It looks like we have an answer for why Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief-of-staff abruptly resigned on Friday; he’s under federal investigation.
According to the New York Post, Saikat Chakrabarti – the architect behind AOC’s meteoric rise from bartender to ball-buster, is being investigated in connection with two political action committees he founded.
The two PACs being probed, Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, were both set up by Chakrabarti to support progressive candidates across the country.
But they funneled more than $1 million in political donations into two private companies that Chakrabarti also incorporated and controlled, according to Federal Election Commission filings and a complaint filed in March with the regulatory agency.
In 2016 and 2017, the PACs raised about $3.3 million, mostly from small donors. A third of the cash was transferred to two private companies whose names are similar to one of the PACs — Brand New Congress LLC and Brand New Campaign LLC — federal campaign filings show. –New York Post
As the Post notes, PACs are required to adhere to stringent disclosure rules, while the private companies Chakrabarti funneled money into are not.
According to a complaint filed by Virginia government watchdog group – the National Legal and Policy Center, Chakrabarti’s LLCs appear to have been specifically designed to circumvent federal reporting requirements.
As noted by the Washington Examiner in March:
The cash transfers from the PACs — overseen by Saikat Chakrabarti, the freshman socialist Democrat’s chief of staff — run counter to her pledges to increase transparency and reduce the influence of “dark money” in politics.
Chakrabarti’s companies appear to have been set up for the sole purpose of obscuring how the political donations were used.
The arrangement skirted reporting requirements and may have violated the $5,000 limit on contributions from federal PACs to candidates, according to the complaint filed by the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group. –Washington Examiner
According to the Post, “Federal authorities are looking at new salary rules imposed by Ocasio-Cortez when she took office earlier this year, and whether they were put in place to let Chakrabarti dodge public financial-disclosure rules, according to sources.”
Interestingly, the Harvard-educated Chakrabarti agreed to take a massive pay cut this year – taking in just $80,000, while the average pay for his position is $146,830. With a salary below $126,000, he was not required to disclose his outside income.
And now, he’s under federal investigation.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YHFlqX Tyler Durden
A cafe in Dubai is embracing automation technologies, including humanoid service robots that use artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to serve humans food.
Based on what we’ve gathered, the new cafe is called RoboCafe, will have no human workers, and is expected to open its doors imminently (sometime in August) in Dubai’s Festival City.
Customers can use their smartphones or a tablet installed at the counter to place an order. Three 6-axis robotic arms will be used to prepare food and drinks.
According to the cafe’s statement, robotic arms will prep orders that will follow fixed paths to deliver food and drink to customers after they have placed an order.
The statement also said robot arms would preform light shows and other forms of entertainment while customers eat their food.
RoboCafe’s Instagram offered followers on Tuesday a sneak preview of the robotic arms:
At the moment, it appears the cafe will serve breakfast food or possibly just beverages, but it remains unclear what exactly will be on the menu. As far as food prep, it’s still unknown if there will be a separate kitchen to prepare ingredients.
Another report said the robotic arms could prepare drinks, like tea and coffee, for customers. The menu could include a range of organic hot beverages, as well as mocktails and snacks.
RoboCafe isn’t the first Dubai restaurant to serve customers with robotic staff.
The Dubai Mall’s Tanuki, an Asian eatery, has humanoid service robots that welcome guests upon arrival:
Customers at Bur Dubai restaurant and Drink and Spice Magics, were able to be served by robotic waitresses last summer.
Automation combined with artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms will transform the service sector of most advanced economies and some emerging economies in the coming decade. Based on our past reports, the rapid spread of automation will result in at least 20 million job losses in just the US alone by 2030.
Waves of automation have reshaped economies before. From 1900 to 1940, the US agricultural automation revolution allowed farmers to move to cities and work at factories, and industrial automation allowed factory workers to enter the service sector. And now, robots blended with artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms will completely displace hundreds of millions of workers globally.
Automation will displace the most workers in these industries: food service, retail, transportation, manufacturing, and warehousing.
Our advice to Zerohedge readers: please evaluate your skillset and career, make sure it’s not prone to robots taking it over in the next 5 to 10 years.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KgFQjN Tyler Durden
Taking over from Britain’s colonial role in exploiting the country, the US has bullied and tried to intimidate Iran for decades. The ongoing pretext for strangling Iran economically is that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency repeatedly finds no evidence for this repeated US-led lie. Then-US President Barack Obama’s Task Force explained the real, as opposed to rhetorical, reasons for US opposition to Iran’s development of enriched uranium for its civilian nuclear energy programme, to which Iran is entitled under Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty–a treaty regularly violated by the UK and US, and to which their ally Israel is not party, despite having undeclared nuclear weapons. The Obama-era Task Force report reads:
“So long as the United States firmly opposed Iran’s [civilian nuclear] Bushehr facility, no friendly Arab state actively pursued civil nuclear power. But once Washington accepted that Iran could have a nuclear power plant, the United States was in no position to press its friends not to pursue a capability it had agreed Iran could have … [I]f an agreement is reached legitimizing even limited enrichment on Iranian soil, other countries may well be interested in having the same capabilities, and it could be difficult diplomatically to dissuade them from this pursuit … Demonstrating how seriously the international community is concerned about Iran’s actions might discourage imitators.”
A media serving the interests of the public, not US foreign policy elites, would make this reminder–that Iran is being abused by the US to deter regional states from moving away from fossil-fuel dependence–regular headline news. Others want all-out war. Veteran reporter Seymour Hersh revealed a plan by then-US Vice President (some say real President), Dick Cheney, to stage a fake maritime incident between “Iranian” (disguised US vessels in reality) and US warships. Hersh says:
“There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.”
More recently, similar incidents appear to have occurred.
SANCTIONS: “MAKE THE PAIN MUCH GREATER”
In 2012, Britain joined the US’s imposition of economic sanctions on Iran. Then-UN Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon described “significant effects on the general population, including an escalation in inflation, a rise in commodities and energy costs, an increase in the rate of unemployment and a shortage of necessary items, including medicine.” Britain’s then-Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond, informed the Iranians: “We can definitely make the pain much greater.” (Hammond is now working as a Member of Parliament to block Britain’s no-deal exit from the European Union, ironically in fear of food and medicine shortages. Fine for Iranians to suffer, but not us, thank you very much.)
The so-called “nuclear deal” praised by “liberal” Western media was, in reality, a disaster for Iran, which the government signed with an economic noose around its neck. In 2015, Iran and the EU (including Britain) signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The United Nations Security Council, meaning in theory the US, too, adopted the JCPOA as UNSCR 2231. Iran agreed to limit its civilian nuclear energy programme and allow enhanced inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which as noted fails to find any convincing evidence of an Iranian WMD programme. The “agreement” states that “[t]he JCPOA will produce the comprehensive lifting of all UN Security Council sanctions as well as multilateral and national sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear programme, including steps on access in areas of trade, technology, finance, and energy.”
