European politicians don’t say publicly anything sensible about the standoff with Russia, which they do in private, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
“Sometimes the things they say from a podium contradict what they tell you in one-on-one talks, when nobody can overhear them,” the minister told Zvezda TV channel. “Alone most of EU members tell me things I find quite sensible, said Lavorov: that it was wrong to confront Russia over Ukraine, which, in fact, fell victim to this European Union policy that forced it to chose between the two.
“They all say, let things quiet down a bit and we can go back to normal relations, the strategic partnership. But when they all gather together and speak in public, they just can’t say those things,” he said.
Lavrov said such ambiguity puzzles him and puts in doubt the wisdom and foresight of EU officials.
The European Union and Russia came into conflict over Ukraine’s plan to open its market to European producers. Moscow warned this deal would leave Russia’s free trade zone with Ukraine in jeopardy, as Moscow would have to protect its markets from European competition.
The warning made the government of President Victor Yanukovich pause the deal, a move that triggered mass public protests in Ukraine widely supported by European officials. The standoff escalated into violence and an armed coup in February 2013, which imposed an anti-Russian government in Kiev declaring integration with EU one of its primary goals.
The new authorities launched a military crackdown on its citizens in eastern Ukraine, who opposed the coup. Ukraine’s economy plunged into a crisis, and social benefits were cut to secure loans from the International Monetary Fund. The country also de facto defaulted on its sovereign $3-billion debt to Russia. The free trade deal with the EU failed to boost Ukraine’s exports to European nations and forced Russia to impose custom fees, as it had warned.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) says recovery of global oil prices to above $70 per barrel will not take place for another four years.
According to a report released by OPEC on Wednesday, the organization, which produces a third of the world’s crude, said it foresees a “gradual improvement in market conditions as growing demand and slower than previously expected non-OPEC supply growth eliminate the existing oversupply and lead to a more balanced market.”
The announcement came at a time that the global benchmark oil price touched an 11-year low of $36.04 on Monday, AFP reported.
In its annual World Oil Outlook report, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries predicted that oil prices will rise to $70.70 for a barrel of crude in 2020 and to $95 in 2040.
According to analysts, the projections represent a sharp drop in market value compared to last year’s report, which predicted a nominal price of $110 for the rest of this decade.
Since one year and a half ago, the global oil market has been rife with various kinds of projections as OPEC largely gave up its past policy of cutting production to support prices, with the price of a barrel of crude plunging more than 60 percent.
Instead of following the traditional policy, the organization aimed to preserve its market shares and push out growing competition from higher-cost shale rock producers in the United States.
According to OPEC’s latest report, shale oil production will only start to “plateau” at 5.6 million barrels per day by 2025 and then decline. It added that low oil prices are only leading to short-term boost in demand.
“The impact of the recent oil price decline on demand is most visible in the short term. It then drops away over the medium term,” noted the organization in its report, which was released at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria.
The report also projected the world’s total crude demand to hit 97.4 million barrels per day by the end of the decade, an increase of 500,000 barrels per day compared to its forecast from last year.
While OPEC projected that the demand for its oil will increase more than previously forecast over the next five years, it added that the figure will still remain below current production levels.
The organization also announced that demand for its crude oil will reach 30.7 million barrels per day by 2020, an increase of about 1.7 million barrels compared to last year’s projections. OPEC is currently pumping 32 million barrels per day.
The organization further stated that it expected its current market share to increase by four points to 37 percent by 2040.
As for trends in the global energy market, OPEC opined that the developing world will account for 63 percent of the total fuel consumption, thus, overtaking industrialized countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Natural gas is expected to replace oil and coal, according to OPEC’s report, as the fuel with the largest share of global energy use by 2040, by accounting for close to 28 percent of world demand.
According to OPEC’s forecast, although use of wind and solar energies is set to grow at the fastest rates, their overall market reach will only be around 4 percent in 15 years from now.
In November, Russia and the United Kingdom suspended flights to Egypt after a Russian Airbus A321 passenger plane crashed in Egypt as a result of a terrorist attack in October.
“The absence of tourists from Russia and the United Kingdom is costing us $300 million a month. Now the second month like this is coming to an end. The figures show what a serious blow the plane crash has dealt to the Egyptian tourism industry and to our economy in general,” the minister said in an interview with the Russian daily Kommersant.
In November, Adviser to the Egyptian Minister of Tourism Mohamed Yousef said that the loss of Russian and UK tourists would deprive Egypt of 70 percent of its tourist traffic. Tourism constitutes over 11 percent of the country’s GDP and accounts for 14 percent of its total foreign currency earnings.
On October 31, a Russian Airbus A321 crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula while en route from the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, killing all 224 people on board. The Islamic State (IS, or Daesh in Arabic) terrorist group, which is outlawed in Russia and many other countries, claimed responsibility for the crash.
When I was very young, my parents used to tell me why having “lots of toys” wasn’t a good idea. “The more you have, the more you want,” they would say. I didn’t have many toys — we were poor — so the idea of possessions feeding greed didn’t make much sense to me then.
But I’ve learned the truth of that statement from observation over the years and lately I’ve been observing Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg is a 31-year-old computer programmer who did two things that made him famous: he founded Facebook, the social networking super service, and, as a result, he amassed a fortune worth about $46 billion. His bank account is as large as the capitalization of many countries.
How he got to these lofty heights of wealth and cultural impact is a matter of often fierce debate — he’s been sued by former “partners” several times. But what’s more important than how he got control of Facebook is what he’s constructed with it: a ubiquitous presence in the lives of a billion people with the potential to frame and manipulate their communications, their relationships and, to a frighteningly large extent, their lives.
So last month, when Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced in a letter to their new baby — a rather novel way to package a press release — that, over the course of their lives, they will give almost all their Facebook shares to a project called the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the world took note.
The Initiative, they explained, would “advance human potential and promote equality” in health, education, scientific research, and energy. In short, change the world: on its face, a worthy cause. But, like many of Zuckerberg’s plans and projects, this one has another side that is darker, more cynical and, even if only partially successful, a potential nightmare for the human race.
How many zeroes are there in $46 billion? More than most of us will ever see. So it’s tough for us “average people” to fathom what a billionaire does with his or her money. Even living the most opulent life-style imaginable wouldn’t start to dent those savings in a bank — the interest alone would pay for everything you could imagine owning. That, in a sense, is Mark Zuckerberg’s dilemma. At 31, he has so much money he doesn’t know what to do with it.
