Two years ago this May, Madrid’s Puerta del Sol and Barcelona’s Plaza Catalunya, Spain’s two most important city squares, were occupied by thousands of indignant protestors. For many of the nation’s highly educated but disillusioned youth, enough was enough, and for a short while it seemed that a new era of political mobilization beckoned.
A few weeks later, however, such hopes were brutally dashed when the riot division of Catalonia’s police force, the Mossos D’esquadra, unleashed the untamed fury of the state upon the protestors’ makeshift camp, under the rather dubious pretext of ridding the city of a health and safety risk (this is Europe, after all!). The message was clear: all attempts to resist the new European economic reality, no matter how peaceful, would be brutally suppressed.
In little more than an hour, a whirlwind of police violence cleared the square of all the occupants and pretty much all of their belongings, many of which were never returned. All the while, a thick, dense ring of shell-shocked protestors and curious bystanders gathered around the square, looking on in a mixture of bewilderment, fear and anger.
And I was one of them. As I strolled around the square, with one wary eye on the aggrieved protestors and the other on the fearsomely armed and highly unpredictable mossos d’esquadra, a placard caught my attention. Its message was beautifully simple: “No soy anti sistema, el sistema es anti yo” (I’m not anti-system; the system is anti-me).
The placard was held aloft by a small child riding on his father’s shoulders. The cynical realist within me knew full well that the boy, who must have been no more than five or six years old, was merely channeling his father’s thoughts. But that didn’t stop my more romantic side from imagining that the child was, in actual fact, eloquently speaking out for his soon-to-be lost generation.
For if there is one thing of which you can be sure about present-day Europe, it is that its political and economic systems are not meant to serve or protect the interests of the youth; on the contrary, they have been designed to gradually erode their last-remaining freedoms and rights and, by leaving them the tab for the transgressions and greed of the global banking sector, deprive them of all hope of ever attaining the standards of living once taken for granted by their parents or grandparents.
Spain is a perfect case in point: In the two intervening years since the country’s 15-M moment, the economy has spiraled into a bottomless depression. Official youth unemployment in the country has reached a mind-boggling 60 percent. Thousands of Spanish savers and pensioners have been robbed of their life savings, victims of the national banks’ cunning (and, it goes without saying, unpunished) preferentes sleight of hand.
All the while, taxes continue to skyrocket and essential welfare spending has been mercilessly sacrificed on the altar of bank recapitalization. Countless of the nation’s homes have – and continue to be – repossessed, to later be given away at a fraction of their value to wealthy international property speculators.
Perhaps worst of all, the country’s current government, which took the reins of power six months after the inception of the 15th May movement, has proven itself to be the most corrupt and incompetent in living memory.
But Spain is by no means unique; it is, if anything, a mere symptom of what is happening throughout the eurozone. From Cyprus to Portugal and from France to Slovenia, an all-out war has been declared against the continent’s industrious middle classes.
And now, with Winter turning to Spring, and Spring soon to Summer, the people of Europe face the starkest of choices: resignation to the EU’s neoliberal, neofeudal agenda, and with it, the gradual elimination of the few remaining freedoms and opportunities we still enjoy; or a spirited last-stand against the encroaching totalitarianism of the European superstate.
Before you make your choice (if, of course, you are European), let me first make a few of my own personal observations vis-a-vis our current situation and future outlook.
1.In case you hadn’t noticed, we are already owned, lock, stock and smoking barrel, by the international cartel of too-big-to-fail banks.
2.Pretty much all our political representatives and institutions, whether at the national or EU level, have also been bought off by the same banks, whose agents – the national central banks, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the ECB, the European Commission, the IMF, OECD and World Bank – now stand head and shoulders above all other players in the global political order.
3.Said banks are, to all intents and purposes, bankrupt, both financially and morally. They are also quite literally a law unto themselves. By allowing them to continue to operate in a mark-to-model fantasy world as well as gorge themselves on virtually interest-free central bank credit and regular transfusions of tax-payer funds, our politicians have shown all too clearly on which side their bread is buttered. As such, as long as the current financial system remains in place, the banks and their senior executives will be free to continue bleeding dry our national economies and personal bank accounts.
As Golem XIV recently wrote in his blog, there now exists an official list, drawn up by the Financial Stability Board, of 28 banks that are now free to operate beyond any legal jurisdiction. Like HSBC, they can consort with and engage in business with some of the world’s most wanted criminals, at absolutely no risk of legal action. And as Golem notes, this month (April 2013), we can look forward to the announcement of “another list, this time of Globally Systemically Important Insurers (G-SIIs). They too will be above the Law.”
4.Democracy has absolutely no role, beyond a figurative one, in theEuropean Union. The continued survival and expansion of the European superstate supersedes all other concerns, whether moral, political, social or economic. As such, no genuine form of democracy or civic political engagement will be allowed to take root. As in Stalinist Russia, complete power and authority will reside in the hands of faceless, unaccountable apparatchiks, all doing the bidding of the large global banks and conglomerates.
5.As the real economy (i.e. everything that is not the stock exchange) continues its descent into the abyss, businesses will continue to close down, jobs will continue to vanish at an alarming rate and taxes will continue to rise. What’s more, at a politically expedient moment, the final nail will be driven deep into the coffin of Europe’s welfare state system, once the envy of the world. Needless to say, the newly privatized healthcare, education and pension systems that will take its place will be the sole preserve of the upwardly mobile (i.e. not us).
Instead of paying for essential public services and utilities such as health care, education, pensions and infrastructure, the public’s ballooning tax burden will be directed toward two purposes: keeping the big banks afloat and sustaining the ever-expanding police-state apparatus that will be needed to keep the collapsing civic society in line. Put simply, we will be forced to finance our own enslavement.
6. Most importantly of all, the global financial system’s days are already numbered. Put simply, the system is bucklingunder the combined weight of unsustainable debt, unpayable pension schemes and a derivatives market whose total value dwarfs global GDP by magnitudes that exceed all human logic.
The question is, once it does collapse, who’s going to pick up the pieces and rebuild a new, more sustainable system in its ashes? Will it be us, the people, or will it be the same bankers, central bankers and heavily compromised political half-wits that got us here in the first place? Will we bravely stake our claim to a new future, or resign ourselves, in fear and despair, to the global bankers’ totalitarian nirvana?
Whatever choice Europeans make in the coming months and years, one thing is clear: the human, social and economic costs will be tremendous either way. For the unpleasant truth is that we have allowed ourselves to be led so far down the rabbit hole of exponential debt that reemerging into the light of day will take years of collective struggle and sacrifice.
Don Quijones is a freelance writer and translator based in Barcelona, Spain. His blog, Raging Bull-Shit, is a modest attempt to challenge some of the wishful thinking and scrub away the lathers of soft soap peddled by our political and business leaders and their loyal mainstream media.
In June, Israel will host the European Under-20 football championship, and in doing so will formally debunk the myth that FIFA gives a toss about fighting “racism.” In fact, it will confirm, as if further confirmation were necessary, that the great football anti-racism campaign is a pretentious, divisive sham. Let’s examine two starkly contrasting examples of “racism” and how FIFA handled them.
ISRAEL
Last July, FIFA displayed conspicuous silence regarding Israel’s years-long illegal detention of Palestinian footballer Mahmoud Sarsak. FIFA also meted out no punishment to the Israeli Football Association for the deliberate bombing of a Palestinian football stadium, which killed at least eight people.
Now, one might argue that the Israel FA was not to blame, but that would be a feeble quibble indeed, given FIFA’s categorical proclamation of high moral purpose:
“FIFA strongly condemns all forms of racism in football, and any form of discrimination will not be tolerated and will receive a strong response by the relevant FIFA authorities” (my emphasis).
Still, FIFA should have condemned the attack on principle, but no. As far as FIFA was concerned, it saw no violation of its moral code.
The hypocrisy of FIFA in the face of Jewish terrorism was obvious late last November when Secretary-General Jerome Valcke announced the official response to the stadium destruction: “We see it our mandate to rebuild football infrastructure which has been destroyed. We will also rebuild the stadium in Gaza, which has been destroyed. Football brings people together and we will support any re-construction necessary when football infrastructure is destroyed through disasters.”
Note the unspecific, generic, wooden boilerplate. Note the cowardly use of the passive voice (“has been destroyed”), designed specifically to avoid mentioning Israel. Valke did not say, as he should have: “We see it our mandate to rebuild the Gaza stadium, and we will assess all costs to Israel, which behaved with callous disregard for human life. Failure to pay for the reconstruction will result in Israel’s suspension from UEFA.” As far as FIFA was concerned, nobody was to blame for the destruction. It was a “disaster,” like an earthquake! Nobody’s fault!
By rebuilding the stadium without forcing Israel to atone for its violence, FIFA tacitly accepts what was done to Palestine and is morally complicit in the commission of Jewish racism.