But the US immediately violated the spirit of the JCPOA. The Congressional Research Service states that despite Obama’s lifting of “relevant sanctions,” whatever that means, the reality is that sanctions remained in place and thus in violation of the spirit if not letter of the JCPOA. “Remaining in place were a general ban on U.S. trade with Iran and sanctions on Iran’s support for regional governments and armed factions, its human rights abuses, its efforts to acquire missile and advanced conventional weapons capabilities, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
In May 2018, US President Trump signed a National Security Presidential Memorandum, “ceasing” US “participation in the JCPOA.”
FISHY HAPPENINGS AT SEA
In May of this year, Ret. Special Agent in Customs, Karl Golovin, asked the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair, Gen. Dunford, about “the potential for false flag terrorism, leading us into war with Iran.” Unusually, Gen. Dunford responded:
“Yeah, look, I’m not going to answer the question directly. I don’t know what others want, but I’ll just tell you this, I am very familiar with the consequences of going to war and take the responsibility of providing military advice in that regard very seriously … Are there people who might like to get the United States to do something? Certainly you can see that even in the open source where that speculation is out there. But I can guarantee you, that’s not going to inform the military advice…”
The British House of Commons Library reports that the US sent an aircraft carrier to the Gulf, citing alleged Iranian escalations of proxy activities in the region. But it adds: “A deputy commander of the Iraq-based coalition fighting ISIS/Daesh, a British Major General, appeared to contradict that on 14 May: ‘There are a substantial number of militia groups in Iraq and Syria, and we don’t see any increased threat from any of them at this stage’.”
On 12 May, Iran was blamed by the US for sabotaging four oil tankers: two of which were Saudi (an enemy of Iran), one Norwegian (neutral), and one from the United Arab Emirates (a Western ally). Despite claims that Iran was to blame, the United Arab Emirates’ inquiry submitted to the UN Security Council did not mention Iran. In June, Iran was blamed by the US for attacking two tankers, Front Altair and Kokuka Courageous, providing fuzzy video to support its case. But when asked for specific evidence, the UK’s Minister for the Middle East, replied: “we are as sure as we can be.”
On 4 July, thirty British Royal Marines were alleged to have commandeered, in Gibraltarian waters, the Iranian-operated tanker, Grace I, supposedly to stop its “unlawful” delivery of oil to Syria. Iran argues, plausibly, that this was a violation of international law because the EU sanctions against Syria do not apply to non-EU states. Britain argues that Iran was using Gibraltarian waters to break the law. But this misses the point: What legal or moral right does the US or EU or Gibraltar have to dictate the nature of Iran’s oil sales?
The Royal Marines allegedly made the civilian crew kneel on the deck whilst pointing guns at them. The captain says: “They didn’t care whether I was master… there was no regulations (sic)… we had 28 unarmed crew. I was in a state of shock, everybody was in a state of shock.
How do you come on a ship like this with armed forces and such brute force. For what reason?” (BBC’s ellipses). The British Ministry of Defence describes this brutality as “standard operating procedure.”
“Perhaps what is most interesting about this seizure is that it was carried out pursuant to the ‘Sanctions Regulations 2019’ enacted by Gibraltar on 3 July, just one day before the seizure. Those Regulations give the Chief Minister of Gibraltar powers to designate a vessel as a ‘Specified Ship’ if he ‘has reasonable grounds to suspect that the ship … has been, or is likely to be, involved in a breach of the EU Regulation’. The EU Regulation in question is Regulation (EU) No. 36/2012 and a ‘Specified Ship Notice’ was issued in Gibraltar on 3 July 2019 naming the Grace 1.”
The Observer’s Simon Tisdall cites “evidence” that US National Security Advisor John Bolton’s “national security team was directly involved in manufacturing the Gibraltar incident … when US spy satellites, tasked with helping block Iranian oil exports in line with Trump’s global embargo, began to track Grace I on its way, allegedly, to Syria, Bolton saw an opportunity.” In addition to remember Dick Cheney’s scheme from more than a decade ago, it should also be remembered that Bolton wrote a book about Iran and US-led geopolitics in general, entitled Surrender Is Not An Option. Spain does not formally recognize Britain’s territorial claims over Gibraltar. Why didn’t the Spanish intervene in this allegedly unlawful Iranian move? Because the US, presumably as part of the “trap,” already tipped off British intelligence (read: instructed them to seize the vessel).
In revenge, the Iranians seized two ships: the British-registered, Swedish-owned Stena Impero and the British-operated Mesdar.
IN CONCLUSION
Britain has pirated and plundered Iran for well-over a century, most notably by stealing its oil via the virtual monopoly, Anglo-Persian (now BP). The US worked with Britain in 1953 to overthrow the Mossadeq government. They imposed the blood-thirsty Shah on the people of Iran and never forgave the Iranians for shaking off their shackles in the Islamic Revolution 1979. In addition to arming Iran’s enemy-next-door, Saddam Hussein, during the brutal war (1980-89), the US, Britain and Israel have engaged in subversion activities, including murder and sabotage. The recent seizure of the Iranian tanker is a continuation of imperial policy.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KiP3qk Tyler Durden
The gunman was taken out by officers responding to the incident.
CNN reports that the Dayton shooting took place around 1 a.m. outside on East 5th Street in the city’s Oregon district, a popular downtown area, Dayton Deputy Director and Assistant Chief of the Police Lt. Col. Matt Carper told reporters early Sunday morning.
“As bad as this is, it could have been much, much worse, as I think everyone will become aware of here as more information unfolds,” Carper said.
Though many people were killed or injured, Carper said that the incident was over quickly, because officers were already patrolling in the vicinity when the gunshots started.
#OregonDistrict#update We had officers in the immediate vicinity when this shooting began and were able to respond and put an end to it quickly.
Dayton police said the shooter used some kind of a long gun in the attack and most likely acted alone. They said they were working on identifying the gunman and establishing the motives behind his rampage.
“I’m heartbroken,” Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley tweeted Sunday morning.
“Thank you to our first responders for all that you’ve done. We will share updates as we have more information.”
Footage from the scene showed a heavy police presence in the Oregon District. According to the police, the FBI is assisting in the investigation.
Elizabeth Long, spokeswoman at Kettering Health Network, which operates several Dayton area hospitals including Kettering Medical Center and Grandview Medical Center told CNN that 13 people were taken to three of the network’s hospitals, many with gunshot wounds to the “lower extremities.” At least one person was shot in the abdomen and at least two people were taken into surgery. She did not give an age range for the injured.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KtrpaX Tyler Durden
Paris, Champs-Élysées. July 14. Bastille Day. Just before the military parade begins, President Emmanuel Macron comes down the avenue in an official car to greet the crowd. Thousands of people gathered along the avenue shout “Macron resign”, boo and hurl insults.
