In solidarity with the popular ‘yellow vests’ movement, France’s workers have gone on national strike Friday, a move called by the General Confederation of Labor (CGT).
“The best way to protest is to go on strike,” the CGT’s Philippe Martinez told BFM TV Friday. “We must multiply actions at companies. We must strike everywhere.”
The French trade union announced the day of action Tuesday after negotiations with the government over unemployment benefits failed.
“The CGT, like the yellow vests, is fighting for claims on salaries, what (French president Emmanuel) Macron announced is not enough because there isn’t any general raise in salaries,” Union representative for health workers Francoise Doriate told Reuters.
“The minimum wage isn’t a minimum wage… the increase of an income tax on only a part of pensioners is a scam and there is a freeze on pensions which means we are losing buying power.”
On Monday, President Macron announced wage rises for the poorest workers and tax cuts for pensioners in further concessions meant to quell weeks of often violent protests that have challenged his authority. However, the government’s decision has been seen by some as a sham.
“Emmanuel Macron thought he could hand out some cash to calm the citizen’s insurrection that has erupted,” Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the far-left La France Insoumise, said. “I believe that Act V (of the protests) will play out on Saturday,” he said referring to a new round of protests planned this weekend.
The move to strike puts pressure on companies as labor unions use their collective power to create disruption just as demonstrators prepare for a fifth-weekend wave of protests across the country since the movement began Nov. 17.
“Of course it is not a question of shouting victory but of amplifying the mobilization: that is why all the general assemblies are maintained!” CGT leadership said in a statement.
The administration of Macron also declared a state of economic and social emergency Monday, and requested the cancellation of the ‘yellow vest’ protests this weekend, citing Tuesdays shooting in Strasburg in which three people were killed and 13 others wounded. Police killed the shooter late on Thursday.
Police have been cracking down on the protests using tear gas and water cannon and many fear that the government is preparing a major repression as the movement announces a fifth round of demonstrations.
The leadership of the CGT said the call to strike is in support of the social and wage demands driven by the popular movement of the yellow vests.
Moscow is ready to take part in the ambitious project of constructing a cross-continental railway line which will connect East and West Africa. That’s according to the Russia-Sudan intergovernmental commission.
“The Sudanese side expressed interest in participation of the Russian companies in constructing of the Trans-African railway over Dakar – Port Sudan – Cape Town,” said the commission in a document seen by TASS.
It added that “The Russian side confirmed readiness to work out the opportunity for participation… but asked for [the] provision of all the financial and legal characteristics of this project.”
The Trans-African railway line is part of the African Union’s plans to connect the port of Dakar in West Africa to the port of Djibouti in East Africa. It will run through 10 different countries (many of them landlocked) and is expected to boost trade on the continent.
The route will be the expansion of the existing Trans-African Highway 5 (TAH5). The first phase of the project will be an estimated $2.2 billion upgrade to 1,228 kilometers of existing rail between Dakar, the capital of Senegal, and Bamako, the capital of neighboring Mali.
The project has already attracted Chinese investment in African infrastructure through Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Awhile back, I wrote an article about how the radical Colorado Energy Plan is actually designed to serve the gigantic Colorado utility company Xcel – not Colorado families and businesses – by beefing up Xcel’s asset base … and bottom line … with $2.5 billion worth of new generating capacity.
The kicker is that the Plan substitutes expensive, unreliable wind power for affordable, reliable coal-generated electricity, and thus is really part of a clever corporate strategy designed by Xcel.
Xcel’s plan was to get past 50% renewable. But now it has doubled down on that. The company just announced that it plans to become 100% “emissions free” by 2050. Xcel serves eight states from Colorado to Michigan, so a lot of people should be grabbing their wallets at this point.
Of course this is all based on the bogus “dangerous manmade climate change” scare, but Xcel stands to make huge profits from it. Being a regulated utility, the more it spends, the more it makes (and the more its customers pay) – while the utility gets to strut its supposed ecological virtues.
Ben Fowke, chairman, president and CEO, Xcel Energy puts it this way: “We’re accelerating our carbon reduction goals because we’re encouraged by advances in technology, motivated by customers who are asking for it, and committed to working with partners to make it happen.”
I doubt the customers asking for it have any idea what it will cost them.
The Greens love it, of course. Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense Fund, says it is all about “carbon dioxide pollution,” which is a hoax. Here is Krupp’s claim:
“Ambitious efforts to slash carbon dioxide pollution are urgently needed. Xcel Energy’s vision will help speed the day when the United States eliminates all such pollution from its power sector, which is necessary to seize the environmental and economic opportunity of powering cars, trucks, homes and businesses with cost-effective, zero-emitting electricity.”
Keep in mind, this “carbon dioxide pollution” is what you exhale every time you breathe. It’s what animals exhale. It’s what plants inhale – and the more carbon dioxide (CO2) there is in the air, the faster and better crop, forest and grassland plants grow, using less water in the process.
Colorado’s radical green Governor-elect Jared Polis is politically ecstatic, saying: “When I launched my campaign back in 2017, we had a bold agenda for our state – to get to 100% renewable by 2040. Xcel Energy’s exciting announcement today, along with the strong climate goals communities like Pueblo, Summit County, Ft. Collins, Denver and others across the state have embraced, shows we are leading the way forward right here in Colorado – by committing to a renewable and clean energy future.”
Polis and the others are deeply mistaken in thinking Xcel means 100% renewables. That is actually impossible, because wind and solar generation are highly intermittent, as I explain here. Xcel knows this too, but hides it with the following vague statements:
“Achieving the long-term vision of zero-carbon electricity requires technologies that are not cost effective or commercially available today. That is why Xcel Energy is committed to ongoing work to develop advanced technologies while putting the necessary policies in place to achieve this transition.” (Emphasis added)
Zero emissions and 100% renewables are two very different things, as I explain here in my article “100% Renewable Deception.” In fact, Xcel is planning to use enormous numbers of batteries, plus fossil-fuel generation with carbon (CO2) capture and storage. That is, both chemical and carbon-based energy.
