than 4.5 billion people, by that time with access to a Chinese supply chain of high-tech exports as well as more prosaic consumer goods.

Anyone who has followed the nuts and bolts of the Chinese miracle launched by Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping in 1978 knows that Beijing is essentially exporting the mechanism that led China’s own 800 million citizens to, in a flash, become members of a global middle class.

As much as the Trump administration may bet on “maximum pressure” to restrict or even block Chinese access to whole sectors of the US market, what really matters is BRI’s advance will be able to generate multiple, extra US markets over the next two decades.

We don’t do ‘win-win’

There are no illusions in the Zhongnanhai, as there are no illusions in Tehran or in the Kremlin. These three top actors of Eurasian integration have exhaustively studied how Washington, in the 1990s, devastated Russia’s post-USSR economy (until Putin engineered a recovery) and how Washington has been trying to utterly destroy Iran for four decades.

Beijing, as well as Moscow and Tehran, know everything there is to know about Hybrid War, which is an American intel concept. They know the ultimate strategic target of Hybrid War, whatever the tactics, is social chaos and regime change.

The case of Brazil – a BRICS member like China and Russia – was even more sophisticated: a Hybrid War initially crafted by NSA spying evolved into lawfare and regime change via the ballot box. But it ended with mission accomplished – Brazil has been reduced to the lowly status of an American neo-colony.

Let’s remember an ancient mariner, the legendary Chinese Muslim Admiral Zheng He, who for three decades, from 1405 to 1433, led seven expeditions across the seas all the way to Arabia and Eastern Africa, reaching Champa, Borneo, Java, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Calicut, Hormuz, Aden, Jeddah, Mogadiscio, Mombasa, bringing tons of goods to trade (silk, porcelain, silver, cotton, iron tools, leather utensils).

That was the original Maritime Silk Road, progressing in parallel to Emperor Yong Le establishing a Pax Sinica in Asia – with no need for colonies and religious proselytism. But then the Ming dynasty retreated – and China was back to its agricultural vocation of looking at itself.

They won’t make the same mistake again. Even knowing that the current hegemon does not do “win-win”. Get ready for the real hardcore yet to come.

This British Colonial Report Offers a Rare Glimpse Into India’s Historic Cannabis Cuisine

And a description of some very stoned canines.

Source

http://www.atlasobscura.com

BY REINA GATTUSO

MAY 09, 2019

This British Colonial Report Offers a Rare Glimpse Into India’s Historic Cannabis Cuisine

In the 1790 painting Bhang Eaters Before Two Huts, by Pemji, a group of men mix and consume bhang. SAN DIEGO MUSEUM OF ART/PUBLIC DOMAIN

THICK, SUGARY, AND CREAMY, RICH with saffron and almonds, bhang thandai is so sweet that at first it’s hard to pinpoint the drink’s secret ingredient. After a sip or two, however, the telltale taste lingers: spicy and slightly musky, it’s the signature whiff of cannabis. After a few minutes, the high comes, dreamy as the rainbow play of Holi colors. An Indian festival staple, drunk especially during North Indian Holi celebrations, bhang thandai is part of a long history of South Asian cannabis culture.

Mentions of cannabis in South Asia date back to at least around 1500 BC, where it makes an appearance as one of five sacred plants in the Atbarva Veda. Beloved by Sikh soldiers and Mughal kings, cannabis has also long been part of spiritual practice across South Asian religions, from Shiva devotees who smoke the god’s treasured herb, to Sufi seekers who use hashish as a tool to unite with the divine. Today, bhang recipes are widely available, and the drink, made from the leaves of the plant, is legal and broadly accepted. Yet British colonialism dramatically shaped modern attitudes toward cannabis in South Asia and, in turn, around the world.

An ascetic devotee of Lord Shiva smokes ganja from a traditional clay chillum. ABHISHEK SINGH/CC BY-SA 2.0

William Brooke O’Shaughnessy could have given you a bhang recipe or two. In early 1830s England, O’Shaughnessy, a young Edinburgh graduate, had gained recognition as a clever chemist. But when he found himself unable to acquire his license in London, he followed in the footsteps of many a young British lad unsure of his next step, and hightailed it to the colonies.

At that time, India was still controlled by the East India Company; it wouldn’t be officially “transferred” to the British crown until 1858. But in the colonial capital of Calcutta, British elites, often in collaboration with elite classes of Indians, had embarked on a grand scholarly mission. Their aim was to learn everything possible about the subcontinent, from its history and languages to its flora and fauna, in order to better understand—and thus, better control—the Indian population. O’Shaughnessy, the bright, young Irish physician, was no different. Upon his arrival in Calcutta, he took up a post at the Medical College Hospital, where he turned his attention to studying a unique aspect of Indian medical and culinary culture: cannabis.

