‘Superior’ designer babies born into the upper class with genetically modified physical appearances and intelligence could be just years away, a British geneticist has warned, after scientists announced they had used gene editing to repair a mutation in human embryos.
In a world first, US researchers announced on Wednesday in the science journal Nature they had used the controversial gene editing technique, CRISPR-Cas9, to correct a mutation for a heart condition in embryos.
The technique could eventually let doctors remove inherited conditions from embryos before they go on to become a child. That, in turn, opens up the possibility of diseases like cystic fibrosis and ovarian cancer being wiped out entirely, researchers say.
Although the scientists only edited out mutations that could cause diseases, it modified the nuclear DNA that sits right at the heart of the cell, which also influences personal characteristics such as intelligence, height, facial appearance and eye color.
While many are hailing the research as an exciting breakthrough, Dr David King of Human Genetics Alert in London told RT it could eventually lead to a “eugenics scenario.”
King, who is a geneticist and molecular biologist, says only the upper echelons of society would be able to afford the expensive technology. Many will want to give their children “genetic advantages over other people’s children” and see it as an “investment” to give them “the best start in life,” he says.
“I think that in a world in which some people are regarded as genetically superior to others because they have been genetically enhanced is a radically more unequal and oppressive world than what we have now,” King says.
“I don’t think it’s unrealistic that once you’ve had a few generations of an elite being genetically enhanced and the rest of us not being, then people in the elite will not have any real interest in having children with members of the rest of the population.”
He believes there is “actually no medical advantage” to using this technology to prevent the birth of children with genetic conditions. That can already be done using pre-implantations, genetic diagnosis, prenatal testing or termination of pregnancy, he says.
“The way the story is pitched in the mainstream media is that this is a wonderful scientific breakthrough, that provides hope for families with these conditions, is actually completely distorted and wrong in that we can already prevent the birth of children with those conditions where it is appropriate, where it really is a serious condition.
“So actually, you have to ask yourself ‘why is it that scientists are pursuing this?’ To me it seems like their motivations are to do with being the first scientist to do it, and getting a name in the history books and the fame, and the money that comes along with that.”
King added that the first attempts at designer babies will be “much sooner” than we think. He is calling on governments and international organizations to pass an immediate global ban on creating cloned or genetically modified babies “before it is too late.”
“Unfortunately, we live in a world in which scientists, if they don’t like the laws in one country, can go to another country,” he says.
It is illegal in the UK to edit human embryos for anything other than research that is appropriately justified and supported by rigorous scientific and ethical review.
Earlier this year, Newcastle University was given the green light to carry out a controversial IVF technique using the DNA of two mothers to make “three-parent babies.” Mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT) will be tested on women who are in danger of passing on devastating and fatal genetic disorders to their children.
In March 2016, the British government pledged 13.4 million pounds to the Community Security Trust (CST), a Jewish body that is committed to fighting hatred against one group only. One would expect that with all that money, the CST would do its job and curb anti Semitism. But the miracle is that the opposite has occurred. Just two weeks later, according to the CST’s statistics, anti Semitism went through the roof. The Daily Mail reports today that 767 anti Semitic hate crimes were logged by the CST in the first six months of 2017, a 30 per cent rise over 2016. It is the highest figure since statistics were first kept 33 years ago. The CST reports an “unprecedented run of over 100 incidents each month back to April 2016.”
A mere few days after the British government vowed to wire millions of pounds to the CST, the number of ‘anti Semitic incidents’ rose by 30% to over 100 incidents a month. The results, at least according to the CST’s statistics, are that the more public money is allocated to fight anti Semitism, the more anti Semitic the Brits become.
If this is the case, the cure for British anti Semitism may be within reach – to fight anti Semitism, deprive the CST and similar organisations of taxpayers’ money!
Anti Semitism is not really a social phenomenon, it is instead a multi million pound industry. The more we spend on the fight against it, the more incidents are ‘recorded’ to justify further spending.
If the British government genuinely wants to fight anti Semitism it would do better to reinstate British liberal values of universalism and tolerance that go beyond the interests of one group. If British Jews feel unsafe, they should insure that they are stripped of their exceptional status. They should insist that they are Brits like all other Britons: protected by the same laws as their neighbours.
In December 2016, the British Government decided to step up the battle against anti Semitism by adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism. The IHRA’s definition was designed to suppress any criticism of Jewish politics, Zionism or Israel. Its intent was to make impossible the utterance of any criticism of anything in any way Jewish related. Yet, according to the new CST statistics, even this drastic measure didn’t reduce anti Semitism at all. If anything, anti Semitism increased sharply since the British Government adopted the new definition.
I would advise both Jews and the British authorities that it is the exceptional treatment of one group that contributes to the growing animosity towards Jewish politics and Jewish lobbying.
But there is another problem that must be addressed. Though it is not clear whether anti Semitism is actually on the rise, it is certain that a growing number of Brits have been subjected to an orchestrated slanderous campaign run by Zionist institutions that are funded by British taxpayer money such as CST and CAA. These organisations attack Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour party, venues, intellectuals, artists, musicians, authors and anyone else they decide has dared to point at Israeli brutality and extensive Jewish political lobbying in Britain.
If Britain still cares for values of tolerance and intellectual exchange, it better spend some taxpayer money defending its citizens, gentiles as well as Jews, from these foreign bodies. And if Britain truly cares for its Jews, it should protect them from the unfortunate consequences of the CST, CAA and other Israeli lobbies operating in our midst.
During the Revolution of 1848, Karl Marx wrote that “the Jew, who in Vienna, for example, is only tolerated, determines the fate of the whole Empire by his financial power. The Jew, who may have no rights in the smallest German states, decides the fate of Europe. This is not an isolated fact. The Jew has emancipated himself in a Jewish manner, not only because he has acquired financial power, but also because… money has become a world power and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations.” Marx had the Rothschilds in mind when he wrote this.
He went on to say that the only solution to the problem is for society to abolish “the empirical essence of Judaism,” and only then will “the Jew… become impossible”[1] in fomenting subversive activity.
Heinrich Heine likewise noted, “No one does more to further the revolution than the Rothschilds themselves… and, though it may sound even more strange, these Rothschilds, the bankers of kings, these princely pursestring-holders, whose European-state system, nevertheless carry in their minds a consciousness of their revolutionary mission.”[2]
According to Heine, “the Rothschild ‘system’ is also potentially revolutionary in itself” because since it “possesses the moral force or power which religion has lost, it can act as a surrogate for religion—indeed, it is a new religion, and when the old religion [Christianity] finally goes under it will provide substitutes for its practical blessings strangely enough, it is once again the Jews who invented this new religion.”[3]
Heine saw James Rothschild as “a powerful destroyer of patrician privilege, and the founder of a new democracy.”[4]
British philo-Semitic historian Niall Ferguson noted that “not only had the Rothschilds replaced the old aristocracy; they also represented a new materialist religion. ‘Money is the god of our time,’ declared Heine in March 1841, ‘and Rothschild is his prophet.’”[5] Heine saw this as dangerous. Marx saw it too. The “new materialist religion” was Mammon, which came in the form of capitalism.
But if we peel the historical onion, we see the same pattern in the early centuries. In fact, Mammon was a major issue in Poland during the 1660s. During that time, scholarship for the Jews was primarily drawn from two main currents: the Talmud and rabbinical literature.[6] Jewish historiographer Heinrich Graetz tells us:
“The study of the Talmud in Poland, established by Shachna, Solomon Lurya, and Moses Isserles, reached a pitch attained at no previous time, nor in any other country. The demand for copies of the Talmud was so great that in less than twenty years three editions had to be printed, no doubt in thousands of copies…
“The cultivation of a single faculty, that of hairsplitting judgment, at the cost of the rest, narrowed the imagination, hence not a single literary product appeared in Poland deserving the name of poetry. All the productions of the Polish school bore the Talmudic stamps, as the school regarded everything from the Talmudical point of view.
“The disciples of this school looked down almost with contempt on Scripture and its simple grandeur, or rather it did not exist for them…They knew something of the Bible from the extracts read in the synagogues, and those occasionally quoted in the Talmud…
“A love of twisting, distorting, ingenious quibbling, and a foregone antipathy to what did not lie within their field of vision, constituted the character of the Polish Jews. Pride in their knowledge of the Talmud and a spirit of dogmatism attached even to the best rabbis, and undermined their moral sense…Integrity and right-mindedness they had lost as completely as simplicity and the sense of truth. The vulgar acquired the quibbling method of the schools, and employed it to outwit the less cunning.
“They found pleasure and a sort of triumphant delight in deception and cheating against members of their own race; cunning could not well be employed, because they were sharp-witted; but the non-Jewish world with which they came into contact experienced to its disadavantage the superiority of the Talmudical spirit of the Polish Jews.”[7]
This energized an anti-Jewish spirit among the Poles, for they knew that they were being cheated. This quickly led to violence among the Gentiles, who in 1638 “slew 200 Jews, and destroyed several synagogues.”
