A Second Amendment For Europe?

A Second Amendment For Europe?

June 28, 2018

A Second Amendment For Europe?

What refugees produced by Washington’s wars have done to spur gun ownership in Europe:

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/06/28/italian-gun-ownership-rise-populist-salvini-proposes-self-defence-policy/

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Two Views of the Putin/Trump Summit by Paul Craig Roberts

Two Views of the Putin/Trump Summit — Paul Craig Roberts

June 28, 2018 

Two Views of the Putin/Trump Summit

Paul Craig Roberts

The meeting that the Deep State strived to make impossible with fabricated “Russiagate” assertions and an orchestrated “investigation” by Mueller has now been set in place by no less than Deep State neocon operative John Bolton. Patrick Lang explains how this came about: https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/stroke-brilliance-trump-has-made-bolton-his-point-man-putin-summit/ri23950

Many see benefits from the Putin/Trump meeting. For example: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/06/25/these-are-benefits-of-us-russia-summit.html

Putin himself sees benefits in the meeting as does Trump. Putin sees hope of improving relations between the two governments. Of course, the “strained relations” are entirely due to Washington, which has demonized both Russia and Putin with false accusations and hostile acts such as illegal sanctions. It was miscalculation for Washington to expect Russia to give up its Black Sea naval base to Washington’s coup in Ukraine.

What can an agreement be based on? Bolton’s position has been opposed to making any agreement with Russia or cooperating with Russia in any way. From the neoconservative standpoint, Russia is in the way of US world hegemony. As the neoconservative foreign policy doctrine states, it is a principal US goal to prevent the rise of any country that could serve as a check on American unilateralism. Russia is a challenge to the American World Order because Russia stands in the way of the American unipolar world.

A successful summit will require Trump to reject this neoconservative doctrine. If Trump can pull this off with Bolton sitting by him, Trump’s critics will look very silly. Do Bolton and the Deep State have a way of baking failure into the summit that will ensure the continuation of Russia’s enemy status, thereby sustaining the enormous budget and power of the US military/security complex? Is Trump a superman who can overcome this powerful vested interest about which President Eisenhower warned Americans in 1961? How much stronger is this complex more than half a century later after being nourished by decades of Cold War and War on Terror?

Assad and no doubt Iran are convinced that negotiations with Washington are a waste of time. Assad has concluded that “the problem with US presidents is that they are hostage to lobbyists. They can tell you what you want to hear, but they do the opposite. That’s the problem, and it’s getting worse and worse. Trump is a stark example. That’s why when talking to the Americans, discussing something with them does not settle anything. There will not be any results. It’s a simple waste of time.” https://www.fort-russ.com/2018/06/assad-says-talks-with-the-trump-a-waste-of-time/

Assad’s view has the evidence on its side. One of Trump’s first actions was to unilaterally pull out of the multi-nation Iran nuclear agreement. There is no evidence that supports the hopeful Russian view.

It would be an interesting exercise to list all the agreements Washington has made over the course of US history and to calculate the percentage that Washington kept. If Putin doesn’t want to be taken for a ride, he should contemplate the words of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce summing up his negotiations with Washington: “I have heard talk and talk, but nothing is done. I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and broken promises.”

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Why You Need www.paulcraigroberts.org

Why You Need www.paulcraigroberts.org

June 28, 2018 

Why You Need www.paulcraigroberts.org

https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/americas-fake-news-complex-keeping-its-people-totalitarian-nightmare/ri23947

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A Different Perspective on President Trump

A Different Perspective on President Trump

June 27, 2018 

A Different Perspective on President Trump

John V. Walsh

John Walsh provides a different perspective on Trump, one that you will not hear from the presstitute media.

https://original.antiwar.com/john-v-walsh/2018/06/25/three-cheers-for-trumps-peace-trifecta/

And a contrast to it that you also will not hear from the presstitute media:

https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/mattis-prevented-ww3-russia-april-now-hes-chopping-block-crossing-israel-firsters-adelson

Three Cheers for Trump’s Peace Trifecta

by John V. Walsh Posted onJune 26, 2018

In the short space of five days, June 8-12, President Trump took three steps that upended the old post WWII global order and moved us a few steps toward a more peaceful world. Two of those steps are undeniable; the third is perhaps not so obvious.

The Singapore Summit.

The Singapore Summit comes first, because it rocked the world.