Portrait of William O’Shaughnessy demonstrating instruments. U.S. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE/PUBLIC DOMAIN

At the time, cannabis use was uncommon in England, and British colonials regarded the drug with suspicion. They had long feared that cannabis could cause madness, and 19th-century colonizers considered its use a threat to colonial power. “Murderous assaults by individuals under the influence of Indian hemp have been somewhat frequent,” declared one Bombay newspaper in 1885. As a result of this violent influence, an Allahabad newspaper opined, “The lunatic asylums of India are filled with Ganja smokers.” This was true, but not necessarily because the drug caused madness. Instead, officials running “native-only” colonial asylums sometimes admitted Indian people suspected of being habitual ganja smokers for the mere fact that the system regarded them as unruly.

But British colonials were interested in anything that could yield knowledge about the colonized population. So in the 1830s, O’Shaughnessy set out on a rigorous program of research, detailing his inquiries in his 1842 The Bengal Dispensatory. Drawing from interviews with Indian colleagues, The Bengal Dispensatory provided—among descriptions of hemp plants and hemp-related literature in Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian—several cannabis recipes detailed enough for an ambitious home chef to attempt today.

Continue:

Source

“Psychopath Capitalism”: US Economic Terrorism and Genocide Against the People of Venezuela

“It is agonizing to witness the mass murder of a heroic and progressive Venezuelan people, by a psychopathic capitalism which has not one iota of human decency, and wallowing in its cannibalistic behavior, desecrates the very concept of human rights.  But that is the essence of monopoly capitalism, whose “highest” stage is fascism.”

Source

April 25: Foreign Minister Arreaza Describes Excruciating Suffering of the Venezuelan People Resulting From US Sanctions; 

April 26: US Violates its Obligation as  UN Host Country and Sanctions the Foreign Minister for Speaking Truth to Power

“We are not only on the wrong side, we are the wrong side.”   Pentagon Papers Expert Daniel Elllsberg

“American sanctions are deliberately aiming to wreck Venezuela’s economy and thereby lead to regime change.  It’s a fruitless, heartless, illegal, and failed policy, causing grave harm to the Venezuelan people.”  Professor Jeffrey Sachs

US Maneuvers at the United Nations

The entire official schedule of meetings of the United Nations Commission on Disarmament – April 8 through April 29 – was forced to cancel because the United States, in violation of its obligations as host country, refused a visa to important Russian delegates.

On April 25, Venezuela’s brilliant, charismatic Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza (left) detailed, in a United Nations press briefing, the horrific suffering the Venezuelan people are enduring as a result of the dictatorship of US sanctions against his country, and US terrorization of each and every global institution and nation which the US is demanding sever all economic and diplomatic ties with Venezuela.

In a stealthy, deadly march to global dictatorship, and consistent with its attempt to subjugate the United Nations to the interests of US oligarchic power, the United States is abusing its membership in the United Nations, attempting to force regime change on Venezuela, using criminal methods in violation of the Hague Convention, the Geneva Convention, the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Charter of the Organization of American States, the Venezuelan Constitution, and in violation of U.S. law itself.

The U.S. maneuvers to destroy the Maduro government’s UN accreditation, and replace it with their puppet Guaido are horrifying and Machiavellian, and, quite realistically, since the US has absolutely no scruples, nor any respect for international law, there is an ominous possibility that they may succeed.  Numerous diplomats of many countries, with whom I have spoken, are terrified by the sanctions the US just placed on the Venezuelan Foreign Minister, recognizing the threat to their own sovereignty, and sophisticated Iranian specialists delineated the dangerous possibilities the US has to use this method to force out the Venezuelan delegation to the UN, and de facto denude the Maduro government’s access to the UN.  If the US succeeds in this criminal scheme, the credibility of the UN will be entirely and irreparably destroyed, as the many diplomats with whom I have spoken have confirmed.  Many delegates are now saying that the UN would be better based in another more reliable and respectful country.  Venezuela is Chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement, an organization of 120 member states. For the US to sanction her Foreign Minister is an unconscionable and intolerable abuse of the host country status.

The US Is Orchestrating a Coup in Venezuela

The US has, furthermore, forged another mafia-style organization of flunkey Latin American “governments” which give every indication of becoming  a new Operation Condor, that systematically organized engine of murder arranged by Augusto Pinochet and Henry Kissinger, (image left) an international organized criminal plan to exterminate all progressive and humanitarian efforts throughout Latin America and beyond.