Ten years later, Jews clung to the book of Zohar for Messianic revolution, and this again caused “bloody retribution,” during which both innocent and guilty Jews were slain.[8] Because of this, both Jews and gentiles died by the thousands in the same year.
Within the next three years, anti-Jewish resistance led again to a bloody war that took the lives of thousands of Jews, and caused many others to move to places like the Netherlands, Bohemia, Austria, Italy, and Hungary. Wherever they went, however, they took the study of the Talmud with them, bearing the same attitudes towards Gentiles. “Far from giving up their own method in a foreign country, they demanded that all the world should be regulated by them, and they gained their point.”[9]
Yet despite all of that, historian Israel Abrahams declares that for Jews in the Middle Ages “to cheat a non-Jew was a double crime: it was an act of robbery, and it involved a profanation of God’s holiness…The prices that they charged their co-religionists were higher than the prices they charged Gentiles. That it was a greater offense against Judaism to cheat a Christian than to cheat a Jew is the constant burden of the Jewish moral books of the middle ages…I cannot remember a moral book of those times from which this doctrine is absent”[10]
Nothing could be further from the truth. Since Abrahams cannot support this historically or Talmudically, it is almost certainly for ideological purposes that he presented these views. If he actually believed the statement above, then Abrahams loses whatever credibility he had as a reputable historian—though he quotes the Talmud extensively, he avoids passages which specifically deal with the goyim.[11] History contains too many instances of usury for us to be able to believe the assertions of one man.
Jewish historian Max I. Dimont likewise declared, “The Talmud forbids usury in today’s sense of the word—that is, the taking of excessive interest rate—and it compares usurers to murderers. The Talmud was as sensible two thousand years ago as ethical Christian bankers are today.”[12]
Yet Jewish authorities such as Rabbi Akiva tell us the opposite: “It was a positive commandment to burden the gentile with interest ‘because one should not benefit an idolator…and cause him as much damage as possible without deviating from righteousness’; others took this line.”[13]
Why did Dimont and others fail to tell us where the Talmud teaches these virtues? In the spirit of almost a thousand years of history, Dimont declared, “In actuality, in medieval days, it was not the rabbis who set the rates of lending money to Christians, but the Pope himself, or else the emperor or prince…The Church used the money of the Jews to build new cathedrals, to commission new murals, to finance new monasteries.”[14]
This falsification of history cannot be allowed to go unchallenged.[15] It is even more incredible that Dimont provides no sources to back up his assertions. Yet this thesis has become the bedrock upon which many Jewish writers have built their careers.
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In the seventeenth century, capitalism fell in the hands of the Jews. French historian Fernand Braudel called this “the ‘age’ of great Jewish merchants,”[16] during which they were involved in
“lucrative areas of commerce” such as piracy “in which these Jewish merchants specialized. Questions of morality did not apply… Jewish merchants were the brains behind the brawn—financing, advising, and sometimes leading the Caribbean’s emerging fighting force: a ragtag crew of misfits of every nation that coalesced as the dreaded pirates of the Spanish Main.”[17]
Eventually in the 1660s, “the pirate capital acquired a reputation as the world’s ‘wickedest city.’”[18]
By the time that the Rothschilds came on the political scene, much of Europe found itself under the guiding principle of the Khazarian Bankster Cult. Carroll Quigley claimed that the Rothschilds, among other bankers, were secretly misleading governments and people; he says that Mirabaud and the Rothschilds became the dominant financial system between 1871 and 1900. British economist J. A. Hobson declared in 1902 that nothing could be pursued “by any European state… if the house of Rothschild…set their face against it.”[19]
The Rothschilds ended up making a fortune during the Napoleonic Wars.[20] Austrian-born Jewish writer Frederic Morton (born Fritz Mandelbaum) declared that the Rothschilds “conquered the world more thoroughly, more cunningly, and much more lastingly than all the Caesars before or all the Hitlers after them.”[21]
Morton’s assertion is corroborated by biographer Derek Wilson, who declared that the Rothschilds were so financially and politically powerful that even royal governments and political leaders were afraid of them.[22] Their influence was so covert that Wilson moves on to say that
“clandestinity was and remained a feature of Rothschild political activity…Yet all the while they were helping to shape the major events of the day: by granting or withholding funds; by providing statesmen with an unofficial diplomatic service; by influencing appointments to high office; and by an almost daily intercourse with the great decision makers.”[23]
Wilson later argued that their clandestine ways were justifiable since they feared that they would be misrepresented by the press; whether Wilson is right is hard to justify. But the Rothschilds made an enormous profit from the Napoleonic wars; after the dust settled, the Rothschilds “emerged from the war as millionaires and celebrities.”[24] One of the Rothschilds, Nathan, “was widely believed to have made extortionate profit from official contracts.”[25]
[1] Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (New York: Penguin, 2007), 440.
[2] Ibid., 214.
[3] Ibid., 213.
[4] Ibid., 214.
[5] Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, Vol. I (New York: Penguin, 1998), 1:17.
[6] See David Bakan, Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition (New York: Dover, 2004), 92-93.
[7] Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews, Vol V, 4-6.
[8] Ibid., 6-7.
[9] Ibid., 17.
[10] Israel Abrahams, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1911), 106.
[11] See R. Travers Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (London: Williams & Norgate, 1903); for similar studies, see Peter Schaefer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
[12] Max I. Dimont, Jews, God, and History (New York: Penguin, 1994), 267.
[13] Johnson, A History of the Jews, 174.
[14] Dimont, Jews, God, and History, 267-268.
[15] For a historical backdrop on this, see E. Michael Jones, Barren Metal: A History of Capitalism as the Conflict Between Labor and Usury (South Bend: Fidelity Press, 2014).
[16] Ed Kritzler, Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 5.
[17] Ibid., 5-6.
[18] Ibid., 10.
[19] Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers who Broke the World (New York: Penguin, 2009), 210.
[20] Ibid., 210; also Egon Caesar Corti, The Rise of the House of Rothschild (New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corp., 1928).
[21] Morton, The Rothschilds, 14.
[22] Derek Wilson, Rothschild: The Wealth and Power of a Dynasty (New York: Scribner’s, 1988), 98-99.
The French capitalist elite that sponsored Macron’s meteoric rise is acutely aware that the European Union is in serious trouble. They chose Emmanuel Macron to save it. His success or failure depends on whether he can persuade the rest of the EU, notably Germany, to let it be saved.
In Trouble Politically
The EU is in serious trouble politically, because the elites love it, and ordinary people do not. A poll published June 20 by the Chatham House Royal Institute of international affairs found a “simmering discontent” with the EU among ordinary Europeans. Over 70% of people classified as decision-makers and opinion influencers – leading politicians, journalists, CEOs and leaders of major civil society organizations such as university presidents – welcomed European integration as beneficial, whereas only 34% of ordinary citizens agreed. On immigration, 57% of the elite consider immigration good for their country compared to 34% of the rest of the population. In short, the “decision-makers and opinion influencers” agree with the decisions they have been making and the opinions they have been advocating, while most other people are not convinced.
This is scarcely surprising since for over half a century the elites “who know what is best for the people” have been forcing European integration down their throats, with massive propaganda to justify major binding decisions taken without consulting the people (or, when the people are consulted, the result is ignored). Member States’ democratic procedures were essentially nullified over half a century ago by the unelected European Court of Justice when it ruled that European laws prevailed over national laws. The vast majority of Europeans were not even aware of how their democracy was being overruled and made obsolete. “Europe” meant escape from the bad past and the promise of a beautiful future of peace and prosperity. The elites saw to it that the real existing “Europe” is based on two principles: “free movement” of everything and absolute respect for “competition”. Presented as the apex of European values, these principles are neither moral nor democratic. They simply give all power to international financial capital.
In Trouble Economically
The elites have long been able to live comfortably with popular discontent. But economic troubles threaten to wreck the whole setup. Throwing together countries with deeply rooted differences in social philosophy and practice, binding them together with a common currency and rules that prohibit adaptation, does not work. As the spearhead of globalization, Europe’s dogmatic enforcement of both competition and “free movement” of goods and capital is enabling foreign capital – Chinese, Qatari, U.S., etc. – to buy up much of its productive resources piece by piece. Instead of growth, the euro has brought stagnation. The reign of unlimited “competition” promotes beggar-thy-neighbor practices rather than solidarity. Germany has lowered its labor costs, and continues to maintain large export surpluses with its neighbors, whose own budgets are broken by the trade imbalance. Concentration of wealth and lowered income decreases consumption and causes businesses to fail and tax revenues to shrink. The European Union finds itself on the edge of a perilous downward spiral.
France’s position in the troubled European Union was the overriding issue in recent French presidential elections. The issue was obscured by trivialities, such as media-inflated “scandals” over politicians hiring their wives and children, or non-issues such as “the fascist threat”. Yet the issue was there. Among leading candidates, both Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen flirted with the notion of leaving the euro, or even the EU itself, but neither had a clear handle on the issue. In her decisive final debate with Macron, Marine Le Pen proved incapable of clarifying her own position on the euro. In the absence of any clear alternative to EU membership, voters were more frightened than seduced by the notion of getting out. Seeing no clear choice, voters massively abstained.