In particular, fossil fueled generation with carbon capture and storage (CCS) means immensely more fossil fuels must be used to create and operate all of this hi-tech and largely unproven technology. And that means hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars in additional costs for Colorado businesses and families. All to capture and store the trace gas (0.04% or 400 parts per million of Earth’s atmosphere) that we exhale.
Note too that the supposed battery and carbon-capture-and-storage technologies do not even exist in usable form. How then does Xcel know they will be cost effective? Clearly they cannot know this. I have seen no hint of an engineering plan or cost estimate for bringing this scheme off – and doubt one exists.
Increased reliance on intermittent, weather-dependent wind power also increases grid instability and the likelihood of blackouts, brownouts and rolling outages. Customers more and more often get power when it’s available, instead of when they need it.
Also keep in mind that “emissions free” really means no emissions from electricity sources located in Colorado. The misleading claim completely ignores the massive emissions elsewhere in the world – of very real pollution, as well as emissions of plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide – in the process of mining and processing the enormous amounts of metals, hydrocarbons and other materials required to make those turbines, manufacturing the 600-foot-tall windmills, transporting and installing them, and so on.
Enormous amounts of metals and other materials are also needed for the backup fossil fuel power plants, CCS equipment, extra-long transmission lines – or massive battery arrays, if Xcel decides it’s going to use “clean, green” batteries instead of coal- or gas-fired backup power plants. Those backup systems, by the way, actually do 70-85% of the electricity generation, because the wind turbines only work 15-30% of the time. And it all impacts millions of acres of once pristine land, in Colorado and elsewhere.
One more important point, while we’re on the topic of corporate ethics and environmental virtue: A lot of those metals and minerals – especially the rare earths, lithium, cobalt, cadmium and other specialty items required in all this high-tech equipment – come from China, Mongolia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other faraway, out-of-sight-and-mind places. Places where child labor is common, and health, safety and environmental standards are all but non-existent.
You could think of them as the renewable energy equivalent of “Blood Diamonds,” like the ones Leonardo DiCaprio dislikes so intensely that he made a movie about them – when he wasn’t driving his heavily subsidized Tesla, which also uses extensive “blood battery” technology.
(Xcel and its lawyers and environmental and political friends didn’t mention any of that? That’s really surprising, considering how often they emphasize their ethics and planet-saving virtues.)
A lot of people who buy into the climate scare invest on the basis of “greenness.” Given that Xcel is a publicly traded, stockholder owned corporation, one wonders if this “we are the greenest in the land” hype – or any of the lofty but specific promises Xcel has been making – amount to securities fraud.
Perhaps this potential fraud is something the SEC and FTC should look into.
David Wojick is an independent analyst specializing in science and logic in public policy.
We are the Little Folk—we! Too little to love or to hate. Leave us alone and you’ll see How we can drag down the State!
A Pict Song, Rudyard Kipling
Belgium has joined the list of countries that are rebelling against their elected leadership. Over the weekend the Belgian government fell over Prime Minister Charles Michel’s trip to Morocco to sign the United Nations Migration Agreement. The agreement made no distinction between legal and illegal migrants and regarded immigration as a positive phenomenon. The Belgian people apparently did not agree. Facebook registered 1,200 Belgians agreeing that the Prime Minister was a traitor. Some users expressed concern for their children’s futures, noting that Belgian democracy is dead. Others said they would get yellow vests and join the protests.
The unrest witnessed in a number of places is focused on some specific demands but it represents much broader anger. The French yellow vests initially protested against proposed increases in fuel taxes that would have affected working people dependent on transportation disproportionately. But when that demand was met by the government of President Emmanuel Macron, the demonstrations continued and even grew, suggesting that the grievances with the government were far more extensive than the issue of a single new tax. Perhaps not surprisingly, the French government is seeking for a scapegoat and is investigating “Russian interference.” The US State Department inevitably agrees, claiming that Kremlin directed websites and social media are “amplifying the conflict.”
Some commentators looking somewhat more deeply at the riots in France have even suggested that the real issue just might be regime change, that the Macron government had become so disconnected with many of the voters through both its policies and the rhetoric justifying them that it had lost its legitimacy and there was no possibility of redemption. Any change would have to be an improvement, particularly as a new regime would be particularly sensitive to the sentiments of those being governed, at least initially. One might suggest that the prevailing sentiment that a radical change in government is needed, come what may, to shake up the system might well be called the “Trump phenomenon” as that is more-or-less what happened in the United States.
The idea that republican or democratic government will eventually deteriorate into some form of tyranny is not exactly new. Thomas Jefferson advocated a new revolution every generation to keep the spirit of government accountable to the people alive.
Call it what you will – neoliberalism, neoconservatism or globalism – the new world order, as recently deceased President George H.W. Bush once labeled it, characteristically embraces a world community in which there is free trade, free movement of workers and democracy. They all sound like good things but they are authoritarian in nature, destructive of existing communities and social systems while at the same time enriching those who promote the changes. They have also been the root cause of most of the wars fought since the Second World War, wars to “liberate” people who never asked to be invaded or bombed as part of the process.
And there are, of course, major differences between neoliberals and neoconservatives in terms of how one brings about the universal nirvana, with the liberals embracing some kind of process whereby the transformation takes place because it represents what they see, perhaps cynically, as the moral high ground and is recognized as being the right thing to do. The neocons, however, seek to enforce what they define as international standards because the United States has the power to do so in a process that makes it and its allies impossible to challenge. The latter view is promoted under the phony slogan that “Democracies do not fight other democracies.”
