Posts: 1,909
Threads: 44
Joined: Feb 2017
Reputation:
4
FIGHTING FOR SURVIVAL : WHITHER MODERN CIVILISATION?
A red alert in an age of fear, anger and extremes
In anticipation of its 2018 edition, the well-regarded Munich Security Conference issued a report which aimed to serve as a useful compilation for an impressive gathering of over 300 decision makers and security professionals coming from all four corners of the world.
Quoting the following message delivered by the newly elected United Nations Secretary-general António Guterres, the epigraph to the very first article of the report clearly nailed the colors to the mast: “When I took office one year ago, I appealed for 2017 to be a year for peace. Unfortunately, in fundamental ways, the world has gone in reverse. On New Year’s Day 2018, I am not issuing an appeal. I am issuing an alert—a red alert for our world. Conflicts have deepened and new dangers have emerged. Global anxieties about nuclear weapons are the highest since the Cold War. Climate change is moving faster than we are. Inequalities are growing. We see horrific violations of human rights. Nationalism and xenophobia are on the rise”.[3]
Could there be any more accurate and concise depiction of the state of the world in the early years of the twenty-first century?
Epochal developments in nearly all areas of human activity have triggered increasing concern about the sustainability of an international order conceived, shaped and erected in large measure by the United States of America, in the wake of World War II, thanks to its economic and military might. But this so-called US-led “liberal” order has been witnessing steady erosion and is today brutally called into question, to say the least. And surprisingly enough, its very foundations have been subject to incessant assaults carried out by those who have constructed it—led today by the Donald Trump administration, in response to what it views as excesses of an unbridled globalization. As John Ikenberry stated “the world’s most powerful state has begun to sabotage the order it created. A hostile revisionist power has indeed arrived on the scene, but it sits in the Oval Office, the beating heart of the Free world”.[4]
The conjunction of such realities as illegal wars waged by self-proclaimed global policemen against weaker “disobedient” albeit sovereign states, and unparalleled economic inequality stemming from the contradictions of capitalist globalization and the behavior of unfettered corporate expansion exploiting almost every area of public and private life, has generated a growing global authoritarianism and social Darwinism.
Thus, along a similar train of thought as other leading critics of this twenty-first century-style global capitalism—like Paul Krugman and Thomas Piketty[5]—Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz described this pervasive reality of great divide in an important book.[6] During the past decade, he writes, “four of the central issues facing our society have been the great divide—the huge inequality that is emerging in the United States and many other advanced countries— economic mismanagement, globalization, and the role of the state and the market”. This situation is “related to the role of special interests in our politics —a politics that increasingly represents the interests of the 1 percent”.
That’s why in 2014, Oxfam submitted a landmark briefing paper[7] calling on the world’s elite gathered in Davos to make commitments needed to counter the growing tide of inequality. The paper indicates that almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population. This massive concentration of economic resources in the hands of fewer people, Oxfam warns, presents a real threat to inclusive political and economic systems, and compounds other inequalities. All the more so since left unchecked, political institutions are undermined and governments overwhelmingly serve the interests of economic elites—to the detriments of ordinary people. These prospects have since been proven right in another report[8] from Oxfam which showed that just eight men own the same wealth as the poorest half of the world and considered “beyond grotesque” that a handful of rich men headed by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates are worth $426bn, equivalent to the wealth of 3.6 billion people.
By the same token, a report from the Institute for Policy Studies [9] found that the 3 wealthiest citizens in the US (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet) are richer than the poorest half of the population of this country, equivalent to 160 million people! Their combined wealth amounts to a staggering figure of $248.5 billion. Commenting on these findings, Chuck Collins, an economist and co-author of the report, said that the “billionaire class” continues to separate from the rest of the population at an accelerated pace, and that “so much money concentrated in so few hands when so many people are struggling is not only a sign of bad economic policy, it is a moral crisis”.
Pankaj Mishra aptly captured and eloquently summed up the big picture and the choreography of this danse macabre in which the world got trapped. He rightfully observed that “future historians may well see such uncoordinated mayhem as commencing the third—and the longest and the strangest—of all world wars: one that approximates, in its ubiquity, a global civil war.[10]
But how did the world get to experience its present horrendous predicament?
From Prometheus to Homo Deus
Marshalling an impressive array of research in his 2014 book “The Progress Paradox”[11], Gregg Easterbrook makes the assertion that almost all aspects of Western life have vastly improved in the past century, and that the last fifty years made almost everything so much better for almost everybody that it is sheer perversity to feel bad about most anything. Very recently[12], he reiterated this claim, and in doing so, he denounced all those who are engaged in a “politics of competitive nostalgia” which demands return to an idealized past that can never be reached because, he says, it never existed in the first place. Instead, Easterbrook is convinced that by almost every meaningful measure, the modern world is better than it has ever been, and an even better future can be reached.
In the same vein, assessing the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, also drawing upon wide-ranging research and seventy-five graphs, points out that “life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge and happiness”[13] are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. He draws the apparently logical conclusion that there has never been a better time to be a human being.