In January this year, FIFA again did nothing when Israeli fans displayed undisguised racism after the team Beitar Jerusalem announced its intention to sign two Chechen players. As Agence France-Presse reported: “During a game that day, some fans chanted slogans such as ‘no Arab will tread here’ and waved a huge banner reading ‘Beitar—pure for ever.’ They also cursed [the team’s Russian-Israeli owner Arkady] Gaydamak, though reports said some fans tried to shout them down.”
Is it not perverse that the most overtly racist country in FIFA does not merit so much as a tut-tut or a fine for acts of physical violence and grossly racist chanting? How does such inaction not prove that FIFA tacitly accepts Jewish bigotry toward Arabs?
HUNGARY
On the other hand, if anyone does denounce Israel’s racism, or happens to say anything the least bit impolitic about Israel, FIFA goes berserk. Take the example of Hungary: what FIFA did to the Hungarian Football Association in the name of “anti-racism” made no sense morally or legally.
On Aug. 15, 2012, Hungary hosted Israel in a friendly match during which fans chose to voice their displeasure of Israel’s warmongering and contempt for human rights. Based on a complaint that these fans chanted “anti-Semitic” remarks, FIFA punished the Hungarian national team by forcing it to play its March 22 World Cup qualifying match against Romania behind closed doors.
The source of the above mentioned complaint was the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, one of the more notorious Zionist agencies dedicated to promoting the Holocaust® and defending the canonical fiction that criticism of Israel (anti-Zionism) equals criticism of Jews (“anti-Semitism”).* The centre has even resorted to outright defamation to proselytize the Jew-as-victim myth. In 1998, it published a screed against Switzerland alleging, among other things, that the Swiss built special concentration camps for Jews and deliberately wanted to inflict suffering on them. The report was so egregiously false it had to be repudiated.
Given the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s ethically dubious nature and history of lying, did FIFA evaluate the credibility of the complaint? What, exactly, made the fans’ protests “anti-Semitic” as opposed to “anti-Israeli?” FIFA won’t say.
In fact, FIFA’s media centre refuses to answer any questions about the event, preferring instead to recycle a generic press release and try to act invisible behind its e–mail address in hopes the questions will go away. Unprofessionalism notwithstanding, the refusal to answer media enquiries says a great deal about the moral integrity of FIFA’s “anti-racism” crusade; or rather, the lack of it.
Regardless of what the Hungarian fans did or did not chant, the Hungarian FA apologized and asserted its commitment to ensuring that Hungarian football is rid of “extremist voices” as soon as possible. Surely this act of abject contrition should have been enough for FIFA: the Hungarian FA accepted the Zionist version of events unconditionally and did not attempt to defend its fans’ behaviour. It should have been enough, but wasn’t. The Hungarian FA was subjected to the gratuitous, unjust measure of being forced to play its March 22 game behind closed doors.
Hungary’s new constitution states that every person shall have the right to express his or her opinion (“Freedom and Responsibility,” Article IX), yet FIFA acted, and continues to act, as if it can override fundamental constitutional rights. “Dictatorship” is a term that Tibor Mezei says accurately describes FIFA. Mezei, a senior adviser in the Hungarian government’s Department of Communication, said in an interview from Budapest that FIFA is not accountable to any government:
“FIFA is an absolute power like Louis XIV in France. You can’t appeal to an international court if you don’t like what FIFA has done. It’s a voluntary organization, so its members are completely at the mercy of FIFA. What happened was not a verbal criticism of Israel or any other country. It’s a question of how you interpret symbolic gestures, and if you oppose FIFA’s interpretation you risk being excluded.”
The Hungarian FA understandably appealed the penalty, but the appeal was denied. Meszei said FIFA wanted to make an example of Hungary and it’s hard to argue with him. In fact, the Hungarian media came to the same conclusion.
On Jan. 10, 2013, Szabolcs Szeretö, the deputy editor of Magyar Nemzet (Hungarian Nation) wrote that the majority of Hungarians felt that FIFA’s “painful, unfair and excessive verdict” punished them for something they have never done. Moreover, he said the verdict will stir up, not lessen, anti-Jewish animosity. Ironically, that would suit Israel just fine because acts of anti-Jewishness, even contrived ones, are important for manufacturing sympathy for Jews.
Szeretö further pointed out that FIFA did not levy harsh sanctions against Romania when radical fans chanted anti-Hungarian slogans during a match in Bucharest. Furthermore, FIFA took no strong measures against Malaysia after thousands of Malaysian fans chanted Singapore itu anjing (“Singapore are dogs”) during a Nov. 25, 2012, match.
Unfortunately, the case of Hungary is not isolated. A similar disproportionate response was visited upon the Roman club Lazio after fans dared to brandish a “Free Palestine” banner during a Nov. 22, 2012, match against Jewish-owned Tottenham Hotspur.
The waving of the national flags of Iran (left) and Palestine (right) were acts of “racism” according to FIFA because they were deemed to be attacks on Israel, and so the “offending” host country was severely sanctioned. Would FIFA dare to sanction the Israeli Football Association as severely, if at all, if a Jew waved an Israeli flag during a game featuring a team from a Muslim country?
If FIFA defines non-violent expressions of support for Israel’s victims as “racist” yet refuses to recognize active Jewish racism toward Arabs, then it declares itself to be thoroughly zionized and devoid of any right to dictate morality to anyone. The truth of the matter is this: FIFA does not have an “anti-racism” policy; it has a “anti-racism” prejudice, and that prejudice infects the entire sport.
__________
* “Anti-Semitism” is an artificial term invented in 1873 by Wilhelm Marr, an anti-Jewish German journalist who needed to redefine Jews as an ethnic, not a religious, group to justify official discrimination; hence, he coined the term Semitismus, based on the linguistic term “semitic.” By this linguistic corruption, Marr was able to attack not only Jews but the larger concept of Jewishness.
Catastrophic nuclear accidents, like Chernobyl in 1986 or Fukushima No. 1 in 2011, are very rare, we’re incessantly told, and their probability of occurring infinitesimal. But when they do occur, they get costly. So costly that the French government, when it came up with cost estimates, kept them secret.
But now the report was leaked to the French magazine, Le Journal de Dimanche. Turns out, the upper end of the cost spectrum of an accident at a single reactor at the plant chosen for the study, the plant at Dampierre in the Department of Loiret in north-central France, would amount to over three times the country’s GDP. Financially, France would cease to exist as we know it.
Hence, the need to keep it secret. The study was done in 2007 by the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), a government agency under joint authority of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Environment, Industry, Research, and Health. With over 1,700 employees, it’s France’s “public service expert in nuclear and radiation risks.” This isn’t some overambitious, publicity-hungry think tank.
It evaluated a range of disaster scenarios that might occur at the Dampierre plant. In the best-case scenario, costs came to €760 billion—more than a third of France’s GDP. At the other end of the spectrum: €5.8 trillion! Over three times France’s GDP. A devastating amount. So large that France could not possibly deal with it.
Yet, France gets 75% of its electricity from nuclear power. The entire nuclear sector is controlled by the state, which also owns 85% of EDF, the mega-utility that operates France’s 58 active nuclear reactors spread over 20 plants. So, three weeks ago, the Institute released a more politically correct report for public consumption. It pegged the cost of an accident at €430 billion.
“There was no political smoothening, no pressure,” claimed IRSN Director General Jacques Repussard, but he admitted, “it’s difficult to publish these kinds of numbers.” He said the original report with a price tag of €5.8 trillion was designed to counter the reports that EDF had fabricated, which “very seriously underestimated the costs of the incidents.”
Both reports were authored by IRSN economist Patrick Momal, who struggled to explain away the differences. The new number, €430 billion, was based on a “median case” of radioactive releases, as was the case in Fukushima, he told the JDD, while the calculations of 2007 were based more on what happened at Chernobyl. But then he added that even the low end of the original report, the €760 billion, when updated with the impact on tourism and exports, would jump to €1 trillion.
“One trillion, that’s what Fukushima will ultimately cost,” Repussard said.
Part of the €5.8 trillion would be the “astronomical social costs due to the high number of victims,” the report stated. The region contaminated by cesium 137 would cover much of France and Switzerland, all of Belgium and the Netherlands, and a big part of Germany—an area with 90 million people (map). The costs incurred by farmers, employees, and companies, the environmental damage and healthcare expenses would amount to €4.4 trillion.
“Those are social costs, but the victims may not necessarily be compensated,” the report stated ominously—because there would be no entity in France that could disburse those kinds of amounts.
Closer to the plant, 5 million people would have to be evacuated from an area of 87,000 square kilometers (about 12% of France) and resettled. The soil would have to be decontaminated, and radioactive waste would have to be treated and disposed of. Total cost: €475 billion.
The weather is the big unknown. Yet it’s crucial in any cost calculations. Winds blowing toward populated areas would create the worst-case scenario of €5.8 trillion. Amidst the horrible disaster of Fukushima, Japan was nevertheless lucky in one huge aspect: winds pushed 80% of the radioactive cloud out to sea. If it had swept over Tokyo, the disaster would have been unimaginable. In Chernobyl, winds made the situation worse; they spread the cloud over the Soviet Union.