As a result, the European Union won the French election, in the person of Emmanuel Macron.
Macron’s mission is to bring the alienated couple, the EU and the French people, together – by persuading both to do what they don’t want to do.
Macron’s Protection Strategy
Macron’s June 21 interview with the French daily Figaro and seven other major European newspapers clarified his salvage strategy. The key word is “protection”. The idea is that people can develop loyalty toward institutions that protect them, and people do not feel protected by the EU.
This interview included significant foreign policy statements, notably a change in France’s policy toward Syria. Macron announced that “imported neoconservatism” is no longer welcome in France.
In all our EU societies, “the middle classes have begun to doubt”, Macron observed. “They have the impression that Europe is being built in spite of themselves. This Europe is dragging itself down.” Thus Europe must be made to provide both physical and economic security in order to reassure the citizens and regain their support. The physical protection involves controlling migration and cooperating in eradicating terrorism. The political impact of recent terrorist attacks ensured that any new French government would have to take moves to secure borders and control immigration, but Macron chooses to try to accomplish this at the European level. So far, disagreements between Member States have prevented effective measures from being taken.
Economic Protection
As a slight dissonant note in the usual rhapsody praising unspecified “Western values”, Macron made a subtle distinction between European and American “values”, implying a special European identity. “Americas love freedom as much as we do. But they do not have our taste for justice. Europe is the only place in the world where individual freedoms, the democratic spirit and social justice have been wedded to such a point.”
This implies that there must be limits to demolishing French social benefits in order to satisfy German demands for lower labor costs and a balanced budget. Meeting those demands is seen as the necessary condition for gaining German confidence in order to shift from austerity to prosperity programs. But it requires a quid pro quo. “The strength of some cannot feed for long on the weakness of the others.” In other words, German political leaders need to accept the fact that an EU which benefits Germany at the expense of other member States cannot last forever.
Specifically, Macron denounced the rules on “detached workers” which enable employers to evade the social costs of labor in countries like France by hiring foreign workers from countries like Romania under the rules of their own country. “Detached labor leads to ridiculous situations. Do you think I can explain to the French middle classes that businesses shut down in France in order to go to Poland because it’s cheaper there, and that the construction industry hires Poles because they are paid less? This system is not fair.” (Such observations were denounced as “racist” when made by Marine Le Pen or Jean-Luc Mélenchon, but are in fact totally consensual.)
Macron’s Foreign Policy
Macron’s statements on foreign policy could be seen as hints of a possible joint European foreign policy, partially independent of the United States, at a time when Washington appears to be paralyzed by deep state efforts to overthrow the President.
For the last six years, Paris has been at the forefront of the get-rid-of-Assad propaganda. Former foreign minister Laurent Fabius notoriously declared that Bachar al Assad “has no right to be alive on earth”. In a clear break, Macron said that trying to settle the Syrian problem militarily was “a collective mistake” and stressed his aggiornamento: “I do not proclaim that the destitution of Bachar al Assad is the precondition for everything. For nobody has shown me his legitimate successor!”
His first priority is fighting terrorist groups, with the cooperation of everybody, “particularly Russia”. His second is “Syria’s stability, as I don’t want to see another failed State. With me, there will be an end to the sort of neoconservatism imported into France for the last ten years. Democracy cannot be imposed on people from outside. France did not take part in the Iraq war and was right not to. France was wrong to wage that sort of war in Libya.” The result was failed states where terrorist groups prosper.
Somewhat ambiguously, Macron professed to be “aligned with the United States” on setting a “red line” against use of chemical weapons in Syria. “If it turns out that chemical weapons are used and we know how to trace where they came from, then France will proceed to carry out air strikes to destroy the identified stocks of chemical weapons.” Yet this statement is not precisely aligned with U.S. practice, which has always automatically blamed Assad for chemical weapons attacks, without ever bothering to “trace where they came from” or to limit retaliation to the arms stocks themselves.
Understanding Putin
As for Russia, Macron was also ambiguous, stressing unspecified “disagreements” with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine, while distancing himself from current anti-Putin hysteria in Washington by observing that Putin’s objective is to ensure the survival of his country, not to weaken the West.
Any one of the other leading candidates for the French presidency would almost certainly have gone farther toward rapprochement with Russia. While neoconservative influence has permeated French media and the Socialist Party, it does not control the French establishment as in the United States. Macron’s statements are a long overdue recognition of reality in harmony with informed opinion in France, notably in the diplomatic, military and business communities, which see the U.S.-induced Russian bashing as unjustified, contrary to French interests, and dangerous. These shifts in foreign policy were probably an inevitable reaction against the past ten years of Sarkozy-Hollande’s absurd role as puppy dog running ahead of its American master, yapping at Washinton’s chosen enemy.
Such concessions to reality could contribute to working out a common foreign policy with Germany, which has tended to keep its distance from certain U.S.-led military adventures. However, they are accompanied by urgent appeals to Germany to increase its military spending, at a time when the United States is making similar demands, in order to strengthen NATO against the Russian “threat”. Macron in contrast seems to have in mind the prospect of strengthening Europe by providing it with a strong military defense of its own, presumably not totally under U.S. command. The current struggle for power in Washington favors moves toward European independence. This can sound good if indeed it allows Europe to bow out of various U.S.-incited wars in the Middle East and elsewhere. But military buildups are costly and dangerous in themselves, and not the appropriate way to promote peace in Europe and beyond. The arms race that United States threats have incited in Russia and China shows signs of spreading. There are forces in Germany all too willing to seize any pretext to revive German military strength.
Resistance To Macron
Macron’s efforts to save the EU marriage will encounter stiff resistance from both sides – and not least from the European side.
The resistance in France will be minimal in a parliament entirely under his control. The largest “opposition” party, the Republicans, are moving toward supporting him. The Socialist Party is decomposing rapidly, and the rest of the opposition is tiny and divided. Opposition in the streets sounds revolutionary, but it is not favored by the current relationship of forces, notably the weakness of the unions and the strategic disadvantages of a diminished industrial working class.
The resistance to Macron’s projects in Europe stems from the mere fact that the EU includes too many nations with conflicting interests and cultures. On the issue of control of migration, for example, German Chancellor Angelo Merkel has opened wide the gates to refugees, whereas Hungary is intent on keeping them out. Germans, or at least some of them, consider mass migration good for a country with a low birthrate. Hungarians, in contrast, want above all to preserve their cultural identity. The Baltic States, many of whose current leaders were nurtured in Cold War America, as well as Poland, with its bitter historic rivalry with Russia, support U.S. demands for a defensive/aggressive military posture against Russia. This has virtually no support in France, Italy or Spain. As for economic interests, they are widely contradictory, with important differences between North and South, East and West, that cannot easily be unified. And finally, except for the mobile, multilingual elite, people in Europe do not feel European: they feel French, or Italian, or whatever. Macron’s mission is clear, but it might turn out to be mission impossible.
Questions are mounting over opportunities that were potentially missed to prevent the deaths caused by the Grenfell Tower fire, after it emerged that ministers had been warned several times about the cladding used in the building’s regeneration.
Fires in France, Australia, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the US have been linked to the aluminum composite panels used on the outsides of buildings.
Eyewitnesses of the west London tragedy have suggested that the fire spread quickly through the facade of the building because the cladding contained flammable polyethylene or a plastic core.
Three years ago, leading fire safety expert Arnold Tarling warned a meeting of the British Standards Institute that “this type of cladding fire” would soon take place in Britain and that it would lead to a large number of deaths.
Government fire safety advisor, Brian Martin, attended the event.
“There will be countless other buildings in the UK covered in that material,” Tarling told the Telegraph.
“We need to change building regulations, and we need to change the people who are advising government,” he added.
Leading that study was architect Sam Webb, who told the Guardian that half of the buildings failed basic fire safety checks.
“We discovered a widespread breach of safety, but we were simply told nothing could be done because it would ‘make too many people homeless,’” he told the paper.
“I really don’t think the building industry understands how fire behaves in buildings and how dangerous it can be. The government’s mania for deregulation means our current safety standards just aren’t good enough,” he added.
Labour MP David Lammy branded the Grenfell catastrophe “corporate manslaughter” and demanded that arrests be made.
One of Lammy’s family friends is missing following the disaster.
“This is the richest borough in our country treating its citizens in this way,” the Tottenham MP said on BBC Radio 4’s Today program on Thursday morning.
“We should call it what it is – it’s corporate manslaughter, that’s what it is – and there should be arrests made, frankly,” he said.
The newly elected Kensington and Chelsea MP, Labour’s Emma Dent Coad, is a longtime housing activist. She told the Guardian, the Grenfell disaster is “unforgivable.”
“I can’t help thinking that poor quality materials and construction standards may have played a part in this hideous and unforgivable event,” she told the paper.