And yet today, most men and women feel less happy than in previous generations; a fact that prompted David Callahan to ask the big question: why do so many walk around scowling, rather than smiling at their good fortune in being born into the present generation?[14]
So, why is this global discontent, in the face of an undeniable improvement in the general human condition?
Is it attributable, as Pinker thinks, only to the fact that this progress “which is not the result of some cosmic force, but a gift of the Enlightenment, the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing” swims against currents of human nature—tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking, which “demagogues committed to political, religious and romantic ideologies” are all too willing to exploit in a rearguard war, resulting in a “corrosive fatalism and willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy”?
Or is the current global crisis, as many others believe, because botched experiments in nation-building, democracy, industrialization, and urbanization scar much of the world, and such concepts as modernity, secularism, development, and progress are no more than long-held utopian views by the powerful few as benign ideals for the many? This opinion is shared by Pankaj Mishra who asserts that the political impasses and economic shocks of our societies, as well as the irreparably damaged environment, corroborate the bleakest views of a long list of thinkers, starting with nineteenth-century critics, who condemned modern capitalism as “a heartless machine for economic growth, or the enrichment of the few, which works against such fundamentally human aspirations as stability, community and a better future”.[15]
Also jumps to mind here the response to a question posed to Noam Chomsky by his interviewer on whether civilization can survive the predatory capitalism most advanced economies have returned to since the late 1970s: “Really existing capitalist democracy—RECD for short (pronounced ‘wrecked’)—is radically incompatible with democracy. It seems to me unlikely that civilization can survive really existing capitalism and the sharply attenuated democracy that goes along with it”.[16]
It is noteworthy that as far back as 1932, Aldous Huxley’s novel “Brave New World” foresaw such a looming scientific dictatorship, though it seemed as much frightening as it was a projection into the remote future. Less than thirty years later however, in a fascinating and no less scary non-fiction book[17], Huxley compared the modern-day world with the prophetic fantasy envisioned in his previous analysis, including threats to humanity induced by dazzling advances in the field of the science of thought control in particular. His new book was meant to be a challenge to any complacency with regard to the increasingly powerful pressures to adopt these modern tools, as well as a plea that mankind should educate itself for freedom before it was too late.
Nowadays, there’s little doubt that we are well on our way to almost everything Aldous Huxley’s book warned us against. Indeed, a recent book by Franklin Foer[18] addressed these very daunting challenges, with particular emphasis on the dangers that the GAFA—the four technology giants Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon—pose to our culture and careers. He argued that in their methods of consumer observation and data gathering, and in their intention to replace human decision-making with merciless algorithms, these companies “are shredding the principles that protect individuality”. It’s even worse than that, he adds, because in their quest to dominate the markets and the world, these “fearsome four”, as Foer characterizes them, “have lulled us into a sense of pliant dependency as they influence our thinking and activities”. And since they are far more powerful than the elite “gate keeping” institutions of the past—the major television networks or the leading newspapers—they have become the new arbiters of media, economy, politics and the arts.[19]
A similar opinion is expressed by Yuval Noah Harari, an author and historian who has managed to capture the imagination of millions of people around the world, thanks to his two global bestsellers[20]. In Sapiens, Harari explains how humankind came to rule the planet, and in Homo Deus, he examines humanity’s future. He underlined that “The global empire being forged before our eyes is not governed by a particular state or ethnic group. Much like the Roman Empire, it is ruled by a multi-ethnic elite, and is held together by a common culture and common interests. Throughout the world, more and more entrepreneurs, engineers, experts, scholars, lawyers and managers are called to join the empire. They must ponder whether to answer the imperial call or to remain loyal to their state and their people. More and more choose the empire”.
As for his vision of the future, Harari believes that the pursuit of projects, dreams, and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century—from overcoming death to creating artificial life—may ultimately render most human beings superfluous. He predicts that the main products of the twenty-first-century economy will not be textiles, vehicles, and weapons but bodies, brains, and minds. Thus, “while the industrial revolution created the working class, the next big revolution will create the useless class […] Democracy and the free market will both collapse once Google and Facebook know us better than we know ourselves, and authority will shift from individual humans to networked algorithms. Humans won’t fight machines; they will merge with them”.
Equally worryingly, Harari is of the opinion that fascism and dictatorships might come back, but they will do so in a new form, a form which is much more relevant to the new technological realities of the 21st century. In ancient times, he observes, land was the most important asset in the world. Politics, therefore, was the struggle to control land. And dictatorship meant that all the land was owned by a single ruler or by a small oligarch. But in the modern age, as machines became more important than land, “politics became the struggle to control the machines. And dictatorship meant that too many of the machines became concentrated in the hands of the government or of a small elite. Now data is replacing both land and machines as the most important asset”. Harari concludes that “the greatest danger that now faces liberal democracy is that the revolution in information technology will make dictatorships more efficient than democracies”. This is the shape of the new world, he adds, and the gap between those who get on board and those left behind will be larger than the gap between industrial empires and agrarian tribes, larger even than the gap between Sapiens and Neanderthals. This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus.
The global spiritual influx: requiem for Western consumerist secularism?