So he follows a long capitalist tradition called philanthropy. In projects that range from supporting education to enhancing Internet access world-wide to tackling specific social problems, Zuckerberg has thrown money at social inequality like a park visitor throws bread-crumbs to pigeons…except the pigeons actually benefit.
When he gave $100 million to the Newark Public Schools, the money was largely wasted with very little impact on the quality of education in that embattled city. When he has joined other rich philanthropists, like Warren Buffett, in a string of similar projects — funding schools or programs in other U.S. cities, giving major endowments to hospitals or funding initiatives in Global South countries — they have usually fallen short of their expectations or projected expectations that didn’t make much sense in the long term. Some good happens but the social problems remain and often deepen.
At the same time, he’s used his wealth and power to launch Internet projects like one that brings together almost a million software developers to work on Facebook improvement and another, called Beacon, that enables people to share information with their Facebook friends based on their browsing activities on other sites (also providing a huge resource to advertisers and marketing people).
In the Summer of 2013, Zuckerberg launched “Internet.org” whose stated purpose is to bring internet access to over 5 billion people world-wide. The access, however, is partial; only certain websites will be seen by these newly connected people in part because many of the world’s governments don’t allow full access to the Internet. Users will, however, be able to fully access Facebook.
Then there’s Facebook itself which continues to expand. With over a billion users, the company has control over the information, data and communications of much of the human race. All of it is contained in an Internet protocol that feels like the conversation at a party where everyone’s had a few drinks. Short statements followed by long strings of one sentence responses, fattened by photos and videos with no real explanation of their importance and a huge “friends” section. It’s a snapshot of your life without the depth, thinking and development that makes it precious to the rest of us.
But that basic information is very valuable to advertisers and marketing companies who can use your activities and friends lists to develop a consumer profile of you. Facebook sells it to them and then fashions advertising programs that display ads that reflect your buying patterns and insert them into the flow of messages (at a premium advertising rate). It also turns the information over to government spy agencies like the NSA.
Facebook admits no sin. It claims that its user agreement allows it to “share relevant information on users” with advertisers for the users’ “convenience” (and, of course, to generate fantastic revenue) and that it can’t legally refuse to share information the NSA demands. None of which changes the reality of what it does and the potential impact that this has on people’s lives.
There’s a common thread to Zuckerberg’s projects. Those that are completely devoid of benefit to him and his company usually fall short of expectations. Projects that are at least partially successful, while they may benefit people, return a hefty benefit for Facebook.
Throughout all of this, Zuckerberg has trotted the globe projecting an image of a young genius whose altruism and concern for the planet and its people drive his daily activities. He’s written about all the time and been the subject of a major motion picture, The Social Network, although it portrays him in a less than flattering light.
What’s interesting about this record of double-edged philanthropy and innovation is that, contrary to the movie’s depictions of him as a snide self-absorbed jerk, Zuckerberg is by most accounts a friendly, open, funny and fairly humble guy. He and his wife have eschewed ostentatious shows of wealth, travelled mainly to speak with leaders and thinkers world-wide (rather than spend months lounging on beaches) and spent most of their time as a couple doing the things normal couples do (like walk around places rather than take a limousine). What’s more, people who know and work with him insist that his concern for the world is not only honest but consuming. In short, they say, he’s the real deal.
The question, however, is can the real deal be all that real using wealth generated by a morally corrupt economic system that pursues profit over any aspect of human life or well-being? In other words, can you provide a nutritious meal when the food is poisoned?
The answer, demonstrated throughout history, is “no”. You can’t and neither can Mark Zuckerberg.
Philanthropy is about control and always has been. The great philanthropists who’ve left their footprint in huge foundations and museums and universities were also among the most exploitative and viciously repressive capitalists of their time. Morally trapped by their immense fortunes, they have sought to control, not only the daily work activities of people (the source of their wealth), but our culture, education, thinking, social life and the other activities that consume every single second of our existence.
Such control protects their wealth in many ways but that’s not the principal reason for this “giving”. Their motivation is to shape our society as they shape our days. Like monarchs dictating reality from a throne, they want it all and, through philanthropy, they get it.
This is the culture in which Mark Zuckerberg functions. His projects have in common a certainty that his perspective and interests (and the system that creates them) offer a future to the human race no other perspective can. His internet projects not only develop internet skill but tie people to Facebook and the “quick message” and superficial relationship culture it drives. Even with his Internet.org project, Zuckerberg can’t conceive of a world in which people make their own decisions about where to go and what to do on the Internet. He is, effectively, trying to take control of the world.
His latest project is an illustration of that approach. Rather than create a foundation, the couple has created a limited partnership corporation, a legal form that has tax benefits, avoids much of the government scrutiny foundations deal with and allows for a much greater secrecy in its functioning and decision-making. A red flag is now flying.
That corporation, one would assume, will now dole out money to projects with potential but who decides the potential? We don’t know but since the corporation belongs to Mark and Priscilla one would assume that they have a big say. As a corporation, it doesn’t have to limit spending to non-profit ventures; it can invest in companies and profit-making projects if it wants. It can even invest in Zuckerberg companies and projects: basically, funding his own work.
While they are busy doling, by the way, Chan and Zuckerberg are still firmly in control of their assets since all that is happening is that the stock of Facebook is cashed in and put into the new company’s bank account with considerable tax benefits (since it’s a reinvestment).
Zuckerberg has yet to specify the projects his new venture will fund but, based on his past, we can confidently speculate. He will continue to encourage development as a way of molding human activity in accord with his vision of it. He will use that spectacular wealth to take even greater control of culture and education. Most of all, he will continue to spread his grasp of the Internet, the one thing that enables human interaction and resists this kind of control.
If Facebook is Zuckerberg’s vision of what on-line communications should be, the remarkable wealth of knowledge, shared thinking, compared experiences and, let us not forget, organizing that has become possible with the Internet will progressively be reduced to a ping-pong game of superficial statements and “likes”. If that vision is imposed through funding of education and other aspects of development, creativity and independent critical thinking will suffer and the kind of machine-like “competence” Zuckerberg frequently champions will hammer another nail in humanity’s coffin. If his funding is used to encourage development projects like the ones he has supported in the past, the cooperativism and the coop movement, the most exciting and potentially game-changing movement in today’s world, will find itself battling against odds that are even greater than the odds it currently faces.
In short, he would end up doing much more harm than good, playing a destructive kind of monopoly with real streets, buildings and lives.