“The council want to develop this area full of social housing, and in order to enable that they have prettified a building that they felt was ugly … The idea that that has led to this horrendous tragedy is just unthinkable.”
Residents groups had time and again warned the borough council and the Kensington and Chelsea Tenants Management Organisation (KCTMO) that the building was a deathtrap.
Virginia, a local resident, told RT she was “angry” at KCTMO after watching many of her friends living in the building affected by the devastating fire.
“There’s no fire alarm, there’s no sprinkler, and there’s only one way in and one way out,” the local surgery worker said.
“They [KCTMO] should have listened to the residents, because we’ve been complaining for years. They never listen to what we have to say,” she added.
She also thought the lack of action by the government was deplorable, as little was learned from the similar Lakanal House fire in Southwark in 2009.
“If [the government] had acted on it, they would have had sprinklers in [Grenfell Tower] and fire alarms,” Virginia added.
Ethno-religious (ER) beliefs and practices have been harmless when individuals or groups linked to those practices have limited influence over the state and economy. In contrast, when such groups exercise a disproportionately powerful influence over the state and economy, they dominate and exploit majorities while forming closed self-replicating networks.
Examples of powerful ethno-centric regimes in the 1930’s are well known for their brutality and devastating consequences. These include the white Christians in the US, Germany and the European colonial settlement regimes in Rhodesia, South Africa, India and Indonesia, as well as the Japanese imperialists in Asia.
In the post-colonial or neo-colonial era, ethno-centrism has taken the form of virulent anti-Islamic hysteria resulting in predatory Western regimes embarking on wars and military occupations in the Middle East.
The rise of Judeo-centrism, as an economic and political force, occurred in the last half of the 20th century. The Jewish-Zionist seizure, occupation and ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine and their rising economic and political influence within the United States has created a formidable power bloc with significant implications for world peace.
The rise of Jewish ethnocentrism (JE) has confounded its proponents as well as its adversaries; Zionists and anti-Semites alike are surprised by the scope and depth of JE.
Advocates and adversaries, of all persuasions, conflate the power of what they call ‘the Jews’, for their own purposes. Advocates find proof of ‘Jewish genius’ in every prestigious position and attribute it to their own unique culture, heredity and scholarship, rather than the result of a greater social-cultural context. The anti-Semites, for their part, attribute all the world’s nefarious dealings and diabolic plots to ‘the Jews’. This creates a strange duality of illusions about the exceptionalism of a minority group.
In this paper I will focus on demystifying the myths buttressing the power of contemporary Judeo-centric ideology, belief and organizational influence. There is little point in focusing on anti-Semitism, which has no impact on the economy and the exercise of state power with the possible exception of Saudi Arabia. Even the Saudi Monarchy’s occasional outbursts against Israel do not inhibit it from engaging in large-scale financial transactions with the Jewish banking elite on Wall Street and City of London and from forming covert alliances with Israeli intelligence in order to overthrow secular pro-Palestinian Arab regimes – as has happened in Libya, Iraq and Syria. They have both benefited from the massive ethnic cleansing of the highly educated minority Christian populations of secular Iraq and Syria.
Fake Anti-Semitism: Operational Weapon of the Ethno-Centric Jews
Fake anti-Semitism, as most recently seen in the launching of series of anti-Semitic ‘threats’ by ethno-centric Jews to create hysteria, serves many purposes following the recent rise of populism in Europe and the election of the American President Donald Trump who had promised to withdraw the US from wars in the Middle East. First, it secures widespread support from North American and European regimes, especially when Israel is criticized throughout the world and at the United Nations for its war crimes in occupied Palestine. Widespread fake anti-Semitic attacks divert attention to Judeo-ethno centrists and validate their claims to be the first among the history’s victims. Second, widely publicized ‘fake’ acts of anti-Semitism arouse the ethnocentric foot soldiers and increase rich donor contributions to the illegal Jewish settlements and the Israeli military. Third, ‘fake anti-Semitism’ is used to threaten, repress and outlaw any organizations and individuals who criticize Israel and the influence of Jewish ethnocentric organizations in their home countries.
How many ‘anti-Semitic’ acts are staged is uncertain: On March 23, 2017, an Israeli-American man was arrested in Israel for sending hundreds of fake anti-Semitic threats to Jewish institutions and schools in four European countries and nine US states. Such threats led to the emergency grounding of two US airlines and the panicked evacuation of countless schools and cultural centers. This man used a sophisticated system of cloaking accounts to appear to originate in other countries. Despite his high skills at cyber-terrorism, Israeli authorities preposterously described him as a ‘teenager with a learning disability’. The Israeli-American cyber-terrorist’s arrest made the ‘back-pages’ news in the US for one day while his (and others’) fake threats continued to make international headlines for weeks.
These scores of fake anti-Semitic bomb threats were cited by the major ethnocentric leaders in the US to pressure the US President and hundreds of Congressional leaders, University Presidents, etc. to mindlessly echo their clamor for greater police state investigations against critics of Israel and to offer special ‘protection’ for potential ‘Jewish victims’. Moves to outlaw criticism of Israel as ‘anti-Semitism’ and a ‘hate crime’ increased.
Not surprisingly the leading Jewish organizations never backed down or called on the US government to investigate the source of the fake anti-Semitic threats: that is Israeli-American Zionists, who carry both nations’ passports and can enter and exit with total ease and enjoy immunity from extradition.
It is almost certain that the US FBI had identified the perpetrator of these acts as they uncovered the sophisticated operation based in Israel. The FBI would have demanded Israeli police arrest ‘the culprit’ and shut down the operation. Israeli police staged their own ‘fake’ investigation and concluded that the complex cloaked cyber operations ‘were the work of a shy nineteen year old with dyslexia’ – clearly another example of the Jewish genius. It is more likely that the hundreds of false-anti-Semitic threats were part of an Israeli state operation identified by the FBI who ‘diplomatically’ pressured Tel Aviv to cut out the monkey business. The news report of the lone-wolf teenager in Israel allowed the Israeli intelligence to cover-up their role. Once the Israelis passed off the unbelievable tale of a brilliant, if troubled, young ‘lone wolf’, the entire US mass media buried the story forever. In due time the so-called perpetrator will be released, amply rewarded and his identity recycled. In the meantime the US government, as well as several European governments, was forced to allocate tens of millions of dollars to provide extra security to Jewish institutions in the wake of these fake threats.
Jewish Power: The Top 25 American Multi-Billionaires
In February 2017, Forbes magazine compiled a list of the world’s billionaires, including a country-by-country account. The top five countries with multi-billionaires among its citizens are: the US with 565, China with 319, Germany with 114, India with 101, and Russia with 96. Moreover, since 2016 the net worth of the multi-billionaires grew 18% to $7.67 trillion dollars.
While the US has the greatest number of billionaires, China is fast catching up.
Despite China’s advances, the US remains the center of world capitalism with the greatest concentration of wealth, as well as the greatest and growing inequalities. One reasonably can argue that who controls US wealth controls the world.
‘Jews’ among the Top 25 Multi-Billionaires in the US
A review of the top 10 US multi-billionaires finds four who are identified as ‘Jews’: Mark Zuckerberg with $56 billion, Larry Ellison with $52.2 billion, Michael Bloomberg with $47.5 billion and Sergey Brin $39.4 billion. In other words 40% of the super-richest Americans are ‘Jews’ while 60% are non-Jews. Among the top ten in the US, billionaire Jews with a total of $195.1 billion are collectively less rich than the top billionaire Gentiles who own $282.7 billion.
Of the top 25 multi-billionaires in the US, 11 of the 25 are Jews. In other words ‘the Jews’ represent 44% of the top 25 biggest billionaires – outnumbered by Gentiles but catching up.
Analysis of the ‘Richest Jews’
We place ‘Jews’ in quotation marks because this is a doubtful signifier – more useful to both Zionist fanatics and anti-Semitic polemicists. Most are not ‘practicing’ or are completely disinterested in tribal religions. Nevertheless, half of secular Jews in the US are active supporters of Israel or involved in Fifth Column Israeli ‘front groups’.
In other words, about half of the richest ‘Jews’ do not consider themselves to be religiously or ethnically ‘Jewish’. Super rich Jews are divided regarding their ethnic loyalties between the US and Israel.
Moreover what is murkier, many of the richest so-called ‘Jews’ were born to ‘mixed marriages’. Strictly religious Jews do not recognize the children of such marriages as Jews because their mothers are not Jewish. The omnivorous Zionists, on the other hand, classify all of them as Jews on the basis of their actual or potential contribution to the State of Israel. In other words, the Zionist classification of ‘Jews’ becomes arbitrary, politicized and dependent on organizational affiliation. Religious practice and ethno-cultural purity are less important.
Judeo-Centrism and the Intrinsic Superiority Fallacy
Among the many zealous advocates of the Judeo-centric world, the most tiresome are those who claim they represent the product of superior genetics, culture and heritage – unique and intrinsic to Jews.
