No breakthrough in Milan talks on Ukraine crisis
‘Difficult, full of disagreements’
RT | October 17, 2014
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said a breakthrough was not reached in Friday morning’s talks on Ukraine, Reuters reports.
“I cannot see a breakthrough here at all so far,” Merkel said after top EU leaders met with Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on the sidelines of an EU-Asia summit.
“We will continue to talk. There was progress on some details, but the main issue is continued violations of the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” she added.
A political solution to the conflict in Ukraine has not yet been found, President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy commented after the meeting, according to RIA Novosti.
Rompuy said the participants have all agreed on the need to follow through on the peace agreement reached in Minsk, Belarus at the beginning of September.
“What we agreed was the protocol of Minsk on the ceasefire, and the peace plan is of crucial importance,” Rompuy said.
“We have to implement this. This would guarantee again a future for Ukraine. So implementation, implementation, implementation — those are the key words.”
Earlier Vladimir Putin described his meeting with the Ukrainian president on Friday as “positive.” The Russian president’s spokesman however noted some of the meeting participants were reluctant to understand the true situation in eastern Ukraine.
“It was good, it was positive,” a smiling Putin told reporters after the discussions at the margins of a summit of Asian and European leaders in Italy according to Reuters.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, meanwhile acknowledged the negotiations were “difficult” ones due to a number of differences and misunderstandings among the participants.
“The negotiations are really difficult, full of disagreements, full of misunderstandings,” Peskov said. “Nevertheless they are still taking place. There’s an exchange of opinions.”
“The participants have discussed in detail the implementation of the Minsk agreements effectively enough,” Peskov said.
“Unfortunately, some of the breakfast participants demonstrated their complete reluctance to understand the real situation in the southeast of Ukraine.”
The presidents of Russia and Ukraine met on Friday morning in Milan. They were joined by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, British Prime Minister David Cameron and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.
The meeting was hosted by the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who said that while some progress had been made, “a lot of differences” still remain on the Ukrainian crisis.
There’s a possibility Putin and Poroshenko will hold a bilateral meeting at the summit, Peskov said, adding that Russia would like journalists to participate.
“[Journalist participation] will depend upon our Ukrainian partners. We are open – we hope they are too.”
Putin drew gas figures for Merkel
Russian gas supplies to Ukraine are expected to be one of the most difficult issues on the summit agenda. Kiev is due to pay out $3.1 billion debt to Gazprom until the New Year, according to the latest Russia-Ukraine agreement. There are fears, though, that the crisis-struck country will not be able to make the payment, possibly leading to disruptions of gas supplies, including those to Europe via Ukraine.
The gas issue was among things the Russian president discussed with the German chancellor during their meeting on Thursday.
“Yesterday Putin informed Merkel in detail about the gas issues,” Putin’s spokesman said. “He literally took a pen and drew figures on a piece of paper to explain the situation.”
More gas discussions are to follow, as Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak and head of Gazprom Aleksey Miller are part of the Russian delegation in Italy.
According to Peskov, Thursday’s reports from Poland have shed much light on the gas conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
“Our Polish partners have reacted in such a lively way to news of Ukraine wanting to get Polish coal almost free of charge,” Peskov said. “This is the best illustration of what’s going on in the gas sphere. The Poles were greatly impressed and did not conceal their shock. But still they can fully understand the desire to have gas free of charge.”
Privatized Ebola
By Margaret Kimberley | Black Agenda Report | October 15, 2014
Sierra Leone has waved the white flag in the face of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). Its meager infrastructure has buckled under the onslaught of a disease which could have been curtailed. The announcement that infected patients will be treated at home because there is no longer the capacity to treat them in hospitals is a surrender which did not have to happen. Not only did Europe and the United States turn a blind eye to sick and dying Africans but they did so with the help of an unlikely perpetrator.
The World Health Organization is “the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system.” Its very name implies that it takes direction from and serves the needs of people all over the world but the truth is quite different. The largest contributor to the WHO budget is not a government. It is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which provides more funding than either the United States or the United Kingdom. WHO actions and priorities are no longer the result of the consensus of the world’s people but top down decision making from wealthy philanthropists.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation may appear to be a savior when it provides $300 million to the WHO budget, but those dollars come with strings attached. WHO director general Dr. Margaret Chan admitted as much when she said, “My budget [is] highly earmarked, so it is driven by what I call donor interests.” Instead of being on the front line when a communicable disease crisis appears, it spends its time administering what Gates and his team have determined is best.
