In 2014, when the United States and the European Union slapped sanctions on Russian officials and businesses, many observers both in Russia and the West predicted serious problems for the Russian economy and near-certain failure of the Russian government’s efforts to substitute for the lost access to foreign products. But those dire predictions were based on a complete misreading of the mood and general political situation in Russia.
The American legislators who initiated the sanctions believed that the punishment directed at the Kremlin leadership and Russia’s corporate chieftains would alienate the so-called oligarchs from President Vladimir Putin and possibly lead to regime change or, at a minimum, a change in Russia’s foreign policy to suit better the wishes of Washington.
U.S. and European politicians justified the sanctions as punishment for what they called Russia’s “annexation” of Crimea and Russia’s military intervention in the Donbas region of Ukraine in reaction to what Moscow and many eastern Ukrainians called a Western-orchestrated “coup” that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine in February 2014.
Russia responded to the Western sanctions with an embargo on food products from the sanctioning countries and rolled out a generalized policy of “import substitution” to sharply curtail the dependency of the Russian economy on outside commercial products and political pressures.
More than two years later – although Russia has faced some difficulties – the evidence is now clear that the sanctions against Russia have largely failed, on both an economic and political level. Reunification with Crimea and the ensuing Western sanctions aroused a swelling of national pride and patriotic feelings in the broad public.
So, instead of caving in to Western pressure, the Kremlin doubled down and has stayed the course on Crimea, on Donbas and – more recently – in Syria where its military support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad has gone directly against U.S. and Western policies of backing violent insurgents in another “regime change” project, a conflict in which Assad now appears to have largely prevailed.
So, in terms of domestic politics and international geopolitics, Putin and Russia appear to have frustrated the U.S. and the European Union as well as U.S. regional allies, Saudi Arabia and Israel, which were strong advocates for Syrian “regime change.” But what about Russia’s strategy of creating domestic sources for what can no longer be imported?
Expectations of Failure
Within months of the Kremlin’s announcement of this policy, commentators were publishing statistics showing that “import substitution,” i.e., Russian products replacing Western ones, was negligible, that the strategy was failing. To explain why, these skeptics pointed to the unbalanced structure of the Russian economy, heavily dependent on the extraction of raw materials with massive resources invested in the highly profitable energy industry, which boosted the ruling elites. Moreover, Russia received low ratings as an “investor friendly” country, which limited outside investments.
Those doubts had validity and there were other problems, particularly the cost of money and its scarcity. In 2014, the Russian economy was experiencing high inflation and suffering from the attempts of the Bank of Russia to contain it with tight-money policies. The costs of borrowing for small businesses were particularly usurious. Indeed, lack of working capital at competitive prices was the main contributor to the flooding of the Russian market with imports and the collapse of local industry.
Yet, despite these headwinds, the Russian government began to make significant progress. Though the creation of industrial sectors can take years, the Kremlin identified priority sectors and provided various kinds of government assistance that included credit subsidies. The Kremlin also took steps to maintain the ruble at a low exchange rate to protect against imports whatever happens to the sanctions and embargo.
Agriculture is one sector where the potential payback was relatively quick, for example, by prioritizing wheat over livestock or poultry over pork. When the oxygen of subsidized credit was applied, the results were stunning. In 2017, despite negative weather conditions in the spring and early summer, Russia is expecting its largest ever grain harvest, possibly reaching 130 million metric tons, and the country is retaking its position as the world’s top wheat exporter and leading exporter of other grains and of beet sugar.
What is happening in other sectors of the economy which the government prioritized for import substitution will be obvious only in the years to come, precisely because of the greater capital and knowhow required and thus the slower payback. But given the way agriculture has responded to stimuli from the Kremlin, it is reasonable to expect similar success stories in manufacturing and service industries like banking, insurance and computer programming over time.
Since a rising tide raises all ships, the initial agricultural success has attracted big business interest not only to industrial-scale farming of grain crops but also to many other sides of the food supply and its processing. Such investments are being made not only by start-up small- and medium-sized businesses but also by the oligarchs, for whom this is a point of pride and a direct response to the wave of patriotism that has swept the country.
Thus, as The Financial Times recently reported, oligarch Viktor Vekselberg has been pouring vast capital via his Renova holding company into the construction of greenhouses for vegetable crops that are in great demand among Russia’s urban populations. Payback on these investments is measured in years, not months, and demonstrates great confidence of Russian competitiveness against ground crops from Turkey and Central Asia and from hothouse crops from Western Europe whenever the sanctions are lifted.
The result of these various undertakings is that Russian Federation Minister of Agriculture Alexander Tkachev, himself a farmer with large-scale interests in the sector, can report regularly on the dramatic progress being made in all areas of agricultural self-sufficiency. Indeed, in many product groupings quite apart from grains, Russia is becoming an exporter for the first time since before World War I.
The Fish Turnaround
This economic transformation has included progress in a surprising area, given Russian national traditions that favor meat over fish. This prejudice was long justified by the quality of fish products that were available in the market from Soviet times. The improvement in assortment and appeal of these products dates from the middle of the first decade of the new millennium.
The Financial Times article gave statistics for the Murmansk-based LLC Russkoye More, an ambitious firm that is rapidly expanding to occupy the leading position as supplier of farmed salmon in what is a major import substitution project. The Russian market for fresh salmon, like the E.U. market, was until two years ago entirely dominated by the Scandinavians, now on the embargo list.
Whereas The Financial Times addresses the changes in the fish sector at the corporate and macroeconomic level, there is also the microeconomic level where people live and where demand meets supply. From my own visits to supermarkets, to independent fish vendors, to covered street markets in cities and in the countryside up to 80 km from St Petersburg, I can speak from first-hand experience about how these fish supplies are reaching consumers. The distribution and logistical chain is all the more important in products as perishable as fresh fish.
Some specific fish varieties are locally grown in the Russian Northwest region, including the sig, a fresh water member of the salmon family native to Lake Ladoga, Europe’s largest body of fresh water that is 50 km east of Petersburg, and also the minnow-sized koryushka, another native of Ladoga that each spring travels down the Neva River to the lightly saline Gulf of Finland to lay its eggs and is caught on the way in vast quantities to the great pleasure of Petersburgers.
But the bigger picture is that — as the largest country on earth representing more than 10 percent of the world’s land surface — Russia has tremendous fresh water resources in terms of lakes and rivers that still abound in fish enjoying local reputation and retail distribution. This is particularly true of the Siberian rivers; smoked delicacy fish from there are sold at high prices across the Russian Federation. In addition, Russian fishing fleets based in Murmansk, to the north and in Vladivostok to the east have been and remain large suppliers of ocean fish.
What has changed is the scale of production and distribution of fish whether from fresh salt water or from lakes and rivers or farmed fish. In the past, the fish section in Russian supermarkets meant shelves of tinned sardines or catfish in tomato sauce, today every respectable market offers fresh fish, in filets or whole, presented on beds of ice.
Specialized fish stores have sprung up even in the hinterland in the Northwest, receiving daily shipments of farmed salmon, wild gorbusha and hefty flounders, among other varieties. By local standards, these fish are all substantially more expensive sources of protein than domestic chickens or pork chops. But they obviously do find their consumers and they are priced 30 percent or more below West European store prices for similar fish.