Many Thanks For Your Support June 27, 2018

Many Thanks For Your Support

June 27, 2018 

Dear Donors:

This website was launched on New Year’s eve, December 31, 2011. It is now half way into its seventh year. The deal between us is that this is your website and it will stay up as long as you support it. Your response to June’s quarterly call for support has again fulfilled your side of the bargain, and I will continue to fulfill mine. The website has a large readership international in scope and the columns are regularly translated and published abroad. They are also reposted on many websites here at home. You can be proud of what you have helped to create.

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How Should Threatened Countries Deal With The US?

How Should Threatened Countries Deal With The US?

June 27, 2018 

PCR Interviewed by American Herald Tribune

How Should Threatened Countries Deal With The US?

https://ahtribune.com/world/2317-paul-craig-roberts.html

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EN Manlio Dinucci THE ART OF WAR NEOCOLONIALISM AND THE "MIGRANT CRISIS"

« THE ART OF WAR »

Neocolonialism and the « migrant crisis »

by Manlio Dinucci

From the United States to Europe, the “migrant crisis” is causing bitter interior and international controversy about the policies which need to be adopted concerning the migrant flow. However, these movements are being represented by a cliché which is the opposite of reality – that of the “rich countries” obliged to suffer the growing migratory pressure of the “poor countries”. This misrepresentation hides its basic cause  - the world economic system which enables a restricted minority to accumulate wealth at the expense of the growing majority, by impoverishing them and  thus provoking forced emigration.

As concerns the migrant flow towards the United States, the case of Mexico is emblematic. Its agricultural production collapsed when, with the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement ), the USA and Canada flooded the Mexican market with low-cost agricultural products, thanks to their own public subsidies. Millions of agricultural workers found themselves without jobs, thereby increasing the work pool recruited by the “maquiladoras” - thousands of industrial establishments along the frontier, in Mexican territory, possessed or controlled, for the most part, by United States companies, where salaries are very low and trade union rights inexistent.

In a country where approximately half of the population lives in poverty, this situation has increased the mass of people who want to enter the United States. This is the origin of the Wall along the border with Mexico, which was begun by the Democrat President Clinton in 1994 when the NAFTA came into effect, pursued by the Republican Bush, reinforced by the Democrat Obama, the same wall that the Republican Trump now hopes to complete along all 3,000 kilometres of the border.

Concerning the migratory flow towards Europe, the case of Africa is emblematic. The continent is rich in raw materials – gold, platinum, diamonds, uranium, coltan (or tantalite), copper, oil, natural gas, precious woods, cocoa, coffee and many others.

These resources, once exploited by the old European colonialist system with slave-type methods, are today being exploited by European neo-colonialism in collaboration with the African elites in power, a low-cost local work force, and interior and international control of the market-place.

More than one hundred companies listed at the London Stock Exchange, British and others, exploit the mineral resources of 37 sub-Saharan African countries for a value of more than 1,000 billion dollars.

France controls the monetary system of 14 African ex-colonies via the CFA Franc (originally the acronym of the “Colonies Françaises d’Afrique”, now recycled as  “Communauté Financière Africaine”). In order to conserve parity with the Euro, these 14 African countries are obliged to pay the French Treasury half of their monetary reserves.

The Libyan state, which sought to create an autonomous African currency, was demolished by the war of 2011. In the Ivory Coast (a CFA region), French companies control the greater part of the commercialisation of cocoa, of which the country is the world's top producer – the little producers are left with hardly 5% of the value of the end product, such that most of them live in poverty. These are only a few examples of the neo-colonial exploitation of the continent.

Africa, presented as being dependent on foreign aid, in fact pays foreign countries a net annual forfeit of about 58 billion dollars. The social consequences are devastating. In sub-Saharan Africa, where the population is greater than one billion souls, and is composed of 60% children and young people between the ages of 0 and 24 years old, about two thirds of the inhabitants live in poverty and amongst these, about 40% - which is to say 400 million – live in conditions of extreme poverty.

The “migrant crisis” is in reality the crisis of an unsustainable economic and social system.