Operation Condor orchestrated the slaughter of Chilean former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier in Sheridan Circle, Washington, DC in 1976. Letelier bled to death after a car bomb arranged by Anti-Castro Cuban terrorists tore off his legs. An American girl working for the Institute of Policy Studies, Ronni Moffett was also killed in that terrorist action.  In Argentina, Chilean General Carlos Prats was murdered when his Buenos Aires home was bombed;  in Rome, ChileanSenator Bernardo Leighton’s wife was crippled by an assassin’s bullet intended for him;  Operation Condor arranged the murder of former progressive Bolivian President Torres in Argentina.

Diabolic Methods Used by the US to Wreck Venezuela

In a colossal report entitled:  “Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment:  The Case of Venezuela,” and corroborating everything stated by Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, economist Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot describe the diabolic methods used by the United States to wreck Venezuela and discredit socialism, resulting in the deliberate murder of at least 40,000 Venezuelan people, including children, the elderly, the infirm and other of the most vulnerable civilians. This is a systematic and deliberate policy of the US government, a heinous plan to exterminate socialism and massacre the Venezuelan people in order to steal their oil, a spectacular act of piracy brazenly conducted with the collusion of obedient puppets in Western Europe and Canada, and craven, obsequious Latin American states whose shameful obedience to Washington is breathtaking.

Complete Blockade

Washington is now threatening to completely blockade and sanction Cuba to force that country to sever relations with Venezuela. Nicaragua is, of course, also in the crosshairs.

Yesterday there was a failed coup, provoked by the Quisling Juan Guaido, (image right with Lopez) who incited a military revolt to violently overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicholas Maduro.  If Joseph Biden or Bernie Sanders, or any American citizen advocated the violent overthrow of the US government, they would be imprisoned and/or executed.  It is astounding that the Manchurian candidate Juan Guaido, advocating the violent overthrow of the Venezuelan government, is allowed to roam free, throughout Venezuela.  This is incontestable proof of the impeccably democratic character of the Maduro government. And perhaps it is proof of Maduro’s strength and trust in the Venezuelan people.  But Maduro’s life is at risk for his country. During yesterday’s emergency, Venezuelan Ambassador Samuel Moncada convened a UN press conference, and skillfully replied to often slanted and biased questions  for which Moncada was well prepared, and had no doubt anticipated.

The US government is disintegrating, and has been for many years, with the current administration rife with internecine warfare.  The French government is confronting an incipient popular revolution of the Yellow Jackets, the British government stymied by Brexit and separatist movements threatening the survival of the “United Kingdom.”  It is only with the most flagrant arrogance that they criticize Venezuela.

It is agonizing to witness the mass murder of a heroic and progressive Venezuelan people, by a psychopathic capitalism which has not one iota of human decency, and wallowing in its cannibalistic behavior, desecrates the very concept of human rights.  But that is the essence of monopoly capitalism, whose “highest” stage is fascism. One can only hope that Russia and China will recognize the future menace to their own survival, and will not indulge in the wishful thinking of a “win-win” arrangement with Washington. One can only hope that the crucible of Venezuela will prove to be the Stalingrad of this de facto World War III, and it will be on the battlefield of Venezuela, with its transgenerational legacy of Simon Bolivar, that fascism is defeated, and the future progressive destiny of humanity will be forged.

*

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Carla Stea is Global Research’s correspondent at United Nations Headquarters, New York, N.Y.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Carla Stea, Global Research, 2019

America Needs A Debt Jubilee

“In America today the population is drowning in unpayable debts—student loan debt, credit card debt, home mortgage debt, state and local government debt, and business debt—but policymakers have reserved forgiveness only for the debt associated with the bad and irresponsible investments of the big banks and financial institutions.  The Federal Reserve printed $4 trillion to buy up the banks’ bad debt while permitting ten million homeowners to be foreclosed.”

Source: America Needs A Debt Jubilee – PaulCraigRoberts.org

America Needs A Debt Jubilee

America Needs A Debt Jubilee

Paul Craig Roberts

May 7, 2019

As school children my friends and I were very interested in archaeology and ancient civilizations. We read all the available books. My best friend intended to become an archaeologist and to explore ancient ruins about which we imagined more than we actually knew. 

As far as I can discern these days no one in the general population has any thoughts of Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria, Ur.  For the American young the 1940s, not 2,500 BC, is the ancient past.

A time so long ago that it predates the Old Testament by 2,000 years is probably imagined as a brutal and politically incorrect time of inhumanity and human sacrifice.  In short, a script for a horror fantasy movie or a video game.