Until recently, ocean fish were brought to market frozen. The Soviet Union developed a large fleet of trawlers and fish processing ships that brought frozen product to port, much of it going into export. The fish were usually low grade, bony, good only for stews and soups. Higher-grade fish like cod appeared for sale in shops in bulk in contorted stages of rigor mortis, not very appealing to the faint of heart.
Meeting Demand
Now, in the past couple of years, the frozen foods bins of super markets are stocked with fish steaks packaged in clear plastic that are as attractive and as high quality as anything sold in Western Europe. These cod steaks, wild salmon (gorbusha) steaks have been flash frozen and are offered in half-kilogram portions. The labeling stresses that no preservatives have been used, that the products are natural and healthful, with detailed nutritional information provided.
In the days of the Soviet Union, the Russian fishing industry produced some world-beating tinned products including red and black caviar and Chatka brand king crab meat. These exclusive and very pricey products are exported, where they enjoy demand and are available domestically in specialty shops. But most tinned fish traditionally fell into the category of low-grade fish in tomato sauce or very poor grade vegetable oil.
Over the past several years, that has changed beyond recognition. Tinned fish of world-class quality is making its appearance on store shelves. For example, a week ago I discovered a new arrival: “premium” class chunk tuna in olive oil packaged in 200 gram glass jars. The producer is the Far East fishing fleet, and the fish name is given in Japanese as well as Russian. The product is similar in design and presentation to premium tuna on sale in Belgium at twice the price.
And finally another fish product category is worth mentioning: the salted, smoked or otherwise processed and unit-packed fish sold in the chilled products sections of supermarkets. This has expanded in product range and quality so as to be beyond recognition when compared with similar offerings just a few years ago.
Many different suppliers vie in the category of cold or hot smoked, salted salmon shrink-wrapped in units of 200 grams plus or minus. Herrings filets in oil or in sauces are now very attractive and of generally high quality. Anchovies and other small fish filets have proliferated. And hitherto unknown product categories such as “seafood cocktails” consisting of baby octopus and squid, pink shrimp and mussels in brine are offered in small plastic pots; quality is in no way inferior to what you would find in an upscale supermarket in Western Europe.
All such alien — “indescribably awful” (??????? ) foods in the judgment of your average Soviet consumer — are today welcomed as the basis for salads, as stuffing for avocados, themselves a relatively new food item to the Russian shopper.
Travel abroad, and 10 million Russians do travel abroad each year, has turned them into quite sophisticated shoppers and diners. And what they have come to love they now can largely find in their supermarkets supplied by domestic producers, including all varieties of fish specialties.
The point is, that from nowhere, the Russian fishing industry has made enormous strides and, unlike the cheese industry, is fully replacing imports with equal or better quality contents and lower prices.
This is the consequence of change in demand as well as change in supply. Demand has changed because before 2014 Russians still distrusted their compatriots and believed that everything made in their country was rubbish. The Ukraine crisis, the reunification with Crimea, the war in Donbas, and the upsurge of patriotism prodded folks to try their own. What Russia has now is a virtuous cycle: the Russian people expect better and what they are getting is better.
Gilbert Doctorow is an independent political analyst based in Brussels. His last book Does Russia Have a Future? was published in August 2015. His forthcoming collection of essays Does the United States Have a Future? will be published in October 2017.
© Gilbert Doctorow, 2017
October 1, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Timeless or most popular | European Union, Russia, United States |
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If voting changed anything, they’d abolish it. That might sound a bit glib but consider these recent events.
In January 2015, the Greek people, sick and tired of austerity and rapidly plummeting living standards, voted for Syriza, a radical anti-austerity party. The Coalition of the Left, which had only been formed eleven years earlier, won 36.3 percent of the vote and 149 out of the Hellenic Parliament‘s 300 seats. The Greek people had reasonable hopes their austerity nightmare would end. The victory of Syriza was hailed by progressives across Europe.
But what happened?
Pressure was applied on Greece by ‘The Troika’ to accept onerous terms for a new bailout. Syriza went to the people in June 2015 to ask them directly in a national referendum if they should accept the terms.
“On Sunday, we are not simply deciding to remain in Europe, we are deciding to live with dignity in Europe,” Alexis Tsipras, the leader of Syriza, declared. The Greek people duly gave Tsipras the mandate he asked for, and rejected the bailout terms with 61.3 percent voting ‘No.’
Yet, just over two weeks after the referendum, Syriza accepted a bailout package that contained larger cuts in pensions and higher tax increases than the one on offer earlier.
The Greek people may as well have stayed at home on 27th June for all the difference their vote made.
Many supporters of Donald Trump in the US are no doubt thinking the same.
Trump won the election by attracting working-class ‘rust belt’ voters away from the Democrats and for offering the prospect of an end to a ‘liberal interventionist’ foreign policy. Yet just nine months into his Presidency the belief that Trump would mark a ‘clean break’ with what had gone before is in tatters. National conservative members of his team have been purged, while Trump has proved himself as much of a war hawk as his predecessors. Rather than ‘draining the swamp,’ The Donald has waded right into it.
The events of 2017 plainly prove as I argued here that the US is a regime and not a genuine democracy, and that whoever gets to the White House – sooner or later – will be forced to toe the War Party/Wall Street/Deep State line, regardless of what they promise on the election trail.
Brits too have had a lesson in the way ‘democracy’ works when people don’t vote the way the most powerful people in the establishment want them to. On June 23, 2016, rightly or wrongly, 52 percent voted to leave the EU. But 15 months on, the view that Britain will either never leave the EU or stay in it in all but name is growing. The government only sent off Article 50 in March, after the courts held that Brexit had to be initiated by Parliament.
Last week, Prime Minister Theresa May asked the EU for a two-year ‘transition’ period after Britain is due to leave in 2019. It’s not hard to imagine the transition period will be indefinitely extended. “I’ve been voicing that fear since long before the prime minister’s dismal speech in Florence, and I see nothing to reassure me that the referendum result will be honored,” says Peter Hill, former editor of the Daily Express.
The odds of Britain still being in the EU in 2022 are now about 3-1. And they’re shortening all the time.
Again, is that what the people who voted for Brexit in 2016 wanted to happen? The issue here is not whether we think leaving the EU is a good idea, but how the referendum vote has not led to the results that people expected.
These are not the only examples of people not getting what they thought they had voted for. In 2008, the citizens of Ireland voted to reject the EU’s Lisbon treaty. Was that the end of the matter? Not at all. They were asked to vote again – a year later – and this time the EU got the desired outcome.
In May 2012, the Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande won a decisive victory in France’s Presidential elections. Like Syriza, he pledged to end austerity.
“I’m sure in a lot of European countries there is relief, hope that at last austerity is no longer inevitable.” He declared. But guess what. Hollande didn’t end austerity. Just a year later he was pushing through a fresh round of cuts.
Proving once again the truth of the old adage: Plus les choses changent, plus elles restent les mêmes.