For the intelligent layman to fathom the whys and wherefores of today’s world reality, a cross-specialization and interdisciplinary approach based on the latest trend in the realm of social sciences—social neuroscience in particular, which posits that humans are fundamentally a social species, rather than individualists[21]—is crucially needed.
In this regard, Malek Bennabi[22] can be thought of as a pioneer, well ahead of his Western peers. The essence of his most original ideas is expressed in his book on the question of ideas in the Muslim world.[23] Taking stock of the universe and man’s place in it, Bennabi provided a comprehensive analysis through a breathtaking historical, theological, philosophical and sociological perspective. He made the fundamental observation that faced with his own loneliness, man feels overwhelmed by a sense of cosmic void. It is his way of filling this void that determines the type of his culture and civilization, that’s to say all the internal and external features of his historical vocation. The Algerian thinker believes that there are essentially two different ways of doing it: either looking at one’s feet down to the earth below, or lifting up one’s eyes to heaven. The former attempts to overcome his solitude with material things, with his overbearing gaze wanting to possess, while the latter would have recourse to ideas to achieve his goal, with his questioning gaze searching for truth. And thus arise two kinds of culture: a culture of empire with technical roots, and a culture of civilization with ethical and metaphysical roots.
Bennabi then explains that for each of these two types of civilizations, the point of failure comes to the excess of its core, that is: overindulgence of mysticism for the latter, and overindulgence of materialism for the former. Thus, for instance, over the course of their respective historical trajectories, the Islamic civilization has been taken away from its initial balance, only to be inexorably thrown into the hands of the theologians and mystics. Similarly, Western civilization’s embrace of intemperate materialism, both capitalist and communist, has led to a systematic destruction of the moral fabric of its societies, hence progressively dragging the world it eventually dominated into a situation where objects are increasingly overwhelming humanity.
As if pondering and agreeing with Bennabi’s deep reflection, Indian author J.C. Kapur[24] contends that consumerism is making the soul of its addicts empty, permitting all kinds of transgressions with low culture instruments, hence further invigorating unicentralism and limiting humans merely to the status of consumers of material objects. He believes that in the quest for new directions “our salvation will lie in the recognition of the fact that the images of materialism that are being projected are leading towards a moral, ethical and spiritual vacuum that would bar all processes of human development and evolution”. Even more worrying is for him the fact that with the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the ensuing marketization of its successor state’s economy, the global market economies have now arrived at the stage of an “Armament Protected Consumerism” leading towards an ecologically, socially, emotionally and psychically unsustainable paradigm. And so, any attempts to structure a new “Imperial Civilization” on the parameters of a global information society can only be short-lived. He, accordingly, poses the big question as to what focal point should be given to human activity: will it be around material gain or the unending search for the true nature of man in harmony with the cosmic laws?
In effect, for more than two centuries, a diehard tradition of thought, from early “positivists” like Auguste Comte and Friedrich Nietzsche, to modern outspoken “atheists” like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Bennett and Sam Harris, has assumed that modernization would render all religions obsolete, and fantasized about a free, democratic, secular, and materially superior world where reason and science would guide humanity towards a bright and happy future. A case in point here is what French politician Jean Jaurès said in a speech in 1903: “If the very idea of God took a palpable form, if God himself stood visible on the multitudes, the first duty of man would be to refuse obedience and treat Him as the equal with whom we discuss, and not the master that one submits to”.
And so, proponents of this “new religion” have regularly pronounced faith to be dead. Some of them went as far as to assume the “death of God”, while others did not hesitate to write about nothing less than “God’s funeral”![25]
Up to the sixties of the 20th century, the trend to total secularization in the “Western” world seemed irreversible. And so was admittedly the case in the overwhelming majority of the newly decolonized countries of the third world. Their “Westernized” ruling classes did all they could to persuade their fellow citizens that the superiority of the “advanced” countries lays in the Western ideas and institutions and hoped to access modernity by simply and blindly adopting both; the most extreme example in this respect being Atatürk’s (the father of the Turks) Republic of Turkey.
Today, it’s become all too obvious that the demise of religion and this sense of wonderful expectation about the intrinsic virtues of technological progress have all but gone missing. And it is no longer possible, as Pankaj Mishra pointed out to deny or obscure the great chasm “between an elite that seizes modernity’s choicest fruits while disdaining older truths and uprooted masses, who, on finding themselves cheated of the same fruits, recoil into cultural supremacism, populism and rancorous brutality”. [26]
Now that the contradictions and high costs of this minority’s progress have become visible on a global scale, there’s an urgent need for a truly life-saving transformative thinking along the lines J.C. Kapur referred to, or even some of the compelling insights developed by Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow in their 2011 book.[27]
It’s worth recalling in this regard that back in December 1975, in an interview given to Le Point magazine, the famed French novelist and Minister André Malraux denied having ever said that “the 21st century will be religious (spiritual) or won’t be”; a quote too often credited to him, to this day. He surely did say however that “I do not exclude the possibility of a spiritual event on a planetary scale”. On this, he was indeed prophetic, since only four years after this interview, the Iranian Islamic revolution broke out, ushering in an exceptional revival of faith, particularly in the Muslim world, even though religion there has never ceased to hold sway. To be sure, this revolution was the most striking and violent “local” manifestation of the rejection of the “global spiritual emptiness” that had until then characterized the “post-modern” world, forcefully promoted by the Enlightenment movement, but equally fiercely castigated during the “May 1968” wave of tectonic social and political changes that swept the European continent, starting in France precisely.