At the end of the parade, a few dozen people release yellow balloons into the sky and distribute leaflets saying “The yellow vests are not dead.” The police disperse them, quickly and firmly. Moments later, hundreds of “Antifa” anarchists arrive, throw security barriers on the roadway to erect barricades, start fires and smash the storefronts of several shops. The police have a rough time mastering the situation, but early in the evening, after a few hours, they restore the calm.
A few hours later, thousands of young Arabs from the suburbs gather near the Arc de Triomphe. They have apparently come to “celebrate” in their own way the victory of an Algerian soccer team. More storefronts are smashed, more shops looted. Algerian flags are everywhere. Slogans are belted out: “Long live Algeria”, “France is ours”, “Death to France”. Signs bearing street names are replaced by signs bearing the name of Abd El Kader, the religious and military leader who fought against the French army at the time of the colonization of Algeria. The police limit themselves to stemming the violence in the hope that it will not spread.
Around midnight, three leaders of the “yellow vest” movement come out of a police station and tell a TV reporter that they were arrested early that morning and imprisoned for the rest of the day. Their lawyer states that they did nothing wrong and were just “preventively” arrested. He emphasizes that a law passed in February 2019 allows the French police to arrest any person suspected of going to a demonstration; no authorization from a judge is necessary and no appeal possible.
On Friday, July 19, the Algerian soccer team wins again. More young Arabs gathernear Arc de Triomphe to “celebrate” again. The damage is even greater than eight days before. More police show up; they do almost nothing.
On July 12, two days before Bastille Day, several hundred self-declared African illegal migrantsenter the Pantheon, the monument that houses the graves of heroes who played major roles in the history of France. There, the migrants announce the birth of the “Black Vest movement”. They demand the “regularization” of all illegal immigrants on French territory and free housing for each of them. The police show up but decline to intervene. Most of the demonstrators leave peacefully. A few who insult the police are arrested.
France today is a country adrift. Unrest and lawlessness continue to gain ground. Disorder has become part of daily life. Polls show that a large majority rejectPresident Macron. They seem to hate his arrogance and be inclined not to forgive him. They seem to resent his contempt for the poor; the way he crushed the “yellow vest” movement, and for his not having paid even the slightest attention to the protesters’ smallest demands, such as the right to hold a citizens’ referendumlike those in Switzerland. Macron can no longer go anywhere in public without risking displays of anger.
The “yellow vests” seem finally to have stopped demonstrating and given up: too many were maimed or hurt. Their discontent, however, is still there. It seems waiting to explode again.
The French police appear ferocious when dealing with peaceful protesters, but barely able to prevent groups such as “Antifa” from causing violence. Therefore, now at the end of each demonstration, “Antifa” show up. The French police seem particularly cautious when having to deal with young Arabs and illegal migrants. The police have been given orders. They know that young Arabs and illegal migrants could create large-scale riots. Three months ago, in Grenoble, the police were pursuing some young Arabs on a stolen motorcycle, who were accused of theft. While fleeing, they had an accident. Five days of mayhem began.
President Macron looks like an authoritarian leader when he faces the disgruntled poor. He never says he is sorry for those who have lost an eye or a hand or suffered irreversible brain damage from extreme police brutality. Instead, he asked the French parliament to pass a law that almost completely abolishes the right to protest, the presumption of innocence and that allows the arrest of anyone, anywhere, even without cause. The law was passed.
In June, the French parliament passed another law, severely punishing anyone who says or writes something that might contain “hate speech”. The law is so vague that an American legal scholar, Jonathan Turley, felt compelled to react. “France has now become one of the biggest international threats to freedom of speech”, he wrote.
Macron does not appear authoritarian, however, with violent anarchists. When facing young Arabs and illegal migrants, he looks positively weak.
He knows what the former interior minister, Gérard Collomb, said in November 2018, while resigning from government:
“Communities in France are engaging in conflict with one another more and more and it is becoming very violent… today we live side by side, I fear that tomorrow it will be face to face”.
Macron also knows what former President François Hollande said after serving his term as president: “France is on the verge of partition”.
Macron knows that the partition of France already exists. Most Arabs and Africans live in no-go zones, apart from the rest of the population, where they accept the presence of non-Arabs and non-Africans less and less. They do not definethemselves as French, except when they say that France will belong to them. Reports show that most seem filled with a deep rejection of France and Western civilization. An increasing number seem to place their religion above their citizenship; many seem radicalized and ready to fight.
Macron seems not to want to fight. Instead, he has chosen to appease them. He is single-mindedly pursuing his plans to institutionalize Islam in France. Three months ago, the Muslim Association for Islam of France (AMIF) was created. One branch will handle the cultural expansion of Islam and take charge of “the fight against anti-Muslim racism”. Another branch will be responsible for programs that train imams and build mosques. This autumn, a “Council of Imams of France” will be established. The main leaders of the AMIF are (or were until recently) membersof the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement designated as a terrorist organization in Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — but not in France.
Macron is aware of the demographic data. They show that the Muslim population in France will grow significantly in the coming years. (The economist Charles Gave wrote recently that by 2057, France will have a Muslim majority). Macron can see that it will soon be impossible for anyone to be elected President without relying on the Muslim vote, so he acts accordingly.
Macron apparently sees that the discontent that gave birth to the “yellow vest” movement still is there. He appears to think that repression will be enough to prevent any further uprising, and so does nothing to remedy the causes of the discontent.
The “yellow vest” movement was born of a revolt against exorbitantly high taxes on fuel, and harsh government measures against cars and motorists. These measures included reduced speed limits — 50 mph on most highways — and more speed-detection cameras; a sharp rise in the penalties on tickets, as well as complex and expensive annual motor vehicle controls. French taxes on fuels recently rose again and are now the highest in Europe (70% of the price paid at the pump). Other measures against the use of automobiles and motorists still in force are especially painful for the poor. They were already chased from the suburbs by intolerant newcomers, and now have to live — and drive — even farther from where they work.
Macron has made no decision to remedy the disastrous economic situation in France. When he was elected, taxes, duties and social charges represented almost 50% of GDP. Government spending represented 57% of GDP (the highest among developed countries). The ratio of national debt to GDP was almost 100%.
Taxes, duties, social charges and government spending remain at the same level now as when Macron came in. The debt-to-GDP ratio is 100% and growing. The French economy is not creating jobs. Poverty remains extremely high: 14% of the population earn less than 855 euros ($950) a month.
Macron pays no attention to the growing cultural disaster also seizing the country. The educational system is crumbling. An increasing percentage of students graduate from high school without knowing how to write a sentence free of errors that make incomprehensible anything they write. Christianity is disappearing. Most non-Muslim French no longer define themselves as Christians. The fire that ravaged the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris was officially an “accident,” but it was only one of the many Christian religious buildings in the country that were recently destroyed. Every week, churches are vandalized — to the general indifference of the public. In just the first half of 2019, 22 churches burned down.