Yet the study might underestimate the cost for other nuclear power plants. The region around Dampierre has a lower population density than regions around other nuclear power plants. And it rarely has winds that would blow the radioactive cloud in a northerly direction toward Paris. Other nuclear power plants aren’t so fortuitously located.
These incidents have almost no probability of occurring, we’re told. So there are currently 437 active nuclear power reactors and 144 “permanent shutdown reactors” in 31 countries, according to the IAEA, for a total of 581 active and inactive reactors. Of these, four melted down so far—one at Chernobyl and three at Fukushima. Hence, the probability for a meltdown is not infinitesimal. Based on six decades of history, it’s 4 out of 581, or 0.7%. One out of every 145 reactors. Another 67 are under construction, and more are to come….
Decommissioning and dismantling the powerplant at Fukushima and disposing of the radioactive debris has now been estimated to take 40 years. At this point, two years after the accident, very little has been solved. But it has already cost an enormous amount of money. People who weren’t even born at the time of the accident will be handed the tab for it. And the ultimate cost might never be known.
The mayor of Futaba, a ghost town of once upon a time 7,000 souls near Fukushima No. 1, told his staff that evacuees might not be able to return for 30 years. Or never, for the older generation. It was the first estimate of a timeframe. But it all depends on successful decontamination. And that has turned into a vicious corruption scandal. Read…. Corruption At “Decontaminating” Radioactive Towns In Japan.
With Barack Obama putting his plan to cut Social Security and Medicare expenditures into writing in his Federal budget proposal the ability of those who voted for him to credibly deny his years of publicly stating he would do so disappeared. The pathetic pleas from liberals and progressives who only a few short months ago were assuring the unwashed masses Mr. Obama was on the cusp of a ‘liberal’ renaissance if only doubters would join them in granting him another term are today as empty as their assurances were then. And Mr. Obama’s self ‘sacrifice’ of voluntarily giving up 5% of his own $400,000 per year salary in solidarity with seniors present and future who will see their Social Security payments reduced calls into question his intelligence if sincere—the difference between the rich (Mr. Obama) voluntarily giving up a fraction of their yacht allowance versus millions of seniors choosing between eating and living indoors is fundamental.
Those whose politics begin and end with rolling off the couch every few years to vote could in theory be forgiven for perceiving a yawning chasm between the Republican and Democrat candidates. Marketing firms were paid a lot of money to create that illusion. And Mr. Obama almost certainly has the political calculus correct that the bourgeois commentariat, a/k/a/ ‘the left,’ will whimper in protest for a few days, weeks at most, before falling in line for Hillary or whatever militaristic, corporatist abomination the Democrats put forward in the next Presidential election. Early reports even have liberal pundits sticking with the line Mr. Obama is only posturing with the proposals, despite his near decade prior explaining why he believes Social Security and Medicare must be cut to be ‘saved.’ However, this is truly a ‘let them eat cake’ moment. Mr. Obama’s policies will needlessly, and in economic terms gratuitously, hurt a lot of people—overwhelmingly those who self-identify as the Democrats’ political ‘base.’ And lest there be confusion over the matter, in his first term Mr. Obama fully restored the fortunes of America’s ruling class at several trillion dollars of public expense before proposing these cuts.
The faux official hand wringing over Social Security is a result of the bi-partisan (‘Washington’) consensus that produced the trajectory of catastrophic public policy over the last forty years. Radically skewed income distribution, the result of public policy, has seen lower and middle-income wages stagnate with all economic gains delivered up to a tiny plutocracy. This has lowered the proportion of total income paid into Social Security because above the current $113,700 cap income is excluded from contribution to the program. Raising the cap would have some effect in reducing expected future shortfalls but would reframe the social insurance nature of the program because payments are also capped. The real solution—where the real money is, lies in shifting economic gains back toward lower and middle class wages. Doing this would raise the proportion of income paid into Social Security. And this leaves aside the fact the Federal Reserve created several trillion dollars ‘out of thin air’ to restore the fortunes of a dysfunctional financial system and its beneficiaries in the plutocracy and could more productively do so to fund the nation’s social insurance programs. In short, the ‘crisis’ facing Social Security and Medicare is one of skewed income distribution resulting from bad public policy and is readily solvable without cutting benefits.
To the argument proposed tax increases on the rich balance ‘sacrifice’ across economic classes, what makes Mr. Obama’s self-imposed wage cut so ludicrous is how radically it understates the degree to which a large and growing proportion of the population has been economically marginalized. It also frames income distribution as an outcome of ‘natural’ processes from which returning some proportion for the benefit of the common weal through taxes is ‘sacrifice.’ (The rich benefit from public expenditure in far greater proportion than the rest of us). About one-third of retirees exist entirely on Social Security payments that are already at bare subsistence levels. These payments constitute the bulk of monthly income for two out of three retirees. Cutting benefits for people who lack other options for obtaining income isn’t ‘sacrifice,’ shared or otherwise—it is immiseration. And Social Security belongs to those who paid into the program throughout their working lives—it is only through radically anti-democratic governance Mr. Obama and Congressional Republicans have say in the matter.
Income distribution data shows top incomes coming from two related sources—finance and finance related and corporate executive compensation. Wall Street—the F.I.R.E. sector (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate), benefited from Wall Street’s resurrection at public expense. Government ‘bailout’ policies were framed as ‘liquidity’ provision when in fact the programs went on far longer and at greater public expense than this explanation supports. In fact, Wall Street was (is) insolvent due to poor and / or fraudulent business practices meaning bankers killed ‘their’ banks, not nature. The resurrection of Wall Street, including paychecks and bonuses, took place entirely on the public dime. And a significant proportion of the rise in corporate earnings used to justify grotesquely disproportionate executive compensation came from cutting wages to labor. The ability of executives to cut wages derives from government policies specifically designed to reduce the power of labor unions and from tax breaks and incentives to shift production to low wage countries. These are no more ‘market’ forces than the bank bailouts were.
The challenge for the bourgeois commentariat is it largely accepts the political economy that produced current circumstance but objects to the outcomes. Explicit austerity economics, of which Mr. Obama’s proposals to cut social insurance programs are a component, receive their provenance from the ‘structural adjustment’ programs the IMF (International Monetary Fund) for decades inflicted on the citizens of other nations for the benefit of Western banks. The neo-liberal premises behind structural adjustment are still taught in university economics departments by ‘liberal’ economists who are leading members of the bourgeois commenting class now critical of austerity. With the aforementioned government policies to concentrate wealth within a tiny plutocracy whilst throwing labor to the wolves in mind, liberal economists defer to ‘market’ forces to explain the income and wealth skews behind the ‘natural’ austerity faced by the bulk of the working populace and then argue explicit austerity policies are ‘unfair’ and / or economically destructive. But why argue over effects when the causes can be addressed?
In the macroeconomic context in which austerity economics is argued the mainstream debate is between Keynesian economists, ‘New’ and old and Austrians. Keynesians argue in circumstances where private demand for goods and services is ‘inadequate’ government spending produces multiples of the money spent in increased economic output. Austrians argue government spending is always and everywhere less productive than private spending and taxes levied to fund government spending take away from private spending. Eighty or so years of evidence strongly favor the Keynesian understanding of how modern economies ‘work,’ but with a caveat. Austrians tend to understand the roles of money and banking in the economy whereas ‘New’ Keynesians remain willfully clueless. This difference plays out in a few ways—private credit expansion has an economic effect similar to public expenditure but it is neither in the public interest nor is it socially neutral in its political-economic effects. And public investment funded with public debt has the power of the printing press behind its repayment whereas private credit doesn’t.
Mr. Obama’s delivery of several trillion dollars of public wealth to the banks in ongoing bailouts was sold as a way to ‘get banks lending again,’ ‘private’ Keynesianism, to raise the quantity of private debt issued to bolster consumption. But wholly reviving insolvent banks has no legitimacy in any economic theory. This is why the bailouts were, and still are, framed as liquidity provision when they are in fact solvency provision. And again, private debt has the political-economic consequence of concentrating wealth and political power in the hands of lenders (Wall Street). Intellectually honest Austrian economists would have let Wall Street die at its own hands in 2008 in favor of a functioning private credit system. ‘New’ Keynesians support public spending to bolster demand when necessary under the (correct) premise the power of the printing press is a tool to serve the public interest. But their ignorance of money and banking leaves them supporting the monetary policies of solvency provision for dysfunctional banks and at utter losses as to why fiscal policies funded by this same printing press are nowhere to be found. To coin a Clintonism, it’s the class warfare stupid!
The difference between the Federal government providing ‘liquidity’ to markets and restoring solvency to insolvent banks is more than a technicality. In the case of liquidity provision the government temporarily floods markets with money to facilitate transactions during bank panics– it is the ability to transact that is restored. In the case of restoring solvency the Federal government both buys bad assets from the banks that through fraud and / or incompetence rendered themselves insolvent and it provides subsidies from which banks can ‘rebuild’ their balance sheets. Both are transfers of public resources to private interests demonstrated by history to be economically destructive.