For many centuries most Jews were illiterate believers of religious tribal myths, taught by anti-scientific rabbis, who closed off the ghettos from the accomplishments of higher culture and forbade integration or mixed marriages. The high priests punished and expelled any Jews who were influenced by the surrounding Hellenistic, Romanized, Arabic, Renaissance and Rationalist cultures, like the great Spinoza.
In other words, Jews who had rejected Jewish law, the Scriptures and the Torah were expelled as apostates. But these ‘apostates’ were most open to the modern ideas of science. Jews greatly benefited from the emancipatory laws and opportunities following the French Revolution. Under Napoleon, Jews became citizens and were free to advance in science, the arts and finance by attending secular universities away from the primitive, superstitious Rabbi-controlled ghetto ’schools’.
The dramatic growth of intellectual excellence among Jews in the 19th century was a result of their ceasing to be Jews in the traditional closed religious sense. Did they suddenly switch on their ‘genius genes’ or invent a fake history or religion, as the ethno-centrist would have us believe? It seems far more likely that they took great advantage of the opportunities opened to them with major social and political developments in the greater society. As they assimilated and integrated in secular traditions, they ceased to be Jews in the tribal religious sense. Their scientific, medical and financial success came from learning, absorbing and exchanging scientific ideas, high culture and conservative, liberal and socialist ideas with the larger progressive non-Jewish society.
It is no coincidence that ‘great Jewish achievers’ like the totally secular Albert Einstein were educated in German universities by German professors and drew on scientific knowledge by German and non-Jewish scholars. His intellectual development was due to his free association with the great scientists and scholars of Germany and Europe, not closeted away in some ethno-tribal commune.
The Jews who remained embedded in the Polish, Lithuanian and Russian ghettos, under the reign of the leading Rabbis, remained illiterate, poor and backward. Most of the claims of ’superior’ cultural heritage or traditions are the creation of a mythical folk history serving ethno-national supremacists.
The Myth of the Contemporary Genius
The modern ethnocentric ideologues ignore the ‘dilution of Jewishness’ in their celebratory identification with successful ‘Jews’.
Many of the best thinkers, writers, scientists and political leaders were conversos (Christian converts), or integrated European secular nationalists, socialists, monarchists, bankers and professionals.
Some remained ‘reformed Jews’ or later transformed into secular Zionists: nationalists who despised non-Europeans as inferior and couldn’t even conceive of Arab Palestine as their ‘homeland’. It wasn’t until the 20th century that Zionism was in part ‘Judacized’. Early Zionists looked at various locations for a homeland, including Argentina and parts of Africa and Russia.
These ethno-chauvinist ideologues lay claim to all brilliant individuals, no matter how tenuous as examples of ‘Jewish genius’. Even those personally opposed Jewish ethno-religious beliefs and indifferent to tribal loyalties end up being claimed as examples of the ‘Jewish genius’. Once some ‘matrilineal link’ could be found, their success and brilliance was tied to the mystical lineage, no matter how tenuous.
This bizarre practice became even more commonplace following the Jewish military conquest and brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestine, with the military, political and financial backing of non-Jewish Europe and the United States. With myths and inflated ideas of unique virtue and brilliance, Israel was established as a racist apartheid state.
A new militant, ethnocentric Judaism converted Israel and its overseas backers into an ethno-ideological international power with religious trappings, based on the myth of its ‘exceptionalism’.
To maintain this myth, the personal histories of all prominent ‘Israel Firsters’ were sanitized and scrubbed of anti-social and destructive behavior.
All Jewish billionaires were to be portrayed as uniquely philanthropic, while the exploits of Jewish billionaire swindlers (Bernie Madoff, Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky) were not to be mentioned in polite company. The conquests of billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, rapist-procurer head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Governor Elliot Spitzer, Congressman Anthony Weiner and other similar perverts quietly slithered off the edge of the planet although all had once been hailed as examples of ‘ethnocentric genius’.
Major Jewish political donors to US-UK-French electoral parties were hailed while their work on behalf of Israel was naturally assumed but not discussed. The dizzying shifts between open adulation and selective whitewash served to reinforce the illusion of superiority. Anyone, Jew or Gentile, bold enough to point out the obvious hypocrisy would be immediately censored as ’self-hating’ (Jew) or ‘anti-Semite’ (Gentile).
Return to the Beginning: Judeo-Centric Power
As mentioned above, Jews represent a substantial minority among the top multi-billionaires, but they are still a minority. Below the top level of wealth are the single digit billionaires and triple and double digit multi-millionaires; here the proportion of ‘Jews’ increases. These ‘less-than-super-billionaires’ are among the most active and the biggest financial and political supporters of the ethnocentric ideology and tribal cohesion.
Los Angeles-based Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban contributed tens of millions of dollars to support of the Jewish state’s occupation of Palestine and brutal colonial land grabbing ’settlers’. His wealth is largely based on his ‘genius’ in pushing culturally vacuous Japanese cartoons (Mighty Morphing Power Rangers) on the nation’s children. He is the primary donor to the Democratic Party pushing Israel’s agenda – his number one priority as an American citizen.
The lesser ‘foot soldiers’ of the Zionist power structure are the millionaires and affluent professionals, dentists, stockbrokers, lawyers, doctors and impresarios. The middle and lower levels of wealth and power are a diverse group – mostly ethno-religious and secular, but very self-identified ethno-Jews. A minority is totally secular or converted to non-Jewish religions (especially Buddhism, Christianity)
Despite the constant drumbeat of ethnocentric identity, an increasing number of young US ‘Jews’ do not identify with Judaism or Israel. Their influence however is minimal.
The wealthy ethno-religious and secular ethnic Jews may or may not constitute a numerical majority but they are the best organized, most political and most adamant in their claims to ’speak for and represent the Jewish community’ as a whole, especially during waves of (fake) ‘anti-Semitism’!
The many former-Jews, anti-tribal Jews and ‘non-Jewish’ Jews are no match for the ethnocentric political apparatus controlled by the chauvinists.
When the tribalists appropriate the glory of a secular non-Jewish Jewish scientist or major ‘prize winner’ they claim his or her tribal affiliation in order to impress the ‘goys’ and to seduce younger more skeptical Jews about the advantages of ethno-chauvinism.
All the high-tech computer and financial billionaires are just assumed by the tribalists to view themselves as ‘Jewish geniuses’ even though they may have learned and borrowed ideas and knowledge from their non-Jewish partners and mentors in Silicon Valley or Wall Street.
Upward mobility within academia, government and business circles is automatically assumed by the tribalists to be a reward for superior merit – ‘Jewish genius’ – rather than nepotism or connections. Tribal networks and ‘understandings’ play a powerful unspoken role in career success and immunity from the consequences of failure, incompetence or dishonesty.
Multi-billionaires and multi-millionaires prospered because they entered established lucrative fields or made highly profitable career choices.
Early on, many powerful Gentile bankers provided entry for talented Jews to succeed. This is despite revisionist history bemoaning the exclusion of US Jews on Wall Street and their degrading denial of membership in select WASP country clubs. These myths of brutal oppression on Wall Street or Long Island yacht clubs have empowered generations of American Jews to assume the role of spokespersons for the oppressed everywhere. The expression ‘crying all the way to the bank’ comes to mind.
By the last quarter of the 20th century and especially in the 21st century, deindustrialization and the shift to financialization in the US economy increased the power and privilege of a disproportionate number of multi-billionaire/millionaire Jews. This seismic shift has coincided with the pervasive impoverishment of the marginalized working class in the former ‘rust belt’ and central parts of the country and the incredible concentration of national wealth at the top 1%. This is a demographic shift and ethno-class apartheid of huge, but unstudied, significance.
The most important political question is not how many Jews are super-wealthy but what proportion of them are influential political donors and active in the Democratic or Republican Parties in order to intervene on behalf of clan, tribe and motherland (Israel). Majorities among Jews are not crucial – most are not politically active. What is decisive is the percentage of all the super-wealthy who are politically active, organized and contribute substantially to influence and control the mass media to promote their ethno-centric ideology and punish critics.
Conclusion
Overt and covert Jewish supremacists have embroidered a fake history and legacy of exceptional intelligence ignoring the context of advanced non-Jewish science and cultures, which preceded and later provided Jews with opportunities for education and wealth.
The danger inherent in all ethno-centric tribes is that they work to dominate majority populations by creating systems of assigning superiority and inferiority. They then use these to justify growing inequalities of wealth, education and political power!
Historically favored minorities tend to overreach and, like the eyeless Sampson, bring down the Temple on everyone. Power corrupts and absolute ethno-chauvinist power corrupts absolutely. Intelligent Jews of principle are abandoning this Temple built on injustice and myths: Over one-third of Israeli Jews would leave Israel now, if they could. Perhaps their disenchantment with the tribal ethnocracy governing Israel is reflected in the desire of many non-Jewish Jews in America for a truly just, non-tribal society.