It seems clear for everybody to see that the “sacred” character of the thoroughly secularized state born after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 is now crumbling. And like all other political forms, the nation-state experienced a rise and a climax, and is presently in decline. For a lot of people, consequently, religions—far from declining as expected or hoped for—constitute the most solid landmark to fill the void and face today’s world disorder and uncertainty.[28] In the words of the bestselling author and influential scholar of religion Rodney Stark, the world is more religious than ever before. He reached that conclusion after surveying more than a million people in 163 countries to paint the full picture that both mainstream scholars and popular commentators have missed. [29] Assuredly, “God is Back”[30]—if, at all, He has ever gone away—and he who wants to correctly understand the politics of the 21st century cannot afford to ignore Him, whether he believes in Him or not.
So much so that an increasing number of social scientists have deemed it necessary to attempt to comprehend religious behavior rather than to discredit it as irrational, anachronistic, and an obstacle to progress. This is precisely what Rodney Stark and Roger Finke did in their book[31], which they concluded by saying “it seems time to carry the secularization doctrine to the graveyard of failed theories, and there to whisper requiescat in pace”.
Rise, decline and revival: the case for a “universal civilization”
Long before those two Californian scholars pronounced their requiem, British historian Arnold Toynbee had written a study[32] in which he highlighted the important historical fact that civilizations die from suicide, not by murder. He explained that civilizations start to decay when they lose their moral fiber and their cultural elite turns parasitic, exploiting the masses and creating an internal and external proletariat. Toynbee propounds that having become reactionary, this once “mystically-inspired creative minority” ends up being an “elite dominant minority” unable to respond creatively to existential challenges.
In the case of the Western civilization, Toynbee found that religion was its Achilles’ heel, and warned that its scaffolding is built on technology, whereas “man cannot live by technology alone”. He further observed that “the Western civilization that has run like a wildfire round the world has not been the whole of the seamless web; it has been a flare of cotton waste: a technological selvage with a religious center piece torn out”. And with an amazing foresight, he made the prediction that “in the fullness of time, when the ecumenical house of many mansions stands firmly on its own foundations and the temporary Western technological scaffolding falls away—as I have no doubt that it will—I believe it will become manifest that the foundations are firm at last because they have been carried down to the bedrock of religion…for religion, after all, is the serious business of the human race”.
In the following paragraphs, we’ll attempt to explain why and how the 500-year long global dominance of the “Western civilization” is coming to an end—a fate first and most significantly epitomized and signaled by the West’s self-immolation during the bloodbath of the two World wars it ignited in a span of only 30 years. We shall do so by surveying the writings of seven authors who have had a profound influence on Western Man’s thinking, and seven other authors who have predicted and warned against an impending twilight of this Western predominance. Indeed, what we take to be the ethical, social, economic, and ideological bedrock of Western thought has, far and away, been laid down in seven landmark references put forward since the beginning of the European Renaissance and the Age of the Enlightenment.
Thus, in his 1513 book “The Prince”, Italian Nicolo Machiavelli described methods—including through deliberate deceit, hypocrisy and perjury—that an aspiring prince can use to acquire the throne, or an existing prince can resort to in order to maintain his reign. English Pastor Thomas Robert Malthus claimed in his 1798 “Essay on the Principle of Population” that population tends to grow faster than the food supply. He also posited that the planet would be unable to support more than one billion inhabitants, and advocated therefore for a limitation on the number of poor people as a better controlling device. English Charles Darwin’s 1859 seminal book “The Origins of Species” promoted a theory of evolution by natural selection through the notion of “survival of the fittest”, thus and so profoundly challenging Victorian-era ideas about the role of humans in the universe. English philosopher/sociologist Herbert Spencer’s 1864 “Principles of Biology” transferred Darwin’s theory from the realm of nature to society. He believed that the strongest or fittest would and should dominate the poor and the weak who should ultimately disappear. This meant that certain races (in particular European Protestants), individuals and nations were entitled to dominate others because of their “superiority” in the natural order. German Karl Marx’s 1867 “Capital” is the foundational theoretical text in materialist philosophy, economics and politics. Belief in some of its teachings led to communism and caused millions of deaths in the hope (or utopia) of bringing about an egalitarian society. In his most celebrated book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” (1883-1885) German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche elaborates on ideas like eternal recurrence of the same, death of God, and the prophecy of the “Übermensch” (Overman), that is, the ideal superior man of the future who could rise above conventional Christian morality to create and impose his own values. Finally, Austrian Sigmund Freud’s theories, although subject to a lot of criticism, were enormously influential. His best known 1930 book “Civilization and Its Discontents”, analyzes what he sees as the fundamental tensions between civilization and the individual. The primary friction, he asserts, stems from the fact that the immutable individual’s quest for instinctive freedom (notably, desires for sex) are at odds with what is best for society (civilization) as a whole, which is why laws are created to prohibit killing, rape, and adultery, and implement severe punishments if they are broken. The result is an ongoing feeling of discontent among the citizens of that civilization.