The Ebola horror continues as it has for the last ten months in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The cruelty of the world’s lack of concern for Africa and all Africans in the diaspora was evident by the inaction of nations and organizations that are supposed to respond in times of emergencies. While African governments and aid organizations sounded the alarm the WHO did little because its donor driven process militates against it. The world of private dollars played a role in consigning thousands of people to death.
Critics of the Gates Foundation appeared long before this current Ebola outbreak. In 2008 the WHO’s malaria chief, Dr. Arata Kochi, complained about the conflicts of interest created by the foundation. In an internal memo leaked to the New York Times he complained that the world’s top malaria researchers were “locked up in a ‘cartel’ with their own research funding being linked to those of others within the group.” In other words, the standards of independent peer reviewed research were cast aside in order to please the funder.
Private philanthropy is inherently undemocratic. It is a top down driven process in which the wealthy individual tells the recipient what they will and will not do. This is a problematic system for charities of all kinds and is disastrous where the health of world’s people is concerned. Health care should be a human right, not a charity, and the world’s governments should determine how funds to protect that right are spent. One critic put it very pointedly. “…the Gates Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates, do not believe in the public sector, they do not believe in a democratic, publically owned, publically accountable system.”
There is little wonder why the Ebola outbreak caught the WHO so flat footed as they spent months making mealy mouthed statements but never coordinating an effective response. The Gates foundation is the WHO boss, not governments, and if they weren’t demanding action, then the desperate people affected by Ebola weren’t going to get any.
Privatization of public resources is a worldwide scourge. Education, pensions, water, and transportation are being taken out of the hands of the public and given to rich people and corporations. The Ebola crisis is symptomatic of so many others which go unaddressed or improperly addressed because no one wants to bite the hands that do the feeding.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged an additional $50 million to fight the current Ebola epidemic but that too is problematic, as Director General Chan describes. “When there’s an event, we have money. Then after that, the money stops coming in, then all the staff you recruited to do the response, you have to terminate their contracts.” The WHO should not be lurching from crisis to crisis, SARS, MERS, or H1N1 influenza based on the whims of philanthropy. The principles of public health should be carried out by knowledgeable medical professionals who are not dependent upon rich people for their jobs.
The Gates are not alone in using their deep pockets to confound what should be publicly held responsibilities. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was contributing $25 million to fight Ebola. His donation will go to the Centers for Disease Control Foundation. Most Americans are probably unaware that such a foundation even exists. Yet there it is, run by a mostly corporate board which will inevitably interfere with the public good. The WHO and its inability to coordinate the fight against Ebola tells us that public health is just that, public. If the CDC response to Ebola in the United States fails it may be because it falls prey to the false siren song of giving private interests control of the people’s resources and responsibilities.
Margaret Kimberley can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
Russia orders limit on foreign ownership of mass media
RT | October 15, 2014
The Russian president has signed into law a bill, which sets the maximum foreign stake in Russian mass media companies at 20 percent.
The law will come into force on January 1, 2016, and media companies must submit reports on their stockholders before February 15, 2016.
The bill was drafted by opposition MPs in September and passed by parliament very quickly. Apart from lowering the maximum share in Russian mass media companies allowed for foreign citizens and firms from the current 50 percent to 20 percent, the draft bans foreigners from being founders of Russian mass media companies. The same restrictions apply to residents without citizenship and Russians who have citizenship of other nations.
There are exceptions for media derived from state-level international treaties, like Mir television, which was founded jointly by several CIS nations.
The sponsors of the motion said the main reason behind it was the desire to provide maximum information security. They also noted that the 20 percent limit was chosen because a 25 percent share would enable a powerful veto possibility, allowing its owners to exert serious influence on the information policy of any media outlet.
“Those who own information own the world. It is obvious that when foreigners enter the mass media market of any country they practically gain access to people’s minds, to forming public opinion. And we must draw a clear line here – what are the reasons behind such purchases? Do they want simply to do business or do they want to enforce their policies and to change the situation inside the country?” asked MP Vadim Dengin of the nationalist LDPR caucus.