Is the President being held hostage? Was this video a cry for help? Or did his captors issue it to send a message: “We have completed our coup. We are in total control. Do not even think of f*ing with us!”
Watch the above video again. What is wrong with this picture?
Look, I LOVE religious minorities, okay? I’m Muslim myself. I love my Jewish friends. I used to practice Buddhist meditation. And I still revere the wisdom of the Tao and the Upanishads and the many wonderful Native American spiritual traditions.
But let’s face it: The United States of America is a Christian-majority country. Today is Easter. The President’s holiday message should be: “Happy Easter!”
Instead, the President of the (Christian-majority) United States has issued an Easter message that looks more like a hostage video. A professor at a major university who saw it emailed me:
Oh my God. Talk about the demeanor of a mind-controlled zombie…..
Instead of saying “happy Easter” and talking about Jesus, and maybe throwing in some eggs and rabbits as a sop to Christian-pagan syncretism, Trump begins by rambling on and on about how wonderful Jews are. He couldn’t make it any clearer that his main holiday message is “Happy Passover!” When he finally gets around to mentioning Easter, it’s almost an afterthought.
The video has abysmally poor production values, considering that it’s coming from the White House. It’s too dark. And Trump looks extremely low-energy –like a kidnapping victim in a hostage video with someone offscreen pointing a gun at his head or a knife at his foreskin.
The weirdest holiday video ever made by any sitting president?
Trump’s “Passover video” reminds me of the nationally televised speech by George W. Bush in early December, 2001. Bush gave that speech, in which he monotonously intoned the shibboleths of the Israeli-fabricated “War on Terror,” in front of an Israeli flag, not an American one.
What makes Trump’s “f*ck Easter, Happy Passover” message even weirder is the whole history between Jews and Christians. (As a Muslim, I am able to get some distance and objectivity on this very sensitive issue.)
Until around 1800, when the Rothschilds took over the financial centers of Western Europe and imposed their ideological hegemony on the West, Christians took it for granted that “the Jews killed Jesus,” as the Gospels tell us in so many words. Jews, for their part, evinced extreme loathing for Christianity in general and Jesus in particular. The Christian was “Esau,” the naive, hairy, primitive fool who needed to be swindled out of his birthright by Jacob “the heel” AKA “Israel.” And Jesus, according to the Talmud, is being boiled eternally in excrement.
Maybe it’s a good thing that the Jews and Christians are getting over their horrible history of mutual hatred. But it strikes me as odd that the way they’re getting over it is through a stealth Jewish-Zionist takeover of the West, accompanied by what can only be called the annihilation of traditional Christianity. Trump’s Easter message, coming in the wake of the ouster of Steve Bannon (Catholic) and elevation of Jared Kushner (Kosher Nostra) is a sign of the times.
There seems to be a lack of awareness in the United States about how much our healthcare system is an aberration. We tolerate levels of injustice that would be unthinkable in other advanced nations. Perhaps it is because many of us have never experienced health security – being able to seek medical care without concern about the cost or worry over potential financial ruin. We’ve spent too many years in a system in which families hold bake sales or sell their homes in order to afford lifesaving treatment.
A case in point is a recent article in the Los Angeles Times titled “Patients swamped with medical bills find a solution in crowd-funding”. The article states:
“Indiegogo, which launched in 2008 to help filmmakers raise money online, has seen such a marked uptick in personal fundraising to pay for medical costs that it recently started Indiegogo Life — for personal causes, including healthcare. There are a host of other medical crowd-funding sites such as GoFundMe and YouCaring — both of which also report huge increases in medical fundraising in the last two years.”
“Here’s a way to give to an individual — it might be someone you know or someone you’ve never met. You know what their need is and that your donation will go to meeting their exact need,” says Leonard Lee, head of communications for YouCaring based in San Francisco.” “A lot of people who thought they had adequate insurance coverage find themselves in situations where insurance is not enough,” he says.
The article goes on to describe stories of people who have health insurance but still need to raise tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for cancer treatment or ongoing costs for neurological diseases.
At this point, one might think that the author would make the point that it is our healthcare system that is the problem and how ridiculous it is that this happens in the wealthiest nation in the world, but instead she provides tips on how to create an effective fundraiser and how donors can trust people asking for money.
“We recognize it’s difficult for people to ask for help and talk about a very personal situation,” Lee says. “But those able to talk about what their journey has been through their illness tend to be most effective,” Lee says.
Profiles with pictures — even better, videos — tend to have greater success.
“People want to see the person behind the story and get a sense of who the person is, what their journey has been and who they are donating to,” Lee says.
Earlier this year, Dana Sitar of Taylor Media Corp wrote that 41% of campaigns on crowdfunding sites are for medical bills but that only 11% of them met their goals in 2015. In the truly American way, families have to market themselves so that potential donors will find them worthy of living. And those who don’t have access to the tools to crowdfund suffer and die in silence.
RoseAnn DeMoro, the president of National Nurses United recently tweeted that more than 1.3 million people in the United States are crowdfunding for medical care.
Let’s be clear. This is NOT normal. In no other industrialized nation in the world do people have to beg strangers for money so they or a loved one can live. We are already spending twice as much per person per year on health care as other nations do and they cover everyone, have better health outcomes and have longer life expectancies. In no other industrialized nation do people go bankrupt because of medical illness, but this causes the most personal bankruptcies in the US.
We have the solution to this healthcare crisis that would end this outrage. It’s National Improved Medicare for All as embodied in HR 676: “The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act.” So far the bill has 94 co-sponsors, the most it has ever had. And we expect a companion bill in the senate by Bernie Sanders in May.
Take action now. Call your member of Congress and tell them to co-sponsor Medicare for All. If they already do, then thank them and ask them to do more. They should be speaking about it publicly, writing about it and holding town halls. Stop this suffering. The time is now for Medicare for all.
The cross border flood of millions of immigrants provokes profound political divisions, violence and the rise of mass movements challenging the unity of the European Union (EU) and the survival of the dominant political parties in the US and Europe.
Both the progressive pro-immigrant and rightwing anti-immigration parties and movements propose easy answers and attack their adversaries with political invective.
Both left and right engage in a losing war, based on historical omissions, abstract and muddle-headed assumptions and destructive proposals.
I will proceed by outlining a framework to understand the political, economic and security implications, which form the centerpiece for confronting immigration.
The Past and the Present
A serious discussion of immigration begins by focusing on the centrality of time and place, encouraging the flow and absorption of immigrants.
In the past, immigration flourished during periods when countries experienced: (1) rapid productive growth; (2) increasing labor demand; (3) trade unions and organizations capable of integrating new (immigrant) workers and protecting the on-going wage rates and conditions for all; (4) cross sectoral labor co-operation and solidarity lowering conflict between immigrant and native workers; (5) inclusive, equitable welfare programs; (6) local, not global wars and (7) violence confined outside of the US and the EU. During these periods, most immigration was confined within Europe and North America or between them.
These conditions could not eliminate competition and conflict but they limited its nature and time frame and allowed for successful integration.
If these conditions formed the basis for relatively peaceful immigration, their absence has intensified conflict amidst an increased flow of immigrants. This process has produced deep political problems. Progressives, who cite past ‘Ellis-Island’ type immigration experience and ignore the unfavorable current socio-economic conditions, are in denial. They dismiss the vast socio-economic and political changes, which have occurred and which make the absorption of new waves of immigrants extremely difficult.
Mass Immigration and Imperial Wars
The vast majority of refugees today are on the move because of Western wars. These wars are ‘total’ wars, designed to obliterate civilian, as well as military institutions and structures. In the last two decades, the US and EU have launched seven wars devastating the lives of once-cohesive and productive families, their homes and farms, jobs, institutions and security. Millions have been driven into exile.
The vast majority of new immigrants are refugees from countries targeted by the US-EU and their suffering has no visible end. During and after the Second World War, refugees suffered greatly, but were generally absorbed or repatriated and integrated into re-constructing their homes and societies. These favorable transitions were aided by an acute post-war labor shortage (over 40 million, mostly men, were killed in WWII) and the economic demands of post-war reconstruction. Western peace movements in the post-WWII past were effective and succeeded in limiting the scope and length of wars. Such peace movements no longer exist. Wars today are designed to be endless and total – in terms of the destruction of civilian infrastructure and national institutions.
Over the past 2 decades, the peace movements have disappeared. This is largely because the US and EU increasingly rely on the use of devastating bombing campaigns by their air and naval forces, which sharply limit Western casualties. Most anti-war movements were sustained by domestic anger at their own soldiers returning in ‘body bags’.
Current domestic economic conditions have sharply deteriorated. Capitalist regimes have imposed brutal economic policies increasing unemployment and low paying temporary job. Joblessness approaches 50% among young workers in Southern Europe – regions flooded with desperate refugees.
Moreover imperial policies have shifted steadily to increased military spending for wars while imposing austerity measures, slashing social programs at home.
In this context, new immigrants, especially refugees from imperial wars, compete for diminishing public resources and drastically reduced wages. Their competition effectively drives down the wages for all workers – sharply increasing the conditions for brutal exploitation.