This wouldn’t have surprised French students of Hungarian politics as the same thing happened in Hungary in the mid-1990s. In the 1994 election Gyula Horn’s Socialist Party swept the right-wing Hungarian Democratic Forum from power, by promising to preserve the best elements of the old ’goulash communist’ system. Horn attacked energy privatization and pledged to put the interests of ordinary working Hungarians first. But the forces of Western capital had no intention of allowing any vestiges of socialism to survive in the former Eastern bloc country.
Under pressure from Western financial institutions, Horn did a spectacular U-turn, sacking genuinely progressive ministers- and appointing a neoliberal economic professor called Lajos Bokros to impose a brutal austerity program, which was far worse than anything the previous government had introduced. He also stepped up privatization.
See the pattern?
What the above examples illustrate is that regardless of how we vote, the people behind the scenes – the money men, the embedded bureaucrats, those who want to see no end to neoliberal globalization because they do so well out of it – won’t meekly accept the verdict of the people. If the ‘great unwashed’ vote the ‘wrong way,’ i.e., for Trump, for Syriza, for Brexit or for Hollande or Horn, then ways will be found to make sure that normal service is soon resumed.
There are important lessons I think here for the British Labour Party, who could be on the brink of power. Like many this week, I was hugely impressed by the speech to the conference made by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Corbyn pledged to develop “a new model of economic management to replace the failed dogmas of neo-liberalism,” and linked the rise in terrorism to neocon/liberal interventionist foreign policies.
This is heresy as far as the pro-war neoliberal elites are concerned.
Opinion polls show that Labour, which registered its biggest increase in vote share in any election since 1945 earlier this year, has a consistent lead. Establishment attack dogs have been snapping at Corbyn’s heels since day one, and it’s utterly naïve to think that it’ll all stop if he does get the keys to Number 10, Downing Street. In fact, the war against Jez and his closest comrades will only intensify. The good news is that Labour is already planning for capital flight and a run on the pound if it’s elected. Paul Mason, a pro-Labour commentator, has said the first six months of a Corbyn government would be like ‘Stalingrad.’
Of course, you could argue that the likes of Trump, Hollande, Horn, and Tsipras were never totally committed to the program they stood on, and they said the ‘right things’ to the people just to get elected. But even if politicians are 100 percent genuine as the veteran anti-war activist Jeremy Corbyn appears to be, the pressures on them to cave in to the powerful forces behind the curtain will be immense, especially if they are putting forward policies which the elites don’t favor.
It’s clear from recent history that in modern Western ‘democracies’ voting in itself doesn’t determine outcomes. It’s what comes afterward that’s the most important.
Follow Neil Clark @NeilClark66
October 1, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Economics, Timeless or most popular | European Union, France, Greece, Hungary, SYRIZA, UK, United States |
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French legislative elections follow hard on the heels of the Presidential election. The momentum virtually ensures a presidential majority. So it was taken for granted that voters would give President Emmanuel Macron a docile parliament for his five-year mandate.
But these elections were exceptional. The victory of Macron’s personal party, la République En Marche (REM), is novel in several ways. Not only has REM won an absolute majority of 350 out of 577 seats in the National Assembly. REM’s victory has also bled the two traditional governing parties, the Republicans and the Socialists, perhaps fatally.
With over 130 seats, the Republican Party of former President Nicolas Sarkozy and its allies came in second, and thus ranks as leading opposition party. But since Macron successfully lured two Republican politicians into prominent positions in his government – Edouard Philippe as Prime Minister and Bruno LeMaire as Economics Minister – it is hard even for the Republicans’ current leader, François Baroin, to explain just what they will oppose. How can they be a “right-wing opposition” to a government that intends to tear down the Labor Code, leaving workers at the mercy of employers, to deregulate the economy, to privatize, and to promote European militarization?
The plight of the Socialists is even more dire. Despite their strong historic implantation throughout the country, they won only 29 seats (which with small party allies gives them a group of 45 deputies). Most of the prominent members of Hollande’s government who dared to run were defeated. Former Prime Minister Manuel Valls’ close victory in the town where he used to be mayor is being vehemently contested, by angry crowds, with accusations of cheating.
As an opposition party, the Socialists’ predicament is even worse than that of the Republicans. Macron was a pet advisor to Socialist President François Hollande, a minister of economics in his government, and was sponsored by leading Socialists as a way to perpetuate their own surrender to high finance. Since many of leading Socialist Party personalities have joined or endorsed Macron, the survivors are not sure whether to support him – or how not to. The confusion is total.
The result is that by cannibalizing the two discredited government parties, and adding a large contingent of political amateurs (described as representatives of “civil society”), Macron and his team have succeeded in creating a new form of single party state. The new majority of deputies in the National Assembly are not there to represent ideas, or a program, or local constituencies, but simply to represent… Emmanuel Macron. From the looks of it, he can do whatever he wants, and the parliament will approve.
Macron’s victory was both overwhelming and underwhelming. All records of abstention were broken; for the first time in over a century, a majority of eligible voters stayed away from the polls in the first round of the parliamentary elections, and abstention rose to 57% in the second round. He owes his landslide to less than 20% of registered voters.
There is no doubt that the election results reveal a rejection of traditional parties, of politicians, and to some extent even a rejection of electoral politics. This is a foreseeable result of the so-called “power of the markets” – which disempower the voters. Political elites have surrendered to the dictates of financial capital, primarily through the intermediary of the European Union, where economic policy is designed and imposed on Member States. Presented as “new”, Macron is simply more intent than his predecessors on pushing through EU economic policies, on behalf of the big banks and at the expense of everyone else. But many of those who voted for him did so fatalistically: “let’s give him a chance”, like playing the lottery.
Indeed, Macron ran as himself, “young, vigorous, optimistic” in a time of pessimism, and not as a program. And the election season showed that personalities counted more than parties or programs. The two most charismatic personalities in French politics, Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, after their strong scores in the presidential elections, were both comfortably elected to the National Assembly from friendly districts (he in Marseilles and she in the depressed industrial north), but their followers did not rush to the polls to support their respective parties. Mélenchon’s party, La France Insoumise, won only 17 seats, which together with ten communists could make a group of 27 deputies.
As for Marine Le Pen, her National Front won only eight seats, four from the traditionally socialist north (including Marine), and four from the right-leaning south (including Marine’s life partner, Louis Aliot). That reflects the ideological division in the party. In the Calais region, the winning National Front leader was a former regional Communist Party leader, José Evrard, who comes from a family of coal miners and anti-Nazi resistants. The intellectual leader of the left tendency, Florian Philippot, was not elected, but plans to work to create a broader “sovereignist” movement opposing Macron’s drive to integrate France irreparably into Western globalizing economic and military structures.
In short, President Emmanuel Macron is intent on using his unprecedented single party powers to reduce the power of France by intensifying its commitment to globalization. But how much power does he really have, or is he an instrument of other powers?
Chief power guru, Jacques Attali, tends to glorify himself shamelessly, but when he says that he is “very proud” of having launched Macron’s brilliant career, he is telling the unchallenged truth. As for the next President after Macron, Attali claims to know “who she is”, as well.
But whoever he or she may be, Attali’s point is that genuine power is not exercised by politicians any more, but by financial institutions. The President of the Republic has much less power than people think, he told a recent television panel. One reason is the euro, he said, which “means that a large part of economic policy has fortunately become European.