Other lawmakers claimed that the need for restrictions became obvious after the recent crisis in Ukraine demonstrated that some sectors of the Russian press can be biased in their coverage of important topics.
The new Russian law is in line with international practice as many countries in the world have already protected their informational space from excessive foreign influence. For example, Australia has set a 30 percent limit of foreign ownership in national mass media and Canada has a law limiting foreign ownership in electronic mass media by 46 percent. The United States allows foreigners to control not more than 25 percent of American TV and radio stations, while Japan has set this limit at 20 percent. France will not allow non-EU citizens and companies to possess more than 20 percent of its mass media. In the UK, the shares of foreign stockholders in mass media corporations cannot exceed those owned by British investors.
Current foreign ownership in Russian mass media is fairly high, especially in the magazine and newspaper business where 60 percent of companies have significant foreign shareholders. Some print media companies are owned by businessmen, who hold dual citizenship, and these individuals will, under the new law, become ineligible to continue as owners.
Street Demonstrations In 21 European Countries Held To Protest Against TAFTA/TTIP; Another ACTA Revolt Brewing?
By Glyn Moody | Techdirt | October 15, 2014
Last month, the European Commission refused to accept a request to allow an official EU-wide petition called a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) to take place. This was a curiously maladroit move by the Commission: it would have been easy to allow the petition against TAFTA/TTIP and CETA to proceed, thank the organizers once it was completed, file it away somewhere and then ignore it. Instead, by refusing to allow it to take place, the European Commission has highlighted in a dramatic manner the deeply undemocratic way in which so-called trade agreements are conducted.
Moreover, those making the request have simply gone ahead anyway, launching what they call the “Self-organised European Citizens’ initiative Against TTIP and CETA“. Even though this was only launched last week, it has already collected over 600,000 signatures from European citizens at the time of writing, and there is every indication that it will go well past the nominal one million signatures that the ECI would have required. The European Commission’s refusal to allow the official petition was doubly stupid, since it came shortly before a Europe-wide day of action against TAFTA/TTIP that took place last Saturday, and doubtless encouraged people to take to the streets in order to make their views felt:
On October 11, 2014, tens of thousands of people and hundreds of organisations in 21 countries are organising actions to reclaim democracy, and stop the negotiations on three far-reaching trade agreements: the EU-US deal (TTIP), the EU-Canada deal (CETA) and the trade in services deal (TiSA).
This decentralised European Day of Action — consisting of over 300 actions, marches, meetings and flash mobs — is being organised by an unprecedented alliance of civil society groups and individuals, social movements, trade unions, rights defenders, farmers and grassroots activist groups.
Reporting on the event, Euractiv.com wrote:
Some 400 activist groups marched all over Europe on Saturday (11 October) in protest against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), as the EU-US trade deal crystallises opposition to a wide variety of issues — from shale gas to corporate finance.
That last point is important. Euractiv.com goes on to explain:
The opposition to TTIP has many faces however, and seems to embody a wide variety of concerns. In France, many small demonstrations focused on opposition to shale gas, especially in the South of France, while in Berlin protesters were worried that TTIP would weaken the powers of the German regions, or Länders.
Potentially, that could make the European opposition to TAFTA/TTIP even broader-based than it was to ACTA, where people were largely concerned about a single issue — digital rights. And just as the ACTA demonstrations started off small scale, but grew to hundreds of thousands of people before ACTA was rejected by the European Parliament, so the anti-TTIP movement in Europe could easily swell larger still. Especially if the European Commission continues to conduct the negotiations in secret and without any input from its citizens.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+
US sanctions against Russia is economic terrorism – Morales to RT
RT | October 14, 2014
US sanctions against Russia can be considered as economic terrorism, said acting Bolivian President Evo Morales in an interview to RT. He also revealed his secret job aspiration.
“This [US sanctions against Russia] is genuine economic terrorism. The country that thinks it can dominate the world is making a mistake,” says Morales.
“I think that US President Barack Obama doesn’t’ know what is going on in other countries and continents.”
According to Morales, a single country “cannot rule in this multipolar world,” as all the issues should be “settled in cooperation among the states; that’s what the UN is for.”