The main concern of Macron and the French government seems not to be the risk of riots, the public’s discontent, the disappearance of Christianity, the disastrous economic situation, or Islamization and its consequences. Instead, it is climate change. Although the amount of France’s carbon dioxide emissions is infinitesimal(less than 1% of the global total), combatting “human-induced climate change” appears Macron’s absolute priority.
A Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, age 16, — nevertheless the guru of the “fight for the climate” in Europe — was recently invited to the French National Assembly by members of parliament who support Macron. She delivered a speech, promising that the “irreversible destruction” of the planet will begin very soon. She addedthat political leaders “are not mature enough” and need lessons from children. MPs who support Macron applauded warmly. She received a Prize of Freedom, just created, which will be given each year to people “fighting for the values of those who landed in Normandy in 1944 to liberate Europe”. It is probably reasonable to assume that not one of those who landed in Normandy in 1944 thought he was fighting to save the climate. Such minor details, however, seem beyond Macron and the parliamentarians who support him.
Macron and the French government also seem unconcerned that Jews — driven by the rise of anti-Semitism, and understandably worried about court decisions infused with the spirit of submission to violent Islam — continue to flee from France.
Kobili Traore, the man who murdered Sarah Halimi in 2017 while chanting surasfrom the Qur’an and shouting that the Jews are Sheitan (Arabic for “Satan”) was found not guilty. Traore had apparently smoked cannabis before the murder, so the judges decided that he was not responsible for his acts. Traore will soon be released from prison; what happens if he smokes cannabis again?
A few weeks after the murder of Halimi, three members of a Jewish family were assaulted, tortured and held hostage in their home by a group of five men who said that “Jews have money” and “Jews must pay”. The men were arrested; all were Muslim. The judge who indicted them announced that their actions were “not anti-Semitic”.
On July 25, 2019 when the Israeli soccer team Maccabi Haifa was competing in Strasbourg, the French government limited the number of Israeli supporters in the stadium to 600, not one more. A thousand had bought plane tickets to come to France to attend the match. The French government also banned the waving of Israeli flags at the game or anywhere in the city. Nonetheless, in the name of “free speech”, the French Department of the Interior permitted anti-Israeli demonstrations in front of the stadium, and Palestinian flags and banners saying “Death to Israel” were there. The day before the match, at a restaurant near the stadium, some Israelis were violently attacked. “The demonstrations against Israel are approved in the name of freedom of expression, but the authorities forbid supporters of Maccabi Haifa to raise the Israeli flag, it is unacceptable,” said Aliza Ben Nun, Israel’s ambassador to France.
The other day, a plane full of French Jews leaving France arrived in Israel. More French Jews will soon go. The departure of Jews to Israel entails sacrifices: some French real estate agents take advantage of the wish of many Jewish families to leave, so they buy and sell properties owned by Jews at a price far lower than their market value.
Macron will remain as president until May 2022. Several leaders of the parties of the center-left (such as the Socialist Party) and center-right (The Republicans) joined The Republic on the Move, the party he created two years ago. After that, the Socialist Party and The Republicans electorally collapsed. Macron’s main opponent in 2022 is likely to be the same as in 2017: Marine Le Pen, the leader of the populist National Rally.
Although Macron is widely unpopular and widely hated, he will probably use the same slogans as in 2017: that he is the last bastion of hope against “chaos” and “fascism.” He has a strong chance of being elected again. Anyone who reads the political program of the National Rally can see that Le Pen is not a fascist. Also, anyone who looks at the situation in France may wonder if France has not already begun to sink into chaos.
The sad situation that reigns in France is not all that different from that in many other European countries. A few weeks ago, an African cardinal, Robert Sarah, published a book, Le soir approche et déjà le jour baisse (“The evening comes, and already the light darkens”). “At the root of the collapse of the West”, he writes, “there is a cultural and identity crisis. The West no longer knows what it is, because it does not know and does not want to know what shaped it, what constituted it, what it was and what it is. (…) This self-asphyxiation leads naturally to a decadence that opens the way to new barbaric civilizations.”
That is exactly what is happening in France — and Europe.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ME3NmO Tyler Durden
Today, self-help books and relationship gurus invoke evolution to explain everything from marital infidelity to the paleo diet. Our early ancestors’ survival needs echo through our ideas today. But this is not the first time our hominid ancestry’s role in our culture and character has played a major role in Western popular culture.
Following the nightmare of the Second World War, the idea of a universal humanity had great appeal. The Holocaust and the atom bomb had proven that human beings have not only destructive impulses but a devastating ability to carry them out. But were these impulses something we were born with, or were they created by our culture? Answering this question became a driving focus of popular anthropology. With Creatures of Cain, the Princeton historian Erika Lorraine Milam explores this period of intellectual debate.
The high-minded internationalism of the postwar period sought to promote a sense of brotherhood, as in the “Family of Man” exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955—photographs showing the lives of people around the world. (This still, rather parochially, treated the nuclear family as the center of all cultures.) Anthropology hadn’t covered itself in glory in the previous 50 years: Some of its biggest names, such as Earnest Hooton and Eugen Fischer, had gone all in on the “race science” that drove Nazism and eugenics. The S.S. doctor Josef Mengele even received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation before he went to Auschwitz. So after the war, many scholars believed the path to peace (and academic redemption) was to celebrate the universal family of man, playing down differences and pointing to humankind’s immense achievements, from agriculture to rocket science. Violence was aberrant and abhorrent; our true nature was to cooperate. Some scientists, such as Margaret Mead, even argued that behavior, whether cooperative or competitive, was entirely learned. We are made by our cultural environment, so cultures could create peace.
In the ’50s and ’60s, magazines like National Geographic and Scientific American published stories on various “Stone Age” cultures still alive in the world, from the Kalahari Bushmen to the tribes of New Guinea. The stories highlighted the idea that such peoples represented the lives of our hominid ancestors and focused on how they lived in harmony with nature. There was also a sense of urgency to study these groups before they were changed by contact with the rest of the world.
This idealization of tribal peoples was hardly new—some of that fawning coverage could have been written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Unfortunately, other studies offered less comforting visions in which these “primitive” groups turned out not to be soft-focus prelapsarian Adams after all. Indeed, some of them were pretty violent.
Meanwhile, other scientists treated baboons, chimpanzees, or gorillas as analogs to early man, using them to look for clues to our ancestral patterns. But Jane Goodall’s research found that life among chimps was not idyllic either. Territorial warfare, murder, and infanticide were part of their world too.
So the idea that our species is naturally cooperative was changing by the mid-1960s. The “Killer Ape” thesis, popular from about 1966 to 1975, held that human beings are violent because of our genes. Milam argues that Americans’ understanding of human nature shifted rapidly “from seeing humanity as characterized by our unique capacity for reasoned cooperation to emphasising, even lauding, our propensity for violence.”