Edition Tuesday 26 June 2018, il manifesto

Translated by Pete Kimberly

NO WAR NO NATO

SIGN THIS PETITON

More videos

https://www.pandoratv.it/category/opinioni/manlio-dinucci-opinioni/

God’s Chosen People

God’s Chosen People

June 26, 2018 

God’s Chosen People

http://thomas-l-are.blogspot.com

Zionist Bigotry

It has been said, Pride goeth before a fall, meaning, “People who act overconfident or too arrogant are likely to fall.”  Oh, I remember where that quote comes from. It’s in the Jewish Bible, God’s word to his chosen people. (Proverbs 16:18) 

As Israel celebrates 70 years of stateism, it has become a nation of racism, arrogance and bigotry. Bradley Burston, writing in Haaretz, a leading newspaper in Israel, says:

It hurts me to write what I’m about to. But it also hurts me to have to live in this place today. This is Zionism as racism…As a public servant, as an Orthodox rabbi, as a settler, you’re free to say anything, as long as it’s anti-Arab, anti-black, anti-Muslim, anti- Palestinian anti-Nazi, anti-North American…For sheer, unadulterated Zionist bigotry and hatred…no one can touch Benyamin Netanyahu [i]

It’s amazing. Dov Lior, chief rabbi of Hebron issued a religious edict saying:

A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail. He also asserts that Arabs could be used for medical experiments.

Ovadia Yosef, a former Sephardi chief rabbi said:

“The sole purpose off non-Jews is to serve Jews.”

This declaration was endorsed by 250 Jewish religious figures.[ii]  

Again, Allan Brownfeld writes:

Israel repeatedly refers to itself as a “Jewish state,” but its current direction represents a rejection of Jewish moral and ethical values. Slowly, more and more American Jews, who believed Israel shared their values are coming to the realization that it does not.

I used to think of Israel as a century state, meaning that it would survive for about 100 years. Israel seems to thrive on creating enemies and I thought, one of these days, one of them is going to stomp in and crush it.

No more. I now think if Israel makes it ten more years it will be a miracle. Not because some “enemy” will invade but because it will implode from within. Israel has no foundation other than its illusions about itself, such as: Of all the people on earth, we are God’s chosen. Jews are smarter and more valuable than other people. Actually, Israel has little self-control, no constitution and recognizes no borders. It has one true friend in the world, the United States, and that could easily change as more and more young Jews reject the actions and arrogance of Israel.

Most Americans have supported Israel over the years as, “the only democracy in the Middle East.” But what kind of democracy is it when Israel’s Jewish leadership declares that it is not a nation for all its citizens but rather, its democracy is for “Jews only?” It is pure Zionist bigotry.

Thomas Are

June 26, 2018

---

[i] Allan C. Brownfeld, Israel at 70: An Alarming Growth of Racism and Intolerance. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs,  June 2018, p. 40.

[ii] Also from Allan C. Brownfeld, Israel at 70: An Alarming Growth of Racism and Intolerance. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs,  June 2018, p. 40.

POSTED BY THOMAS L. ARE AT 10:18 AM 6 COMMENTS:  

MONDAY, JUNE 18, 2018

NIKKI

There is much to be admired about Nikki Haley, but her blind excusing of Israel is not one of them. It seems that in her mind, Israel, no matter what it does, is innocent and deserving to be given a pass. Israel can do no wrong. If anybody says otherwise, she will not listen.

Last month at the United Nations Security Council meeting, she described Israel’s forces at the Gaza border. ”No country in this chamber would act with more restraint than Israel has.”  When the Palestinian Ambassador tried to explain some context to her remarks, that the conflict at the border is a one sided massacre which has already killed hundreds of  Palestinians and wounded thousands more, including women and children, Nikki Haley got up and walked out. So much for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. Just forget it.

Another story that Haley refuses to remember is that of Arnon Sofer of Haifa University’s advise to 

Ariel Sharon in 2004:

Withdraw Israeli forces from within Gaza, seal the territory off from the outside world, and simply shoot anyone who tries to break put. “When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it is going to be a human catastrophe.” Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today… So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill, all day, every day.”[i]

The facts that Haley currently refuses to hear include a report that on one day, May 14^th:

The Israeli army shot and killed 60 Palestinians in Gaza – including 6 children – and injured 3,000 others amid scenes of smoke, fire, teargas, dust, agony and blood.[ii]

The “brave soldiers operating with restraint” to whom she refers are of course snipers hiding behind barricades shooting unarmed civilians from a safe distance of 1,000 yards or more.

No problem for Nikki Haley. If Israel does it, and it seems harsh, just forget it.