In actual fact, these civilizations were more advanced and more humanitarian than our own. They were more advanced because the rulers were focused on ensuring the society’s longevity by maintaining a livable balance between debtors and creditors. It has all been downhill ever since.

The rulers maintained social balance and, thereby, the life of the society by periodically cancelling debts. The rulers understood that compound interest resulted in debt growing faster than the economy.  The consequence would be foreclosures on agricultural land, which would shift riches and power into a small oligarchy of creditors. The ruler and the society would be deprived of a self-supporting population on the land which provided tax revenues, soldiers for the military, and corvee labor to maintain public infrastructure.  Disaster would follow.  A grasping oligarchy could overthrow the ruler or the dispossessed population could flee to a potential invader offering their military services in exchange for debt forgiveness. 

To protect their societies from dissolution by unpayable debts, rulers periodically  cancelled agrarian debts owed by the citizenry at large, but not mercantile debts among businessmen.

The reason for debt forgiveness was stability, not egalitarianism.

We know this fascinating story of the Bronze Age’s successful economic policy because Michael Hudson spent 30 years as a research fellow at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum working with scholars of the ancient word.  The study resulted in the organization of five colloquia over a decade and in the recent publication of Hudson’s book,  “. . . and forgive them their debts.”

In America today the population is drowning in unpayable debts—student loan debt, credit card debt, home mortgage debt, state and local government debt, and business debt—but policymakers have reserved forgiveness only for the debt associated with the bad and irresponsible investments of the big banks and financial institutions.  The Federal Reserve printed $4 trillion to buy up the banks’ bad debt while permitting ten million homeowners to be foreclosed. Student loan debt prevents university graduates from forming independent households. Mortgage and credit card debt prevents households from having discretionary income with which to drive retail sales.  But modern day economics has no prescription for preventing our society from failing from debt overload.

America long ago lost its independent farmers to debt overload.  All it took was a drought, or a dustbowl, or the Fed driving up interest rates on loans, and farmers were foreclosed and the farm properties passed to corporate farming. Today the same thing is happening to dairy producers. Canada’s response to Trump’s tariffs is to place tariffs on US dairy products.  The earnings drop leaves American dairy farmers overburdened with debt service.  This business, too, seems destined to be concentrated in a few hands. Economic independence is being driven  out of American society.

The problems of monopoly, monopsony, oligopoly are real.  Especially so when indebted Americans have their high productivity, high value-added jobs offshored and then face robotics displacing the lower paid domestic service jobs that are their current employment. The profit maximizing activities of corporations reduce Americans’ incomes but not their debts.  Thus, debt service becomes more difficult.

In the US today we have a situation in which the New York banks control Federal Reserve policy and financial legislation—the deregulation of the banking system and its subsequent bailout, for example.  We have a situation in which monopolies, monopsonies, and oligopolies are stronger than the central government, which is unable to rein them in or act against them in any way. Corporations dispossess citizens of their jobs by offshoring the jobs. Creditor demands prevent university graduates from forming households. Debt service preempts retail demand except by further debt expansion. 

This is an economy headed down, not up.  Clearly, Hammurabi did far better for the Babylonians than Washington can do for Americans.

Escobar: Now Comes The Notre Dame Of Billionaires

Source link

http://www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,

Thu, 04/18/2019

 

The Bamiyan Buddhas were destroyed by an intolerant sect pretending to follow Islam. Buddhism all across Asia grieved. The West hardly paid attention.

The remaining ruins of Babylon, and the attached museum, were occupied, plundered and vandalized by a US Marine base during Shock and Awe in 2003. The West paid no attention.

Vast tracts of Palmyra – a legendary Silk Road oasis – were destroyed by another intolerant sect pretending to follow Islam with their backs covered by layers of Western “intelligence”. The West paid no attention.

Scores of Catholic and Orthodox churches in Syria were burnt to the ground by the same intolerant sect pretending to follow Islam with their backs sponsored and weaponized, among others, by the US, Britain, and France. The West paid no attention whatsoever.

Notre-Dame, which in many ways can be construed as the Matrix of the West, is partially consumed by a theoretically blind fire.

Especially the roof; hundreds of oak beams, some dating back to the 13th century. Metaphorically, this could be interpreted as the burning of the roof over the West’s collective heads.

Bad karma? Finally?

*  *  *

Now back to the nitty-gritty.

Notre-Dame belongs to the French state, which had been paying little to no attention to a gothic jewel that traversed eight centuries.

Fragments of arcades, chimeras, reliefs, gargoyles were always falling to the ground and kept in an improvised deposit in the back of the cathedral.

Only last year Notre-Dame got a check for 2 million euros to restore the spire – which burned to the ground yesterday.