Decentralization, major investments and major infrastructures are no longer up to the State. Globalization and the market have won hands down. There are a large number of things that were thought to be up to the government and no longer are.”
Presidents “no longer have real power over society.”
As for getting out of the clutches of European dictates, Attali boasts that those who, like himself, took part in writing the first versions of the EU treaties “made sure that getting out is no longer possible.”
“The market is going to spread to sectors to which it hasn’t had access until now such as health, education, the courts, the police, foreign affairs…” The outcome will be a dominant market which causes more and more concentration of wealth, growing inequality, absolute priority to the short term and to the tyranny of the present instant and of money, Attali concedes cynically.
A fairly realistic sense of powerlessness underlies the high abstention rate and the search for a providential leader. Since the Socialists and the Republicans have been contaminated with Macronism, the serious parliamentary opposition is reduced to the small party of Mélenchon and the still smaller party of Marine Le Pen. Mélenchon has the oratorical skill to be the leading opposition voice within and even outside the new Parliament. Marine still commands strong personal loyalty. But as long as they fail to find common ground, the Macron machine will play on their differences to marginalize them as the “extreme right” and the “extreme left”. And French democracy will continue to be disempowered by global governance. The single party state is at least an accurate expression of that reality.
October 1, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Timeless or most popular | Emmanuel Macron, European Union, France, José Evrard |
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The US Department of Defense has published data demonstrating that America’s “endless wars” abroad, from Yemen and Somalia to Afghanistan and Pakistan, have cost each US taxpayer just $7,500 since the fateful day the World Trade Centers were leveled in New York 16 years ago.
DoD estimates just $1.5 trillion has been spent on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, Defense One reports. The figure is strikingly lower than independent estimates conducted by American economists in Ivy League institutions.
The Watson Institute at Brown University published data in September 2016 showing “total US spending on national security related to the post-9/11 war on terror has reached $3.6 trillion, and interest on funds borrowed to pay those bills could climb to $7.9 trillion by 2053.”
According a paper by Columbia University economist and former chief economist of the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University’s Linda Blimes, former US President George W. Bush’s economic adviser Larry Lindsey touted that war costs would be capped near $200 billion when pitching the Iraq War, which he thought would be “good for the economy.”
“It now appears that Lindsey was indeed wrong – by grossly underestimating the costs,” the economists wrote. Indeed, they determined that $750 billion to $1.2 trillion had been spent on the Iraq invasion alone, three years after the conflict started (2006). Now, 11 years after their paper, the Pentagon actually says that the Iraq, Afghan, and Syrian conflicts combined have summed just $1.5 trillion.
In May 2017, Blimes penned an article stating that funds sunk into the foreign wars had not only reached four times what the Pentagon now says – but that “the US $6 trillion bill for America’s longest war is unpaid.”
The Pentagon is putting out estimates entirely inconsistent with the academic literature – in other words, what some people might call blatantly lying – and has been swiping the metaphorical national credit card to pay for it all.
“I’m against endless war for principles that the US Army once articulated, which was that war is so unpredictable and expensive that you do everything to avoid it,” retired Maj. Todd E. Pierce, retired US Army Judge Advocate General, told Radio Sputnik’s Fault Lines.
Fault Lines host Lee Stranahan asked the retired major what exactly is meant by the term “endless war,” as it is constantly used as a buzzword to describe US foreign policy.
Tracing the idea’s origins to former US Vice President Dick Cheney, who sparked and disseminated the notion of “perpetual war,” military commanders, policymakers and think tank researchers have become convinced “that we’re in this world that’s different than anything that’s existed before, surrounded by enemies,” Pierce said.
As for who is pushing America endlessly toward conflict, one need not look further than the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute, Peirce says. “They’ve all been advocating [for] wars since the 1990s.”
September 30, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics, Militarism | United States |
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Goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank have been bypassing European Union (EU) laws and profiting from the preferential trade tariffs with the EU, MEMO has learnt.
The EU has admitted that it has become “impossible” to monitor the source of goods imported to Europe from Israel despite a legal obligation to implement a policy of differentiating between Israel and settlement activities within its multibillion dollar bilateral trade relations.
Documents obtained under EU freedom of information rules seen by MEMO revealed that it has become “impossible” for the EU to differentiate between Israel and the Green Line following the introduction of a “new 7 digit zip code system”.
Notes from a meeting in June between Israeli Minister of Economy, Eli Cohen, and Lars Faaborg-Andersen, then the EU’s ambassador in Tel Aviv, state that the new zip code is “impossible for the delegation to follow” and the “EU requested Israel’s input to address the issue”.
The EU delegation confirmed that the European side suggested using a different method to ensure that settlement products are not granted the same preferential treatment Israel gets under existing trade rules, but the reply from the Israeli side was that “the current system is very effective and that the arrangement operates in a very satisfactory manner”.
It’s unclear if the new zip code system introduced four years ago was intended to circumvent tariff rules that differentiate between Israel and the occupied territories. However “despite having rather fewer people than China” said the Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, “Israel [is] switching to a rather more complicated 7-digit postal code system”.
The EU delegation repeated its stance on the differentiation rules but the admission by the EU Ambassador Faaborg-Andersen indicates that under his term, EU trade rules have been flouted for four years.
The influential European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) explained to MEMO details of the trade agreement between the EU and Israel. The EU and its member states, like the rest of the international community, do not recognise any legal or de facto Israeli sovereignty over the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This duty of non-recognition is based on international law, resulting in a legal obligation to clearly differentiate between Israel and its activities beyond the Green Line within their bilateral relations.
Asked how far the EU could go to uphold its own trade rules, ECFR representative said that the EU will not be able to completely terminate its trade agreement with Tel Aviv but if it really insisted on being faithful to its rules, then Brussels could cancel all its preferential trade deals with Israel until it clearly distinguishes between itself and the territory beyond the Green Line. In the meantime the EU and Israel could maintain a non-preferential trade agreement.
Read also: UN warns companies about doing business in Israeli settlements
September 28, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | European Union, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Russian President Vladimir Putin is heading to Turkey to meet his counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan as relations between the two states continue to thaw. The situation in Syria and de-escalation zones are expected to be the main issues on the table.
The leaders held a phone conversation on Monday in which they discussed Syria, including de-escalation zones – an initiative proposed by Russia and also brokered by Iran and Turkey – and political settlement of the crisis, according to the statement from the Kremlin.
The parties agreed to further discuss the Syria issue during Putin’s visit to Turkey on Thursday. The leaders will meet in the Presidential Complex in Ankara, Erdogan’s office said in a statement.
Bilateral relations between Turkey and Russia will also be on the table during the meeting, the statement added.
On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that the presidents had discussed the independence referendum of Iraqi Kurdistan on Monday.
The topic of S-400, Russia’s most advanced missile systems which Ankara is planning to purchase, remains hotly-discussed in the media. It’s not yet clear whether Putin and Erdogan will discuss it.
Turkey confirms deposit on Russia’s state-of-the-art S-400 missile systems. Speaking about military cooperation between Moscow and Ankara, Peskov said on Wednesday that “no one has a right to criticize it.”
Moscow-Ankara cooperation is performed “in strict accordance with international law and in no way is directed against any third country,” he said.