Beyond shadow of a doubt, Western Man’s mindset, worldview and behavior have been considerably influenced by the presuppositions of the “seven deadly sins’ embodied in this literature. This led to such calamities for the world as materialism, individualism, scientism, unbridled pursuit of profit, nationalism, racial supremacy, excessive will to power, wars, colonization, imperialism, and eventually to civilizational decadence and decline. As a result of this irreversible process, more particularly following the moral wreckage and colossal human and material cost of the Great War, prominent thinkers and philosophers started to voice their concern about the coming demise of the West. Chiefly among those are seven authors whose books argue that while it is true that the West is in decline, there’s still time to mitigate it or even to reverse it and preserve it for posterity.[33] Those books are: Oswald Spangler’s “The Decline of the West” (1926); Arnold Toynbee’s “Civilization on Trial” (1958); Eric Voegelin’s “Order and History” (1956-1987); Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History and the Last Man” (1992); Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” (1998); Niall Ferguson’s “Civilization: The West and the Rest” (2012); and Michel Onfray’s “Décadence: Vie et mort du judéo-christianisme”[34] (2017).
Another stated or implied common feature of these books is the belief that the “Western Christian civilization” has to be defended anew not both from internal decay and threats arising externally, mainly Islam or, even worse, an alliance of “Islamic” and “Sinic (Chinese)” civilizations. This fear of Islam is by no means new; it’s deep-rooted in the Western psyche. Today, however, it is being exacerbated to such an unprecedented—and sometimes absurd[35]—extent that the debate on the resurgence of Islam has become, more often than not, inextricably intertwined with the talk about the decline of the Western civilization.
Back in 1948, English theist Arnold Toynbee observed[36] that the Western civilization has produced an economic and political plenum and, in the same breath, a social and spiritual void. He also said that in the foreground of the future, Islam may exert valuable influences upon the “cosmopolitan proletariat of western society that has cast its net round the world and embraced the whole of mankind”. As for the more distant future, he speculated on “the possible contribution of Islam to some new manifestation of religion”, warned that “if the present situation of mankind were to precipitate a ‘race war’, Islam Might be moved to play her historic role once again. Absit omen”, and advised that “Westerners, who are mentally still-slumbering, have now to realize that our neighbors’ past is going to become a vital part of our Western future”.
Seventy years later, in his abovementioned controversial book, French atheist philosopher Michel Onfray echoed Toynbee’s predictions. He pointed out that History testified that there was no civilization built on atheism and materialism “which both are signs or even symptoms of the decomposition of a civilization” and that “we don’t bind men together without the help of the sacred”. He pronounced the death of the Judeo-Christian tradition, which will soon be overthrown by Islam, a religion “endowed with a planetary army made up of countless believers willing to die for their religion, God and His Prophet”.
For our part, we will deliberately refrain from indulging in any rhetoric of hatred and mutual misunderstanding embodied in such deadly and confrontational slogans as “Clash of Civilizations”. A much better alternative route would be to seek common denominators among all peoples and cultures converging towards the objective of building lasting peace and security and shared prosperity in today’s globalized albeit disoriented world.
In a forthcoming analysis, we’ll attempt to explain the reasons why, and the only conditions and circumstances under which Islam will indeed be able to answer to the appeal to play its “historic role once again”. It can only do so as a driving force within a “global alliance of the willing” aiming to build a truly “universal civilization”. Bonum omen.
Notes
- Algerian researcher in international relations, author of the book L’Orient et l’Occident à l’heure d’un nouveau Sykes-Picot (The Orient and the Occident at a time of a new Sykes-Picot), Editions Alem El Afkar, Algiers, 2014: downloadable free of charge, by clicking on the following links:http://algerienetwork.com/blog/lorient-et-loccident-a-lheure-dun-nouveau-sykes-picot-par-amir-nour/ (French) http://algerienetwork.com/blog
- Albert Einstein, in an interview with Alfred Werner, Liberal Judaism 16 (April-May 1949), Einstein Archive 30-1104, as sourced in The New Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2005), p. 173 ?
- Read and watch: https://news.un.org/en/story/2017/12/640812-un-chief-issues-red-alert-urges-world-come-together-2018-tackle-pressing ?
- G. John Ikenberry, The Plot Against American Foreign Policy: Can the Liberal Order Survive?, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2017. ?
- Commenting on Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Paul Krugman said “He’s telling us that we are on the road not just to a highly unequal society, but to a society of an oligarchy. A society of inherited wealth […] We are becoming very much the kind of society we imagined we’re nothing like.”
- Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzQYA9Qjsi0 ?
- Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them, 2015. ?
- Oxfam, Working for the Few: Political Capture and Inequality, Briefing Paper 178, January 20, 2014. ?
- Read the report titled An Economy For the 99%. ?