Rich people can’t avoid acting that way and that’s why even “progressive” billionaires like Zuckerberg or Buffett are really part of an anti-future. The schemes and projects and reforms they think up in small groups and fund with large money will never improve the world fundamentally. The only way to do that is to build a world where people like them can never exist and such wealth can never be amassed. It’s hard to imagine the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative contributing that world.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday signed a decree to suspend the free trade treaty with Ukraine, starting from January 1, 2016.
“Due to exceptional circumstances affecting the interests and economic security of the Russian Federation which require immediate measures, I order … from January 1, 2016 to suspend the Agreement on the free trade zone with Ukraine, which was signed in St. Petersburg on 18 October 2011,” said the decree.
Currently, Russia and Ukraine are trading in accordance with the free trade agreement between CIS countries. However, starting next year the economic part of Kiev’s Association Agreement with the EU comes into force making Ukraine part of the European trading bloc.
Last month, Russia’s Economic Development Minister Aleksey Ulyukaev said Moscow will impose a food embargo on Ukraine from January 1. According to him, the food ban is to be introduced to counteract Ukraine joining economic and financial sanctions against Russia.
The minister explained the measure aims to protect the Russian market from the illegal supply of embargoed European goods that will become available in Ukraine under the Association Agreement.
Moscow banned agricultural and other products from European countries that joined anti-Russian sanctions.
Ulyukaev also said the Kremlin plans to introduce customs tariffs on imports of other goods from Ukraine. The tariffs will be introduced because Ukraine will no longer be part of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) free trade zone and therefore should not enjoy membership benefits, according to the minister.
Any serious analysis of mass migration as a phenomena has to provide an in depth study as to the effects of the process, of who benefits and who gains and whether it is a natural phenomena[i] or an organised movement[ii] which serves the neo-liberal agenda.
Greece once more is in the eye of the storm. During 2015 around 750,000 have passed through Greece on their way to Northern Europe. The borders have essentially become non-existent. Another 3 million are expected to arrive in 2016. Is this a natural phenomena (product of wars or economic displacement) or something more sinister? A new world order agenda to reduce wages in the EU as it is now in stark competition with the USA and China? Replacing a century and a half of unionised labour?
Greece suffered extensively as a result of two decades of wars, in the first half of the 20th century as a consequence of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and World War I and as a result of World War II and the subsequent Cold War (Truman doctrine was inaugurated in Greece) and civil war. As such it has been prone to mass movements of populations from abroad to Greece and vice versa and two examples stand out. The population transfers as a result of the Asia Minor expedition of the early 20’s that saw a couple of million arrive in Athens from Attaturk’s Turkey and the tens of thousands of Greeks that emigrated after the end of the civil war to find work in the factories and mines of Germany, Belgium and France.
From the mid 1960’s to approximately 1990 no large population movements occurred apart from the displacement of Greek Cypriots from Turkey’s invasion into Cyprus. What did occur and what isn’t mentioned ever is the first wave of globalisation created by the Greek merchant ship owners who had Greek flagged crews on their fleet which was mainly used to carry goods East to West and who developed enormously during the period of the embargo on Saudi Arabia in the 1950s.
They were closely linked to the City of London in terms of insurance and financing of loans for developing the merchant fleets and were at the cutting edge of labour reform. With the advent of new technology and the reduction in manning on merchant shipping, alongside the creation of schools for shipping in the Philippines and Central America, Greek flagged ships became a rarity. Most of the personnel were from the ‘third world,’ unless they were the captains or port engineers. Labour costs were driven to the ground way before the fall of the Soviet Union and in the 1990’s this essentially became the blueprint for neoliberal labour relations worldwide.
The military junta of the late 1960’s early 1970’s pioneered the first wave of cheap labour from Pakistan for agriculture but this was regulated and at the time the Drachma wasn’t a convertible currency so the export of currency was minimal and controlled by the government of the day.
Entrance into the EEC
Greece’s entrance into the EEC in 1981 occurred under the guise that it would develop both its agriculture and its heavy industry. Nearly four decades later its agriculture has been decimated and its heavy industry destroyed. Instead of Greek agricultural products being protected in the EU wide market the opposite occurred. Greek supermarkets were taken over by larger chains and they started to import produce the world over. This destroyed agricultural labour costs which led directly to the mass importation of cheap labour. We recently had the odious situation of Asian farmers living with animals to pick strawberries in Greece and being shot for asking for wages. [iii]
Fall of the Soviet Union
When the Soviet Union fell there was a mass wave of illegals that arrived from Albania.
Statements alluded to the recent leader of New Democracy Samaras, made at the time when Greeks had two homes and multiple cars led to a massive wave of Albanians to arrive. Initially they were few but then they kept on coming and the crescendo reached the Olympic Games building projects of the early 2000.
Greek bosses started to prefer and select Albanian immigrant workers for cost as well as hours worked. Insofar as there was a building boom, they were needed and older Greek workers became foremen. Just as mechanisation in shipping led to smaller shipping crews required with more simple instructions, so the changes in building construction led to less workers required with a smaller skill set. By 2000 there were allegedly around 800,000 Albanians alone, but official figures always underestimate. According to estimates by the police there are currently 94 different nationalities present in Greece. In the first decade of the 21st century around 1.5 million Albanians gained legal status in Greece and this year all children born in Greece can gain nationality.
A Greek Parliamentary Committee was set up in 1993 to analyse the issue of mass migration and the demographic crisis. All the major parties signed it (PASOK, New Democracy, KKE and Sinaspismos – Syriza’s precursor[iv]).
Olympics Building Boom
Between 1999 and 2004 a mass building program of works occurred for the Olympic games. Thousands of companies were created and tens of thousands of new immigrant workers came. “The entrance of the new immigrants in the labor movement, which covers now around one third of the total number of laborers who are occupied in Greece,” explained the Greek TUC Report[v] in 2002.
In other words 33% of the working people are immigrants. From this many have concluded that the borders of Greece are hermetically sealed. Greece is a Fortress inside a European fortress! Someone could ask what percentage should the 33% of cheap laborers be, so as to theoretically accept that borders are open? 100% of all laborers, 200%, 500%, an endless figure? Not that we expect a reply to this
question.
‘Whoever continues to talk about open borders is either consciously lying or doesn’t have a consciousness of reality’ was a common refrain at the time alongside what was written on walls all over Athens: ‘Worker, the bosses like racism.’