The fact that globalists of every type consider nationalism a threat to their broader ambitions has meant that parochial or domestic interests are often disregarded or even rejected. With that in mind, and focusing on two issues – wholesale unwelcome immigration and corrupt government run by oligarchs – one might reasonably argue that large numbers of ordinary citizens now believe themselves to be both effectively disenfranchised and demonstrably poorer as rewarding work becomes harder to find and communities are destroyed through waves of both legal and illegal immigration.
In the United States, for example, most citizens now believe that the political system does not work at all while almost none think that even when it does work it operates for the well-being of all the citizens. For the first time since the Great Depression, Americans no longer think of upward mobility. Projections by sociologists and economists suggest that the current generation growing up in the United States will likely be materially poorer than their parents. That angst and the desire to “do something” to make government more responsive to voters’ interests is why Donald Trump was elected president.
What has been occurring in Belgium, France, with Brexit in Britain, in the recent election in Italy, and also in the warnings coming from Eastern Europe about immigration and European Union community economic policies are driven by the same concerns that operated in America. Government itself is becoming the enemy. And let us not forget the countries that have already felt the lash and been subjected to the social engineering of Angela Merkel – Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece. All are weaker economies crushed by the one size fits all of the EURO, which eliminated the ability of some governments to manage their own economies. They and all their citizens are poorer for it.
There have been windows in history when the people have had enough abuse and so rise up in revolt. The American and French revolutions come to mind as does 1848. Perhaps we are experiencing something like that at the present time, a revolt against the pressure to conform to globalist values that have been embraced to their benefit by the elites and the establishment in much of the world. It could well become a hard fought and sometimes bloody conflict but its outcome will shape the next century. Will the people really have power in the increasingly globalized world or will it be the 1% with its government and media backing that emerges triumphant?
Unlike the 2014 Ukraine uprising, which witnessed invasive meddling on the part of US politicians and diplomats, Western support for the French Yellow Vest protests has been conspicuously missing in action.
With the streets of Paris ablaze for a fourth weekend in a row, as a swarm of Yellow Vests assert themselves against a French government which, they argue, has become increasingly detached from the cares of ordinary citizens, support among Western capitals for the protesters is nowhere to be found.
This is a bit odd since the ‘gilets jaunes’ are not just protesting Macron’s (rescinded) plans for a fuel tax, but have released a list of 42 demands they want to see implemented. This includes an increase of the minimum wage, pensions and wages, as well as a halt to illegal immigration into the country. In other words, we are not talking about violent anarchists on the streets of France, but regular citizens. Thus far, the movement enjoys a high level of support among the French, with one poll showing 72 percent siding with the protesters.
The United States and its allies may have trouble explaining their tone-deafness in the face of these legitimate concerns on the part of millions of French citizens. At the very least, their icy silence will reveal a no small amount of double standards and outright hypocrisy since the West rarely misses an opportunity to interfere in the affairs of foreign states – mostly in the Middle East – when ‘democracy’ is purportedly on the line.
Consider Washington’s starkly different attitude to Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan revolution, which brought down the government of Viktor Yanukovich through the explicit support of the United States, as well as a number of influential NGOs operating in the country. Yanukovich committed the unforgivable mistake of thinking he would be allowed to pursue an independent course for his country, despite the fact that since 1992, the US had spent over $5 billion propping up ‘democracy-building programs’ in Ukraine.
Did Kiev really think that Washington would not eventually expect something in return for all those dollars, like maybe deciding who would eventually rule the Eastern European country on Russia’s border? And that is exactly what happened.
When Yanukovich signaled that he would not sign Ukraine up to an EU trade deal, he awoke a sleeping giant below his feet. Several weeks after the announcement, as his country was becoming increasingly divided over its options, the late US Senator John McCain appeared in central Kiev where he tossed dry wood on the smoldering fires by proclaiming at a rally on Independence Square, “Ukraine will make Europe better, and Europe will make Ukraine better… America is with you.”
What could have motivated Washington to pursue such blatant interference in the affairs of Ukraine, while ignoring the French ‘gilets jaunes’ that are now fanning out across France, protesting the neo-Liberal policies of President Emmanuel Macron? Could the answer have anything to do with something as simple as money? That certainly seems to be a large part of the equation.
After all, steering Kiev away from Russia, Western officials understood, would pay off handsome dividends for Western lending institutions, like the International Monetary Fund, which had already lent Kiev billions of dollars to stay afloat. The West was fiercely opposed to the idea of Russia and China becoming ‘lenders of last resort’, a financial and political function that the Western world covets more than any other, with the possible exception of military interventionism against sovereign states.
Fast forward one year after John McCain was agitating rallies in Kiev, and Victoria Nuland was handing out cookies to the protesters, and we find Ukraine, under the new leadership of the US-anointed President Petro Poroshenko, inking a $17.5bn (£11.5bn) loan deal with the IMF, together with the painful austerity measures that always accompany the bags of cash.
Presently, there are no such financial incentives in France that would convince Western capitals to ‘rally on behalf of democracy’ as it had done without delay in Ukraine.
This glaringly hypocritical position with regards to the French protesters reveals a deeply flawed, cart-before-the-horse Western axiom that commands: ‘whatever works to the advantage of Western institutions and its political elite is automatically good for democracy.’ This does not exclude social upheaval and revolution. If violence in the streets translates into the empowerment of Western institutions, not least of all the global financial institutions, then such actions will be rewarded with Western support without a moment’s thought.
Today, Emmanuel Macron, 40, the former Rothschild investment banker known as “president of the rich” by his countrymen, is facing the prospect of an early political demise, no less than Viktor Yanukovich faced in 2014.
Indeed, to say that Macron’s popularity among the French is in the toilet would be putting the situation mildly.