One key advocate of this view was the science writer Robert Ardrey, who published The Territorial Imperative in 1966. He argued that competition for territory was part of human character. Around the same time, Konrad Lorenz’s On Aggression and Desmond Morris’ The Naked Ape appeared in bookstores.
Morris’ focus was on sexual behavior, which he argued was different from that of other primates due to humans’ relative hairlessness, which rendered our primary and secondary sexual characteristics more visible. He argued that breasts had developed for sexual signaling as well as for feeding infants and that sexual selection had favored men with large penises. TheNaked Ape‘s message was in keeping with the sexual revolution, and the book became a bestseller, reaching readers well beyond the kinds of people who would normally buy books on anthropology. (A Johnny Carson interview with Morris was, by Milam’s account, the first time the word penis was said on live American television.)
A number of the experts involved were also focused on public communication. Milam suggests that a sharp line cannot be drawn between the “colloquial” and academic discussions taking place, since several scientists were participating in the public sphere. Their books were published by commercial presses; they appeared on TV; the debate played out not just in Nature but in the letters page of Playboy. (Hugh Hefner liked The Naked Ape and even sponsored a film adaptation of the book. The idea that promiscuity was biologically determined obviously played well with much of Hef’s audience.)
It is worth noting that some of the prominent figures in this intellectual debate had no advanced credentials in the field. Ardrey, who was well-known as a Hollywood screenwriter, had no training beyond an undergraduate degree in anthropology. Jane Goodall had not been to college at all when she began her chimpanzee research. (She would later complete a Ph.D. after being admitted directly to a graduate program on the basis of her published work.) Those who did have advanced degrees and university appointments could suddenly attract the kind of attention most academics only dream of. Lionel Tiger, the Rutgers anthropologist who wrote Men in Groups (1969), was profiled like a rock star in TheNew York Times. Tiger argued that homosocial groups of men formed the foundation of human society. (It was Tiger who introduced the phrase male bonding to common conversation.) The writer Kate Millett called it “a genetic justification of the patriarchy”—and it wasn’t only feminists who found the idea of such innate social behavior depressing.
The popularity of these human evolution books made them ripe for parody, by writers such as Elaine Morgan in The Descent of Woman (1972) and Antony Jay in Corporation Man (1971). In his witty account of businessmen (Homo sapiens corporalis), Jay—the future co-writer of the TV show Yes, Minister—mocked the participant-observer anthropologist, saying that he was “accepted so completely by the objects of my study that my presence in no way inhibited or modified their behaviour. Indeed, there were times when I could honestly say that I felt I was one of them myself.” Morgan similarly suggested that readers try to observe “specimens of Homo sapiens in his natural habitat. It shouldn’t be difficult because the species is protected by law and in no immediate danger of extinction.”
This wave of books would give way to further, more nuanced discussions of evolution and its impact on human behavior. E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology(1975) attempted to synthesize group and individual selection pressures, including cooperative as well as competitive traits. Richard Dawkins entered the fray in 1976 with The Selfish Gene, the most popular book about the new evolutionary theories. Dawkins’ work focused on individual genetic survival, explaining even cooperation as a strategy for gene transmission. More recently, Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate (2002) came close to capturing the kind of crossover appeal of the Killer Ape genre.
Today, evolution is widely accepted as an explanation not just for how we got here but for how we are. But the understandings of it among the public are not always what scholars have intended. Far from promoting equality, it can be used to justify division. Just as religions could be interpreted as endorsing hierarchies, so evolution could be used to denigrate certain groups who were seen to be at “different stages of development,” an idea that appeared soon after Darwin published TheOrigin of Species.
This mindset was especially widespread in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. From the Enlightenment view of “savages” as less culturally developed, evolution allowed Westerners to see them as less biologically developed too, an idea that was weaponized in various forms of colonial oppression. This “scientific racism” was not eradicated with notions of universality. When scholars themselves point to “primitive” tribes as representing how our ancestors might have lived, it’s not hard to see how the average reader would interpret that as meaning these indigenous groups were less far along the evolutionary track than Westerners.
Today, DNA testing is widespread—for criminal investigations, for medical diagnoses, for genealogical research. The idea that our genome offers something of a road map for our behavioral characteristics is widely accepted, although the nature/nurture debate does continue.
But the idea that we would instinctively fight and fornicate, were it not for the moderating influence of modern civilization, wasn’t created by the Killer Ape theorists. It was the general understanding of the Christian world. We were creatures of Cain. Our ability to control our behavior—our higher consciousness—was what separated us from the animals. Whether we label those instincts “DNA” or “original sin,” the idea is the same.
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Today, self-help books and relationship gurus invoke evolution to explain everything from marital infidelity to the paleo diet. Our early ancestors’ survival needs echo through our ideas today. But this is not the first time our hominid ancestry’s role in our culture and character has played a major role in Western popular culture.
Following the nightmare of the Second World War, the idea of a universal humanity had great appeal. The Holocaust and the atom bomb had proven that human beings have not only destructive impulses but a devastating ability to carry them out. But were these impulses something we were born with, or were they created by our culture? Answering this question became a driving focus of popular anthropology. With Creatures of Cain, the Princeton historian Erika Lorraine Milam explores this period of intellectual debate.
The high-minded internationalism of the postwar period sought to promote a sense of brotherhood, as in the “Family of Man” exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955—photographs showing the lives of people around the world. (This still, rather parochially, treated the nuclear family as the center of all cultures.) Anthropology hadn’t covered itself in glory in the previous 50 years: Some of its biggest names, such as Earnest Hooton and Eugen Fischer, had gone all in on the “race science” that drove Nazism and eugenics. The S.S. doctor Josef Mengele even received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation before he went to Auschwitz. So after the war, many scholars believed the path to peace (and academic redemption) was to celebrate the universal family of man, playing down differences and pointing to humankind’s immense achievements, from agriculture to rocket science. Violence was aberrant and abhorrent; our true nature was to cooperate. Some scientists, such as Margaret Mead, even argued that behavior, whether cooperative or competitive, was entirely learned. We are made by our cultural environment, so cultures could create peace.
In the ’50s and ’60s, magazines like National Geographic and Scientific American published stories on various “Stone Age” cultures still alive in the world, from the Kalahari Bushmen to the tribes of New Guinea. The stories highlighted the idea that such peoples represented the lives of our hominid ancestors and focused on how they lived in harmony with nature. There was also a sense of urgency to study these groups before they were changed by contact with the rest of the world.
This idealization of tribal peoples was hardly new—some of that fawning coverage could have been written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Unfortunately, other studies offered less comforting visions in which these “primitive” groups turned out not to be soft-focus prelapsarian Adams after all. Indeed, some of them were pretty violent.