Without apparent irony, the structural adjustment programs fiscal conservatives look to for intellectual sustenance absolutely reject using public funds to restore dysfunctional banks because dysfunctional banks inevitably bleed the economies that remain dry. Austerity economics, the bases for IMF and World Bank policies, are banker economics designed to assure bank debts are repaid regardless of the economic devastation doing so may cause. For theoretical coherence austerity requires that core banks (Wall Street), the banks for which loans be forcibly repaid by the periphery, be functional and healthy. Having now saved a parasitic and dysfunctional Wall Street at public expense, fiscal conservatives in the U.S., led by Barack Obama, seek to cut public expenditures to pay for the privilege.
If cutting the inflation assumption for Social Security would ‘save’ the program, the purported rationale for doing so, then reversing policies designed to concentrate income and wealth would do far more. But cutting the inflation assumption isn’t intended to ‘save’ the program; it is intended to cut Federal spending in which Social Security plays only an indirect role (why else include it in budget ‘negotiations’?) because it is funded through a dedicated tax, not through Federal spending. This doesn’t mean Mr. Obama isn’t locally sincere (if wrong) in promoting the Hamilton Project (Robert Rubin) line that ‘tweaking’ social insurance programs will ‘save’ them. But here context is important. And the context is public expenditures are being cut to pay for the Wall Street bailout and the economic calamity Wall Street caused. Put another way, if there is no public debt ‘crisis’ (there isn’t) and the temporary increase in public debt was to save Wall Street and undo the damage it did to the economy, why not get the money from Wall Street?
But in fact the money is still going in the other direction. And across Europe the story is remarkably similar—through assuming bank liabilities directly (Ireland), shifting public resources to the banks to ‘save’ them and public expenditure on economic stabilizers and unemployment benefits, formerly fiscally ‘disciplined’ nations are now regularly characterized by the European Central Bank and German Chancellor Angela Merkel as nations of ‘takers’ whose morally bankrupt citizenries ruined their countries with fat public welfare programs that must be cut to restore economic health. To be clear, fiscal issues the European periphery faces came from delivering public resources to Wall Street alone. (Wall Street now includes large European banks).
For the uninitiated, the endgame appears nigh. The seizure of bank deposits in Cyprus to pay for bank losses simply removed the ‘middle men,’ the European Central Bank and the political powers that be in Europe, from transferring wealth from the citizens of Cyprus to Cypriot bankers (and to European banks and U.S. hedge funds). The capitalist media storyline promoted by gullible liberals that ‘Russian mafia’ money was seized is nonsense. By reports European banks and rich Russians had little trouble getting their money out of Cyprus. The deposits being seized are in precise inverse relation to the political-economic power the depositors wield. And across the West policies of economic austerity are being imposed in similar fashion.
Mr. Obama is who he is. But those who voted for him have some explaining to do. I oppose Mr. Obama’s policies and would have likewise vocally, and otherwise, opposed those of Mitt Romney had he ‘won.’ Were this simply a matter of resentment the situation would take care of itself—you are the schmucks who cut your own Social Security and Medicare programs. But if you think this is it, that the worst is over, I humbly suggest that was your view when Mr. Obama won his second term. To those paying attention, the Dodd-Frank legislation being sold as a way to ‘reign-in’ bailed out banks contains ‘Cyprus’ clauses that leave banks (or their creditors, beginning with derivatives counter-parties) no alternative than to seize insured deposits when they need their next inevitable bailout. On the plus side, this will eliminate the time-consuming theater of austerity ‘debates.’ On the minus side, Mr. Obama is exponentially increasing the misery of society’s most vulnerable. But I’m confident he appreciates your support for his policies.
Rob Urie is an artist and political economist in New York.
German journalists have found barrels of radioactive waste in an underwater valley in the English Channel, which were dumped there half a century ago. Politicians in Germany have called for the potentially harmful containers to be removed.
28,500 containers of low level radioactive waste were dumped into the English Channel by the British and the Belgians between 1950 and 1963. Most of them were sunk in an underwater channel near the island of Alderney, known as Hurd’s Deep. Several barrels were found by a team of the joint Franco-German public broadcaster ARTE in an investigative report set to air later in April.
As part of the investigation, the German Public broadcaster SWR sent an unmanned remote controlled submarine into the Channel’s depths. The team discovered two barrels just 124 meters deep, a few kilometers from the French coast.
Experts had assumed that the sea had rusted open the barrels and the contents had dissipated throughout the ocean, thus making the hazard innocuous.
According to the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA), the containers hold an estimated 17,224 metric tons of low-level radioactive waste. The British barrels are estimated to contain the equivalent to 58 trillion becquerels (units of radioactivity), while the Belgian barrels are thought to hold 2.4 trillion becquerels. The European Unions’ limit for drinking water is 10 becquerels per liter.
“We think that there are still many more undamaged barrels below,” Thomas Reutter, a SWR journalist, told Spiegel Online. He added that it was likely there were other containers that the expedition hadn’t located.
Members of Germany’s Green Party have called for the barrels to be removed from the channel.
“I believe that at such shallow depths these barrels pose a high potential for danger. And it’s not for nothing that dumping in the ocean has been forbidden in the last 20 years,” Sylvia Kotting-Uhl, a Green Party member of parliament and nuclear policy spokesman, told SWR.
US President Barak Obama has presented congress an almost 4 trillion dollar budget plan: Amongst his requests: more funds, in the billions, to modernize US’s nuclear weapons. This is while he will cut payments to Medicare not to mention cutbacks to its Social Security pensions and other government programs.
Press TV has conducted an interview with Mark Dankof, a political commentator from San Antonio, to further examine why the US – who has the lead in the possession of nuclear weapons and has advocated nuclear non-proliferation – feels the need to modernize its weapons of mass of destruction, which also goes against the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The video also offers the opinions of one additional guest: Charlie Wolf who is a writer and broadcaster from London.
The following is a partial and approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: Do you not think that we have our guest there Charlie Wolf thinking that the Iranian government is pursuing weaponization of its program; Iran has clearly come out and said we want a Middle East free of nuclear weapons and at the same time, countries like the US are coming out and using nuclear weapons as, they claim to be deterrent but really to use and enforce power. What is your reaction there?
Dankof: A couple of things. One, I am not a nuclear expert but let me simply say this. If we take the director of National Intelligence of the United States James Clapper at his word, if we take the 16 intelligence agencies of the United States that produce the national intelligence estimate at their word, Iran is in fact not pursuing a weaponized nuclear program.
And I add it to that of course is the situation where the United States’ chief ally in the region Israel is a nuclear power and going back to something that the Times of Israel published earlier this week back in the 1970s, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yigal Allon then the foreign minister of Israel were repeatedly lying to the president of the United States and the senator Howard Baker of Tennessee and Mac Mathias of Maryland in regard to their Dimona Operation, in regard to their weaponized nuclear program and in regard to the fact that they already were in the 1970s in possession of nuclear weapons.
When you look at that Times of Israel’s report and then consider that Israel is the chief driving force behind what the United States is presently doing in the Middle East and what President Obama and John Kerry are insisting that Iran do in the Middle East and with their nuclear research program, I think the word hypocrisy does apply.
Press TV: Eight billion dollars for this most recent upgrade; Mark Dankoff, the UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron just recently came out and he called the ownership of nuclear weapons, in response to North Korea threats ‘the ultimate insurance policy’. This is the kind of feeling that generally some people are feeling when it comes to the US president coming out with 8 billion dollars for what he calls upgrades. I mean, one nuclear bomb should be enough unless there is different types of bombs with lesser degrees or higher degrees. Again I know you said that you are not a nuclear technician. It does not give much merit to the president’s claim that it is for nuclear nonproliferation.
Dankof: That is right and I will say something again and this gets back to something Charlie [Wolf, the other guest on the show] was commenting on because I am not a nuclear expert, I do not know the extent to this budget upgrade by the president represents an attempt to merely keep the present stockpiles safe and workable and to keep it from being involved in some sort of accident or malfunction and to what extent it actually represents an upgrade in the expulsive capacity of these so-called weapons of mass destruction. I simply do not have that knowledge of my disposal.
But it does seem to me that when we look at the president’s actions, at least symbolically, when you look at what has happened since 9/11 with American foreign policy, the draconian increases in defense spending across the board, the ongoing military intervention of the United States and NATO and all kinds of circumstances around the globe of which Libya and Syria are only the latest and when you look at the kinds of things that the US is clearly doing in regard to the deployment of the aircraft carrier, Task Force Groups, black operations inside Iranian borders, draconian economic sanctions and so forth and so on, the Iranians could well be forgiven for interpreting all of these actions on the part of the United States as particularly bellicose.