Earlier in September, Putin’s aide on military-technical cooperation, Vladimir Kozhin, said that the contract has been “agreed upon,” and Ankara added that a deposit has been paid.
The deal signals closer cooperation with Moscow and a widening rift with its NATO allies, which have criticized the deal, claiming that the Russian system may be incompatible with those of NATO.
US Defense Secretary James Mattis said in July that S-400 anti-aircraft systems are “not going to be interoperable with NATO systems.”
Erdogan rebuffed the critics, saying Ankara had no intention of waiting for the protection of its NATO allies.
“They have gone crazy because we made a deal for S-400s,” Erdogan said.
“What do you expect? Should we wait for you? We take care of ourselves in every security point,” he added.
S-400 delivery to Turkey will start within two years, Defense Undersecretary Ismail Demir said on Monday, as cited by Anadolu news agency.
This is the second visit of the Russian leader to Turkey since the improvement in relations after downing of the Russian jet by Turkish forces in November 2015.
Relations between the two states began to thaw in June 2016 after Erdogan sent a letter to the Kremlin apologizing for the pilot’s death.
Putin visited Istanbul in October 2016 to discuss Syria, as well as stalled energy projects and bilateral trade.
September 28, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Economics | NATO, Russia, Syria, Turkey |
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Due to numerous reasons, the Middle East continues to witness the most disturbed geopolitical conditions in the entire world. When political analysts and thinkers scrutinize the region’s map they can simply and clearly realize the intersection of the civilizational, anthropological, and geopolitical givens, which cause continuous changes. The Kurdish endeavor to establish an ‘independent’ state in northern Iraq exacerbates the overall complicated image of the whole area. However, could the Kurdish ‘dream’ come true regardless of all the surrounding factors?
Iraqi Kurdistan authorities held a so-called ‘independence’ (separation) referendum on Monday aimed at establishing a Kurdish state.
According to the freshly announced results, more than 92 percent of Iraqi Kurds voted for the separation. Electoral commission officials told a news conference in the regional capital Arbil that 92.73 percent of the 3,305,925 people who cast ballots voted “yes” in Monday’s referendum, which had a turnout of 72.61 percent.
Iraqi Kurdistan
It is a northern area in Iraq, which comprises around 41,710 square kilometers and has a population of 4 million. It has borders with Iran (to the east), Syria (to the west), Turkey (to the north) and the rest of the Iraqi provinces (to the south). So, it is a closed area that can never economically interact with the world without concluding pacts with the neighboring countries.
Economic Facts
According to economic experts, Iraqi Kurdistan achieves an annual oil revenue which approaches $11bn, adding that this cannot be sufficient to pay the employees’ salaries and establish a well-built state in the future.
“The Kurdish authorities suffer from a serious financial crisis.”
Furthermore, Kirkuk city which comprises 85% of the oil production will not be part of the autonomous area as the central government in Baghdad is not going to let the Kurdish authorities control it.
Although several international oil firms have signed contracts with the Kurdish authorities to invest in this vital field, the oil revenues will be unable to match the economic needs of the state.
Political Scene
Despite the clear US-Israeli support to the Kurdish leader Massoud Al-Barzani to establish a state in northern Iraq, the political conditions in Kurdistan indicate that the expected losses of the ‘independence’ will lead to several alterations in the domestic scene, which threatens the entire scheme of Al-Barzani.
The Iranian and Turkish opposition to the Kurdish ‘state’ represents a milestone political alliance which unifies the religious components in the area in face of the US-led plot to cause partition in Iraq and all the regional countries.
Furthermore, the US administration will no longer be able to keep its strong ties with Turkey, which is threatened with a similar scenario carried out by its own Kurds, while backing the Kurdish scheme. This is expected to push the Turks into intensifying their coordination and enhancing relations with Iran and all its axis in the Middle East and reducing those with the United States and its allies, including the Zionist entity.
In brief, the Kurdish ‘state’ is a closed area which can never move economically, politically and militarily without the aid of its neighbors.
The US-Israeli attempt to siege the victories achieved by the axis-of-resistance in the area is exposed, and the counter plans to frustrate the mentioned scheme and prepare for further victories over the vicious American policies are ready to be implemented.
September 28, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | Iraq, Israel, Middle East, Turkey, United States, Zionism |
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Saudi activist Mujtahid said that the inclusive change in Saudi Arabia (political, social and economic change) is coming, noting that the authorities will arrest all those who stand against this change,
On his Twitter account, Mujtahid quoted a US advisor, who takes part in Saudi Arabia’s Vision for 2030 project, as saying that the change is coming.
This change requires Crown Prince Mohamamd Bin Salman’s monopolization of power on the political level, secularizing the kingdom on the social level, and selling Aramco firm on the economical level, Mujtahid said, citing the US advisor.
He revealed that such plan is being coordinated with the US, Zionist entity, Egypt and UAE, noting that all these sides share the same stance regarding the arrest campaign which will target all those who reject this change.
In this context, Mujtahid, who is believed to be a member of or have a well-connected source in the royal family, pointed out that the arrests which were made recently represents an early stage of this plan of change.
September 28, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance | 2030 Vision, Egypt, Human rights, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, United States |
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May 5, 2016: Ultra-Zionist Billionaire Megadonor Sheldon Adelson attends 4th annual champions of Jewish values international awards gala at Marriott Marquis Times Square
Once in a while, an observer notices a concerted Jewish action, and reports on it pro bono publico. It could be that Jews support Third-world immigration, or Jews fight the memorials, or, in the recent case, Jews promote the war on Iran. The Jews respond with a huge vehement counterattack and make life very difficult for the outspoken observer. Afterwards, the subject recedes, as people get cold feet to proceed, or do not know how to proceed, though the problem remains at large.
The recent example is a piece by Philip Giraldi on the Unz.com, which still produces waves on the web. In his piece he rolled the list of Jews who were keen on Iraq invasion, and who are pushing the US now into an attack on Iran: “David Frum, Max Boot, Bill Kristol and Bret Stephens, Mark Dubowitz, Michael Ledeen… And yep, they’re all Jewish, plus most of them would self-describe as neo-conservatives.”
Giraldi proposed to keep Jews out of the positions of influence on the foreign affairs, in order to keep the US out of wars it does not need. Giraldi wrote: “We don’t need a war with Iran because Israel wants one and some rich and powerful American Jews are happy to deliver.”
Actually, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz wrote at the time (in April 2003): “The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history. Two of them, journalists William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, say it’s possible.”
I also wrote things in the same vein during Iraq invasion, and it is good to see that this thesis did not die but keeps resurging from time to time. One could add that these very persons are pushing for conflict with Russia, demonise Putin and attack Trump, though the Orange Man tries to fulfil their wishes as an eager Santa Claus of diligent Lizzie.
While agreeing with Giraldi on the malady, let us discuss the remedy. Would keeping Jews out of foreign policy making actually help? Did the US keep out of wars before the Rise of Jews in late 1960s? The Jews weren’t specially prominent before that time, and certainly weren’t overrepresented in the establishment. A Jewish couple, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg has been fried on the electric chair in 1953, and there were few objections. McCarthy terrorized Jews. The word Holocaust had yet to make its first appearance (in 1968). Jews were still kept out of clubs and out of high level politics. Israel had been threatened by the US (in 1956) rather than assisted.