Just think about it. More than two million (and more) immigrants who live in Greece, a number which represents 20% of the total population, is a ‘conscious lie’! Whilst truth is that Europe closed its borders a long time ago, stopped immigration, became a Fortress. The simple Greek worker who believes in the opposite doesn’t have a consciousness of reality! As this reality isn’t one which is witnessed daily in their journeys on public transport, in factories, on ships, on building sites and public works, but that which exists in the realms of fantasy.
Is there competition for work amongst Greeks and immigrants?
‘No, jobs are not taken by immigrants.’ That is what we are told by the anti-racist globalists. Greek capitalists didn’t bring them to replace the more expensive and demanding Greek workers but for them to do the jobs which the well fed locals refuse to do! The foreign workers who work in Greece apparently occupy positions that are exclusively those of unskilled laborers such as cleaning duties, cleaners or building work and agricultural work for men.
Allegedly new migrant workers were required for work in occupations that were new in the expanding labor market, such as building sites. Even if we assume that was the case, building sites aren’t new occupations and unemployment always existed between 7-10% during the first decade of the 21st century.
As the ‘reality’ for which we don’t all have a ‘consciousness’ is that before the immigrants arrived in Greece there were no house servants, no building workers, fishermen, no one dug any fields or worked in making furniture!
Let us contemplate the ‘logic’ of the ahistorical globalist: that before 1990 the Greek worker didn’t work; he knitted and waited for the arrival of immigrants to stand upright and become a new labor aristocracy. Now he has found a new occupation: ‘managers of consumerism,’ avoiding every labor intensive activity, just like the writers on immigration in the neoliberal era avoid every intellectual activity, with the end result of creating paper-thin arguments, full of contradictions.
Greek labor fought for labor standards. Ship owners destroyed them.
The whole of the history of the Greek labor movement and of every country is based primarily on one-two militant sections of workers with a history and tradition, with a socialist tradition and perspective for another world. The dockworkers and building workers before they were globalised were the advanced guard of class struggle. They were the example to be copied by all the other sections. Whoever sits to read a little history will see that the dockworkers and sailors were the first in Greece during the 2nd world war that created Workers’ Committees which decided and forced the ship owners onto their regime on the ships. They reached such a level of class militancy and dynamism that the bosses couldn’t recruit or sack who they wanted or when they wanted. Their fame spread in all the significant shipping fleets around the world and the dockers and sailors in many countries followed the example of the Greek dockworkers.
Greece occupied around 25% of the shipping fleet of the Western world and it is no coincidence that the ship owners tried to break the power of the dockworkers and ships crews. This was finally achieved by the rise of PASOK in power (in the early 1980’s) and the policies of the KKE who wrote off the leadership of the dockworkers and supported the party of ‘change’ (which is how PASOK called themselves). The ship owners created schools of sailors in the Philippines and slowly but surely started to replace Greek crews with hungry, politically subdued and educationally backward workers so as to escape from the high labor contracts, and the special provisions regarding unhygienic and dangerous labor, pre-determined hours of work and introducing on the ships a regime of the Roman galleys, once more.
The ship owners from their base in the City of London have in store a future identical to the one above for the whole of the working class. With the use of foreign crews they achieved what they hadn’t in four decades. They gained from the paltry wages they paid. More significantly they achieved a significant strategic defeat on the whole labor movement in Greece opening the path to the subjugation of all sectors, using as a lever neoliberal mass immigration. This task will be undertaken when every relationship with militant and revolutionary traditions of the Greek labor movement are broken with the replacement of the natural carriers of these traditions not by the 33% of the Greek TUC report but by 100%, with the support of the ‘leftist’ globalists.
People don’t ask to whom do the jobs belong. To the Greek workers or to their bosses? If the Greek boss had 5 Greek workers on an X wage and he sacks them recruiting 15 immigrants, he didn’t create 10 new positions but divided 5 wages to 15 people. With such logic (if anyone can call it that) they claim with all honesty that unemployment in Greece has remained stable and during certain periods even been reduced!… What a nice picture for Greek capitalism.[vi]
With 1/3 of the labor force being immigrants, with only 2,000 Greek seafarers left out of an estimated 100,000 in 1970, everything is going fine. For whom? This isn’t really the issue. Due to the immigrants the wages on the building sites –as everywhere else in the private sector – are now under the level of the 1980’s. Hours of work have gone through the roof. Thus the beggar became a ‘strong Greece.’ Greece from being at the bottom of the EU, due to the expansion of immigrant labor, is now somewhere in the middle. First among last, great is its glory (but these borders keep on closing whilst the EU keeps expanding).
We are told that the use of immigrants hasn’t occurred due to the profit collapse of gross sales by companies, but because of the expansion of the market. We needed immigrants in booming capitalism. You see, without them the Greek worker would be lazy. He wouldn’t get off the couch to pick a grape (despite doing this for thousands of years) or to clean a hospital.
Foreign workers do not take jobs from Greeks, this is the common refrain, as the market has developed and unemployment remained the same. But if the market truly developed, would unemployment remain the same? The unemployed remain unemployed in a period of growth of the economy? So who takes all the new jobs (if they truly exist) as they aren’t being taken by Greeks? Whilst some economists present a picture of economic boom of capitalism and the appearance of new jobs, unemployment remains static. In other words development doesn’t equal a drop in unemployment. Immigrants don’t then take the jobs of Greeks. Or are they taking the new jobs and therefore a drop in unemployment is impossible, despite development?
Trying to justify the unjustifiable and to state that the presence of immigrants has no social, political or economic consequences in the neoliberal era, but only brings to the surface the racist nature of Greek people, globalists who justify mass immigration are being led by mathematical precision into the camp of the apologists of capitalism, in its greatest crisis of history, which is attempting to survive transforming the planet into an arsenal of racial conflicts and planetary slavery. The industrial bourgeoisies in globalised capitalism will try to replace the hands it uses with cheaper and cheaper pools of labor, using the endless pools of illegal labor wherever it can on the planet. Not to improve the standard of life of the hungry and dispossessed but to destroy whatever was achieved by struggle by Western workers and to globalize immiseration.
Riots over Illegal Immigration
Two areas, one in the central Athenian working class district of Ag. Panteleomonas, and another in the port town of Patras, have finally broken center-stage in political life. Starting off by people living in the areas, they protested against the mass invasion, occupation and enforced ‘multiculturalism’ of the Greek globalist oligarchy whose starting point is the City of London.
Initially unable to know what to do and frightened of being blamed for racism they complained to the official authorities about the squatter camps of hundreds of illegal immigrants camped in town squares, in children’s play areas, outside churches. The mass number of illegals meant that not having any work, crime skyrocketed in these areas, people were frightened of moving about in their areas, local businesses were forced into closure, property prices catapulted downwards and communal areas were being used by people to defecate, take drugs, drink, even have sex in full public view. Globalization had finally arrived.