- Chuck Collins and Josh Hoxie, Billionaire Bonanza 2017: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us. ?
- Pankaj Mishra, Age of Anger: A History of the Present, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017. ?
- Gregg Easterbrook, The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, 2004 ?
- Gregg Easterbrook, It’s Better than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear, PublicAffairs, 2018. ?
- Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Viking, 2018. ?
- David Callahan, The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead, 2004. ?
- Pankaj Mishra, Age of Anger, op. cit. ?
- Noam Chomsky, Optimism over Despair: On capitalism, Empire and Social Change, Penguin Books, 2017. ?
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, Harper & Row Publishers, 1958.?
- Franklin Foer, World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech, Penguin Press, 2017. ?
- Jon Gertner, Are tech giants robbing us of our decision-making and our individuality?, The Washington Post, October 6, 2017. ?
- Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Harvill Secker, 2014 and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Harper, 2017.?
- Read J.T. Cacioppo and J. Decety, Social Neuroscience: Challenges and Opportunities in the Study of Complex Behavior, in Annals of the New York academy of Sciences, Vol. 1224, 2011. ?
- Malek Bennabi (1905-1973) is best known for having coined the concept of “colonizability” (the inner aptitude to be colonized) and the notion of “mondialisme” (Globalism). ?
- Malek Bennabi, Le problème des idées dans le Monde musulman, 1970.?
- J.C. Kapur, Our Future: Consumerism or Humanism, Kapur Surya Foundation, New Delhi, 2005. ?
- Andrew Norman Wilson, God’s Funeral: The Decline of Faith in Western Civilization, W.W. Norton, 1999. ?
- In Age of Anger, op. cit. ?
- Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow, War of the Worldviews: Science vs. Spirituality, 2011. ?
- Manlio Graziano, Holy Wars and Holy Alliance: The Return of Religion to the Global Political Stage, Columbia University Press, 2017. ?
- Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Faith: Why the World is More Religious than Ever, ISI Books, 2015.?
- For more on that subject, read: D. Hamer, The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into Our Genes, 2004; J. Micklethwait and A. Wooldridge, God is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith is Changing the World, 2009; M. Duffy Toft, D. Philpott and T. Samuel Shah, God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics, 2011; ?
- Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion, 2000.?
- Arnold Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, Oxford University Press, New York, 1948. ?
- Emanuel L. Paparella Is Western Civilization Doomed? A review Essay, Modern Diplomacy, Oct. 20, 2015. ?
- (Decadence: The Life and Death of the Judeo-Christian Tradition), Flammarion, 2017. ?
- Read Mike Adam’s Darwinian analysis titled The Coming Collapse of Western Civilization: The Shocking Reason Why Liberal Americans Are Weak, But Islamic Soldiers Are Strong, September 30, 2016. ?
- Arnold Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, op. cit. ?
Posts: 1,909
Threads: 44
Joined: Feb 2017
Reputation:
4
THE NEW ATLANTIS-HISTORY OF THE USA
Posts: 1,909
Threads: 44
Joined: Feb 2017
Reputation:
4
GLOBALIZATION IS THE DEMISE OF HUMANITY:
TOWARDS AN ECONOMY OF PEACE WITH AN ALTERNATIVE MONETARY SYSTEM
https://www.globalresearch.ca/globalization-is-the-demise-of-humanity-towards-an-economy-of-peace-with-an-alternative-monetary-system/5545014
Globalisation is the demise of humanity. That being said, if we want peace, solidarity, harmonious cohabitation, justice and equality – we have to defeat globalisation. And to be able to defeat it, countries which strive to take back autonomy and sovereignty may want to move away from the oppressive fist of the west.
BREXIT offers Europe and the world a formidable opportunity to break loose from the rigged, dollar-based fiat monetary system. BREXIT opens the door for other European Union (EU) nations to do likewise. Different polls indicate that between 60% and 80% of all EU citizens are fed up with the corrupt EU, wanting to leave. In France, whose Mr. Hollande has reached the attribute of least popular President of all times and who is openly called a traitor of the people, a recent survey says more than 85% of the French are against the EU.
Europeans are also worried about the gradual but steady integration of the EU with NATO. A militarisation of Europe with a US-led war machine moving ever closer towards Moscow is a strong and present danger for WWIII – meaning Europe may become again the theatre of war and destruction the third time in 100 years. Encircling China with two thirds of the US Navy fleet in the South China Sea, provoking territorial conflicts via the Philippines, a former colony and a US vassal; and presenting a constant menace with uncountable military bases in the area, all the way to Australia, are no signs of peaceful cooperation by Washington.
Bringing down the EU would break up the Euro and may also break up NATO. This, of course, is non-coherent with Washington’s hold on power over Europe and aggression against Russia. Breaking up the EU would also annihilate the secretly negotiated nefarious TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) turn Europe into US corporate-finance slavehood. As usual with US-imposed trade agreements, the TTIP would tilt the balance of benefits heavily in favour of Washington and its corporate-finance masters. It would superimpose private courts upon sovereign nations’ legal system to arbitrate on behalf of corporations and financial institutions for foregone profit, in case EU nations might dare introducing profit hindering legislation, for example for environmental protection, food safety and social wellbeing.