The intense competition over jobs between native workers and immigrants is the result of capitalist wars and deliberate domestic economic policies to pay for these wars. This creates greater insecurity and hastens the downward mobility experienced by workers and the lower middle class.
In the past, such pressures and conditions led to worker protests, resistance and class conflict.
Today, trade unions cease to unify old and new workers into a strong organized force to confront the worst excesses of capital. Trade union membership has declined precipitously. The union bosses have exchanged militancy and independence for self-serving alliances with capitalist politicians. Trade unions do not protect the basic interests of workers and their families – they follow the lead of the ‘progressive’ pro-immigrant parties which are an arm of the militarist capitalist ruling class.
The workers are not racist when they resist further deterioration in their income and living standards: They are trying to protect their jobs, benefits and social programs for their families – in an environment of increasing insecurity and capitalist exploitation.
In the recent past, workers could rely on stable jobs and increasing wages because of the strong manufacturing domestic economy. These same workers, who are now labelled as ‘racist’, generally accepted immigrant workers at their plants and in their neighborhoods and schools. But this was in the decades before droves of refugees and destitute immigrants fleeing US-EU wars and destruction came to be viewed as threats to their livelihoods and children’s future.
Unlike the past, when international capital brought extracted raw materials back to the imperial country to be processed by local manufacturers, today US and EU multi-nationals have relocated their industries to overseas low wage countries, undermining jobs and living standards at home.
Commercial importers and retailers, like Wal-Mart, re-employ the displaced workers with offers of minimum pay, no benefits and contingent work.
‘Free Trade’ is not really ‘trade: Rather it is the easy outflow of investment and jobs and the retention of profits overseas in tax-havens.
US government-subsidized, high-tech corporate agro-exports have decimated ‘Third World’ farmers, forcing mass immigration of displaced peasants who then form a base to compete with domestic workers and lower the wages in the US and EU.
Progressives falsely argue, ‘ex post facto’, that migrants have merely taken the poorly-paid, unpleasant jobs that local workers rejected. The reality is more complex: In a previous era, most immigrants quickly moved into decently-paid jobs and were generally accepted by US workers.
Once, US meat packers were well-paid workers supported by militant unions. Over time, the unions lost key labor struggles and capitalists reduced wages, in some cases by fifty percent. What had once been well regulated and strictly protected workplaces deteriorated dramatically. This decline was accompanied by the influx and hiring of low wage immigrants from Mexico and Central America. Today, the meat packing industry is among the most dangerous work environments where even immigrant children are employed. The same pattern of deteriorating wages and conditions and replacement by immigrant labor has occurred in landscaping, construction, the garment industry, transport, retailing, plumbing etc.
What has most recently pushed millions of young workers to migrate from their homes are the series of destructive imperial wars. These devastated the domestic security situation, erasing any functional national military and police structures as well as the possibilities for jobs and a stable future for young people. Former military commanders and soldiers, whose families have been torn apart by imperial US-EU wars and stripped of all dignity, have little choice but to join resistance fighters, such as ISIS in Iraq, or join the waves of refugees.
The US and EU invasion forces and puppet regimes have systematically destroyed any secular, democratic, nationalist or socialist parties and movements in the targeted countries, in their drive to divide once cohesive nations into tribal client states. In their place, violent Islamist and ethnic resistance movements have sprung up to fight the invaders and their puppets. This is the natural and predictable result of the imperial policy of destroying modern states on a massive scale.
Since multiple imperial wars in contiguous countries have destroyed all hope for refuge and new lives within the war-torn region, the new violent Islamist movements have adopted their own ‘international strategy’. Since the imperial wars were launched from distant imperial capitals in Washington, London and Paris, using bombs and missiles, the Islamists have little alternative but to base their military and terrorist strategies within civilian populations, leading to massive casualties.
The violent jihadi attacks against civilian targets in the West are not specifically religious or directed at capturing economic resources or power. The objective is to gain political influence among the growing and marginalized immigrant population in Europe and to undermine the capacity and willingness of the EU and US to continue these endless wars.
In the neglected immigrant neighborhood, there will be growing numbers of sympathizers for the ‘attackers’. This will increase demands by angry and frightened citizens in the West who have increasingly accepted the nationalist political solution of ‘draining the lake’ (immigrants) to catch the ‘fish’ (terrorists). Anti-immigrant politics and anti-terrorist police activities become inter-mingled with growing domestic economic insecurity and the sense of cultural and national displacement experienced by traditional homogeneous working class communities adjacent to large enclaves of immigrants. Increasingly severe ‘austerity’ policies, imposed by neo-liberal governments, greatly inflame the situation.
The so-called, liberal pro-immigration parties and movements ignore the fragile socio-cultural fabric of the local communities. They have done little to protect vulnerable communities from capitalist policies of literally dumping immigrants into areas and regions which cannot support or absorb them. The political leaders of pro-immigrant parties are generally far from these communities and immune to growing competition for scarce jobs and resources. For many politicians, bureaucrats and even NGO administrators, ‘their immigrants’ are domestic workers, cooks, baby sitters, gardeners, who directly serve the most comfortable strata of society. In contrast, the masses of uprooted refugees and immigrants live close to local workers, compete for jobs and share crowded clinics, social services and schools – under conditions of increasing scarcity.
The ruling class collaborates with highly domesticated trade union officials and certain ‘co-opted’ second generation immigrant leaders to ‘pacify’ this domestic discontent through multi-cultural programs and mandatory diversity training sessions for workers and neighborhoods, without ever having to actually confront the class issues of deteriorating living standards and the loss of future job prospects for the children of local workers.
Working and lower middle class communities will naturally close ranks on ethnic, regional and religious bases, because they lack principled class leaders. They are susceptible to the appeals of nationalist-populist or anti-immigrant leaders and politicians, despite these parties long association with the hard right. With the notable exception of French leader, Marine Le Pen, who skillfully combines a deep understanding of French socio-economic trends with her restrictive immigration policies, the majority of Western populist and anti-immigrant politicians channel the widespread resentment over downward mobility among native workers to blaming ‘the immigrants’.
The virulent media attacks and charges of ‘racism’ made by liberal politicians and intellectuals against the downwardly mobile workers, who have been devastated by neo-liberal policies and the broad consequences of imperial wars, do nothing to combat imperialism and class exploitation. They certainly do not help the immigrants. Denunciations of the marginalized American workers and rural citizens, who voted for US President Donald Trump, by middle class intellectuals, living in the more comfortable and urbanized coastal states, show a deep misunderstanding of the fundamental changes occurring in the country. In Europe and the US, employees and activists, connected to liberal NGOs, flock to immigrants like carrion birds, carving out their own little careers ‘educating’ immigrants and entreating the local residents of deteriorated neighborhoods to join in ’sharing’ the dominant ruling class-directed celebrations of ‘diversity’ (or the ‘multi-culturalism of suffering’).
Conclusion
Immigration in the 21st century is significantly different from past waves of migrants. It is highly manipulative to compare the current displacement of millions of war refugees with ‘Ellis Island’ in the US or the post-WWII situation of massive reconstruction in Europe. Immigration today is a direct product of imperial wars, where murder, injury, terror and deliberate shredding of social institutions have forcibly displaced tens of millions of people – the immigrants.
Meanwhile, in the imperial countries, crass capitalist exploitation, the export of capital and jobs, and austerity have aroused the anger of workers and lower middle class employees, whose living standards have sustained significant losses. The forced merger of two enormous waves – the millions of dispossessed refugees and migrants and the marginalized and increasingly threatened workers and citizens in the West has become the key focus of the deepening conflicts of capitalists and workers in the US and the EU. Progressives and reactionaries alike obfuscate the fundamental class issues by diverting public attention to the issue of ‘racism’ and ‘immigrants’.
In the long run, the West must face this dangerous phenomenon by organizing broad and militant anti-imperial peace movements to prevent the wars that produce these waves of desperate migrants. Trade unions, co-operatives and local or national social movements must organize the under-employed, unemployed and underpaid workers to combat the loss of jobs, the pillage of national wealth, massive capitalist tax evasion and the de-industrialization of the national economy. Banks must be nationalized, and education and health care should be publically funded and replace the current massive public budgets for war. Immigrants, who decide to settle in their new countries, should seek to fully integrate, reject dual citizenship and dual loyalties and denounce organizations that act as “fifth columns” for overseas ethno-religious states of all persuasions.
Uprooted people must ultimately choose to remain and fight over flight. They must engage in resistance to imperial occupations in their homelands instead of choosing abject submission and indignities abroad. The role of citizens in the West is to support these struggles by opposing the militarists among their own political leaders.
There are no easy answers for mass migration but there are clear causes and proposals for the future.
One does not have to plow through Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013) in order to grasp the radical changes in income and wealth inequality over the past four decades which fundamentally determined Donald Trump’s victory last November. Instead, one can examine a few of the charts at the end of two more recent reports by Piketty and his Berkeley colleagues Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman: “Wealth Inequality in the United States Since 1913: Evidence from the Capitalized Income Tax Data” (2014); and “Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States” (2016).