Some wise soul has pointed out:

Erase memory and you wash away the blood from the perpetrator’s hands, you undo the done deed, make it disappear from history. Erase memories of atrocities and you tempt future perpetrators with immunity.[iii]

Nikki Haley is supposed to be our U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. To use one of Donald Trump’s favorite words, it is “unfair.” Actually, we have no ambassador to the U.N.  Israel has two.

Thomas Are

June 18, 2018

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1 and 2 - Saree Makdisi, Kill and Kill and Kill,  Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 2018, p. 8

[iii] Miraslov Volf, cited in Justin Schwegel, The Greenhouse Propaganda – How Gazan History is Being Rewritten to dehumanize Palestinians. Mondoweiss.net, August 10. 2014

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A MUST -- THE WIRETAP ROOMS The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities

THE WIRETAP ROOMS

The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities

Photo: Steven Day

Ryan Gallagher, Henrik Moltke

June 25 2018, 1:00 p.m.

THE SECRETS ARE hidden behind fortified walls in cities across the United States, inside towering, windowless skyscrapers and fortress-like concrete structures that were built to withstand earthquakes and even nuclear attack. Thousands of people pass by the buildings each day and rarely give them a second glance, because their function is not publicly known. They are an integral part of one of the world’s largest telecommunications networks – and they are also linked to a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program.

Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. In each of these cities, The Intercept has identified an AT&T facility containing networking equipment that transports large quantities of internet traffic across the United States and the world. A body of evidence – including classified NSA documents, public records, and interviews with several former AT&T employees – indicates that the buildings are central to an NSA spying initiative that has for years monitored billions of emails, phone calls, and online chats passing across U.S. territory.

The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.” It is a collaboration that dates back decades. Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T’s customers. According to the NSA’s documents, it values AT&T not only because it “has access to information that transits the nation,” but also because it maintains unique relationships with other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T’s massive infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies.

How Long Can The Federal Reserve Stave Off the Inevitable? — Paul Craig Roberts

How Long Can The Federal Reserve Stave Off the Inevitable? — Paul Craig Roberts

June 26, 2018 

How Long Can The Federal Reserve Stave Off the Inevitable?

Paul Craig Roberts

When are America’s global corporations and Wall Street going to sit down with President Trump and explain to him that his trade war is not with China but with them. The biggest chunk of America’s trade deficit with China is the offshored production of America’s global corporations. When the corporations bring the products that they produce in China to the US consumer market, the products are classified as imports from China.

Six years ago when I was writing The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, I concluded on the evidence that half of US imports from China consist of the offshored production of US corporations. Offshoring is a substantial benefit to US corporations because of much lower labor and compliance costs. Profits, executive bonuses, and shareholders’ capital gains receive a large boost from offshoring. The costs of these benefits for a few fall on the many—the former American employees who formerly had a middle class income and expectations for their children.

In my book, I cited evidence that during the first decade of the 21st century “the US lost 54,621 factories, and manufacturing employment fell by 5 million employees. Over the decade, the number of larger factories (those employing 1,000 or more employees) declined by 40 percent. US factories employing 500-1,000 workers declined by 44 percent; those employing between 250-500 workers declined by 37 percent, and those employing between 100-250 workers shrunk by 30 percent. These losses are net of new start-ups. Not all the losses are due to offshoring. Some are the result of business failures” (p. 100).

In other words, to put it in the most simple and clear terms, millions of Americans lost their middle class jobs not because China played unfairly, but because American corporations betrayed the American people and exported their jobs. “Making America great again” means dealing with these corporations, not with China. When Trump learns this, assuming anyone will tell him, will he back off China and take on the American global corporations?

The loss of middle class jobs has had a dire effect on the hopes and expectations of Americans, on the American economy, on the finances of cities and states and, thereby, on their ability to meet pension obligations and provide public services, and on the tax base for Social Security and Medicare, thus threatening these important elements of the American consensus. In short, the greedy corporate elite have benefitted themselves at enormous cost to the American people and to the economic and social stability of the United States.

The job loss from offshoring also has had a huge and dire impact on Federal Reserve policy. With the decline in income growth, the US economy stalled. The Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan substituted an expansion in consumer credit for the missing growth in consumer income in order to maintain aggregate consumer demand. Instead of wage increases, Greenspan relied on an increase in consumer debt to fuel the economy.

The credit expansion and consequent rise in real estate prices, together with the deregulation of the banking system, especially the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, produced the real estate bubble and the fraud and mortgage-backed derivatives that gave us the 2007-08 financial crash.