The press initially started a mass wave of criticism blaming the victims for the crimes. The authorities provided no facilities for the hundreds thousands of illegals. Why should they? They don’t live in working class areas. After all multiculturalism is for the poor, not the rich. Over a sustained period of six months the protestors were vilified by all: by the media, by the government, by the leftists, but not by the Greek people. They stood on their side, in every conversation on the street, in the markets, even by the first large wave of immigrants. There were Albanians who signed petitions against the multicultural wave from Afghanistan, Somalia, Morocco, Pakistan, Nigeria, Chad, Bangladesh etc. The numbers are now currently standing at around 4 million new immigrants in a country of 10 million, in 2009.
The government’s loyal followers in the form of the leftists started a mass campaign to brand the citizens of the central Athens district of Ag. Panteleomonas as ‘racists,’ ‘fascists,’ and ‘Nazis.’ They held demo after demo in the area trying to hound out the hundreds of local protestors.
The focal point was the biggest Orthodox Church in Greece and the children’s play area in its garden. They would not be cowed or browbeaten though. They fought back, with posters, leaflets, petitions leading up to a national protest in Omonia Square central Athens. After 9 months of struggle and after the disastrous Euroelections for the ruling parties of both right and left, they have finally achieved half their aims.
The square has been cleared and the illegal immigrants have been forced to move on. Of course they haven’t gone to the northern rich suburbs of Athens where the businessmen and politicians live, but the whole country has heard about them now. It’s become a national issue where before, it was a side issue. The KKE and the leftists in tow have stood on the opposite side of the class war with the government.
The fake Left has refused to participate or take up any of the issues. They have been forced to admit like the government that there is a problem. The 3,500-strong petition that was gathered (in November 2008) was of course ignored when circulated.
It will be extremely difficult to justify the current mass waves of sustained illegal immigration that currently number around 200,000 a year (2010 onward). When we had Muslim protests in Athens, this further weakened the position of illegal immigration. The Greek working class has no reason to accept wave upon wave of migrants when it itself cannot survive.
By 2009, the percentage of votes going to extreme rightwing parties was minimal and their representation in the Athens council elections (central districts where most of the immigrants congregated) was minor. The arrival of the Troika meant the parties of the extreme centre (PASOK, New Democracy) which adopted the economic genocide of Greece started to fragment and from a high point of combined votes of 85% of the electorate dropped to around 30% (in the 2012 elections) and the political vacuum created meant people voted for parties of the alleged extreme left and right. Retro-fascists in the form of a party called Golden Dawn gained national prominence and the myth created around this party was that it was fighting for state power, when it had no such intentions. It arrived on the scene due to the political vacuum created.
Just as most of the heavy industries of the EU went to Asia due to high labour costs, so the high cost of Greek labour led to the importation of wave upon wave of immigrants who took over whole industries: farming, catering, building, home care, hotel work and so on. Many bosses preferred cash in hand work with no contractual ties and achieved what they always wanted: a labour movement with no history and zero memory. This they achieved in a majority of sectors and wherever there is some industry left, Greeks remain at most 20% of the labour force.
When New Democracy took over the elections in 2012, it was under pressure, due to another round of riots in central Athens after the murder of a Greek by lumpen Afghanis for a video camera as he was taking his wife to give birth. This forced New Democracy to take emergency measures to limit the globalist inflows of migrants who congregated with nothing to do in all the central town squares. This forced Manolis Glezos (historic leader of the Left who helped tear down the German flag from the Akropolis during the occupation) to make a statement against the Left stating it has adopted mass immigration without any criticisms. [vii]
Anyone visiting Athens between 2008 and 2012 would have noticed the total absence of tourist police (they never existed), hundreds of unlicenced immigrant street sellers everywhere, tens of migrants going round in shopping trolleys taking old metal, hundreds involved in daily muggings and in particular many crimes against old people who couldn’t defend themselves, whilst we also had the arrival of teenage prostitutes from Africa pushed by pimps 50 meters from a central police station, just south of Omonia Square.
This in a country that suffered extensively during the German occupation losing around 10% of its overall population, with such violence being unknown against old people by hungry and starving Greeks. These were the social effects of neoliberal globalisation on the immigration side. It would also be absurd to believe that so many people could survive in an era of de-industrialisation just by arriving in Greece. The export of the Euro (hard currency) is of course the pull factor, but this would have a detrimental effect on the actual economy as wages were pinned to the floor and local companies would face the full weight of global competition as was witnessed by the mass importation of low priced goods from Asia. A return to a national currency would reduce the presence of such large numbers of migrants only because the currency of the country would no longer have a global trading status.
Dublin II and Frontex
Throughout the first decade of the 21st century an agreement was reached called Dublin II which stated that all new immigrant arrivals would have to be registered in the first country of arrival. For a decade this was argued against by the parties from the Left. The argument was that Greece could not become a depository of lost souls. In other words, once in, new migrants should be free to travel anywhere within the EU. So why even bother paying fig leaf to borders. Why not just set up direct flights to Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Congo for example, and ask who wants to fly to Europe? There would a lot less stress and a lot less corporate propaganda, but how could the powers that be sell this process?
Brussels has a no pushback policy implying that at anytime one is in the territory of the EU one has to be processed forwards, everything else is illegal. That also implies that the navy of each country which is in the Mediterranean has to accept anyone at sea. As the states don’t want to openly admit they desire the mass movement of populations from Asia and Africa into the EU, they like the fact that this is organised on a for profit basis by smugglers and hundreds drown every now and again. It serves their globalist agenda.
The unregistered process serves big business well, as a section of workers has no papers, and bosses can use them as a way of lowering wages across the board.
At around the same time another organisation Frontex was set up, based in Poland, whose aim was to process and register the hundreds of thousands that would arrive in the EU.
Syriza’s rise to power with Independent Greeks
If Turkey does not accept repatriation Greece cannot be the EU’s reservoir of lost souls. This was the new common refrain. Without officially abolishing Dublin II, Germany gave the green light for millions to arrive in the EU. Syriza complied.
Tens of thousands have arrived and there seems to be no let up in the situation.