As one local English-language French magazine summed up his plight: Macron is “long-hated by the extreme-leftist groups because of his past as a banker… detested by the far-right because of his pro-European, globalist beliefs and now hated by many ordinary French people, who see him as arrogant, aloof and unsympathetic to their problems.”
Yet, not a single Western politician to date has appeared in the French capital, rallying the protesters and demanding Macron step aside; nor has any top-ranking US diplomat been spotted handing out cookies to the French rabble as Victoria Nuland did in Kiev at the height of Ukrainian tensions.
Incidentally, with such stark images in mind, it seems preposterous that the US can actually accuse Russia of meddling in its political affairs, and without a shred of evidence to back the claims. But I digress.
The simple reason that no Western country has come out to condemn Macron is because he toes the line on neo-liberalism and extreme free-market economics that has ravaged the French middle class to breaking point. The fuel hike was just the proverbial straw that broke the voters’ back.
It would be no exaggeration to say that all segments of French society have become caught up in the protests. Today we see hundreds of French schools, for example, shutting down as students take to the streets to protest Macron’s unpopular education reform. Pensioners are also counted among the protesters after Macron lectured them to stop “whining” about spending cuts, at the very same time he was slashing taxes for the wealthy.
Clearly, there is nothing about Macron that Western leaders can find not to their liking. He is carrying out painful liberal reforms with gusto, and only under pain of usurpation does he backpedal on his political program. Although the rudderless French president may fancy himself as a modern-age Napoleon, acting tough with his subjects to get what he wants, ultimately it will be the French street that decides his fate, which at the moment looks very bleak.
Such a brutal wake-up call may very well be in store for many more Western neo-liberal leaders, who fail to feel the pulse of their people when instituting their unpopular policies, in the weeks and months to come.
Mike Pompeo is in no position to claim that sending two strategic bombers to Venezuela was a “squandering” of public funds, Moscow countered, saying half of the US military budget is enough “to support all of Africa.”
The US Secretary of State produced a lengthy tirade on Twitter on Tuesday, claiming the arrival of two Russian Tu-160 bombers was an example of “two corrupt governments squandering public funds, and squelching liberty and freedom while their people suffer.” Later in the day, the remark was met with a sharp rebuke from the Kremlin.
“This is indeed very undiplomatic,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists, adding, “we think it was an utterly inappropriate comment.” US President Donald Trump might “give his own assessment” of Pompeo’s statement as he did in the past, he said.
Saying that, Peskov made a veiled reference to President Trump’s inflammatory tweet in which he accused Rex Tillerson, Pompeo’s predecessor, of lacking the “mental capacity” to do his job. “He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell,” Trump tweeted.
“As far as the ‘squandering’ is concerned, we don’t agree with that,” Peskov stated, noting that half of the bulky US military budget “would be enough to support all of Africa.”
The exchange happened a day after a pair of Tu-160s touched down at Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar International Airport on Monday. The bombers, nicknamed the ‘White Swans’ in the Russian military, had flown over 10,000 kilometers to reach the South American country. Their visit was part of “combined operational flights” with the Venezuelan Air Force, according to the Russian military.
That aside, it has recently emerged that Donald Trump has committed to a $750bn military budget, despite earlier labeling the $716bn previously allocated for defense ‘crazy’.
Above all, the mammoth US military budget has long been the largest in the world. According to the reputed Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), it dwarfs the defense expenditure of Russia, China, India, the UK, France, and Germany combined.
Macron’s concessions to the Yellow Vests has failed to appease protesters and opposition politicians, such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who called for “citizen’s revolution” to continue until a fair distribution of wealth is achieved.
Immediately after French President Macron declared a “social and economic state of emergency” in response to large-scale protests by members of the Yellow Vest movement, promising a range of concessions to address their grievances, left-wing opposition politician Mélenchon called on the grassroots campaign to continue their revolution next Saturday.
“I believe that Act 5 of the citizen revolution in our country will be a moment of great mobilization.”
Macron’s promise of a €100 minimum wage increase, tax-free overtime pay and end-of-year bonuses, Mélenchon argued, will not affect any “considerable part” of the French population. Yet the leader of La France Insoumise stressed that the “decision” to rise up rests with “those who are in action.”
“We expect a real redistribution of wealth,” Benoît Hamon, a former presidential candidate and the founder of the Mouvement Génération, told BFM TV, accusing Macron’s package of measures that benefit the rich.
The Socialist Party’s first secretary, Olivier Faure, also slammed Macron’s financial concessions to struggling workers, noting that his general “course has not changed.”
Although welcoming certain tax measures, Marine Le Pen, president of the National Rally (previously National Front), accused the president’s “model” of governance based on “wild globalization, financialization of the economy, unfair competition,” of failing to address the social and cultural consequences of the Yellow Vest movement.
Macron’s speech was a “great comedy,” according to Debout la France chairman, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, who accused the French President of “hypocrisy.”
Yet many found Melanchon’s calls to rise up against the government unreasonable, accusing the 67-year-old opposition politician of being an “opportunist” and “populist,” who is trying to hijack the social protest movement for his own gain.
The Yellow Vest protests against pension cuts and fuel tax hikes last month were organized and kept strong via social media, without help from France’s powerful labor unions or official political parties. Some noted that such a mass mobilization of all levels of society managed to achieve unprecedented concessions from the government, which the unions failed to negotiate over the last three decades.
Despite tweeting just last week that a $716bn defense budget was ‘crazy’, US President Donald Trump has reportedly reversed course and instead committed to the highest budget in history.
Trump’s unexpected decision to agree to Defense Secretary James Mattis’ request and propose an increased budget, relayed to several media outlets by anonymous officials, appears to stem from a meeting last Tuesday between Trump, Mattis and the chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services committees.
It appears to have had an effect, considering that the day before the meeting, Trump tweeted that the previous year’s $716bn was “crazy” and a product of “a major and uncontrollable Arms Race” with China and Russia.