“Thus I condemn and reject these kind of actions [US sanctions against Russia],” said the president, adding that Bolivia shares “the struggle of the Russian people.”
“I express my solidarity with Russian people and their President [Vladimir Putin],” he added.
Morales recently coasted to victory in the country’s presidential elections. He won the third term, securing 60.5 percent of the vote according to a count released by local TV channel ATB.
“This win is a triumph for anti-imperialists and anti-colonialists,” Morales announced from the balcony of his palace to thousands of supporters. He dedicated his victory to Cuba’s ex-President Fidel Castro and the late Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez.
Morales took office in 2006, and after the latest victory will remain the state leader until January 2020.
Under Morales’ term the number of Bolivians living in extreme poverty reduced and he delivered economic growth of more than 5 percent a year.
In an interview with RT, he noted that one of the main political purposes for Bolivia will be fighting poverty.
“I hope that nobody will have the childhood I had: without electricity, telecommunications, drinking water,” said Morales, adding that he often drank water from a pond when he was a child.
According to the Bolivian president, the country has achieved in just nine years what it hitherto couldn’t achieve in 180.
“I want to speak of my experience. How important it was to start from the bottom: poverty. That’s why I always say that my nation is my family. Homeland is my soul. Bolivia is my life.” … Full article
Venezuela Declares Victory over Transnational in Response to Exxon-Mobil Settlement Ruling
By Cory Fischer-Hoffman | Venezuelanalysis | October 10, 2014
Caracas – On Thursday, The International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) stated that Venezuela’s compensation payment to Exxon Mobil Corp for the 2007 nationalization of the oil company’s holdings in the country should only be 13% of the amount that the transnational company claimed that it was owed. Venezuelan officials have described the ruling as a victory and a testament to the country’s sovereignty.
In 2007, PDVSA, Venezuela’s state oil company, renegotiated their contract with Exxon Mobil so that less of the profits from oil extraction would leave the country. Following ten years of very profitable oil exploitation by the foreign corporation in Venezuela’s Orinoco region, Exxon Mobil resisted the partial nationalization measures. When two of its refineries were then expropriated, the company brought the case to arbitration, demanding a compensation of USD $20 billion, which they later reduced to $12 billion.
The ICSID ruling on Thursday stated that Venezuela’s payment to Exxon Mobil would be $1.6 billion, an amount far lower than what the company had claimed. Venezuela’s foreign minister, Rafael Ramirez said that this ruling “confirmed that the level of compensation sought had been exorbitant and completely unjustified.”
An Exxon spokesperson said the nationalization was “clearly not a desirable outcome” and he went on to claim that Venezuela “failed to provide fair compensation for expropriated assets.” According to the Wall Street Journal, Exxon Mobil’s sales last year of USD $438 billion are roughly equivalent to Venezuela’s gross domestic product.
While Exxon Mobil has admitted defeat, the Venezuelan government, still owing the oil giant $1.6 billion, has claimed a victory. Ramirez noted in his official statement, “Once again the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, its government, institutions and workers have confronted and [have] been able to defeat the aggressions of powerful transnational interests.”
Venezuela still faces pending rulings for other expropriated industries and the much anticipated ruling in the ConocoPhillips expropriation case is expected within the next few months. Ramirez insisted that the government sees these arbitrations as an affront to the country’s sovereignty and that they will continue to fight compensation claims from multinationals.
“We reiterate that Venezuela must be respected, we are committed to defending our independence and sovereignty in all scenarios” Ramirez concluded as he read the government statement following Thursday’s ruling.
Ukraine will need extra funding to stay afloat – IMF head
RT | October 10, 2014
The Ukrainian economy, weakened by war, needs additional funding from sources beyond the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to stay afloat, the fund’s head Christine Lagarde has said.
The IMF’s December estimate of the cash needed has turned out to be insufficient following the continued conflict in the country.
“Additional funding will have to come” after the IMF reviews the current bailout strategy, Lagarde said at a Bretton Woods Committee event on the sidelines of the annual IMF and World Bank meetings of finance ministers and central bankers.