What is the real agenda? Solving Germany’s demographic problem or weakening European elites? Evidence exists for both[viii] options.[ix]
There were indications that this was Syriza’s actual program: opening the borders and facilitating the mass importation of labor. It works insofar as tens of thousands don’t stay in Greece. Each new migrant is given a travel document to leave Greece within 30 days. Priority is only given to Afghanis, Iraqis and Syrians. The non-EU countries bordering Greece like the former Yugoslavia, have been targeted perhaps to bring it into the EU. Immigrants could in theory just go to wherever they wanted via Bulgaria as there are no borders with Greece. Merkel wanted Brussels to centralize the mass movement of migrants and for each member state to receive constant flows and for Frontex to decide who is registered as an asylum seeker so individual states lose control of their own territory.
The future will be explosive, just like the past.
One cannot argue the political elite did not understand the issues related to mass immigration and the demographic problems of Greece or the fact that neighbouring states have laid claim to Greek land. A whole parliamentary committee was set up and it produced a report in 1993 signed by all the major parties.
The open borders regime introduced with the election of Syriza has meant around 1 million have entered the EU via Greece (officially 740,000) in 2015. The EU commissioner on immigration who happens to be Greek (another ‘natural’ phenomenon) Dimitris Avramopoulos stated that “the end of the Schengen Treaty will mean the beginning of the end of Europe. We have thrown down the walls and we are seeing that some people are putting them up again,” reported Kontra newspaper on December 4, 2015.
Turkey is expected to receive 3 billion Euros in order to ship across 3 million more migrants in 2016 whilst Greece has agreed to house and feed 50,000 and set up another 4 processing centers on top of the 11 reception centers created in 2012.
The plan is to reintroduce Dublin II whereby migrants are kept in country of arrival for 18 months before being allowed to leave. The expulsion of Greece from Schengen is the new propaganda tool, just like Grexit before it, to force Greece to accept joint naval operations in the Aegean sea with Turkey, to accept sole responsibility of borders to Frontex and lose all rights of national sovereignty.
A weak state with porous borders: a new – found banana republic, without taking into account the host nation. How will they be housed and fed? Various programs are mentioned with respect to this, housing benefits and a minimal food subsidy. So do they have as an aim to house tens of thousands in empty properties that have been abandoned by owners due to the financial crash in Greece. Who will fix up these properties that are in decay? They will house thousands provisionally in old Olympic stadiums or ones still functioning eg. Galatsi, Faliro or the old Olympic Airport in Athens. Four new processing centres are to be set on Aegean islands but only one so far is functioning. No private housing has yet been set up, reported the ProtoThema newspaper on December 6.
The EU is founded on four core principles: freedom of movement of capital services, capital, and goods. Any logjam in any of them implies the EU starts to unravel. This is what the globalist elites want to avoid at all costs and will try their hardest to achieve.
We had before movements of populations into the EU that were related to decolonization, with Algeria and Vietnam being the two most prominent cases at stake.
Over 100,000 Algerians arrived who were part of the security services of occupied Algeria and a similar situation developed when up to 2 million Vietnamese left Vietnam in the mid-70s when the US occupation collapsed there. Parallels with our times exist in the departure of Iraq’s Kurds in the early 1990’s organized by the then Secretary of the Conservative Party of Great Britain Jeffrey Archer. Nowadays for Western imperialism to gain influence in each society it occupies, priority is given to all these local quislings like the campaigns to allow Afghani translators free access to the UK by the British Army. [x]
All these issues are pie in the sky schemes without taking into account local reactions. One cannot relocate Asia and Africa into the EU under ‘humanitarian’ guises or ‘welcome all refugees’ to justify a globalist neoliberal free for all. One can start a process, attempt to control it by using riot police to stop people’s reactions, but in the long term there will be civil wars. The USA is a special case. It was created from scratch as an area whereby each successive wave of migrants replaced another, creating multi-ethnic ghettoes in a period where stability was guaranteed by America’s global status. In declining capitalism only ethnic ghettoes can be created which are in conflict with each other over declining resources and the idea that a new order can be created which doesn’t resemble the old order of the past is indeed a fantasy by those who have given up hope in another world and support the neoliberal order of the current one.
In John Kerry’s recent visit to Athens, his only visit was to an NGO serving mass immigration called Melissa. There were zero protests against his visit.
Coolies: How Britain Reinvented Slavery tells the astonishing and controversial story of the systematic recruitment and migration of over a million Indians to all corners of the Empire. It is a chapter in colonial history that implicates figures at the very highest level of the British establishment and has defined the demographic shape of the modern world.
Iran moved another step away from international isolation after the UN’s nuclear watchdog announced on Tuesday it was closing a probe into whether Tehran sought to obtain nuclear weapons.
The decision was made by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as it looks to move forward with a nuclear deal signed by Iran and six world powers on July 14, which is supposed to see Tehran curb its nuclear program in return for economic sanctions being lifted.
IAEA official Yukiya Amano said his investigation could not “reconstruct all the details of activities conducted by Iran in the past.”
The decision means the 12-year investigation will now finally be closed, as the West had believed for over a decade that Tehran was striving to produce nuclear weapons. One diplomat who attended the meeting said the decision was reached by consensus, with all those attending in favor.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif applauded the move.
“We welcome the closure of the investigation of Iran’s past nuclear activities … the resolution by the board of governors of the agency … shows the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program,” the Tasnim news agency quoted Zarif as saying.
Iran says it will start implementing restrictions concerning its nuclear activities within the next two-to-three weeks.
“We are intending to complete this process within two-to-three weeks, so accelerate the implementation day as soon as possible,” Iranian envoy to the IAEA Reza Najafi stated, as cited by Reuters.
Meanwhile, Iranian nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi said he believes that economic sanctions against Tehran could be lifted within the next three weeks, following the decision made by the IAEA.
Iran issued a warning to the IAEA in November that if the nuclear probe was not closed, they risked Tehran abandoning the international atomic deal signed in July.
Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said that the closure of the case was a necessary prerequisite for the full implementation of the nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 nations.
Under the nuclear deal, Tehran agreed to put major curbs on its atomic program, particularly its enrichment of uranium to high purities. In return, all nuclear-related sanctions imposed by the US, the EU and the UN are to be lifted.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the well-known fan of air defence systems, is facing impeachment for an endless list of crimes. We have only got to this point because he is probably guilty of most of them.
The Speaker of Parliament, accountable to parliament and not government, has the authority to unveil official documents concerning his actions which have been hidden until now. If that happens, it is very likely that Erdogan’s rule will come to an abrupt end, simply because the list of charges is so long that even if only 10% can be proven that will be enough to sink him.