I would like to say one other thing that Charlie commented on that I do disagree with. President Ahmadinejad is often quoted as saying that either he or Iran would wipe Israel off the map. That is not what the man said. That is what an Israeli translation service called MEMRI said that he said.
President Ahmadinejad’s remarks, properly translated as I understand it, indicated that he simply thought that the Zionist state would eventually fade from history because of all of the internal contradictions within it. That is more than a slight shift in nuance in regard to meaning. I do not think that the president of Iran said the things that had been repeatedly said that he said about wanting to annihilate Israel militarily.
I think that is a bad translation and a false translation and one that again was offered by a Middle East research institute that has no links to the Israeli intelligence community.
Press TV: I am trying to steer this debate to focus on Obama’s proposal to upgrade its nuclear arsenal. We seem to keep going back to the Middle East and Iran. So Mark Dankoff, let’s go along the line of why the US president feels for this upgrade and one deduction has been the US military industrial complex: companies such as GE of which there has been lots of money to be made here. Could this be part of the push by them?
Dankof: I think when you look at the American defense posture generally, it is hard to get away from this perception. After all, when you look at the power of these defense contractors, the amount of money that is involved, the influence that they have on Capitol Hill with people in both of the major political parties, certainly this has to factor into this without question.
There is an additional political context to all of this however that I think does go back to 1945. It is noteworthy that the United States is the only nation on earth that has ever used these weapons in wartime. It used them against two Japanese cities, as we all know, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to me the most chilling aspect of all of this is that my father’s old boss, General Curtis Lemay, the father of the Strategic Air Command said after the war that the American utilization of all those weapons against those cities had nothing to do with ending the war or getting Japan to surrender which is what we were always taught in American schools growing up for years after 1945.
But that had everything to do with simply showing the Soviet Union what we had and that using the Japanese as the victims of the demonstration. So with that as a beginning to this whole tragedy of nuclear weaponry, it seems that over the course of the last 70 years or so that we cannot get away from the political context of all of this and the perception on the part of most of the people of the world that when it comes to issues of nuclear proliferation and non-proliferation that the United States will play by one set of rules; the other nuclear powers will play by one set of rules and everyone else gets to play by the rules and guidelines that are said done by the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
This is perceived as inherently unfair and I do not think that we can separate the technical issues involved in this debate and the budgetary issues from the issue of the profit motive of these armament companies and also the whole question of the fact that some people want to have their cake and eat it too in terms of possessing these weapons and denying the right to these weapons to other people. It is a vexing situation.
Press TV: What is your response to Charlie Wolf’s remarks?
Dankof: As a matter of fact, we now know through a series of things that have been declassified that the Japanese had already agreed to surrender that Truman would not allow them to surrender because of his so-called unconditional Surrender Doctrine. What all the Japanese were asking for was that we kept our hands off of the emperor.
In fact, we went ahead and used these weapons and then turned around and basically agreed to the back channel demand that the Japanese had made after the destruction of both of those cities. So I would take issue with that.
I also in terms of Mr. Ahmadinejad would compare him with the current leadership of the nation of Israel. It is also a fact. Why do we not go back and take a look at what General Lemay and Admiral Nimitz and General Eisenhower had to say on this subject years after the war and a series of the things that have subsequently been declassified.
Press TV: Obama’s nuclear vision or is it an illusion?
Dankof: I think it is an illusion and it is interesting to me again that we are talking about a man of the Democratic Party and a man who is perceived on the left end of the Democratic Party spectrum who has been involved in a series of things and making him look to me like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney ranging from the drone strikes to agreeing to put out the war through his secretary of state that the United States is prepared to take preemptive military action against Iran or allow Israel to do so.
Under Obama’s presidency, the United States and Israel have been using the Mujahedin-E-Khalq or the MEK to conduct these assassinations of these Iranian nuclear scientists. With what all of that implies – and of course the president was very much involved in getting NATO to intervene in Libya – the president is now clearly involved as the United States is and as the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation States are in financing the attempted overthrow of this government in Syria with all of these al-Qaeda elements in it. This does not sound like liberal to me.
In the last ten years, the expansion of corporate sugarcane and oil palm plantations in northern Guatemala has encroached on the lands of Maya Q’eqchi’ indigenous people—many of whom fled to this region during the country’s 36-year genocidal war. These plantations have already displaced hundreds of families—even entire communities—leading to increased poverty, hunger, unemployment, and landlessness in the region. The companies grabbing land are controlled by European-descendent Guatemalan oligarchs who are benefitting from rising global commodity prices for food, animal feed, and fuel (biodiesel and ethanol). In the face of violent expulsion and incorporation into an exploitative system, peasant families are struggling to access land and defend their resources as the basis of their collective identity as Q’eqchi’ peoples or R’al Ch’och (“sons and daughters of the earth”).
When ranking which multi-millionaire American pundit is the most overrated, there are, without doubt, many worthy contenders, but one near the top of any list must be the New York Times’ Thomas L. Friedman – with his long record of disastrous policy pronouncements including his enthusiasm for George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.
Friedman, of course, has paid no career price for his misguided judgments and simplistic nostrums. Like many other star pundits who inhabit the Op-Ed pages of the Times and the Washington Post, Friedman has ascended to a place where the normal powers of gravity don’t apply, where the cumulative weight of his errors only lifts him up.
Indeed, there is something profoundly nonsensical about Friedman’s Olympian standing, inhabiting a plane of existence governed by the crazy rules of Washington’s conventional wisdom, where – when looking down on the rest of us – Friedman feels free to cast aspersions on other people’s sanity, like the Mad Hatter calling the Church Mouse nuts.
Friedman describes every foreign adversary who reacts against U.S. dictates as suffering from various stages of insanity. He accepts no possibility that these “designated enemies” are acting out of their own sense of self-interest and even fear of what the United States might be designing.
In last Sunday’s column, for instance, Friedman airily dismissed the leaders of Iran, Syria, North Korea, China and Russia as all operating with screws loose, either totally crazy or fecklessly reckless. North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un was a “boy king … who seems totally off the grid.” In Friedman’s view, China is enabling North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship and “could end the freak show there anytime it wants.”
Russia is aiding and abetting both the violence in Syria and the supposed nuclear ambitions of Iran. Friedman asks: “Do the Russians really believe that indulging Iran’s covert nuclear program, to spite us, won’t come back to haunt them with a nuclear-armed Iran, an Islamist regime on its border?”
To Friedman, Bashar al-Assad is simply “Syria’s mad leader,” not a secular autocrat representing Alawites and other terrified minorities fearing a Sunni uprising that includes armed militants associated with al-Qaeda terrorists and promoting Islamic fundamentalism.
You see, according to Friedman and his neoconservative allies, everyone that they don’t like is simply crazy or absorbed with mindless self-interest – and it makes no sense to reason with these insane folks or to propose power-sharing compromises. Only “regime change” will do.
Who’s Detached from Reality?
But the argument could be made that Friedman and the neocons are the people most disconnected from reality – and that the New York Times editors are behaving irresponsibly in continuing to grant Friedman some of the most prestigious space in American journalism to spout his nonsensical ravings.
Looking back at Friedman’s history of recommending violence as the only remedy to a whole host of problems, including in places like Serbia and Iraq, you could reasonably conclude that he’s the real nut case. He’s the one who routinely urges the U.S. government to ignore international law in pursuit of half-baked goals that have spread misery over large swaths of the planet.
In 1999, during the U.S. bombing of Serbia, Friedman showed off his glib warmongering style: “Like it or not, we are at war with the Serbian nation (the Serbs certainly think so), and the stakes have to be very clear: Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389 too.”
Before George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, Friedman offered the witty observation that it was time to “give war a chance,” a flippant play on John Lennon’s lyrics to the song, “Give Peace a Chance.”
Yet, even amid his enthusiasm to invade Iraq, Friedman was disappointed by Bush’s clunky rhetoric. So, he hailed the smoother speechifying of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and dubbed himself “a Tony Blair Democrat.” Today, it might seem that anyone foolish enough to take that title – after Blair has gone down in history as “Bush’s poodle” and is now despised even by his own Labour Party – should slink away into obscurity or claim some sort of mental incapacity.
But that isn’t how U.S. punditry works. Once you’ve risen into the firmament of stars like Tommy Friedman, you are beyond the reach of earthly judgments and surely beyond human accountability.
When the Iraq War didn’t go as swimmingly as the neocons [purportedly] expected, Friedman became famous for his repetitious, ever-receding “six month” timeline for detecting progress. Finally, in August 2006, he concluded that the Iraq War wasn’t worth it, that “it is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are babysitting a civil war.” [NYT, Aug. 4, 2006]
At that point, you might have expected the New York Times to drop Friedman from its roster of columnists. After all, the Iraq War’s costs in lives, money and respect for the United States had become staggering. You might even have thought that some accountability would be in order. After all, advocacy of aggressive war is a war crime as defined by the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II.