Meanwhile, other scientists treated baboons, chimpanzees, or gorillas as analogs to early man, using them to look for clues to our ancestral patterns. But Jane Goodall’s research found that life among chimps was not idyllic either. Territorial warfare, murder, and infanticide were part of their world too.
So the idea that our species is naturally cooperative was changing by the mid-1960s. The “Killer Ape” thesis, popular from about 1966 to 1975, held that human beings are violent because of our genes. Milam argues that Americans’ understanding of human nature shifted rapidly “from seeing humanity as characterized by our unique capacity for reasoned cooperation to emphasising, even lauding, our propensity for violence.”
One key advocate of this view was the science writer Robert Ardrey, who published The Territorial Imperative in 1966. He argued that competition for territory was part of human character. Around the same time, Konrad Lorenz’s On Aggression and Desmond Morris’ The Naked Ape appeared in bookstores.
Morris’ focus was on sexual behavior, which he argued was different from that of other primates due to humans’ relative hairlessness, which rendered our primary and secondary sexual characteristics more visible. He argued that breasts had developed for sexual signaling as well as for feeding infants and that sexual selection had favored men with large penises. TheNaked Ape‘s message was in keeping with the sexual revolution, and the book became a bestseller, reaching readers well beyond the kinds of people who would normally buy books on anthropology. (A Johnny Carson interview with Morris was, by Milam’s account, the first time the word penis was said on live American television.)
A number of the experts involved were also focused on public communication. Milam suggests that a sharp line cannot be drawn between the “colloquial” and academic discussions taking place, since several scientists were participating in the public sphere. Their books were published by commercial presses; they appeared on TV; the debate played out not just in Nature but in the letters page of Playboy. (Hugh Hefner liked The Naked Ape and even sponsored a film adaptation of the book. The idea that promiscuity was biologically determined obviously played well with much of Hef’s audience.)
It is worth noting that some of the prominent figures in this intellectual debate had no advanced credentials in the field. Ardrey, who was well-known as a Hollywood screenwriter, had no training beyond an undergraduate degree in anthropology. Jane Goodall had not been to college at all when she began her chimpanzee research. (She would later complete a Ph.D. after being admitted directly to a graduate program on the basis of her published work.) Those who did have advanced degrees and university appointments could suddenly attract the kind of attention most academics only dream of. Lionel Tiger, the Rutgers anthropologist who wrote Men in Groups (1969), was profiled like a rock star in TheNew York Times. Tiger argued that homosocial groups of men formed the foundation of human society. (It was Tiger who introduced the phrase male bonding to common conversation.) The writer Kate Millett called it “a genetic justification of the patriarchy”—and it wasn’t only feminists who found the idea of such innate social behavior depressing.
The popularity of these human evolution books made them ripe for parody, by writers such as Elaine Morgan in The Descent of Woman (1972) and Antony Jay in Corporation Man (1971). In his witty account of businessmen (Homo sapiens corporalis), Jay—the future co-writer of the TV show Yes, Minister—mocked the participant-observer anthropologist, saying that he was “accepted so completely by the objects of my study that my presence in no way inhibited or modified their behaviour. Indeed, there were times when I could honestly say that I felt I was one of them myself.” Morgan similarly suggested that readers try to observe “specimens of Homo sapiens in his natural habitat. It shouldn’t be difficult because the species is protected by law and in no immediate danger of extinction.”
This wave of books would give way to further, more nuanced discussions of evolution and its impact on human behavior. E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology(1975) attempted to synthesize group and individual selection pressures, including cooperative as well as competitive traits. Richard Dawkins entered the fray in 1976 with The Selfish Gene, the most popular book about the new evolutionary theories. Dawkins’ work focused on individual genetic survival, explaining even cooperation as a strategy for gene transmission. More recently, Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate (2002) came close to capturing the kind of crossover appeal of the Killer Ape genre.
Today, evolution is widely accepted as an explanation not just for how we got here but for how we are. But the understandings of it among the public are not always what scholars have intended. Far from promoting equality, it can be used to justify division. Just as religions could be interpreted as endorsing hierarchies, so evolution could be used to denigrate certain groups who were seen to be at “different stages of development,” an idea that appeared soon after Darwin published TheOrigin of Species.
This mindset was especially widespread in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. From the Enlightenment view of “savages” as less culturally developed, evolution allowed Westerners to see them as less biologically developed too, an idea that was weaponized in various forms of colonial oppression. This “scientific racism” was not eradicated with notions of universality. When scholars themselves point to “primitive” tribes as representing how our ancestors might have lived, it’s not hard to see how the average reader would interpret that as meaning these indigenous groups were less far along the evolutionary track than Westerners.
Today, DNA testing is widespread—for criminal investigations, for medical diagnoses, for genealogical research. The idea that our genome offers something of a road map for our behavioral characteristics is widely accepted, although the nature/nurture debate does continue.
But the idea that we would instinctively fight and fornicate, were it not for the moderating influence of modern civilization, wasn’t created by the Killer Ape theorists. It was the general understanding of the Christian world. We were creatures of Cain. Our ability to control our behavior—our higher consciousness—was what separated us from the animals. Whether we label those instincts “DNA” or “original sin,” the idea is the same.
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via IFTTT
When two Financial Times columnists – pillars of the western Establishment – raise a warning flag, we must take note:
Martin Wolf was first off, with a piece dramatically headlined: The looming 100-year, US-China Conflict. No ‘mere’ trade war, he implied, but a full-spectrum struggle.
Then his FT colleague Edward Luce, pointed out that Wolf’s “argument is more nuanced than the headline. Having spent part of this week among leading policymakers and thinkers at the annual Aspen Security Forum in Colorado,” Luce writes, “I am inclined to think Martin was not exaggerating. The speed with which US political leaders of all stripes have united behind the idea of a ‘new cold war’ is something that takes my breath away. Eighteen months ago the phrase was dismissed as fringe scaremongering. Today it is consensus.”
A significant shift is underway in US policy circles, it seems. Luce’s final ‘take’ is that “it is very hard to see what, or who, is going to prevent this great power rivalry from dominating the 21st century”. It is clear that there is indeed now a clear bi-partisan consensus in the US on China. Luce is surely right. But that is far from being the end of it. A collective psychology of belligerence seems to be taking shape, and, as one commentator noted, it has become not just a great-power rivalry, but a rivalry amongst ‘Beltway’ policy wonks to show “who has the bigger dick”.
And quick to demonstrate his, at Aspen (after others had unveiled their masculinity on China and Iran), was the US envoy for Syria (and deputy US National Security Adviser), James Jeffrey: A US policy boiled down to one overriding component: ‘hammering Russia’. “Hammering Russia” (he insisted repeatedly), will continue until President Putin understands there is no military solution in Syria (he said with heightened verbal emphasis). Russia falsely assumes that Assad has ‘won’ war: “He hasn’t”, Jeffrey said. And the US is committed to demonstrating this fundamental ‘truth’.