“It’s 750. Secretary Mattis secured that over lunch with the president,” an administration official told Politico, who first released the information, although an official announcement is yet to be made.
It’s unclear what exactly changed Trump’s mind. He had been floating a 5% reduction in defense spending, from the originally proposed (and already record-breaking) $733bn to $700bn – but defense officials had told him on Friday that anything less was “a risk”, and could have “disastrous consequences”.
“The Department is committed to ensuring our military remains the most lethal force in the world. We are working with OMB (Office of Management and Budget) to determine the department’s topline number,” a Defense Department spokesman told CNN.
The historically unprecedented numbers further inflate the US’ already world-largest defense budget. Washington is spending as much as the next 7 countries combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Last year, defense was one of the few increases in a budget which saw cuts to the EPA, Health and Human Services and education departments, to name just a few.
An overview of the Treaty of Lisbon in order to understand the consequences of being an EU member, the consequences of leaving decisions in economic policy, monetary policy, foreign policy, budget policy and defense policy to outsiders’ decision-makers.
The Treaty of Lisbon establishes the conditions to adhere to the European Union. It defines the institutions that will replace the national ones, in other words any Treaty of Lisbon signatory state leaves most of its decision-making to institutions placed above. Unlike Norway and Switzerland, 28 European states have left their independence to the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council, the European Commission, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Central Bank, the Court of Auditors on economy, foreign relations, defense, money (those on the Euro zone, 19 Members States) and finance. Members states’ national politicians have now some tools only to have an effect on the life of the citizens they represent because the Union will do that for them.
March 25th 1957 is a red-letter day for pro-European Union (EU). Indeed, the Treaty of Rome then signed by France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg must be seen as the first step towards what we call European Union. The Treaty of Lisbon is the last of a series of eight, each one leading to a deeper commitment to a European government for a larger number of countries. Starting with six European countries in 1957, there are currently 28 countries adhering to the same economic policy, the same monetary and financial policy, the same foreign policy, the same budget policy and following the path toward a common defense policy.
Human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, rights of persons belonging to minorities, pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men are the values promoted by every single member of the EU. Who could be opposed to such values?
Nevertheless two countries, Norway and Switzerland, refused to sign the Treaty of Lisbon. In fact, they never ratified any of the eight treaties. Why did they deny being the 29th and the 30th members? Don’t their citizens want to defend those values? Like the other 28 countries members, don’t their citizens want to improve their life?
The purpose of this article is to give an overview of the Treaty of Lisbon in order to understand the consequences of being an EU member, the consequences of leaving decisions in economic policy, monetary policy, foreign policy, budget policy and defense policy to outsiders’ decision-makers. Afterwards, we will be able to see what is left to national decision-makers and why we vote in national polls.
Treaty of Lisbon
The aim of the EU institutions defined by the Treaty of Lisbon is to replace the national ones in different areas such as economy, politics, education, health, foreign relations, defense, money and finance. These particular areas are critical to the independence of any nation. So, let’s have a deeper look at those institutions.
Key areas and institutions
Institutions
I’m not going to provide a detailed description of EU institutions since I would have to write an article ten times longer than this. I suggest that the reader have a look at the consolidated version of the Treaty on European Union title III (articles 13 to 19) to better understand them.
The European Parliament, the European Council, the Council, the European Commission (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Commission’), the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Central Bank, the Court of Auditors provides the institutional framework to the EU members states. Once the treaty is signed, any state agrees to leave the decisions on key areas to others. From now on, those institutions will replace the national governments, the national parliament and the president or prime minister on most of the decisions in economy, foreign policy, defense, justice and social policies.
Key areas
Foreign policy. The Council plays a paramount role on EU-third countries relationship. According to Article 28.1(1), “Where the international situation requires operational action by the Union, the Council shall adopt the necessary decisions. They shall lay down their objectives, scope, the means to be made available to the Union, if necessary their duration, and the conditions for their implementation”. Along with the Council, the High Representative plays an important role as well on foreign policy. Appointed by the European Council with the President of the Commission’s endorsement, his or her tasks are to organize the coordination of the actions of the members states in international organizations and at international conferences. The purpose is to uphold the Union’s position when dealing with third countries. (For further details see Art.18.4(1), Art.34(1), Art.36(1) and Art.38(1)).
Defense. Even if the Treaty of Lisbon does not yet propose a European army, nevertheless it creates the “progressive framing of a common defense” (further details in article 24.1[1], Art.24.2(1)). This coordination is materialized with the creation of ‘the European Defense Agency’ who “shall identify operational requirements, shall promote measures to satisfy those requirements, shall contribute to identifying and, where appropriate, implementing any measure needed to strengthen the industrial and technological base of the defense sector, shall participate in defining a European capabilities and armaments policy, and shall assist the Council in evaluating the improvement of military capabilities” (Art. 42.3(1)). The exception of this submission to the supervision of the European Defense Agency can be applied to those countries “which see their common defense realized in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)” (Art.42.2(1) & Art.42.7(1)). I would like to mention that 22 of the 28 Members States are NATO’s members as well(3).
Monetary and Financial policy. European Central Bank ECB coordinates euro coins issues with Members States national central banks. Its basics tasks are defined in Art.127(2). Articles 127 to 133(2) from theTreaty on the Functioning of the European Union pull the monetary tool out to the Member State who signs this treaty.
Economic policy. The economic policy as defined in the Treaty of Lisbon is based on three pillars: absolutely free and competitive market, unification of the economic policy and national budget monitoring.