Yet, 12 days after his admission of Iraq War failure, Friedman actually demeaned Americans who had opposed the Iraq War early on as “antiwar activists who haven’t thought a whit about the larger struggle we’re in.” [NYT, Aug. 16, 2006] In other words, according to Friedman, Americans who were right about the ill-fated invasion of Iraq were still airheads who couldn’t grasp the bigger picture that had been so obvious to himself, his fellow pundits and pro-war politicians who had tagged along with Bush and Blair.
As I noted in an article at the time, “it’s as if Official Washington has become a sinister version of Alice in Wonderland. Under the bizarre rules of Washington’s pundit society, the foreign policy ‘experts,’ who acted like Cheshire Cats pointing the United States in wrong directions, get rewarded for their judgment and Americans who opposed going down the rabbit hole in the first place earn only derision.”
Instead of a well-deserved dismissal from the Times and journalistic disgrace, Friedman has continued to rake in big bucks from his articles, his books and his speeches. Meanwhile, his record for accuracy (or even sophisticated insights) hasn’t improved. Regarding foreign policy, he still gets pretty much everything wrong.
‘Crazy’ Enemies
As for the supposed madness of America’s “designated enemies,” Friedman refuses to recognize that they might see defensive belligerence as the only rational response to U.S. hostility. After all, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi both accepted U.S. demands for disarmament and both were subsequently attacked by U.S. military force, overthrown and murdered.
So, who in their right mind would accept assurances about the protections of international law when Official Washington and Tommy Friedman see nothing wrong with invading other countries and overthrowing their governments? In view of this recent history, one could argue that the leaders of Iran, Syria and even North Korea are acting rationally within their perceptions of national sovereignty – and concern for their own necks.
Similarly, Russia and China have searched for ways to resolve some of these conflicts, rather than whipping up new confrontations. On the Iranian nuclear dispute, for instance, Russia has worked behind the scenes to broker a realistic agreement that would offer Iran meaningful relief from economic sanctions in exchange for more safeguards on its nuclear program.
It has been the United States that has vacillated between an interest in a negotiated settlement with Iran and the temptation to seek “regime change.” Recently, the Obama administration spurned a Russian push for genuine negotiations with Iran, instead favoring more sanctions and demanding Iranian capitulation.
It should be noted, too, that the Iranian government has renounced any desire to build a nuclear weapon and that the U.S. intelligence community has concluded, since 2007, that Iran ceased work on a nuclear weapon in 2003, a decade ago. Friedman could be called irrational – or at least irresponsible – for not mentioning that fact. And you might wonder why his Times editors didn’t demand greater accuracy in his column. Is there no fact-checking of Friedman?
Seeking ‘Regime Change’
Of course, the Times and Friedman have a long pattern of bias on Iran, much as they had on Iraq. For instance, the newspaper and its star columnist heaped ridicule on Turkey and Brazil three years ago when those two U.S. allies achieved a breakthrough in which Iran agreed to ship about half of its low-enriched uranium out of the country in exchange for some medical isotopes. To Friedman, this deal was “as ugly as it gets,” the title of his column.
He wrote: “I confess that when I first saw the May 17 [2010] picture of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, joining his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with raised arms — after their signing of a putative deal to defuse the crisis over Iran’s nuclear weapons program — all I could think of was: Is there anything uglier than watching democrats sell out other democrats to a Holocaust-denying, vote-stealing Iranian thug just to tweak the U.S. and show that they, too, can play at the big power table?
“No, that’s about as ugly as it gets.”
Though Friedman did not call Lula da Silva and Erdogan crazy, he did insult them and impugned their motives. He accused them of seeking this important step toward a peaceful resolution of an international dispute “just to tweak the U.S. and show that they, too, can play at the big power table.”
In the column, Friedman also made clear that he wasn’t really interested in Iranian nuclear safeguards; instead, he wanted the United States to do whatever it could to help Iran’s internal opposition overthrow President Ahmadinejad and Iran’s Islamic Republic.
“In my view, the ‘Green Revolution’ in Iran is the most important, self-generated, democracy movement to appear in the Middle East in decades,” Friedman wrote. “It has been suppressed, but it is not going away, and, ultimately, its success — not any nuclear deal with the Iranian clerics — is the only sustainable source of security and stability. We have spent far too little time and energy nurturing that democratic trend and far too much chasing a nuclear deal.”
Just three years later, however, it’s clear how wrongheaded Friedman was. The Green Movement, which was never the mass popular movement that the U.S. media claimed, has largely disappeared.
Analyses of Iran’s 2009 election also revealed that Ahmadinejad did win a substantial majority of the vote. Ahmadinejad, with strong support from the poor especially in more conservative rural areas, defeated the “Green Revolution” candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi by roughly the 2-to-1 margin cited in the official results.
For instance, an analysis by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes concluded that most Iranians voted for Ahmadinejad and viewed his reelection as legitimate, contrary to claims made by much of the U.S. news media. Not a single Iranian poll analyzed by PIPA – whether before or after the election, whether conducted inside or outside Iran – showed Ahmadinejad with less than majority support. None showed Mousavi, a former prime minister, ahead or even close.
“These findings do not prove that there were no irregularities in the election process,” said Steven Kull, director of PIPA. “But they do not support the belief that a majority rejected Ahmadinejad.” [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Ahmadinejad Won, Get Over It!”]
Bias Over Journalism
During the Green Movement’s demonstrations, a few protesters threw Molotov cocktails at police (scenes carried on CNN but quickly forgotten by the U.S. news media) and security forces overreacted with repression and violence. But to pretend that an angry minority – disappointed by election results – is proof of a fraudulent election is simply an example of bias, not journalism.
One can sympathize with those who yearn for a secular democracy in Iran – as you may in other religiously structured states including Israel – but a journalist is not supposed to make up his or her own facts, which was what the Times and Friedman did in 2009 on Iran.
Friedman’s contempt for the Turkey-Brazil deal in 2010 also looks pretty stupid in retrospect. At the time, Iran only had low-enriched uranium suitable for energy production but not for building a nuclear weapon. If Iran had shipped nearly half that amount out of the country in exchange for the medical isotopes, Iran might never have upgraded its reactors to refine the uranium to about 20 percent, what was needed for the isotopes and which is much closer to the level of purity needed for a bomb.
There are other relevant facts that a serious analyst would include in the kind of column that Friedman penned last Sunday, including the fact that the United States possesses a military force unrivaled in world history and enough nuclear bombs to kill all life on the planet many times over.
Also relevant to the Iran issue, Israel possesses a rogue nuclear arsenal that is considered one of the world’s most advanced, but Israel has refused to accept any international oversight by rejecting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran has signed and insists it is living by.
An objective – or a rational – observer would consider the unbelievable destructiveness of the U.S. and Israeli nuclear stockpiles as a relevant factor in evaluating the sanity of the supposedly “crazy” leaders of Syria, Iran and North Korea – and their alleged accomplices in Russia and China.
But Friedman operates on a plane of impunity that the rest of us mortals can only dream about. Apparently once you have achieved his punditry status, you never have to say you’re sorry or acknowledge countervailing facts. All you have to do is say that everybody else is crazy.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
Occupied Palestine – The International Solidarity Movement today remembers Tom Hurndall, ISM volunteer who 10 years ago on 11th April 2003 was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper.
The Israeli army were invading the city of Rafah, in the Gaza Strip when Tom and other ISM volunteers saw a group of children in a street where snipers were firing. Witnesses say that bullets were shot around the children, who were paralysed by fear and unable to move – Tom pulled one child to safety, but as he was returning for a second, he was shot in the head by a sniper.
He went into a coma and died nine months later on 13th January 2004. He was 22 years old. Today, on the day he was shot, we pay tribute to Tom’s bravery. Our thoughts are with his family and friends. We continue to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, as we think Tom would have wished.
“What do I want from this life? What makes you happy is not enough. All the things that satisfy our instincts only satisfy the animal in us. I want to be proud of myself. I want more. I want to look up to myself and when I die, I want to smile because of the things I have done, not cry for the things I haven’t done.” – Tom Hurndall
Dr. Ben Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, likes to pose as a man of faith, a steadfast Christian deriving his worldview from the Bible – heroically, unapologetically, in the face of wanton persecution by the liberal PC-police.
As a sedulous, restless oracle, he’s grown wont, of late, to offer his take on a variety of social and cultural issues. And like the ancient Pythia at Delphi, his utterances have shown the power to strike his audiences agape. Darwinists are nihilistic time-bombs – he maintains – since true morality only stems from the literal word of the Bible; parents should be encouraged to mete out a sound caning to their misbehaving tots, as the Book of Proverbs says so; fiscal policy is divinely-ordained to stand to benefit the rich; and last but not least, we’re assured the Good Book is riddled with warnings throughout that marriage is only the union of one man and one woman.
Not wholly surprisingly, a fierce row has finally erupted over one or the other of his eclectic remarks. His speakership at the 2013 medical class commencement at Hopkins is on the verge of an unprecedented revocation, prompting fury from the Right over alleged liberal intolerance. Apart from the unabashed dogmatism exuding from Dr. Carson’s pronouncements – standard fare in the raging culture wars of America –, we need only wonder whether they withstand rational scrutiny or not.