To restore the whole cathedral would have cost 150 million euros, according to the top world expert on Notre-Dame, who happens to be an American, Andrew Tallon.

Recently, the custodians of the cathedral and the French state were actually at war.

The French state was making at least 4 million euros a year, charging tourists to enter the Twin (Bell) Towers but putting back only 2 million euros for the maintenance of Notre-Dame.

The rector of Notre-Dame refused to charge for a ticket to enter the cathedral – as it happens, for example, at the Duomo in Milan.

Notre-Dame basically survives on donations – which pay the salaries of only 70 employees who need not only to supervise the masses of tourists but also to organize eight masses a day.

The French state’s proposal to minimize the ordeal; organize a beneficent lottery. That is; privatize what is a state commitment and obligation.

So yes: Sarkozy and Macron, their whole administrations, are directly and indirectly responsible for the fire.

Now comes the Notre-Dame of Billionaires.

Pinault (Gucci, St. Laurent) pledged 100 million euros from his personal fortune for the restoration. Arnault (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy) doubled down, pledging 200 million euros.

So why not privatize this damn fine piece of real estate – disaster capitalism-style? Welcome to Notre-Dame luxury condo, hotel, and attached mall.

Jimmy Carter: US ‘Most Warlike Nation in History of the World’

Common Dreams

by Brett Wilkins

Brett Wilkins is a San Francisco-based freelance author and editor-at-large for US news at Digital Journal. His work, which focuses on issues of war and peace and human rights, is archived at www.brettwilkins.com.

Thursday, April 18, 2019

Former president says peaceful China ‘ahead of us in almost every way.’

Most countries surveyed in a 2013 WIN/Gallup poll identified the United States as the greatest threat to world peace. (Photo: CD/CC BY 2.0)

The only US president to complete his term without war, military attack or occupation has called the United States “the most warlike nation in the history of the world.”

During his regular Sunday school lesson at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, Jimmy Carter revealed that he had recently spoken with President Donald Trump about China. Carter, 94, said Trump was worried about China’s growing economy and expressed concern that “China is getting ahead of us.”

Carter, who normalized diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing in 1979, said he told Trump that much of China’s success was due to its peaceful foreign policy.

Carter then referred to the US as “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” a result, he said, of the US forcing other countries to “adopt our American principles.”

“Since 1979, do you know how many times China has been at war with anybody?” Carter asked. “None, and we have stayed at war.” While it is true that China’s last major war—an invasion of Vietnam—occurred in 1979, its People’s Liberation Army pounded border regions of Vietnam with artillery and its navy battled its Vietnamese counterpart in the 1980s. Since then, however, China has been at peace with its neighbors and the world.

Carter then said the US has been at peace for only 16 of its 242 years as a nation. Counting wars, military attacks and military occupations, there have actually only been five years of peace in US history—1976, the last year of the Gerald Ford administration and 1977-80, the entirety of Carter’s presidency. Carter then referred to the US as “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” a result, he said, of the US forcing other countries to “adopt our American principles.”

China’s peace dividend has allowed and enhanced its economic growth, Carter said. “How many miles of high-speed railroad do we have in this country?” he asked. China has around 18,000 miles (29,000 km) of high speed rail lines while the US has “wasted, I think, $3 trillion” on military spending. According to a November 2018 study by Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, the US has spent $5.9 trillion waging war in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other nations since 2001.

“It’s more than you can imagine,” Carter said of US war spending. “China has not wasted a single penny on war, and that’s why they’re ahead of us. In almost every way.”

“And I think the difference is if you take $3 trillion and put it in American infrastructure you’d probably have $2 trillion leftover,” Carter told his congregation. “We’d have high-speed railroad. We’d have bridges that aren’t collapsing, we’d have roads that are maintained properly. Our education system would be as good as that of say South Korea or Hong Kong.”

The US has also invaded or bombed dozens of countries and supported nearly every single right-wing dictatorship in the world since the end of World War II.

While there is a prevalent belief in the United States that the country almost always wages war for noble purposes and in defense of freedom, global public opinion and facts paint a very different picture. Most countries surveyed in a 2013 WIN/Gallup poll identified the United States as the greatest threat to world peace, and a 2017 Pew Research poll found that a record number of people in 30 surveyed nations viewed US power and influence as a “major threat.”

The US has also invaded or bombed dozens of countries and supported nearly every single right-wing dictatorship in the world since the end of World War II. It has overthrown or attempted to overthrow dozens of foreign governments since 1949 and has actively sought to crush nearly every single people’s liberation movement over that same period. It has also meddled in scores of elections, in countries that are allies and adversaries alike.