And still, the free-from-Jews US had fought in Korea the terrible three-year long war (1950-1953), and in Vietnam (up to 1974), invaded and caused regime change in Guatemala and Iran, violently interfered in elections in France and Italy, and had fought the fierce Cold War against the USSR. In all these campaigns, the US Jews were actually for peace and against war. The Jews were nowhere in power when the US fought its wars against Spain and Mexico. The non-Jewish US made a coup in Iran, and non-Jewish and not-pro-Israel President Carter tried to invade Iran. Jews weren’t involved in the conquest of Panama, in Nicaragua intervention, in Granada operation.
Perhaps the Jews had moved the arena of wars to the Middle East and out of Latin America. Less Jewish-influenced America would rather invade Venezuela than Iraq or Iran. But is it so wonderful?
The idea of correcting or channelling the excessive Jewish influence is a reasonable one, but can this goal be achieved by keeping Kristol and Krauthammer out of media (an excellent thought anyway)?
The Jewish prominence in the US is inbuilt in the US culture and tradition. Karl Marx wrote that “in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression”. He said that all Yankees are Jews, behave like Jews, aspire to be Jews and even are circumcised like Jews. So it is natural that real Jews succeed better in being Jews than their Gentile neighbours. Werner Sombart added that Jews were prominent from the very dawn of America and they created American-style capitalism the way that fits them. The Jews are prominent now because America is custom-built for Jews to fit and suit them, he said.
This is what should be corrected, and then the Jewish scribes, these Krauthammers will be out of business of inciting wars. Stop subscribing to Jewish success model, and the Jews won’t be able to influence the Senate. Make the US Christian as Christ taught, share labour and wealth, aspire to God instead of Mammon, make the first last and the last first, love thy neighbour and the problem will be solved.
If this is too tall an order, make it a smaller one. Unseating Ledeens and Frums (and I think they deserve tar and feathers all right) will not do the trick unless the rich Jews are un-wealthed. Without excessive Jewish wealth, there will be no excessive Jewish push for wars. And provided that more than half of all US wealth is in few Jewish hands, freeing it will make a colossal effect of improving life of every American, even every person on earth.
And why to stop there? The super-rich non-Jews are as Jewish as any Jew. They share the same aspirations. Strip them of their assets. Why should we worry whether Jeff Bezos is a Jew by blood or faith, or he is not? He behaves like a Jew, and that is enough. Establish a ceiling of wealth, a counterpart of minimal wage. This idea has been mulled: Jeremy Corbyn called for the maximum wage. Taxes can do it easily – in wonderful Sweden of 1950s, top tax rate was 102%. Or this can be achieved in a more festive way of stripping the richest men of their ill-gotten wealth on the main square of Washington, DC on Mardi Gras Sunday. Do not say this is a punishment for their diligence – other way around, this is assistance on their way to spiritual improvement. Too many assets imprison the spirit.
This would be good for Jews and for all concerned: while the average Jewish wealth in the US had been lagging below total average (that is as long as Jews were less wealthy than Gentiles), the Jews acted in the interests of the people. Around 1968-1970 the Jews became more wealthy than all Americans, and that was it: they ceased to strive for the common good.
Jews could be a force for good if their excessive tendency to collect material goods is nipped in the bud. So it was in the USSR: as the Jews could not make money, they went into science and worked for the common good. Even oligarchs could be good managers instead of pain in the neck for the society.
This is not more complicated than booting Max Boot out of writing business. So why to go for a palliative if you can go for the jugular?
Israel Shamir can be reached at adam@israelshamir.net
September 27, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | United States, Zionism |
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The elections to the German Bundestag on Sunday throw up big surprises. Chancellor Angela Merkel will lead the next coalition government, too – her fourth successive win – but in all other respects, the results signify that Germany’s post-World War II politics is at a turning point.
First and foremost, the two mainstream parties that have dominated German politics have now come to represent only 53% of the electorate. The level of fragmentation is stunning for a country that is synonymous with the ‘middle path’. Second, Merkel’s CDU (Christian democrats) has lost support and her coalition partner SPD (social democrats) suffered a humiliating defeat. Third, the right-wing nationalist AfP – reviled as ‘neo-Nazis’ – won over 13% votes and secured 94 seats in the 709-member Bundestag, the first time such a thing is happening in Germany’s post-World War II political history.
Then, there are the sub-plots. The SPD has vowed to sit in the opposition, which means Merkel may have to form the next government with the rightist CSU (Christian socialists) and leftist Green Party as coalition partners, which makes an improbable alliance of convenience. The CDU-led government’s economic policies are likely to be subjected to pulls and counter-pulls from the two coalition partners CSU and Green Party, which are at loggerheads ideologically.
Interestingly, AfP’s main support base happens to be the former communist East Germany and, thus, an ‘East-West’ divide is surfacing after the German unification a quarter century ago.
Again, CDU lost popular support for the wrong reasons. Under the CDU-led government, the German economy did remarkably well. What cost Merkel heavily has been her refugee policies, which have been perceived as appeasement of Muslims opening the door to an influx of Islam in Germany. Merkel eventually took a tougher line on deportations but it was too little, too late. The issues of asylum, integration and deportation and the perceived ‘Islamisation’ of Germany dogged Merkel’s entire election campaign.
The ultra-nationalist AfD framed its campaign on the provocative platform, “Islam does not belong to Germany.” The party’s program calls for a ban on minarets and considers Islam to be incompatible with German culture.
The AfD leader Alexander Gauland has openly called for Germans to reclaim their history: “We have the right to be proud of the achievements of the German soldiers in two world wars.” The outgoing foreign Minister and SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel warned voters ahead of the poll against having “real Nazis in the German Reichstag for the first time since the end of World War Two”. Germany’s Central Council of Jews said its worst fears had come true in Sunday’s election.
The German policies are almost certain to be affected. Merkel will be under pressure to step up deportation of refugees. The AfD has tasted blood and sensing the national mood, it will surely intensify the ultra-nationalist campaign. Surely, the German discourse is poised to become much more homophobic, much more anti-migrant, much more-anti-Muslim. This will cast shadows on Germany’s relations with Turkey.
Again, Merkel’s approach to Russia will be keenly watched. The AfD – like most ultra-nationalists in Europe, is, ironically, “pro-Russia”. If the Russian strategy has been to discredit western democracies and break them into shambles, there ought to be quiet satisfaction in Moscow over what is unfolding in Germany.
At any rate, a weakened Merkel is not a bad thing for Moscow. (President Vladimir Putin and Merkel had an uneasy personal relationship.) Merkel will now be more susceptible from pressures from the German industry, where Russia has influential lobbyists, for normalization of business ties with Moscow.
The biggest impact of the German election will be felt on European integration processes. Merkel has been out on the back foot and she was a flag-carrier EU integration. Germany’s influence within the EU weakens in the period ahead. And, without a strong axis with Germany, France alone cannot lead European integration. In sum, coming on top of Brexit, EU will be rudderless without Germany’s leadership under an assertive Merkel.