Free and competitive market is the ideology that guides EU economic policy (Art.31 & Art.127(2); this affects trade of goods and capital movements. The abolition of trade restrictions between Members States is clearly mentioned, “(the EU) Encourage the integration of all countries into the world economy, including through the progressive abolition of restrictions on international trade” (Art.21.2.e1)); see articles234, 35, 36 and 37. As for capital movements they have a different treatment, the Treaty goes further since there are absolutely no restrictions. The article 63(2) clearly states “[…]all restrictions on the movement of capital between Member states and between member states and third countries shall be prohibited” and is reinforced by the articles 64(2) and 65(2) which extends it to third countries.
Unification of national economies (article 120[2] and 121(2)) is the second major aim of the Treaty. These two articles recall the signatory that the EU is guided by the principle of an open market economy with free competition and that s/he has to adjust their economy to be in line with the EU member states’ economies and that s/he will be monitored by the commission. (Monitoring of member states budget Art.126.1(2) & Art.126.2(2))
Toward a worldwide governance?
Article 21.2 h) [1] of the consolidated version of the Treaty on European Union states, “The Union shall define and pursue common policies and actions, and shall work for a high degree of cooperation in all fields of international relations, in order to … promote an international system based on stronger multilateral cooperation and good global governance.”
What does it mean? Maybe I am wrong but it sounds like saying we, signatories of the following treaty, accept the establishment of worldwide governance in the future, and we leave all our national decision making tools to someone else.
Putting aside this sentence, all the Treaty is clearly designed in that way. Signing the Treaty of Lisbon means loss of independence on the defense, foreign policy, the economy and on the monetary and financial policy, loss of control of the state budget. On a theoretical point of view, the Treaty of Lisbon has many flaws for the vast majority of the population; I think it is important to be aware of the conditions and the consequences of being a European member state in 2014.
Personal thoughts and conclusion
It is important to understand that the European Union under its current shape is not a union of strong nations with identical views who decided to create it to cope with the imperialist US. Quite the opposite, the EU is currently composed by politically weakened nations who gave all their political and economical power to others. Otherwise, why would the White House support the expansion of the Union?
All the values promoted by the Treaty sound very nice, but we should wonder if the institutions proposed by the EU truly encourage them. Does the freedom of capital movement encourage them? Does preventing capital discrimination help the people? EU defenders might say we can modify the Treaty if we disagree, it is foreseen in the article 48. Good luck with it!
To conclude, I would say I don’t think the EU is made to help its citizens in spite of what its defenders might say. The mainstream media, major political parties all claim here in Europe that, without the EU it would be a disaster, a nightmare for any member state. When you look at the GDP of the last years and the growing debts the European countries are facing, we have the right to be more than suspicious. When you look at Norway (3.5% GDP growth, 3.6% unemployment in 2013) and Switzerland’s (2.0% GDP growth in 2013, 3.3% unemployment in March 2014) economic results, no wonder they may never join the EU, which is having serious problems on economic, political and social levels.
Two questions rise.
On a theoretical level, we must ask ourselves how 28 countries so different in many aspects can make decisions that make everyone happy.
On a practical level, one should wonder why national politicians in Europe keep making promises during their election campaigns knowing they have not the tools to do anything.
[1] Consolidated version of the Treaty on European Union
[2] Consolidated version of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union
[3] Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Ireland, Malta and Sweden are not members
Canadian prosecutors said Friday that the US is seeking the extradition of Huawei Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Meng Wanzhou on suspicion of engaging in conspiracies to defraud multiple financial institutions and contravene US sanctions on Iran.
It isn’t clear how many charges she faces, but each one carries a maximum sentence of 30 years behind bars.
Meng, the Chinese telecommunication giant’s CFO and deputy board chair, was arrested in Vancouver on Saturday but the US Department of Justice did not announce the arrest until Wednesday. Canada’s Globe and Mail broke the story, based on law enforcement sources, that she had been arrested for violating US sanctions against Iran.
A gag order, or as it is called in Canada, a publication ban, was imposed on Meng’s case. Several media outlets have challenged the gag in court. That ban was eventually lifted by a judge in Vancouver, BBC reports.
The court is still considering whether it will grant Meng bail. The Canadian government prosecutor has told the judge Meng has substantial resources in China and is a flight risk.
The prosecutor alleged that Meng deceived American lawyers regarding the connection between the company SkyCom and Huawei. Using SkyCom as a secret proxy, Huawei sold products to Iran in breach of US sanctions between 2009 and 2014.
Huawei is the second-largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world, Sputnik News reported.
The US has introduced a number of measures to curb the flow of technology from Huawei and another telecom manufacturer, ZTE Corp, believing that the Chinese government have could used the tech for surveillance in the past year. Huawei products have also been banned by the Pentagon from being sold on US military bases.
WASHINGTON – The US Geological Survey assessed that the Bone Spring Formation in Texas and Wolfcamp Shale in New Mexico contain the largest oil and natural gas potential ever found, the Department of the Interior said in a press release on Thursday.
“[T]he Wolfcamp Shale and overlying Bone Spring Formation in the Delaware Basin portion of Texas and New Mexico’s Permian Basin province contain an estimated mean of 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids,” the release said.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke celebrated the assessment by saying that the United States has a lot of energy and the country’s dominance in the energy sector is now proven.
The Wolfcamp shale in the Midland Basin portion of the Texas Permian Basin province has been examined by the US Geological Survey in 2016.
The organization concluded then that the formation contained an estimated mean of 20 billion barrels of oil, 16 trillion cubic feet of associated natural gas and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.
The US Geological Survey’s new assessment said that the resources in the two formations are twice larger than those in the Midland Basin. The Interior Department credited the use of modern technologies, such as hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling, for being able to effectuate a greater energy potential.
Some discoveries are just too shocking to digest. Recently I wrote of intrepid Ron Unz, the Californian maverick publisher and IT-genius, who dared to share with his readers his insights into the ideas and motifs of revisionists, or Holocaust Deniers, as their enemies call them. But this absolutely verboten topic fades into irrelevance in comparison with his most momentous discovery that has made somewhat less resonance, paradoxically, because of its magnitude. It was too big. Dark pages of the world war history or of interracial relations in 1930s, or even the whodunit of 9/11, all that is fine and very interesting, but hardly a Stop Press kind.