“To assume that the additional funding will have to come from the IMF, I think is rather far-fetched,” she said. “If the economy has to be restored and stability maintained, money will have to come from multiple sources.”
Initially it was planned that $30 billion in aid, of which the IMF pledged to allocate $17 billion, would be enough to restore the economy. The April bailout was predicated on the expectation that the conflict in eastern Ukraine would end in the early autumn.
The IMF’s review updated last month, showed that the country’s financing needs could rise by $19 billion if the civil war continues.
Despite the World Bank’s forecast that country will likely be in a deep recession until at least 2016, the IMF projects the economy expanding next year.
Cuba Denounces US for Manipulation of Terrorism Claims
teleSUR | October 9, 2014
Cuba has been on the U.S. State Department’s list of countries that according to Washington supports terrorism since 1982, despite lack of evidence that the Caribbean country has been supplying arms or other support to extremists.
In a statement before the United Nations, Cuba denounced the United States for its use of the term “terrorism” saying they manipulate the term for political purposes.
Tanieris Dieguez, the third secretary of the permanent mission of Cuba, Wednesday said that it was absurd that Cuba remains on the U.S. list of countries that support terrorism, referring to the report published April 30 by the State Department naming Cuba a “State Sponsor of Terrorism.” Dieguez statements were published Wednesday by the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina.
The list was created by the State Department in 1979, and is meant to apply to countries that it considers as having “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism,” according to their website. It includes providing administrative and arms exports, as well as other foreign assistance to terrorist bodies. The penalties for the countries on the list are strong sanctions.
Cuba has been on the list since March 1, 1982. The other countries on the list are Iran, Sudan and Syria.
In a forum of the Sixth Committee of the General Assembly – the primary U.N. forum for considering legal questions – Dieguez said Washington keeps Cuba on the list to justify the harsh economic, commercial and financial sanctions imposed on the island, despite the lack of evidence that the government is aiding extremist organizations.
The main focus of the assembly was the elimination of international terrorism, where Dieguez rejected “the manipulation of such a sensitive issue.”
The Cuban diplomat also reminded the U.N. that Cuba has been hosting Colombia’s current peace negotiations since 2012, showing support for the peace process. She also reaffirmed Cuba’s backing the adoption of a general convention on terrorism, and a UN sponsored world conference on the topic to attempt to find coordinated global solutions to the problem.
Cuban citizens had hoped that the U.S. would not keep the island on the “State Sponsor of Terrorim” list this year – a decision that is evaluated and made yearly – because it “fails to meet the statutory criteria for being removed,” say U.S. officials.
New frontiers for oil palm
Communities lose out to oil palm plantations
GRAIN | September 22, 2014
Palm oil is not something you would associate with a Mexican kitchen. But go to any supermarket in the country, and you will find countless products containing it. The country’s food system has changed immensely since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect in 1994 and multinational companies moved in to take control of the country’s food supply. The alarming rate of obesity, now higher than that of the US, is one manifestation of Mexico’s changing food landscape, and tied to this is the escalating consumption of palm oil.
Palm oil consumption has increased by over four times since NAFTA was signed, and it now accounts for one quarter of the vegetable oil consumed by the average Mexican, up from 10% in 1996. Other countries in Latin America undergoing similar changes to their food systems have also increased their consumption of palm oil. Venezuelans have doubled their intake, and Brazilians are consuming 5 times what they did in 1996.
This growing consumption is matched by growing production, not in Mexico, but in those countries where oil palm can be most cheaply produced. A third of Latin America’s palm oil exports now go to Mexico.
Colombia, with about 450,000 ha under production, is the biggest palm oil producer in the Americas. Since the late 1990s, Colombia’s palm oil production has taken off for several overlapping reasons, including government incentives and a national biodiesel mandate. Oil palm has also been promoted as a substitute crop for coca as part of the US-backed “Plan Colombia” – a programme aimed at ending the country’s long-standing armed conflict and curbing cocaine production. Paradoxically, palm oil is also proving a useful way for drug cartels, paramilitaries and landlords to launder money and maintain control of the countryside.