September 25, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Economics | European Union, Germany |
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Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures
For inexplicable reasons the Democratic Party has in many ways made itself the “Green Party,” and thereby has incurred major electoral losses. Each time it loses as a result of its increasingly green ideology, it has responded by doubling down on its green bet. The underlying miscalculation they have made is a result of the fact that the presidency is decided by electoral votes, not popular votes. Most of the “environmentalists” live in strongly blue states and the red state “environmentalists” are widely scattered in the few large towns, particularly college towns. This was very evident in the 2016 election when Clinton won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote, with much of her surplus of popular votes coming from California. Hillary Clinton has now confirmed this view by writing that her statement on the loss of coal mining jobs was the single greatest mistake of her campaign.
In 2016 the Party went whole hog for climate alarmism by writing it into their party platform and even promising to end all use of fossil fuels by a date certain. Clinton also hurt her prospects in 2016 as a result of her remarks about the loss of coal mining jobs and her last minute endorsement of Al Gore and his strident climate alarmism. Yes, Clinton probably picked up some “environmentalist” votes, but most of them were in states that she was going to win anyway. And she probably lost votes in the states that Trump most needed to win for an electoral vote majority.
But a very good case can be made that the climate issue played a decisive role in the 2000 presidential election, the 2010 congressional election, as well as in the 2016 presidential election. Somehow the Party overlooked or misinterpreted what happened in 2000 and in 2010.
2000
Most people who remember the 2000 presidential election immediately think of the controversial outcome in Florida, which ultimately decided the election. But it would have had no influence if Al Gore had not lost West Virginia for the Democrats for one of the few times from 1932 to then. The deciding issue appears to have been climate and coal mining. In the end, Gore lost the presidential election by 3 electoral votes. West Virginia had 5 electoral votes that year. But all of them went to Bush primarily because of concerns about Gore’s views on climate and the likely effects of climate alarmism on coal mining, an important source of income in the State. West Virginia voted Republican in only three presidential elections from 1932 until 1996 but has become increasingly Republican in presidential voting since 2000. I believe most of that increase can be attributed to the Democratic Party’s increasing support for climate alarmism. If Gore had not pursued climate alarmism or had not been the nominee I believe that the Democrats would have won in 2000.
2010
The 2010 Congressional Election resulted in the Democratic Party’s loss of a majority in the House of Representatives. It appears that this loss was due to the loss of Democratic seats where Democratic incumbents had voted for the American Energy and Security Act of 2010 (the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill). A number of Democrats who voted for the bill lost their seats in 2010 and the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives and have not regained it as of 2017. This played an important role in their success or rather lack of it during the remainder of the Obama Presidency in passing legislation to implement the party’s platforms.
Conclusions
From a purely Democratic Party viewpoint, their unequivocal adoption of climate alarmism has been a very bad bet. And this week a number of prominent alarmist climate modelers have finally admitted (see here and here) that the alleged “consensus” has been wrong by exaggerating the global warming that would occur if carbon dioxide emissions are not reduced, just as many climate realists have long been saying. This leaves the Democratic Party with a greatly reduced basis for their extremist views on climate. So major electoral losses over an issue that has little, or more likely, no effect on anyone.
I even wonder if the modelers withheld their long needed revisions until after the Paris treaty was agreed to, but wanted to avoid the increasing criticism of the differences between their models and actual temperatures.
As readers of this blog know, I believe that the situation is even worse for climate alarmists and thereby for their Democratic Party supporters since carbon dioxide emissions and atmospheric levels have been shown to have no significant effects on global temperatures and because higher CO2 levels are good, not bad. So the Democratic Party has been backing the wrong horse and has paid dearly for it. They are not saving the world; they are pushing bad policy that hurts the Party’s electoral chances as well as the economy, green plants, and poor people.
September 24, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | United States |
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Let me preface what I am about to say by stating that I have the utmost esteem for mainstream medicine’s skill in emergency situations — the do or die surgeries, the dispensing of powerful life-saving drugs necessary in that setting are second to none; and its mastery of cosmetic surgery in cases of deformities and the advances made in prosthetics are nothing less than spectacular. These are what make mainstream medicine great.
I would also like to add that I am not an expert of any kind. I hold no degrees or certifications, and neither do I represent, belong to, or work for any party, organization or corporation. I speak for myself, a sixty-two year old woman, and from my experiences with, and extensive research of, a topic I find fascinating, intriguing and bothersome — mainstream medicine and how the belief in its infallibility harms us in so many ways.
The pompous certainty of mainstream medicine’s powerful proponents — be they multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical companies, medical associations, disease-specific charities, government agencies, Madison Avenue selling the diseases and the pills, TV or magazines, the news media parroting its cash cow’s every claim — combined have most people, hook, line and sinker, believing in the impeccable record of mainstream medicine. No questions asked.
Here, I would like to throw out some alarming statistics — ones that can be easily found in a variety of journals from Forbes to JAMA to CounterPunch, etc.
The estimated annual mortality rate for adverse drug reactions to “correctly” prescribed drugs is the 5th leading cause of death in the U.S.1 Over the counter (OTC) cold medications are among the top twenty substances causing death in children.2 Used according to direction, NSAIDs (Non-Steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs) are responsible for more than 20,000 deaths every year.3 There are over 400,000 deaths each year from drug and medical errors and tens of thousands more deaths from unnecessary procedures.4 Add those together and mainstream medicine is the third leading cause of death in the U.S.
So, why is it that most people trust, without question, the omnipotence of mainstream medicine in the same way religious zealots believe in their chosen religion or atheists in theirs? When well over 200,000 people die in the U.S. each year from prescription drug use alone — not abuse, but use; when we spend more, per capita than any other nation on earth and yet our health indices and life expectancy are near the bottom of all other developed nations5 why is there no sense of outrage (except for price gouging!) or, at the very least, a sense that something is not right, that something is terribly wrong?
Yet, as has happened many times, should a doctor, a scientist, a researcher or a curious layperson question conventional medical creed the herald is quickly battered down with jeers of derision, and swiftly “discredited” and shunned by the medical community. The media then parrots what they are told and soon everyone is asking, “How dare they question science? Haven’t they heard of collateral damage? Every war (and they are constantly reminding us of the war we are fighting against diseases) has collateral damage”. Yet when a few people die from dirty spinach, improper use of some herbal product, or a handful of people (some even vaccinated) catch the measles (and live to tell about it!) panic overruns the media.
Does anyone remember or know of the ad campaigns telling us that “nine out of ten doctors smoke Camel cigarettes” or that DDT pesticide spray is “good for you!”? We may laugh now but what about the more recent debacles such as HRT (hormone replacement therapy), Vioxx, swine flu vaccines and GMOs — all of which received the seal of approval from industry scientists, government agencies and all were pushed by Madison Ave. — just like the cigarettes given to my father for heart disease and the DDT sprayed on everything in sight, including children.
The number of TV commercials for drugs, medical clinics, hospitals, and doctor-related reality TV shows is mind blowing. It is a constant barrage of “a pill for every ill” and “don’t forget to ask your doctor about it”, while people with vapid eyes move in slow motion through white rooms or a meadow filmed through gauze, while a voice, soft and soothing, tells you of the pill’s benefits and then the same voice, just as soft but at breakneck speed, spews a partial list of possible side effects and a series of unwanted symptoms, some of which sound, and are (such as death) worse than the “disease” itself.