The Seven Hundred Wives of Solomon
What’s the viewpoint of the Bible on marriage? Contrary to common wisdom, the Good Book doesn’t provide any consistent definition. If anything, it seems to lean overall toward polygamy. The list of Old Testament figures having multiple wives is endless: from Abraham to Esau, Jacob, Gideon, Elkanah, and so on and so forth. Solomon, indefatigable stud, outdid them all, by taking 700 wives and 300 concubines. The New Testament is perfectly ambiguous on the subject, sporting some verses in support of monogamy (Mark 10:11, Matthew 19:4) and others hinting at polygamy (Matthew 25:1, 1 Timothy 3:2). Saint Paul himself recommended eschewing marriage altogether, in favor of a life of chastity – something we regret to learn Dr. Carson was all too quick personally to discount.
The Scarlet Letter
If the Bible’s stance on marriage is murky, other pieces of Bible-based morality are crystal clear:
“Anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord is to be put to death.
The entire assembly must stone them. Whether foreigner or native-born,
when they blaspheme the Name they are to be put to death.”
The capital punishment is prescribed with largess for many other sins, notably adultery, disrespecting one’s parents, having sexual relations with a menstruating woman, and various forms of incest. If we really are to believe Dr. Carson’s protestations that he’s a staunch, coherent, and fearless believer in the literal truth of the Bible, we should ask him what he proposes to do with adulterers. If he doesn’t support stoning them, as we all know he doesn’t, mustn’t we logically conclude he’s a hypocrite who cherry-picks passages from the Bible and wields them as a cloak, or disposable political tool, for his prejudices?
Jesus, the Commie
What about the Bible-mandated tax cuts for the rich? We confess after reading Dr. Carson’s words on the subject we were left wondering whether the good doctor has actually ever been introduced to the Gospels, where a prominent character named Jesus not once mentions the Gays, but adamantly condemns Roman Judea’s top 1% of earners:
“Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:21)
As for the saying, “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s”, we’re acutely reassured it came from Brutus.
The Parapet of Separation
Beyond scriptural (in)accuracy, the fundamental flaw in Dr. Carson’s reasoning lies, of course, in his failure to realize the United States is not a Christian nation, but a secular Republic, where there’s a constitutionally-mandated distinction between sin and crime, between civil order and religious institutions.
Whatever the Bible, or the Koran, or the Upanishads, have to say about “traditional marriage”, taxes or anything else is irrelevant to civil policies. This is for the safeguard of religion as much as the state. As James Madison (not Lenin) put it, the entanglement of religion and politics yields “in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution”.
Immanuel Kant, Party-Pooper
Finally, Dr. Carson seems utterly positive the only possible foundation of ethics is a supernatural law-giver descending from the clouds to hand over stone tablets to His favorite prophet. Murder is bad because God said so. Had God decided in His own free will that murder should be good, then it would have been so. The bedrock of morality, according to this line of thought, is God’s whim.
But the worse has yet to come. We all know God shies away from making regular appearances into the world to confirm which are His authentic wishes for ethical behavior.
Thus we’re left with a plethora of conflicting religious ethical systems, each urging people on to arbitrary commandments (“don’t eat pork!”, or “stone the blasphemer!”) that need to be revealed, or interpreted, or enforced, by God’s earthly representatives, be they priests, pastors, rabbis, imams, ayatollahs, etc.
Is there an alternative to this tottering source of ethical legitimacy?
Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, Isaiah Berlin, John Rawles, and a host of other modern philosophers have variously come up with universalist moral systems, all based on the common notion that there are objective moral truths out there applying to all, because each and every one of us has some shared feature with his fellow humans, be it practical reason or a common nature that favors what benefits us and is vulnerable to suffering. It is nothing less than game theory, the mathematical tool used to study the evolution of animal behavior, that suggests whenever rational, social agents evolve, a non-arbitrary set of rules (“ethical norms”) emerges in the fitness landscape that ensures an optimal outcome. For instance, cooperation among agents leads to demonstrably greater benefits than violence or exploitation. Nihilistic selfishness is not rationally defensible, as a universal morality based on reason requires one to rise above petty short-term interests, and see things as if sub specie aeternitatis (under the viewpoint of eternity).
Free speech and Personal Responsibility
What should we make of Dr. Carson and the backlash he’s suffering?
Nobody proposes the good doctor should be gagged. In fact, we’re pretty sure a lucrative contract is waiting for him at Fox News after his retirement, where he’ll be able to preach to willing crowds as much as he pleases.
What we should all demand, and indeed expect, is to hold him accountable for his declarations.
If Dr. Carson feels compelled to go on national TV to spout out ludicrous and embarrassing arguments about gays, evolutionists, or whatever ghost haunts his imagination at a given time, he’s free to do so. But once he’s lost his credibility, speaking at a university commencement is not something he should be rewarded with.
And this has nothing to do with free speech, but everything to do with bearing responsibility for one’s own actions.
Lorenzo Ospri is a fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
Margaret Thatcher died Monday, April 8, 2013, at the age of 87. While there is no dearth of hagiographic profiles of the former British Prime Minister in the mainstream press and scathing vitriol elsewhere, it should be remembered that, throughout her career, Thatcher was a staunch supporter of many of the world’s most brutal regimes, propping up and arming war criminals and dictators in service to Western imperialism, anti-Communism and neoliberal hegemony.
Throughout the 1980s, Thatcher’s government backed Iraq during its war against Iran, funneling weapons and equipment to Saddam Hussein in contravention of both international law and British policy, all the way up until Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. She even sent Christmas cards to both Saddam and Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi in 1981.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Here’s a review of some of her other pals…
The Shah of Iran and Margaret Thatcher, 1978
In April 1978, prior to her ascension to Prime Minister, Thatcher visited the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in Tehran where she praised him as “one of the world’s most far-sighted statesmen, whose experience is unrivaled.”
Despite the popular protests against the Shah occurring across Iran with increasing frequency, Thatcher said of her host, “No other world leader has given his country more dynamic leadership. He is leading Iran through a twentieth century renaissance.” Exactly one month before her visit, street protests in over 55 Iranian cities resulted in the killing of more than 100 civilians, when police opened fire on the crowds.
Iran “holds a key strategic position in the defence of the Western World,” Thatcher continued, “Her strength and resolve are vital to our future.” She added, “Iran has been the West’s most resolute and stalwart ally in this crucial region.”
Upon his overthrow the following February, the Shah expressed his desire to seek asylum in England at his lavish country estate in Surrey. While the British government at the time wound up secretly helping the Shah make his way from Morocco to the Bahamas, it rejected his request to enter the UK.
Thatcher, who became Prime Minister soon thereafter, respected the decision of her predecessor for political reasons, but was “deeply unhappy” that Britain could not offer sanctuary to Pahlavi, whom she called a “firm and helpful friend.”
A longtime supporter of the Egyptian dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, Thatcher once received a memo from the UK Foreign Office referring to Mubarak as “no intellectual but… always friendly and cheerful,” noting that while “apt to express simplistic views, he has become an experienced and accomplished political operator.” The brief continued, “His affable exterior evidently conceals a degree of ruthlessness since it seems likely that he has conducted some successful political infighting to maintain his position” having “succeeded in ousting or at least surviving all other prominent figures in the government or armed forces.”
“Nevertheless his reputation is free of any taint of corruption or malpractice and he is not thought to have made many enemies,” the memo said of Mubarak, adding that he was “eager to improve relations with the Royal Air Force and to buy British [military] equipment.”
Over the years of her leadership, Thatcher routinely commended Mubarak for his “courage” and “strength.” In 1985, at a banquet in Cairo, she said she “admire[d] particularly, Mr. President, the leadership which you personally… have shown.” Five years later, while hosting Mubarak and his wife at No. 10 Downing Street, Thatcher declared, “You are among our very favourite visitors because we all know you as particularly good and close friends of this country, as we are of Egypt,” and once again expressed her admiration for the Egyptian president, this time for his “incredible energy.”
“You are as full of beans as ever,” she said. Unfortunately for the Egyptian people over the next 11 years, thanks largely to American and British largesse, she was right.
Thatcher was a steadfast defender of Augusto Pinochet, whose unspeakably brutal dictatorship of torture and repression terrorized Chile from 1973 to 1990. She visited Pinochet in 1999 during his house arrest in England, saying that her country “owed” him “a great debt” of gratitude for his help during the 1982 Falklands War.
Without any sense of irony, Thatcher added, “I’m also very much aware that it is you who brought democracy to Chile.”
Never one to mention his appalling human rights record, Thatcher expressed her “outrage at the callous and unjust treatment” of Pinochet during a speech that October at the Conservative Party Conference, called him “this country’s only political prisoner,” and hailed him as Britain’s “staunch, true friend in our time of need” and “who stopped the communists taking Chile.”