The most notorious land grabs for palm oil in Colombia have occurred in the north west Chocó province, where businessmen and paramilitaries have colluded to force Afro-Colombian communities to cede their territories for palm oil plantations and contract farming. After dozens of Afro-Colombian leaders were killed resisting such land grabs, Colombia’s Prosecutor General’s Office brought forward charges against 19 palm oil businessmen for crimes of conspiracy, forced displacement, and the invasion of ecologically important land. Three of these businessmen have so far been convicted.
Disease outbreaks have limited palm oil’s expansion in Chocó Province and most of the expansion has instead happened on the pasture lands of the central and eastern parts of the country, where the oil palm industry claims there is little deforestation and displacement of peasants. But studies show that these pasture lands are in fact typically common areas vital to peasants for the production of their food crops and the grazing of their livestock. The “pasture lands” are often the only lands that peasants have access to, and palm oil companies routinely use force and coercion, including paramilitaries, to take control of these lands from them or to force them into oppressive contract production arrangements. Across Colombia, the expansion of palm oil and the presence of paramilitaries are tightly correlated.
Ecuador, Latin America’s second largest palm oil producer, has also seen a recent expansion in oil palm production. While much of its palm oil is produced on farms of less than 50 ha, new expansion is driven by private companies who have been moving into the territories of Afro-Ecuadorians and other indigenous peoples in the Northern part of the country, leading to severe deforestation and displacement and meeting with stiff local resistance.
Land conflicts over palm oil are also erupting in Central America. In Honduras, peasants in the Aguan Valley have been killed, jailed and terrorized for trying to defend their lands and small palm oil farms from powerful national businessmen who have been grabbing their lands to expand their palm oil plantations with the backing of foreign capital. Ironically, these peasant families first moved into the forests of the Aguan in the 1970s as part of a government land reform programme, and were encouraged to grow palm oil and establish their own cooperatives. The neoliberal policies of the 1990s and a coup d’état in 2009, opened the door for powerful local businessmen like Miguel Facussé, to destroy the peasant cooperatives, violently grab lands for plantations, and reorient the supply chain towards exports for biofuels and multinational food companies. Likewise in Guatemala, where production of palm oil has quadrupled over the past decade, the palm oil sector is now entirely controlled by just eight wealthy families who have been aggressively seizing lands from indigenous communities, such as the Q’eqchi,
Some industry insiders predict that an expansion of oil palm production in Brazil will soon dwarf all other production in the region. Brazil is a net importer, and production has so far been confined to a small area of Pará, in the North. But, unlike in other regional palm oil producing countries where production is dominated by national companies and wealthy landowning families, transnational corporations have recently made significant investments in Brazilian palm oil production, such as the mining company Vale, energy companies Petrobras and Galp, and ADM, one of the world’s largest grain traders and a major shareholder in the world’s largest palm oil processor Wilmar.
Going further
Tanya M. Kerssen, “Grabbing Power: The New Struggles for Land, Food and Democracy in Northern Honduras,” FoodFirst, 1 February 2013
Human Rights Everywhere, “The flow of palm oil Colombia- Belgium/Europe: A study from a human rights perspective,” 2006
Illusionary Growth
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS | CounterPunch | October 3, 2014
It is amazing how the government manages to continue selling Brooklyn Bridges to a gullible public. Americans buy wars they don’t need and economic recoveries that do not exist.
The best investment in America is a highly leveraged fund that invests only in large cap companies that are buying back their own stocks. Many of the firms repurchasing their stocks are borrowing in order to push up their stock prices, executive “performance bonuses,” and shareholders’ capital gains. The debt incurred will have to be serviced by future earnings. This is not a picture of capitalism that is driving the economy by investment.
Neither is consumer spending driving the economy. The US Census Bureau’s 2013 Income and Poverty Report concludes that in 2013 real median household income was 8 percent below the amount in 2007, the year prior to the 2008 recession and has declined to the level in 1994, two decades ago! Even though real household income has not regained the pre-recession level and has declined to the level 20 years ago, the government and financial press claim that the economy has been in recovery since June 2009.
Neither is an increase in consumer debt driving the economy. The only growth in personal debt is in student loans.
Real retail sales (corrected with a non-rigged measure of inflation) remain at the level of the bottom of the recession in 2009. Macy’s , J.C. Penny’s, and Sears store closings are further evidence of the lack of retail sales growth, as is the fact that two of the three dollar store chains are in trouble. Walmart’s sales are declining.