Many unofficial sources are claiming that Erdogan is going mad at hearing that the nation is no longer following him. Even former supporters who stood by him when he was accused of corruption are now leaving him. Erdogan is blaming all this on his former American aide, the Islamist Sai Baba Fethullah Gulen, the leader of a worldwide movement which is halfway between a faith organization and bunch of jack-of-all-trade agents active from China to the US. But it is not Gulen but Erdogan himself who is the object of criticism, and it would come as no surprise if documents released by his own comrades brought about his downfall.
Big statements
One of the issues these documents might talk about is the bomb massacre at a rally in Ankara which made world news. Prime Minister Davutoglu has claimed that two suicide bombers committed this attack on behalf of both ISIL and the PKK, the Kurdish separatist movement, working together.
This claim smears all the Turkish public’s bogeymen at once, but is highly unlikely to be true. Many of the people taking part in the rally were Kurds, it having been organised by the democratic Kurdish party, the HDP. The Turkish government is keen to draw a distinction between ordinary Kurds, and their democratic representatives, and PKK terrorists. This is the basis of the accusation that the PKK must have planned the attack.
But the PKK knows it does not have the strength to destroy the HDP, or take full control of the Kurdish independence movement. It also knows that when a longstanding grievance is resolved by political means the more radical elements gain more public support if they then join the political process. In Northern Ireland, for example, the moderate Republican and Unionist parties dominated their communities until peace was achieved, but then the more extreme parties displaced them as soon as they renounced violence, being seen as stronger voices for their people.
The PKK is also fighting ISIL in the hottest combat regions and is fundamentally opposed to it ideologically. It has more to gain by helping Turkey and the US defeat ISIL, in exchange for a Kurdish state at the end of it, than trying to overthrow a Turkish government which retains international support due to the country’s strategic location. A Kurdish state would be an appropriate thank you for the “moderate Kurdish” contribution to the war on terrorism, granted willingly and with public support, providing a get-out for all sides in that conflict.
Word on the street in Ankara is that the terrorist bombing was the work of the local special services, not ISIL, and probably acting with foreign support. In this view, its purpose was to rally the nation round Erdogan, the face of law and order. However, his refusal to make an official statement about the Ankara bombing for days suggests he has spurned the opportunity allegedly provided him.
Erdogan was elected on a platform of reviving the Golden Age, whenever that was, and making Turkey great again. But he is now putting at risk the economic strength and regional political clout which have become effective levers for doing just that. This is causing many to question his conduct over a number of other matters, which the general thrust of his policy and success enabled him to get away with before. With the idea of being imprisoned keeping him awake at night, Erdogan may well be tempted to resort to measures such as murdering his own citizens to maintain his hold on power, like many another isolated ruler before him.
Ivory towers
The embattled leader has tried to shore up his position by using another well-worn tactic of leaders under pressure – engaging in foreign diplomacy, which opposition groups can’t do, to show his superiority. But when Angela Merkel – who despises him, and doesn’t try to hide the fact – visited Turkey for multilateral talks on immigration and stopping the flood of migrants to Europe, this was seen as nothing more than a political stunt, on her part as well as his, as she has no intention of pulling out of the wars which are creating these migrants.
Erdogan also piled more pressure on himself by his approach to the talks. He complained that the 3 billion EUR the EU has offered to help Turkey take tougher measures against immigration is much less than Turkey is spending on caring for refugees at present. However, it is widely known that Turkey is encouraging, not stopping, the flow of migrants to Europe so that they can be used as a political weapon whenever suitable. This demonstrates that, having failed to get into the EU by fair, diplomatic means, Erdogan is happy to resort to foul ones. It is this which forms the substance of the documents the Turkish parliament, and his colleagues, might now release.
Paper castles
As in Kazakhstan, governments can get away with a lot if their economies are booming. Its previous economic strength had encouraged Turkey to bid for regional leadership, which every country which has had an empire believes is theirs as of right. But now the Turkish currency is in deep crisis. Last May the official exchange rate was 3.5 Turkish Lira to the British Pound, but this August it was 4.7. This steep decline has made the TL the worst-performing currency in the emerging global economies, and is making entrepreneurs’ lives impossible.
Turkey has few primary resources and suffers from a deep technological gap. Consequently, it cannot produce most of the components industry needs. These have to be imported, processed and then exported to pay for their importation, and with the local currency so weak it is very expensive and not competitive to do this. The new Russian sanctions will cause even more problems.
The high rate of inflation, apparently the product of heavy printing by the central bank, will soon make several businesses go bankrupt. Public debt is also rising, and is calculated in dollars, making Turkey very vulnerable to interest rate decisions made across the Atlantic. Far from being a regional leader, Turkey has become the modern financial world’s equivalent of a banana republic. Its current political position has been given it as a sop, to keep it onside until the time comes to pull the rug from under it.
Emperor’s new clothes
All this is laying bare the fact that it is time to “Talk Turkey” about Turkey. It has always been a US ally because of where it is, not for any other reason. The US doesn’t want it as a trusted ally, or really care about it.
Turkey is traditionally a foe of what is now the political West, which fought wars to liberate Europe from the Ottoman yoke and to keep modern Turkey from allying with Hitler in World War Two. It was made part of the West to stop the Communists, who had encircled it, getting their hands on its strategic ports.
But the West has never liked Turkey or what it does, despite its consistent praise of “improvements” in its continually vicious internal politics or its “support” of US ambitions. It’s not seen as a Western country but a military base in hostile territory, which the West has no choice but to indulge as far as possible.
This grudging indulgence has always been part of broader US calculations in the region. Several years ago Georgia was made the US forward operating base in the region partly because it wanted a way out of Turkey. Georgia isn’t big enough to play this role all the time, but its previous government was nasty enough to let the US do whatever it wanted, including murder, torture, training terrorists and manufacturing and exporting biological weapons, so that some of the reasons it needed Turkey no longer applied.
Now the US operation has moved to Ukraine, and a lot of the nasty Georgians with it. Ukraine does have the size, military capacity and strategic location to replace Turkey to a large degree. At this stage there are still too many vested interests for the US to just walk away from Turkey. But with everybody else also wanting out, how long will Erdogan be able to bank on this remaining truth?
Former Georgian President Saakashvili, who always said he would be back without the need for elections, was recently caught on tape plotting a coup which would be conducted from Turkey. Saakashvili is arrogant enough to think that he can say what he wants without being called to account, but not so stupid as to be caught in such a way by routine methods. These tapes were made somehow, most probably by “protectors” for whom he, like Turkey, has become a deep embarrassment.