The next year, upon his release and return to Chile, for which she fought tirelessly, Thatcher sent Pinochet a silver Armada dish as a gift, condemned his detention in England as “a great injustice” and wished the deposed dictator and his family “all good wishes for a peaceful and secure future.”
When Pinochet died six years later, Thatcher said she was “deeply saddened” by his passing.
Subsequently, Robin Harris, a former official in Thatcher’s administration, wrote in The Telegraph that Thatcher “took a positive view of Pinochet’s 17 years in power” and “would not have spoken up for him if she had believed him a monster. She could not judge the merits of every allegation. But, clearly, the legal case against him was weak and the motivation of those involved suspect.”
Harris similarly praised Pinochet for “[leaving] behind a stable democracy,” concluding that “Margaret Thatcher has nothing to be ashamed of in defending Augusto Pinochet, when others refused to do so” and that Pinochet “was lucky to find such a champion.”
In March 1987, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, visited Thatcher. Beforehand, Thatcher said in an interview, “Relations between Saudi Arabia and Britain are excellent. We have common interests in peace and stability in the Middle East. The Al Yamamah Project for the sale of Tornado and other aircraft to Saudi Arabia has done much to focus Saudi attention on Britain and British attention on Saudi Arabia.”
The Al Yamamah arms deal, signed a year and a half earlier, was “the biggest export transaction in British history, estimated by a British Aerospace executive in 2005 to be worth £83 billion in past and future sales to Saudi Arabia of military hardware including aircraft ranging from Tornado fighters and Hawk trainer jets to Eurofighter Typhoons,” in addition to a wide range of arms, naval vessels, radar, spare parts, and a pilot-training program.
The deal was largely the result of Thatcher’s own lobbying initiative on behalf of the British defense industry and weapons manufacturers and, ever since its signing, allegations of corruption, fraud and bribery have abounded.
In 1993, in a speech to a Chatham House Conference on Saudi Arabia after leaving office, Thatcher maintained that “[o]ne of Al Yamamah’s achievements has been the training and equipping of the Royal Saudi Air Force by Britain. Both training and aircraft were put to the test of wartime combat far sooner than anyone expected. As we now know, both the aircraft and their RSAF pilots performed superbly in Operation Desert Storm.” She continued, “The Al Yamamah programme has continued steadily since the conflict. When this year’s new order of a further 48 Tornado aircraft for the RSAF has been executed it will be safe to say that Saudi Arabia will have one of the strongest and most effective Air Forces in the world.”
Beyond this, Thatcher described the kingdom as “a peace loving nation” and a “modern miracle,” touting its “domestic achievements” and the “stable framework” and “solid rock of a well established and respected monarchy.”
“We are strong partners in trade and defence. We share great strategic interests,” she said.
Regarding Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, Thatcher was silent. “I have no intention of meddling in that country’s internal affairs,” she insisted. “It is one of my firmest beliefs that although there are certain basic standards and goals we should expect from every member of the international community, the precise pace and approach must reflect different societies’ cultural, social, economic and historical backgrounds. And Saudi Arabia, in particular, is a complex society which Westerners do not often fully comprehend.”
Again, without even the slightest hint of irony, Thatcher – in the very same speech – noted, “It is the surest signal to other dictators that the West lacks the resolve to defend justice. We have yet to see its full consequences — our lack of effective action will return to haunt us.” She was talking about Bosnia.
While Thatcher maintained throughout her political that she “loathe[d] apartheid and everything connected with it,” she referred to Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress, as “a typical terrorist organization” and refused, alongside Ronald Reagan, to back sanctions against the Apartheid regime in South Africa. “In my view, isolation will lead only to an increasingly negative and intransigent attitude in the part of white South African,” she said in December 1977.
In 1984, Thatcher invited South African Prime Minister P.W. Botha to visit London, the first such visit in 23 years, sparking understandable outrage in the anti-Apartheid movement. The next year, the Associated Press reported that she “rejected demands by the opposition Labor Party that she meet with Oliver Tambo, leader of the African National Congress guerrilla movement, who is visiting Britain…on grounds he espouses violence.”
“I do not accept that apartheid is the root of violence… nor do most other people,” Thatcher insisted and, during a speech before Parliament, stated that Botha’s “South African government has taken more steps to start dismantling apartheid than any of their predecessors.”
“I can see little point in sanctions creating more unemployment in this country only to create more unemployment in South Africa… It seems to me a ridiculous policy that would not work,” she added.
Five years later, during the last gasps of Apartheid, Thatcher was still opposing sanctions. In 2006, Tory leader (and now British Prime Minister) David Cameron apologized for Thatcher’s actions.
In response to her death today, Oliver Tambo’s son Dali told the press, “My gut reaction now is what it was at the time when she said my father was the leader of a terrorist organisation. I don’t think she ever got it that every day she opposed sanctions, more people were dying, and that the best thing for the assets she wanted to protect was democracy,” adding, “It’s a shame that we could never call her one of the champions of the liberation struggle. Normally we say that when one of us goes, the ANC ancestors will meet them at the pearly gates and give them a standing ovation. I think it’s quite likely that when Margaret Thatcher reaches the pearly gates, the ANC will boycott the occasion.”
In the midst of the bloody Indonesian occupation of East Timor, Thatcher visited genocidal Indonesian dictator General Suharto, praised Indonesia’s “agricultural and industrial development” and, although East Timorese had been killed, starved, disappeared and herded into “resettlement camps” as part of Suharto’s “encirclement and annihilation” campaign, dismissed allegations of human rights abuses, explaining that East Timor was none of Britain’s business and that Suharto himself has “assured me that the International Red Cross not only had access to East Timor, but was very welcome there.”
She told the press, “Trade brings us together and identifies our interests, and I am sure that trade between Indonesia and Britain will increase as a result of the very friendly and warm atmosphere created by my visit here. We are clearly the best of friends and there is no sounder basis on which to construct future collaboration.”
In 2008, veteran journalist John Pilger recalled that Thatcher referred to Suharto as, “One of our very best and most valuable friends,” and how, “[f]or three decades the south-east Asian department of the Foreign Office worked tirelessly to minimise the crimes of Suharto’s gestapo, known as Kopassus, who gunned down people with British-supplied Heckler & Koch machine guns from British-supplied Tactica ‘riot control’ vehicles.”
“A Foreign Office speciality was smearing witnesses to the bombing of East Timorese villages by British-supplied Hawk aircraft – until Robin Cook was forced to admit it was true. Almost a billion pounds in export credit guarantees financed the sale of the Hawks, paid for by the British taxpayer while the arms industry reaped the profit,” Pilger adds.
With this kind of record, it is clear that Thatcher’s constantly pledged support for “freedom and democracy” was really a violent, imperial campaign waged for free markets and domination.
The volcanic mineral medicine will not patent — for the toxic burden medicine will not name
Lies are Unbekoming – October 30, 2026
Zeolite is old. It is in Roman concrete that has held for two thousand years. It’s in the water filters of ancient cisterns. It’s in the stomachs of Pacific livestock whose keepers knew, somehow, that this grey crumbling rock made the animals healthier. It’s in Soviet clinical protocols from the 1960s. It’s in the standard emergency response to the Chernobyl explosion.
In 1986, after the Chernobyl reactor failure, the Soviet Union manufactured and distributed natural zeolite at industrial scale — for soil remediation, for livestock feed, for human consumption, for the cleanup itself. Karl Hecht, who had been director of the Institute for Experimental and Clinical Pathophysiology at the Charité of Humboldt University Berlin, spent the six decades after that building the clinical research base — on silicon’s role in human health, on zeolite’s clinical safety, on its applications in ageing. In 2018, Pavelić and colleagues published a comprehensive clinical safety review of natural clinoptilolite in Frontiers in Pharmacology. In 2019, Mastinu analysed its binding affinities. In the Western medical literature, these works sit largely uncited.
What has not been treated at book length, until now, is how a volcanic mineral with six decades of Soviet clinical work behind it, two major peer-reviewed Western reviews, and ongoing clinical use across the former Eastern Bloc, remains almost entirely absent from Western medical practice — and what the toxic burden it’s meant to address actually is.
The Zeolite Book gathers the Soviet clinical record, the Western peer-reviewed studies, three contemporary practitioner voices, and three serious counterviews into one honest treatment. That’s why the book runs to seven appendices. 288 pages, four parts, three practitioner voices, three counterviews, seven appendices. The honest treatment is the argument.
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Occupied Palestine – The International Solidarity Movement today remembers Tom Hurndall, ISM volunteer who 10 years ago on 11th April 2003 was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper.
Zeolite is old. It is in Roman concrete that has held for two thousand years. It’s in the water filters of ancient cisterns. It’s in the stomachs of Pacific livestock whose keepers knew, somehow, that this grey crumbling rock made the animals healthier. It’s in Soviet clinical protocols from the 1960s. It’s in the standard emergency response to the Chernobyl explosion.
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