The basis of auto sales hype is subprime loans and leases taken by those who cannot qualify for a loan to purchase.
Housing starts remain far below the pre-recession level, which is not surprising when available jobs are part-time with no benefits. Such jobs cannot support the formation of households and purchase of homes.
Where does the government’s second quarter 2014 real GDP growth rate of 4.6 percent come from? It comes from an understated inflation measure and jiggled numbers. It is not a correct figure. Nothing has occurred in the economy to turn it from a first quarter decline of more than 2 percent into a second quarter growth of 4.6 percent.
The 4.6 percent number is pulled out of a hat to set the stage for the November election.
It is extraordinary that economists and the financial media permit the government to get away with its false economic reporting. Of course Wall Street likes good news . . . but fake news that misleads investors and covers up economic policy mistakes?
Clearly, something is wrong with the government’s economic reporting. It is not possible to have real GDP growth when real median family incomes are declining and business investment consists of corporations buying back their own shares. Either the government’s GDP estimate is incorrect or the Census Bureau’s Income and Poverty report is incorrect. Apparently Washington doesn’t understand that if it is going to rig the numbers, it must rig all the numbers.
The rigged inflation measures create illusionary real GDP growth. They also block cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security pensions. Indeed, the main purpose of the rigged inflation measures is to get rid of “socialistic” Social Security by allowing inflation to gradually erode away the real values of “entitlements.” Republicans always want to cut “entitlements” that people have paid for over their working lifetime with the payroll tax. But Republicans never want to cut the payroll tax. They need the revenues in order to bail out the big banks and to pay for never-ending wars.
Washington has been conducting needless wars abroad for 93 percent of the 21st century at a cost of trillions of dollars. More trillions have been wasted bailing out banks that deregulation permitted to become “too big to fail.” During the past seven years, millions of Americans have lost their jobs and their homes, and food stamp rolls have reached record numbers. These hurting Americans have been ignored by policy-makers in Washington.
Clearly, government in America is focused on something different from a healthy economy and the well being of citizens. We call it democracy, but it’s not.
Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.
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Britain’s secret role in the brutal US war in Vietnam
By Mark Curtis | MintPress News | November 16, 2022
There is a myth the UK did not support Washington’s war against Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, Labour and Conservative governments backed every phase of US military escalation and played secret roles in the conflict, declassified files show.
- UK sent SAS team to Vietnam in 1962, flew secret RAF missions to deliver arms, and provided intelligence to US
- UK governments lied to parliament they were not providing military advice to South Vietnam’s brutal regime
- Labour government secretly gave arms to US for use in Vietnam, stressing need for “no publicity”
- It also connived with Washington to deceive UK public over its support for US
- UK governments knew of atrocities against civilians but backed US war aims
- Whitehall only started to advocate a peaceful solution, on US terms, once the war became unwinnable
During its war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s the US dropped more bombs than in the whole of World War Two, in a conflict that killed over two million people. The wholesale destruction of villages and killing of innocent people was a permanent feature of the US war from the beginning, along with widespread indiscriminate bombing.
Britain’s role in the war has been largely buried and must be almost completely unknown to the public. When the UK media mentions the war now, reports often simply reference the refusal by Harold Wilson’s government to agree to US requests to openly deploy British troops.
Although this was certainly a public rebuff to Washington, Britain did virtually everything else to back the US war over more than a decade, the declassified documents show. … continue
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- Epstein Advised U.S. Treasury on Crypto During Obama’s Iran Sanctions Push
- No Tricks Zone
- German Expert: “No Climate Crisis” …”Warming Generally Better For Humanity”
- New Paleo Research: Modern ‘Climate Change’ Has Had No Apparent Impact On Precipitation Patterns
- 90% Subsidized… Bielefeld Germany’s €7 Million Hydrogen Garbage Truck Fleet Sits Idle
- New Study: Declining Trends In 1980-2023 Tropical Cyclone Frequency, Accumulated Energy
- 46 IPCC Scientists Break Rank, Publicly Challenge Long-Standing Dogmatic Climate Claims
- Another Study Links Warming To Cloud Forcing, Shortwave Radiation, Natural Atmospheric Circulation
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
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