The latter report focuses on radical changes in income inequality between two post-World War II periods: 1946-1980 and 1980-2014. The authors’ goal is to capture 100% of national income; that is, the income of every individual adult over age 18 from any source—wages, capital (investment income), benefits, and government transfers—which collectively is roughly equal to the yearly Gross Domestic Product. This identity is true for both pre-tax and post-tax-and-government-spending income data; but it is the latter data that make the most honest case for a radical increase in economic inequality since 1980. Increased income inequality pertaining to both labor and capital income in turn explains much of the parallel increase in household wealth inequality, which is often popularly emphasized because the accumulated wealth figures are so much more starkly unequal.
Unlike these economists, I have a polemical purpose as well. It is to counter assertions by many of those who identify as liberals and/or progressives that Donald Trump’s victory primarily signifies a racist/misogynist and white identity-driven agenda rather than a justified reaction to the increased hardships and decreased opportunities visited by neoliberalism on the white working class.
Eight years of neoliberalism with a Democratic Party face—not a black or female face—resulted in white voters with some college or less increasing their Republican margin from 20% (2008) to 40% (2016). Hillary Clinton, with her roots in both neoliberal (more inequality) and neoconservative (more war) policies, had nothing to offer these voters except vicarious identification with her glass ceiling, and she offered that nothing in a condescending manner. Nor had Obama anything economically meaningful to offer, as it turned out, in spite of the relative faith shown in him by white working class voters. Meanwhile, Trump campaigned on a rejection of both of these establishment doctrines.
What the national income data show
Piketty’s et al.’s national income data set compares two periods of economic growth among the full population, the bottom 50%, the middle 40%, the top 10%, and four additional categories within the top 10%. From 1946-1980, overall real per capita (age 18 and over) growth was 95%. Both the bottom 50% and the middle 40% had (post-tax) growth rates higher than this: 102% and 105%, respectively. Therefore, these groups gained a larger share of the overall economic pie during this period. Meanwhile, top 10% income grew at a rate of 79%, signifying a decreasing share of total income. Moreover, all four groups with the top 10%—1%, .1%, .01%, and .001%—also found themselves during this 35-year period with decreased shares of post-tax income, with the real per capita growth rate of the top 1% at only 47%.
The post-tax income data from 1980-2014 show that this trend was radically reversed during the neoliberal era. While overall growth was lower at 61%, growth for the bottom 50% and middle 40% was 21% and 49% respectively. Meanwhile, the exorbitant growth rates for the top 10%, 1%, .1%, .01% and .001% were (respectively): 113%, 194%, 299%, 424%, and 617%.
The concrete results of this shift can be extrapolated from the data as follows, by calculating an alternative scenario in which the income of all groups grew at the overall rate (61%), and comparing that to their actual growth. From these figures, we can derive the amount of income effectively transferred in 2014 from the bottom 90% to the top 10% due to decreased/increased income shares:
+ If the income of the bottom 50% had grown at the overall rate, the average income of this group (117,200,000 adults) would have been $33,250. Instead, it was $25,000, or $8,250 less.
+ If the income of the middle 40% had grown at the overall rate, the average income of this group (93,760,000 adults) would have been $72,600. Instead, it was $67,200, or $5,400 less.
+ If the income of the top 10% had grown at the overall rate, the average income of this group (23,440,000 adults) would have been $190,500. Instead, it was $252,000, or $61,500 more.
+ If the income of the top 1% had grown at the overall rate, the average income of this group (2,344,000 adults) would have been $616,100. Instead, it was $1,010,000, or $393,900 more.
The bottom 50% lost 25% of what would have been its yearly income, given a constant share of overall income, through neoliberal income re-distribution policies, 1980-2014. The average transfer of income away from each of the bottom 90% in 2014 was $6,800. Put differently, every nine adults in the bottom 90% contributed a total of $61,200 to one individual in the top 10%. By 2014, the top 10% received a total of an additional $1.43 trillion dollars, nearly 10% of overall income (or GDP), that had in 1980 accrued to the bottom 90%. This is also reflected in Piketty et al.’s finding that the top 10% share of income increased from 30% to 40% during this period.
At least three additional findings from the income data are relevant in this context:
First, income is highly concentrated among the top tenth of each income bracket. Whether one compares 100% and 10%, 10% and 1%, 1% and .1%, .1% and .01%, or .01% and .001%, the top one-tenth portion receives over 40% of the overall income of the larger group.
Second, while capital (investment) income has overall remained at 30% over an entire century, for the top 10% the capital share has remained above 40%; for the top 1%, 60%, and for the top .1%, nearly 70%. While these figures have not changed dramatically over a long period, it’s worth noting the increasing dominance of capital over labor income as one moves up the total income ladder.
Third, the overall tax rate (federal, state, local) for the bottom 50% has increased since 1960 from 15% to 25%; for the top 1%, the overall tax rate has decreased during this period from 45% to 35% (up from 30% during the early Reagan era).
Summary
The concurrent historical increase of wealth inequality, a consequence of neoliberal policies related to labor, taxation, and finance, is amply demonstrated in the 2014 report referred to above. From 1980-2012, the share of the top 10% of households increased from 65% to 75%, while (obviously) the share of the bottom 90% decreased from 35% to 25%. Analogous to income concentration, wealth is concentrated in the top one-tenth of each increasingly wealthy group. Thus, the top 1% now owns over 40% of household wealth (up from 25% in 1980), the top .1% owns over 20% (up from 10% in 1980), and the top .01% (16,000 households) owns over 10% (up from 3% in 1980).
Increasing disparities in individualincome of course ensure increasing disparities in household wealth, to the point where these disparities are simply inconceivable except in terms of the contrast between materially-based human suffering and superfluous abundance. This suffering, experienced and witnessed well beyond those technically defined as impoverished, cannot be wished away by identity politics, in the name of progressivism, anti-fascism, or anything else.
David Green lives in Champaign, IL and can be reached at davidgreen50@gmail.com.
Excavations at the site of a former Catholic home for unwed mothers, their children, and orphans in Ireland have uncovered “significant quantities” of human remains buried on the grounds.
An investigation was launched after reports surfaced in 2014 of a mass grave on the grounds of the former ‘mother and baby’ home in Tuam, Co Galway.
Excavations carried out between November 2016 and February 2017 uncovered two large structures hidden underground at the former home in the west of Ireland – one apparently a large sewage tank filled with rubble, while the second contained 20 chambers.
“Significant quantities of human remains have been discovered in at least 17 of the 20 underground chambers which were examined,” The Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation said in a statement Friday.
The remains were found to be those of babies ranging from 35 foetal weeks to two or three years old. The Commission said it is “shocked by the discovery” and its investigation is continuing “into who was responsible for the disposal of human remains in this way.”
The coroner has been informed and will determine if there is to be any police involvement in further investigations. The home in Tuam operated from 1925 to 1961 and the commission has revealed that many of the remains found so far date back to the 1950s.
‘Mother and Baby’ facilities housed women who became pregnant outside of marriage and were ostracized by Catholic society as a result. The sites were infamously cruel environments, where mothers worked tough manual labor jobs for little or no pay and only permitted to see their children for a few hours each week. The children were often adopted by other families, sometimes in other countries such as the US, without informing the mother.
Local historian Catherine Corless spent years researching the home and was instrumental in the discovery of the mass grave. “If you look at the records, babies were dying two a week, but I’m still trying to figure out how they could [put the bodies in a septic tank],” Corless told the Irish Mail in 2014. “Couldn’t they have afforded baby coffins?”
People in Tuam first learned of the mass interment in the 1970s when two boys accidentally uncovered skeletons when they broke apart a concrete slab covering part of the grave. However, it was resealed and remained untouched for decades.
Speaking on RTÉ radio on Friday afternoon, Corless said that during her research “everything pointed” to this area being a mass grave, but despite this she was told to leave it alone.
She also said she believes the graveyard extends further overground where remains are buried in coffins and called for the whole area to be investigated. “This is only the start,” she concluded.
Ireland’s Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone said on Friday that the “sad and disturbing news” from the commission confirms the rumors of a mass grave at the site.
“Today is about remembering and respecting the dignity of the children who lived their short lives in this home. We will honour their memory and make sure that we take the right actions now to treat their remains appropriately,” Zappone added.
The Bon Secours Sisters, the order which used to run the home, said in a statement that they could make no comment on the announcement.
Internment of civilian nationals belonging to opposing sides was carried out in varying degrees by all belligerent powers in World War Two. It was also the fate of those servicemen who found themselves in a neutral country.
At the outbreak of war there were around 80,000 potential enemy aliens in Britain who, it was feared, could be spies, or willing to assist Britain’s enemies in the event of an invasion. All Germans and Austrians over the age of 16 were called before special tribunals and were divided into one of three groups… continue
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