Therefore, the US plans to ‘up the pressure’; will escalate the cost to Russia, until a political transition is in place, with a new Syria emerging as a “normal nation”. The US will ‘leverage’ the costs on Russia across the board: Through military pressure – ensuring a lack of military progress in Idlib; through Israelis operating freely across Syria’s airspace; through ‘US partners’ (i.e. the Kurds) consolidating in NE Syria; through economic costs (“our success” in stopping reconstruction aid to Syria); through extensive US sanctions on Syria (integrated with those on Iran) – “these sanctions are succeeding”; and thirdly, by diplomatic pressure: i.e. “hammering Russia” in the UN.
Well, the US shift on Syria also takes one’s breath away. Recall how little time ago, the talk was of partnership, of the US working with Russia to find a solution in Syria. Now the talk of the US Envoy is the talk of Cold War with Russia as much as were his Aspen colleagues – albeit in respect to China. Such ‘machismo’ is evidenced too coming from the US President: “I could – if I wanted – end the US war in Afghanistan in a week”, (but it would entail the deaths of 10 million Afghans), Trump excalimed. And, in the same mode, Trump now suggests that for Iran, he is easy: war or not – either path is fine, for him.
All this braggadocio is reminiscent of late 2003 when the war in Iraq was just entering its insurgent stage: It was said then that mere “boys go to Baghdad; but real men chose to go to Tehran”. It gained wide circulation in Washington at the time. This type of talk gave rise, as I well recall, to something approaching an hysteric elation. Officials seemed to be walking six inches above the ground, in anticipation of all the dominos expected to fall in succession.
The point here is that the tacit coupling of Russia – now termed a major ‘foe’ of America by US Defence officials – and China, inevitably is being refracted back at the US, in terms of a growing strategic Russo-Chinese partnership, ready to challenge the US and its allies.
Last Tuesday, a Russian aircraft, flying in a joint air patrol with a Chinese counterpart, deliberately entered South Korean airspace. And, just earlier, two Russian Tu-95 bombers and two Chinese H-6 warplanes — both nuclear capable — reportedly had entered South Korea’s air defense identification zone.
“This is the first time I’m aware of that Chinese and Russian fighters have jointly flown through the air defence identification zone of a major US ally — in this case two US allies. Clearly it’s geopolitical signalling as well as intelligence collection,” said Michael Carpenter, a former Russia specialist with the US Department of Defense. It was a message to the US, Japan, and South Korea: If you strengthen the US-Japan military alliance, Russia and China have no choice but to react militarily as well.
So, as we look around, the picture seems to be one in which US bellicosity is somehow consolidating as an éliteconsensus (with but a few individuals courageously pushing-back on the trend). So what is going on?
The two FT correspondents effectively were signalling – in their separate articles – that the US is entering on a momentous and hazardous transformation. Further, it would seem that America’s élite is being fractured into balkanised enclaves that are not communicating with one another – nor wanting to communicate with each other. Rather, it is another conflict between deadly rivals.
One such orientation insists on a renewal of the Cold War to sustain and renew that supersized military-security complex, which accounts for more than half of America’s GDP. Another élite demands that US dollar global hegemony be preserved. Another orientation of the Deep State is disgusted at the contagion of sexual decadence and corruption that has wormed its way into American governance – and truly hopes that Trump will ‘drain the swamp’. And yet another, which sees DC’s now explicit amorality as risking the loss of America’s global standing and leadership – wants to see a return of traditional American mores – a ‘moral rearmament’, as it were. (And then there are the deplorables, who simply want that America should attend to its own internal refurbishment.)
But all these divided Deep State factions believe that belligerence can work.
However, the more these fractured, rival US élite factions with their moneyed and comfortable lifestyles, cloister themselves in their enclaves, certain in their separate views about how America can retain its global supremacy, the less likely it is that they will understand the very real impact of their collective belligerence on the outside world. Like any cosseted élite, they have an exaggerated sense of their entitlement – and their impunity.
These élite factions – for all their internal rivalry – however seem to have coalesced around a singularity of talking and thinking that allows the dominant classes to substitute for the reality of an America subject to severe stress and strain – the fable of a hegemon which still can elect which non-compliant governments and peoples to bully and remove from the global map. Their rhetoric alone is curdling the atmospherics in the non-West.
But a further implication of the incoherence within the élites is applicable to Trump. It is widely assumed that because he says he does not want more wars – and because he is US President – wars will not happen. But that is not how the world works.
The leader of any nation is never sovereign. He or she sits atop a pyramid of quarrelling princelings (Deep State princelings, in this instance), who have their own interests and agenda. Trump is not immune to their machinations. One obvious example being Mr Bolton’s successful gambit in persuading the Brits to seize the Grace I tanker off Gibraltar. At a stroke, Bolton escalated the conflict with Iran (‘increased the pressure’ on Iran, as Bolton would probably term it); put the UK at the forefront of America’s ‘war’ with Iran; divided the JCPOA signatories, and embarrassed the EU. He is a canny ‘operator’ – no doubt about it.
And this is the point: these princelings can initiate actions (including false flags) that drive events to their agenda; that can corner a President. And that is presuming that the President is somehow immune to a great ‘switch in mood’ among his own lieutenants (even if that consensus is nothing more than a fable that belligerency succeeds). But is it safe to assume Trump is immune to the general ‘mood’ amongst the varied élites? Do not his recent glib comments about Afghanistan and Iran suggest that he might leaning towards the new belligerency? Martin Wolf concluded his FT piece by suggesting the shift in the US suggests we may be witnessing a stumbling towards a century of conflict. But in the case of Iran, any mis-move could result in something more immediate – and uncontained.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YGo1m8 Tyler Durden
A mere day after the US officially exited the landmark Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty (INF) which had cooled the Cold War arms race, preventing a build-up in Europe, the Pentagon is looking to deploy intermediate range conventional missiles in the Pacific region “within months”.
Noting that it will most certainly provoke the ire of China, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Friday of the plans, “It’s fair to say, though, that we would like to deploy a capability sooner rather than later.” Esper made the remarks from Australia. “I would prefer months. I just don’t have the latest state of play on timelines.”
“I would prefer months… but these things tend to take longer than you expect,” Esper stated.
File image of US military’s land-based Aegis missile defense testing system based in Hawaii, and being developed jointly with Japan, via the AP.
This week’s official end of the INF comes six months after President Trump issued Moscow an ultimatum to cease its alleged violations of the historic treaty.
At the same time US officials indicated plans to test a new missile which would have been prohibited under the arms control treat in the coming weeks, according to the AP.
The Pentagon has been sparse on details, and there’s been no indication of which US Pacific or Asian allies might in the near future host new missiles. Both Australia and Japan have lately worked closely with the US on joint missile defense projects, however.
Interestingly, one of the key reasons both Trump and Bolton have cited over the past year for their view that the INF is “obsolete” is that it fails to include major world powers like China that have made huge advances in their ballistic missile and defense technology since the Cold War.