And last but not least, bringing down the Euro would seriously jeopardise the hegemony of the US dollar, as the two currencies are really one coin with two faces, one governing Europe, the other the world – except for China and Russia; two very important exceptions. Different polls indicate that between 60% and 80% of all EU citizens are fed up with the corrupt EU, wanting to leave. In the western economic system, the US currency means everything for the US empire to fully dominate the world, its resources, people and finances. The US dollar has been created for this purpose. And so has the European Union and her single currency, the Euro. They are not the product of Europe, they are the deceitful construct of the CIA, a process begun shortly after WWII. In 1946 Winston Churchill proclaimed, [we must]re-create the European family, or as much of it as we can, and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom. We must build a kind of United States of Europe.” He was then as Cameron and his successor, Theresa May, are today a mouthpiece for the United States, expressing Washington’s ideas as a Trojan horse in Europe.
Some 240 years ago, the freemason founders of the United States of America duped the common US population and later the world with Big Words, like Democracy, Equality, Free Speech, and Justice for All – into believing that they are living in a free and just country. These ideals were just slogans stamped into the US Constitution, while the long-script is favouring a small privileged elite. For example, slavery existed already since early colonial days in British North America. It was legal at the time of US Independence in 1776. Instead of being abolished under the principles of Equality and Justice for All, it prevailed throughout the 18th and part of the 19th Century. Yet, the sham of a free America continues to this day, providing fertile ground for a predatory monetary system to lead a predatory world economy.
Today’s western debt-based monetary system is – but a foster child of the deceitful Constitution. It began in 1910, when a group of prominent Wall Street bankers travelled clandestinely to Jekyll Island, Georgia, on what they disguisingly called “The Duck Hunt”, where they concocted what in 1913 became the Federal Reserve Act. Thus, emerged the entirely privately owned, Rothschild dominated Federal Reserve system (FED), serving as the US Central Bank. It is the omnipotent dollar making machine.
After signing the FED Act into existence, then President Woodrow Wilson as a dying man declared, “I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world, no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”
The Brits had already a central bank way back in 1694. It was then already controlled by the Rothschild family, as was the entire banking system. Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild once declared: “I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man that controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.” What the Baron may have said some 320 years ago, still holds true to this day.
When Nixon in 1971 abandoned the gold standard (one troy-ounce of gold = US$35), essentially created by the Bretton Woods institutions, the IMF and the World Bank, to control the western monetary system – the US dollar became de facto the world’s currency of reference and by implication the world’s reserve currency. This Machiavellian move allowed the FED to print dollars as needed to fund US / NATO instigated conflicts and wars, as well as propaganda to sell the wars around the globe. Every new dollar was a dollar of debt, most of them externalised, since the world held them in their reserve coffers. The good news is that the paradigm is changing rapidly. When twenty years ago about 90% of worldwide reserves were kept in dollar-denominated securities, today this figure is below 60% and falling. Of course, as long as the value of currencies can be manipulated, the value of dollar reserves is relative. However, the trend is clear. Slipping below 50% may be the beginning of a sea change in world economy, giving rise to alternative monetary systems.
The shift has already started. China, Russia and other eastern countries are quietly divesting their dollar reserves into securities of other denominations. The idea for the future is to back monetary systems, funds circulating and released by central banks, by actual socio-economic outputs of a nation, including social and environmental achievements, such as public health, education, protection and conservation of natural resources, as well as a sovereign’s ability of internal and external conflict resolution. China, Russia and other eastern countries are quietly divesting their dollar reserves into securities of other denominations. The idea for the future is to back monetary systems, funds circulating and released by central banks, by actual socio-economic outputs of a nation.
Simultaneously with the end of the “gold standard”, the limitless dollar production was further facilitated by Father Bush (George H. W.). He negotiated with the House of Saud – his friends – to remain at the head of OPEC, as long as Saudi Arabia would assure that hydrocarbons would never be traded in currencies other than the US-dollar. In return, the US would guarantee the Saudis’ security. Done deal. It allowed the US to establish a series of US bases in Saudi Arabia, with which to control the Middle East and surrounding areas and to carry on wars and proxy conflicts, destroying Yemen and Syria, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of civilians, women and children. The Saudis, Qatar and other Gulf vassals were also coopted into funding the US-created NATO ground troops in Syria, Iraq and Libya, namely the “terror” organisation, and Islamic State (IS-ISIS-Daesh).
Under this OPEC arrangement with the Saudis, the demand for US-dollars increased almost exponentially. Every dollar created means new US debt. This is irrelevant, since US debt was never meant to be paid off. Alan Greenspan, former chief of the FED once answered a journalist’s question on how the US was ever able to repay her debt, “We never will pay our debt, since we can just print new money.” This confirms the pyramid principle of the dollar based monetary system: You create dollars as debt which bears interest which you pay by new debt. In other words: Never; creating an endlessly growing and ever shakier house of cards – until it collapses, and collapse it will.