His other, most significant discovery is not just Stop Press, but Burn the Press Down. He discovered and proved with hard data that Jews discriminate against you to a degree you could not even guess. While you queue at the front door of the Elites, they enter freely by the back door. Chances of a smart non-Jewish “white” American kid getting there are ten-fold lower than that of a Jew. There are ten times more smart non-Jewish white American kids than smart Jewish kids, but there are more Jewish students in the Ivy League than white non-Jews. The system is biased, and not in your favour.
Once you could work your way up to success, like Henry Ford did. That was the American Dream. Not anymore. Now the only way to the best jobs, into the American elites leads through a few top colleges of the Ivy League. You can’t bypass this funnel of opportunity. “A greater and greater proportion of our financial, media, business, and political elites being drawn from a relatively small number of our leading universities” (all unattributed quotes are from the Unz essay). Unless you get the imprimatur of Harvard or Yale, your future is dim. Well-paid middle class jobs in the manufacturing sector for those lacking college degrees are scarce, and workers are being paid less now than forty years ago. When America’s richest 1 per cent has as much wealth as the bottom 95 per cent, it is winner takes all, and this winner is probably a Jew.
The elites have duties, too. The elite universities are supposed to pick the best boys and girls to lead America to its glory and greatness. By your own experience you already know that it does not happen; that the new US elites lead themselves to prosperity, while pushing you to poverty and perdition. The new elites failed you, failed your country, failed the world (always excepting the Jewish state). This failure is the main reason to explore how the elites produce their new generation.
The great surprise is that WASPs, the legendary descendants of the Founding Fathers, have lost their privilege, or even their fair chance to success. Unz proves that a smart Christian American boy of English or German parentage has ten times less chance to get into these crème-de-la-crème universities than an average Jewish boy. This very unfair way of forming tomorrow’s elites has been made possible by the sheer nepotistic networking of the universities’ admission offices. Clannishness, the Jews were (justifiably) accused of.
In actual words of Ron Unz, “Jews are enrolled at Harvard and other elite colleges at a rate some 1,000% greater than white Gentiles of similar academic performance”. One thousand per cent, OMG! Provided that these Ivy League colleges are the only sure-fire way into American elites, into best jobs and into good and important positions, this biased enrolment guarantees the Jews their position of the top dog well into next generation.
In 1920s, Jews accused the WASPs of discriminating them at university admission. The WASPs kept them under 15% of admissions. Now with Jews at the top they show what real discrimination is all about. However, there is one major difference. Then, the Jews volubly complained, now the Christians do not even dare to complain.
While the White Christian Americans kept mum, the Asians dared to speak and went to court against the colleges. The colleges have been forced to explain how they admit students. The heavily-Jewish elites of the legal system and MSM allowed this case of Asian-Americans to proceed (after many years of rejection) for a good reason: they wanted to obscure this fragrant discrimination against white Gentiles by Jews by a SEP device.
In Douglas Adams’s 1982 novel Life, the Universe and Everything, (a sequel to his Hitchhiker’s Guide), the protagonist explains: a SEP is something we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a blind spot. SEP is the best way to hide a pink elephant in a room: people would have walked past the elephant, round it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there.
The problem of Asian-American discrimination is an excellent SEP. Indeed, as Unz said, the Asian-Americans are discriminated at Ivy League universities (though much less than ordinary Americans). But even if they are discriminated, who cares? There are not too many of them, and they anyway manage well. Thus the real point of Unz – you are discriminated! – had been hidden.
The UNZ essay is very long with its 26,000 words, too long for average reader, so here are its salient points:
Jews organized a clannish network to get themselves into best universities in numbers well beyond their share in population, and (!!!) well beyond their abilities;
their fight against discrimination of Blacks has being carried at the expense of America’s white Christians. If previously discriminated minorities, be it Afro-Americans or whatever, enjoy the fruits of affirmative action (positive discrimination), it is no loss for Jews, as only Gentiles, once privileged WASPs are being screwed up.
if once upon a time Jews had got into best colleges because they were smart, smarter than Gentile kids, now they are noticeably less smart, but they get there anyway because they are Jews.
The numbers distilled by Ron Unz out of dusty spread sheets are terrifying. You can look at the diagram he compiled, or immerse yourself in the ocean of data he provides, to get convinced: the discrimination is very real.
Unz quotes a Jewish writer who exhilarates that “the WASP demographic group which had once so completely dominated America’s elite universities and virtually all the major institutions of American life had by 2000 become a small and beleaguered minority at Harvard, being actually fewer in number than the Jews whose presence they had once sought to restrict.” For a Jewish nationalist, it is a cause for celebration. For a WASP, it is a reason to regret the unwise decisions of his fathers who tried to play a fair game with Jews and were Jew’d.
But for an average American, the answer lays in the macro picture. Do the new Jewified elites manage America better than WASPs did? Are they better shepherds? Is America-2018 (with Jews getting over 25% of all seats in the express train to better future, leaving 20% or less to WASPs) better for Americans than America-1962 with 15% of Jews and 80% of WASPs in Yale and Harvard? If you belong to 1% of Americans, the answer is positive; if you are one of the 99%, it is not.
Unz is very meticulous, very cautious in his approach. He asks an almost-insulting question: perhaps the Jews are so smart (after all, that is the kin of Einstein and Freud) that their share in the Ivy League is a result of meritocratic selection? And he provides an almost-insulting answer: no, they aren’t. There are some universities that admit strictly by merit; in these universities Jews do not exactly star. Caltech, the California Institute of Technology is one of them. The Jewish presence there is quite small; Hillel, the Jewish students’ body, gives it as zero. In reality, it is about 6 per cent, like in other merit-based competitions.