Crashing and burning
Those tapes give the West a convenient way out of both Saakashvili’s gang and Turkey, which have now outlived their usefulness. They were one of the reasons Turkey shot down the Russian plane. But this action has provided another reason for Erdogan to be removed, as it was politically inexpedient, a violation of international law and presents Turkey as a supporter of a terrorist organisation, giving the West ample reason to interfere in its affairs yet again.
If Russia responds to the attack militarily NATO is obliged to defend Turkey. However NATO is now trying like hell to avoid expanding to its east, despite the number of countries knocking on its door, precisely because it doesn’t want to find itself obliged to send its forces to these countries. NATO cannot get sucked into war with Russia, or reconstitute the Turkish state, which is not homogeneous to begin with?
The French are fond of talking about their “Fifth Republic”, meaning the state established in 1958, when its current constitution was adopted. France existed before then of course, but under different constitutions and political arrangements. On each occasion, the old France collapsed and was thrown into the dustbin and replaced by a new one, even though it was physically the same country. Erdogan might well achieve his longed-for place in history by being the last president of THIS Turkish Republic, even though it will mean “crashing and burning” with it.
Bulgaria has shut its busy border crossing with Turkey, which is known for notorious activities of human trafficking and smuggling.
The busy Bulgaria-Turkey border crossing at Kapitan Andreevo, which is an important point of entrance to the European Union, would remain closed until further notice.
The closure came after Bulgaria detained some 14 customs officials in an anti-corruption raid on Sunday.
“All customs officers from the morning shift, who control the entries into Bulgaria at the Kapitan Andreevo (border checkpoint) were detained within a probe against contraband,” Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) quoted Bulgaria’s chief prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov as saying.
“We apologize to travelers” over the closure, the prosecutor added.
Media reports indicated that a queue of a dozen kilometers long of trucks, waiting to enter Bulgaria, had formed on the Turkish side.
According to Tsatsarov, State Agency for National Security (SANS) conducted about 100 raids in five towns close to the border.
Kapitan Andreevo is the largest and busiest border checkpoint in the Balkans. The crossing is also considered a major crossing point on the route between Europe and the Middle East.
In recent years, Bulgaria has deported hundreds of refugees at its border with Turkey as the poorest country of the European Union grapples with a sharp rise in the number of refugees from non-EU states.
The developments also come as European countries reportedly remain divided over how to deal with refugees, most of whom are fleeing conflict-hit zones in the Middle East and Africa.
The influx of asylum seekers into Europe has sparked pro- and anti-refugee sentiments across the continent.
Leader of several Balkan countries have repeatedly threatened to shut their borders if their northern European Union neighbors refuse to accept refugees.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov recently announced that Balkan nations desired a Europe-wide solution to the crisis, but would not become a “buffer zone” for the tens of thousands of newly-arriving refugees.
Sofia has already started mobilizing hundreds of forces to its border with Turkey to stop trespassing refugees amid ongoing measures elsewhere across Europe to counter the influx.
According to the recent figures released by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), over 924,140 refugees have reached Europe’s shores so far this year while more than 3,670 people have either died or gone missing in their perilous journey to the continent.
The US nuclear program poses an abstract threat to global stability, but it has also had direct repercussions for those working in atomic weapons facilities. A new investigative report reveals the staggering risks of radiation exposure from the Pentagon’s aging arsenal.
America’s nearly 70-year-old nuclear program has left an indelible mark on the world. But the Pentagon’s massive stockpile of atomic weapons, rotting away in bunkers, has also gradually poisoned the bombs’ caretakers.
In addition to the roughly 200,000 people killed during the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a new investigative report from McClatchy has found that at least 33,480 Americans have been killed from radiation exposure during the last seven decades.
The report is based on over 100 interviews with individuals who have worked in and lived near weapons plants, as well as the analysis of over 70 million federal records.
In 2001, the US government created a special fund to quietly pay out compensation for those affected by nuclear radiation. Officials initially estimated that the program would only need to serve 3,000 people, but that number has soared in 14 years.
While over 33,000 of the individuals on that list are dead, they represent only a fraction of the 107,394 people who have been diagnosed with cancer after working with the nation’s nuclear stockpile. Through the program, American taxpayers have spent $12 billion covering medical expenses, and that amount only covers half of those affected.
Over 50,000 people have gone without compensation, despite their debilitating illnesses.
“I thought I was approved and shared it with my wife,” George Smith Anderson Jr., a former worker at a nuclear weapons plant in Georgia, told McClatchy, “and within no time at all it was disapproved.” He died of multiple myeloma last month.
The report comes as the United States is about to spend an estimated $1 trillion upgrading its nuclear stockpile of 4,700 weapons. The plan has drawn fierce criticism on a number of fronts. Many have questioned the need to spend such exorbitant sums, especially as the world works toward nuclear disarmament.
The upgrades have also come under fire for potentially breaching a pledge made by the Obama administration. While Washington is not supposed to develop any new weapons, many have criticized the modifications being made to the current arsenal. Adding new tail kits, the Pentagon aims to make its “dumb” nukes precision guided. The upgrades will also give the bombs an adjustable yield.
“If I can drive down the yield, drive down, therefore, the likelihood of fallout, etc, does that make it more usable in the eyes of some – some president or national security decision-making process?” former head of US Strategic Command General James Cartwright told PBS.
“And the answer is, it likely could be more usable.”
But McClatchy’s report also raises health concerns over the upgrades, as stronger safety standards have not prevented radiation exposure. Faced with questions over the program’s hefty price tag, officials have also been looking for ways to cut costs. Much of those savings will come from workers’ health benefits.
“Whenever you work at a nuclear plant and you deal with nuclear material, the most important thing to you is going to be your medical benefits,” Roger Richard, a production technician at a warhead reassembly plant, told McClatchy.
“It’s not prejudiced,” Clarence Rashada, the president of Amarillo Metal Trades Union, told McClatchy, speaking of the illnesses nuclear workers take on.
“If you’re on the plant…you’ll get something eventually.”
By James W. Carden | The Realist Review | June 14, 2026
Joe Biden’s presidency may ultimately come to be seen as a cautionary tale. Here was a president who showed little interest in entertaining arguments that might have contradicted his most deeply held assumptions.[1] And there were precious few within the upper ranks of the administration who might have attempted to do so, after all, only policy hands and political operatives who had come up through the ranks of the Clinton and Obama administrations or had longstanding ties to the citadels of the foreign policy community were invited into the fold. … continue
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.
Aletho News
Aletho News 