And interspersed between the ad for an over-the-counter (OTC) medication that had not long ago been given “by prescription only” and another ad for the new six story billion dollar specialty clinic are yet more commercials inviting us to join in what has become a celebration of you fill in the blank disease. There’s a “walk” or a “run”, even a paddle! for this disease and a different colored “ribbon” for that disease. It is almost as if having a disease has become the new “in” thing — fashionable, admirable, heroic even. Are we being groomed to embrace our diseases, while at the same time being told to give, give, give to find a “cure”? According to Dr. Robert Sharpe, author of The Cruel Deception, a book about animal testing in medical research,” . . . in our culture treating disease is enormously profitable, preventing it is not.”
We have been told we are living longer but the sad fact is that the trend has reversed and now for the first time in decades life expectancy has dropped in the U.S.6 Even more alarming is that, along with adults, the number of children with chronic diseases has risen sharply. Think about it. How many of us make it past seventy (hell, even sixty!) without some major medical catastrophe (or two) requiring surgery and/or special apparatuses to help us do what used to come naturally and/or prescribed no less than three or four drugs? And how many “new” (iatrogenic) diseases do we then acquire from taking those drugs or undergoing those procedures that require even more drugs and/or more procedures?
And just what is conventional medicine’s track record for curing disease — any disease — not palliation or suppression or masking (all of which suppress and weaken the immune system) — but curing? Forty years ago I knew one woman with breast cancer while today I know dozens, all of whom underwent tortuous procedures, surgeries and drugging, and yes, some of them died. And why is it that when people die after making use of conventional medicine — surgery, chemotherapy, drugs, etc. — there are no cries of foul against their choice of healthcare? Instead they are hailed as heroes who fought a courageous battle, but when someone dies after trying an alternative medicine the cries against their choice are nothing less than vitriolic, as if no one ever dies using mainstream medicine, when in actuality many thousands die each year from mishaps alone, never mind the many hundreds of thousands who die from the diseases that have remained rampant — heart disease, cancer and diabetes, etc.7
Despite unprecedented technical and scientific advances, mainstream medicine’s only answer to disease is to destroy—with toxic substances, ingested or injected, with life-threatening procedures and with the removal of diseased (and often times healthy) body parts. Kill germs, fight cancer, destroy cells, kick (name a disease)’s ass, crush, terminate, rub out, blast; never build up, heal, cure. Are we, as a society, even capable of imagining alternatives to mainstream medicine? I once told an MD I knew that a friend’s kidney stone passed with relative ease after drinking a herbal tea prescribed by an Acupuncturist. “If there was something out there that can do that,” he told me, “we would know about it”. Not with that attitude!
When contemplating all that led up to the economic debacle of 2008, I would venture to guess that most people would be leery now (if they weren’t already!) of any advise given by the banking industry and Wall Street concerning, let’s say, home loans. And the same wariness would prevail when listening to the oil or coal industries’ take on environmental issues, or the weapons makers’ spin on whether to go to war or sell arms, or the pesticide- producing conglomerates on the safety of their products. The conflict of interest in each case should be obvious because when one considers that the very ones who profit by limiting the field of allowable research, who selectively choose among research papers to discredit alternative theories or boost their own are the very ones who control the message, it becomes obvious that we are seeing conflict of interest on a massive scale.
And, what of the research done by pharmaceutical companies that tell us a certain drug, or procedure, or vaccine is safe and effective? Does it make you comfortable to know that President Obama’s pick for FDA (Food and Drug Administration) Commissioner, Robert Califf, had received research funds from twenty-five drug companies while director of Duke University clinical research department where a major research fraud scandal had erupted under his watch8 or that Julie Gerderding, former head of the CDC (Center for Disease Control) concealed and then destroyed evidence of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism in African-American boys9, and yet congress refuses to subpoena her and the whistleblower from the CDC and the media never mentions it, and that this same Julie Gerderding left the CDC to become the president of Merck’s vaccine division and then executive VP of Merck, the sole manufacturer of the MMR vaccine? These examples are just two of many that are not only about a colossal conflict of interest but also about a dangerous threat to true scientific discovery affecting millions of lives.
So, why is it that pharmaceutical companies (which, by the way, have more lobbyists than there are members of congress and the senate combined) and which have a woeful track record when it comes to conflict of interest in medical research, drug research and alternative medicine viability research, are given a pass, a green light, a pat on the back of confidence and, besides, are vehemently defended and vociferously cheered on? What marketing magic do they spin that makes people overlook their complicity in fraudulent research, their over-the-top demonizing of opposing viewpoints, and above all their abhorrent safety record?
Why can’t we question the effectiveness, the safety or the necessity of some vaccines without being rudely shouted down? I wonder if those who shout the, “Shut up! They are safe!” mantra have ever taken the time to study the long history of infectious disease and the history of vaccine use? Do they know there are no long-term studies on the effects of vaccines, or that vaccinated people are not necessarily protected from the diseases they are vaccinated against, or that the pharmaceutical companies and the government agencies refuse to do a vaccinated vs. unvaccinated population study as to their overall health indices, that vaccines, unlike other drugs are not tested against a placebo but against another vaccine, or that childhood infectious diseases had been on a downward trend for many years (measles deaths had declined by almost 100 percent!) well before vaccines were introduced as had many of the other infectious diseases — running their course, improving as our sanitary conditions and treatment of the illness improved? So, why not let them continue to decline until they naturally disappear? Why introduce crude disease substances and a mixture of lethal chemicals (of which no one knows or bothers to test their long-term effects) into our bodies in an attempt to eradicate diseases that seemed to be doing a fine job of doing just that naturally?
Could there be a connection between the plethora of “new” or increasing diseases and the crude drugs (including vaccines) we have been putting into our bodies for decades now? If we stop to think about it does it make sense to inject ourselves with hazardous material we know nothing about to prevent diseases like the measles, mumps and the flu and others that are now so simple to treat?
But we are told, ad nauseam, to, “Shut up and just get your shots! All your questions have already been answered!” However, when you look behind the scenes of medical research and find the pharmaceutical companies paying the bills, writing the reports and working closely with government agencies, research colleges, medical journals and the media to get their message out, it should raise a red flag.
What is the great harm brought about by this absolutism of the proponents of mainstream medicine? There are many but two are outstanding. One is that freedom of choice in one’s healthcare decisions can and will be taken away — it has begun already and is picking up momentum. I do not use conventional medicine except in some emergency situations, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t fight for the right of others to choose to use it exclusively if they believe it to be their best or only option. Being comfortable with one’s healthcare choice is, I firmly believe, of utmost importance. Yet if it were up to many people I should not be allowed to choose the kind of healthcare I want for my family and me.
And secondly, that same vitriolic certainty and insular thinking is truly harmful to the very essence of scientific inquiry. Great discoveries could be ignored simply because of a refusal to look beyond what we are told is scientifically acceptable today, the realm of inquiry having been limited by the greed of those in power and their manipulation of the masses by way of the fear factor.
September 24, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Scientism, United States |
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