It can’t be zero, for sure. In 2003, two Palestine Solidarity activists, Adam Shapiro and Huwaida Arraf, had been booed there by pro-Israeli Jews who tried their beastly best to drive away the speakers. But there are not many Jews. There are few Jewish Olympiad winners; once they were in dozens, now there are hardly any. Altogether Jewish kids make up some six per cent of NMS, the highest-performing students’ list. This is a good result, in line with Jewish admissions into meritocratic colleges, but it is four times less than what you would expect judging by their Yale admissions. The Jewish IQ, as Unz found out, is also in line with that of their Gentile peers, and not the fabulous 110-115, as the Jewish newspapers claim. Jews are not all that smart anymore, judging by their score.
Unz explains this “sudden collapse of Jewish academic achievement” by inertia. The youngsters just do not try hard enough, in contradistinction to their fathers’ generation. They will succeed, they think, by their old-school-tie connections or through their parents’ links. Indeed when you look at the face of President Trump’s son-in-law, Mr Jared Kushner, you understand that the Nature took a nap in his generation. His parents’ generation were predators and major crooks (his father actually served two years in jail for tax evasion while obtaining his two-billion-dollar loot), but Jared’s generation could not enroll or graduate without assistance, while his political meddling made a mess of already troubled American Middle East politics.
This is the Nature way to deal with problems. Thomas Mann in his 1901 novel Buddenbrooks subtitled The Decline of a Family depicts three generations of a North German family: the first generation amasses fortune, the second maintains it, the third wastes it away in Bohemian pleasures. Smart people’s kids are usually not that smart, and have much less drive. For this reason, I wouldn’t be bothered too much by Jewish achievement of the elder generation; the young generation will waste it all right.
The problem is, there is more than one way to shine. One is to be brilliant, another is to dim others to shine in their background. In Israel, the Jews promoted plethora of laws and regulations circumcising Palestinians’ ability to compete. In the US, Jewish support of migration from underdeveloped countries and discrimination of the white American students achieve a similar effect as it lowers the average ability of non-Jewish population and allows the Jews to excel in comparison.
Unz exploration could bring enormous benefits to the American society. His diagnosis of the malady allows to cure it. In his consequent article on the subject, Unz discovered that after publication of his article, the numbers of Jewish admissions in the best colleges had been sharply readjusted downwards. What was 25% (Jews in Harvard) became 12%. But do not rejoice before time. The Jews responded with subterfuge instead of correcting action. Now they refer in their statistics only to Jews who state that they are followers of Jewish faith; and this is a dwindling lot. If one counts the students who refer to themselves as “descendants of Holocaust survivors” and speak of “my true home Israel”, we are back to 25%.
So the US Jews have learned how to perpetuate their dominance, by jealously guarding the gates of the best universities. Can it be corrected?
Jews broke the glass ceiling of admissions to Harvard by mass protests and media pressure. The Gentiles are not likely to emulate their strategy as they became even more obedient and placid as if being bred for these traits. The Americans aren’t rebellious by nature; that’s why the US is so prosperous and that’s why the lot of a working American is going from bad to worse. Yes, Scylla and Charybdis guard the passage to well-being: over-rebellious folk grows poor as revolutions diminish the treasury; on the other hand, over-docile folk grows poor because their betters oppress them fearing not for harsh response. Wise elites navigate these narrow straits cautiously like the Swedes did until 1990. Obstinate elites have to be cured by revolution, like in England or France, or by state terror, as in Russia or China.
Now you have to live with Jewified elites. Historically, the record is not encouraging. Jews are not very good in the top dog position. They are too obstinate, doctrinaire and despise the low classes to whom they feel no affinity. A single person of Jewish origin can be very good as a leader (Bruno Kreisky, the Austrian chancellor, is a good example). Some Jewish politicians are very loyal – the much-denigrated Kaganovich remained loyal to Stalin when all the rest switched to Khrushchev. But when Jews form a prominent part of elites, like it happened in a few states in different times, the result is not very good. We have the example of Israel, where the natives have nor basic rights neither citizenship, and by millions they are deprived of property and locked up in the ghetto of Gaza.
The Unz revelation demonstrates the main feature of Jews: as a rule, they are immoral (or, if you prefer, they have a different, Jewish moral, as many Rabbis claim). It gives them an advantage in some dealings but eventually courts disaster. In the Tsar’s days, the Jews complained vociferously about two things: one, Numerus Clausus, (a Jewish quota of students) and two, the Pale of Settlement, a part of the country where Jews could reside freely. They – my grandparents – sounded so sincere denouncing these evils. Nowadays, the victorious Jews established the Pale of Settlement for Gentiles in Palestine, while in the US, they fixed the low quota for previous lords of the land, and very few Jews complain about it, as I noted at length.
When it is good for Jews, it is bad for Gentiles, says the Talmud. “If you hear that Caesarea (a symbol of Gentile rule) and Jerusalem (a symbol of Jewish rule) are both in ruins or that both are flourishing peacefully, do not believe it. Believe only a report that Caesarea is in ruins and Jerusalem is flourishing or that Jerusalem is in ruins and Caesarea is flourishing”. (Talmud, Tractate Megillah 6a). History confirms it – up to a point. Jews can have it good under Gentile rule, though not as good as they would like to. But under Jewish rule, not only Gentiles, but even middle-to-low-class Jews are being screwed up, as you can observe in the Jewish state of Israel – and in the heavily Jewified US, as well. Like fire, like women, – Jews are good when under control and dangerous and destructive when they are in control.
Still, there is a free will; everyone can choose one’s own way. Nobody born in the Jewish family has to stick with Jews. The best of Jews, from Christ Apostles to Joseph Brodsky and Ron Unz always escaped it to join the people.
… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.