Concerning China, Esper dismissed the potential that new US systems in the Pacific could trigger a crisis amid ongoing tensions with Beijing, per the AP:
Esper, who was confirmed as Pentagon chief on July 23, wouldn’t detail possible deployment locations in Asia, saying it would depend on discussions with allies and other factors. He downplayed any reaction from China, saying that “80 percent plus of their inventory is intermediate range systems, so that shouldn’t surprise them that we would want to have a like capability.”
But perhaps it’s all about geography. Consider for example, how Washington and the American public would react if China were to deploy medium-range missiles in Greenland or anywhere in the Atlantic for that matter.
On Friday, 88-year old Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who originally signed the INF alongside Reagan, warned“This US move will cause uncertainty and chaotic development of international politics.”
Indeed we could already be witnessing the beginning of a new “chaos” and “uncertainty” of a global arms race.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/33c6py3 Tyler Durden
Capitalists have claimed responsibility for America’s past economic success. Let’s begin by setting the record straight. American success had little to do with capitalism. This is not to say that the US would have had more success with something like Soviet central planning.
Prior to 1900 when the frontier was closed, America’s success was a multi-century long success based on the plunder of a pristine environment and abundant natural resources. Individuals and companies were capitalized simply by occupying the land and using the resources present.
As the population grew and resources were depleted, the per capita resource endowment declined.
America got a second wind from World War I, which devastated European powers and permitted the emergence of the US as a budding world power. World War II finished off Europe and put economic and financial supremacy in Washington’s hands. The US dollar seized the world reserve currency role from the British pound, enabling the US to pay its bills by printing money. The world currency role of the dollar, more than nuclear weapons, has been the source of American power. Russia has equal or greater nuclear weapons power, but it is the dollar not the ruble that is the currency in which international payments are settled.
The world currency role made the US the financial hegemon. This power together with the IMF and World Bank enabled the US to plunder foreign resources the way vanishing American resources had been plundered.
We can conclude that plunder of natural resources and the ability to externalize much of the cost have been major contributors right through the present day to the success of American capitalism. Michael Hudson has described the plunder process in his many books and articles, as has John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
Essentially, capitalism is a plunder mechanism that generates short-run profits by externalizing long-run costs. It exhausts natural resources, including air, land, and water, for temporary profits while imposing most of its costs, such as pollution, on the environment. An example is the destruction of the Amazon rain forest by loggers. The world loses a massive carbon sink that stabilizes the global climate, and loggers gain short-run profits that are a tiny percentage of the long-run costs.
This destructive process is amplified by the inherently short-run time perspective of capitalist activity which seldom extends beyond the next quarter.
US economic success was also a result of a strong consumer demand fed by rising real wages as technological advances in manufacturing raised the productivity of labor and consumer purchasing power. The middle class became dominant. When I was an economics student, Paul Samuelson taught us that American prosperity was based entirely on the large American consumer market and had nothing to do with foreign trade. Indeed, foreign trade was a minor factor in American GDP. America had such a large domestic consumer market that the US did not need foreign trade to enjoy economics of scale.
All of this changed with the rise of free market ideology and the collapse of the Soviet Union. When I was a student we were taught that boards of directors and corporate executives had responsibilities to their employees, their customers, their communities, and to their shareholders. These responsibilities were all equally valid and needed to be kept in balance.
In response to liberals, who tried to impose more and more “social responsibilities” on corporations, free market economists responded with the argument that, in fact, corporations only have responsibilities to their owners. Rightly or wrongly, this reactive argument is blamed on Milton Friedman. Conservative foundations set about teaching jurists and legislators that companies were only responsible to owners.
Judges were taught that ownership is specific and cannot be abridged by government imposing obligations on the investments of owners for responsibilities that do not benefit the owners. This argument was used to terminate all responsibilities except to shareholders and left profit maximization as the corporate goal.
Thus, when the Soviet Union collapsed and China and India opened their economies to foreign capital, US corporations were free to desert their work forces and home towns and use cheaper labor abroad to produce the goods and services sold to Americans. This increased their profits and, thereby, executive bonuses and shareholder capital gains at the expense of the livelihoods of their former domestic work force and tax base of their local communities and states. The external costs of the larger profits were born by their former employees and the impaired financial condition of states and localities. These costs greatly exceed the higher profits.
Generally speaking, economists assume away external costs. Their mantra is that progress fixes everything. But their measures of progress are deceptive. Ecological economists, such as Herman Daly, have raised the issue whether, considering the neglect of external costs and the inaccurate way in which GDP is measured, announced increases in GDP exceed in value the cost of producing them. It is entirely possible that GDP growth is simply an artifact of not counting all of the costs of production.
As we approach the end of the second decade of the 21st century, the long history of American capitalism fed by plunder seems to be coming to an end simultaneously with the ability of the US central bank to protect existing financial wealth by creating ever more money with which to support stock, bond, and real estate prices. The US has a long history of overthrowing reformist governments in Latin America that threatened American control over their resources. Washington’s coups against democracy and self-determination succeeded until Venezuela. Washington’s coup against Chavez was overturned by the Venezuelan people and military, and so far Washington’s attempt to overthrow Chavez’s successor, Maduro, has failed.
Washington’s attempt to overthrow the Syrian government was prevented by Russia, and most likely Russia and China will prevent Washington from overthrowing the government of Iran. In Africa the Chinese are proving to be better business partners than the exploitative American corporations. To continue feeding the empire with its heavy costs is becoming more difficult.
Washington’s policy of sanctions is making it even more difficult. To avoid the arbitrary and illegal sanctions, other countries are starting to abandon the US dollar as the currency of international transactions and arranging to settle their international accounts in their domestic currencies. China’s Silk Road encompasses Russia with much of Asia in a trade bloc independent of the Western financial system. Other countries hoping to escape US control are turning to Russia and China to achieve sovereignty from Washington. These developments will reduce the demand for dollars and impair US financial hegemony. Alternatives to the World Bank will remove areas of the world from the reach of US plunder.
As plunderable resources diminish, American capitalism, which is heavily dependent on plunder, will have one foundation of its success removed. As aggregate consumer demand collapses from the absence of growth in real income, absence of middle class jobs, and the extreme polarization of income and wealth in the US, another pillar of American capitalism disintegrates. As business investment has also collapsed, as indicated by the use of corporate profits and borrowing to repurchase the corporations’ equity, thus decapitalizing the companies, total aggregate demand itself collapses.
The absence of growth in aggregate demand will make the gap between high stock prices and dismal prospects for corporate profits too great to be bridged by the Federal Reserve flooding money into financial assets. Without the ability to prop up financial asset prices with money creation, flight from dollar-denominated assets could bring down the US dollar.
What is left will be a ruin.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2LYUZrR Tyler Durden