The Federal Reserve responded to the crash not by bailing out consumer debt but by bailing out the debt of its only constituency—the big banks. The Federal Reserve let little banks fail and be bought up by the big ones, thus further increasing financial concentration. The multi-trillion dollar increase in the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet was entirely for the benefit of a handful of large banks. Never before in history had an agency of the US government acted so decisively in behalf only of the ownership class.

The way the Federal Reserve saved the irresponsible large banks, which should have failed and have been broken up, was to raise the prices of troubled assets on the banks’ books by lowering interest rates. To be clear, interest rates and bond prices move in opposite directions. When interest rates are lowered by the Federal Reserve, which it achieves by purchasing debt instruments, the prices of bonds rise. As the various debt risks move together, lower interest rates raise the prices of all debt instruments, even troubled ones. Raising the prices of debt instruments produced solvent balance sheets for the big banks.

To achieve its aim, the Federal Reserve had to lower the interest rates to zero, which even the low reported inflation reduced to negative interest rates. These low rates had disastrous consequences. On the one hand low interest rates caused all sorts of speculations. On the other low interest rates deprived retires of interest income on their retirement savings, forcing them to draw down capital, thus reducing accumulated wealth among the 90 percent. The under-reported inflation rate also denied retirees Social Security cost-of-living adjustments, forcing them to spend retirement capital.

The low interest rates also encouraged corporate boards to borrow money in order to buy back the corporation’s stock, thus raising its price and, thereby, the bonuses and stock options of executives and board members and the capital gains of shareholders. In other words, corporations indebted themselves for the short-term benefit of executives and owners. Companies that refused to participate in this scam were threatened by Wall Street with takeovers.

Consequently today the combination of offshoring and Federal Reserve policy has left us a situation in which every aspect of the economy is indebted—consumers, government at all levels, and businesses. A recent Federal Reserve study concluded that Americans are so indebted and so poor that 41 percent of the American population cannot raise $400 without borrowing from family and friends or selling personal possessions.

A country whose population is this indebted has no consumer market. Without a consumer market there is no economic growth, other than the false orchestrated figures produced by the US government by under counting the inflation rate.

Without economic growth, consumers, businesses, state, local, and federal governments cannot service their debts and meet their obligations.

The Federal Reserve has learned that it can keep afloat the Ponzi scheme that is the US economy by printing money with which to support financial asset prices. The alleged rise in interest rates by the Federal Reserve are not real interest rates rises. Even the under-reported inflation rate is higher than the interest rate increases, with the result that the real interest rate falls. If the stock market tries to sell off, before much damage can be done the Federal Reserve steps in and purchases S&P futures, thus driving up stock prices.

Normally so much money creation by the Federal Reserve, especially in conjunction with such a high debt level of the US government and also state and local governments, consumers, and businesses, would cause a falling US dollar exchange rate. Why hasn’t this happened?

For three reasons. One is that the central banks of the other three reserve currencies—the Japanese central bank, the European central bank, and the Bank of England—also print money. Their Quantitative Easing, which still continues, offsets the dollars created by the Federal Reserve and keeps the US dollar from depreciating.

A second reason is that when suspicion of the dollar’s worth sends up the gold price, the Federal Reserve or its bullion banks short gold futures with naked contracts. This drives down the gold price. There are numerous columns on my website by myself and Dave Kranzler proving this to be the case. There is no doubt about it.

The third reason is that money managers, individuals, pension funds, everyone and all the rest had rather make money than not. Therefore, they go along with the Ponzi scheme. The people who did not benefit from the Ponzi scheme of the past decade are those who understood it was a Ponzi scheme but did not realize the corruption that has beset the Federal Reserve and the central bank’s ability and willingness to continue to feed the Ponzi scheme.

As I have explained previously, the Ponzi scheme falls apart when it becomes impossible to continue to support the dollar as burdened as the dollar is by debt levels and abundance of dollars that could be dumped on the exchange markets.

This is why Washington is determined to retain its hegemony. It is Washington’s hegemony over Japan, Europe, and the UK that protects the American Ponzi scheme. The moment one of these central banks ceases to support the dollar, the others would follow, and the Ponzi scheme would unravel. If the prices of US debt and stocks were reduced to their real values, the United States would no longer have a place in the ranks of world powers.

The implication is that war, and not economic reform, is America’s most likely future.

In a subsequent column I hope to explain why neither US political party has the awareness and capability to deal with real problems.

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