Greece is a typical showcase, strangled into misery by a rigged monetary system. Similar criminal deeds emanating from the dollar denominated worldwide “Ponzi” scheme, are “sanctions”, punishing countries that do not submit to the tyrannical dominance of the empire, blocking trade, confiscating assets, foreign currency accounts – and more. This is possible, because the US dollar scam-currency still dominates international trade. As long as hundreds of trillions of dollars are flooding the globe, it is possible to manipulate the value of any currency, including gold. The secretive Basle-based BIS (Bank for International Settlement), also called the central bank of central banks, entirely privately owned and controlled by Rothschild and Co, is best suited for such manipulations.
No wonder, breaking loose from this abusive monetary scheme is number one priority of most countries that treasure sovereignty, autonomy and freedom, though many do not dare say so openly, lest the empire lashes out at them punishing them with the very financial terror they want to escape from – illegal economic sanctions. And lashing out at the unaligned nations the empire does, like a dying beast, attempting to pull with it much of the living world into its own shoveled grave. The western culture is based on aggressive, greed driven mono-theistic Judo-Christianism. It foments constant competition instead of cooperation, conflict instead of harmony, supremacy instead of solidarity. It thrives on a constant growth fetish which flourishes on extreme consumerism – it plunders mercilessly the earth’s natural resources, representing an unsustainable marauder economy, bound to implode rather sooner than later.
Since the ascent of neoliberalism in the 1980s, exacerbated by the auto-coup 9/11, the Washington-declared war on terror has killed an estimated 12 to 15 million people around the globe in the last 15 to 20 years. It has also fed and fueled the US military-security complex that by now accounts for a majority of the US economic output, including associated industries and services. Wars and conflicts have become Washington’s guarantee of survival. The US economy could not survive without the military industrial complex unlimited amounts of dollars that finances them. This war dependency and tool for dominance used by world financiers may soon spread to Europe. Aggressions by “regime change” of every “unaligned” government, US/NATO military invasions, or mercenary wars, from the Middle East, through Asia, Latin America and Europe abound. They are enhanced by western organised false flag “terror” attacks, gradually reaching around the globe, sacrificing the lives of western governments’ own citizens, with the purpose of spreading fear. Since history remembers, fear is the weapon of dictators to subdue people, countries and eventually entire continents. The very useful culprits are invariably Islamic “jihadists”, who hate the west. The ultimate goal is to complete militarisation of Europe, US and eventually the world. People under Martial Law can be controlled and manipulated.
The US economy could not survive without the military industrial complex unlimited amounts of dollars that finances them. If the multi-trillion-dollar cycle of debt-interest-debt is broken, the western economy is dead. The war on Iraq and the murder of Washington’s long-time ally, Saddam Hussein, was foremost a currency war. At the end of the 1990’s “sanctions” upon Iraq for its western provoked attack on Kuwait, Saddam planned to sell Iraq’s hydrocarbons, at that time the world’s second largest known source, for Euros and later for the “Gold Dinar”, Libya’s new gold-backed currency; the very currency with which Mohammed Gaddafi intended to free Africa from the voracious fangs of the west. Gaddafi wanted to gradually introduce the Gold Dinar as a common (reserve) currency in Africa. He also planned to bring low cost mobile telecommunication to Africa, thereby foregoing European and US phone monopolies’ insane profits reaped off the African people. Therefore, Gaddafi and Libya also had to go.
Iran was falsely accused as a nuclear threat, even when the 16 most prominent US secret services said that Iran had no intentions of producing nuclear weapons. It was again the dollar that was at stake. In 2007 Iran was about to launch the Teheran Oil Bourse, where hydrocarbons could have been traded in Euros, instead of dollars, an idea many oil producers cherished. Imagine, the trillions of dollars lost to the empire; dollars required by Washington’s proxy government to sustain its supremacy around the world. Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Chad, Afghanistan and more Middle-Eastern and North-African countries were already condemned to fall under the Zionist-neocon fabricated PNAC (Plan for a New American Century). However, the “oil bourse” and what it would have meant for the decline of the dollar, triggered the nuclear pretext for illegal “sanctions” and economic attacks on Iran.
To return to peace, it is high time for the world to move to an alternative monetary system. A new future is dawning. SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), the western privately-owned and Wall Street dominated international transfer system is being disbanded by the East. SWIFT makes it possible that Iran can be excluded from receiving and making monetary transfers, and that Argentina can be blackmailed into acceding to the US-based Vulture funds demanding US$4 billion of UN-declared illegal debt. SWIFT is being replaced by the Chinese CIPS which can be rolled out internationally and made available to countries that would like to disconnect from western control. Western media are silent about the emerging change, lest it might help awaken the slumbering oppressed masses.
The only reason BREXIT may have a negative impact, is if the powers that control the dollar-economy – the minute elite of less than 1% – manage to fabricate another crisis in Europe and accuse BREXIT for it. BREXIT, if allowed to happen, might put an avalanche of international discontent in motion. But BREXIT is under tremendous pressure not to happen by Washington and its European vassals, as it puts dollar hegemony on the brink. The IMF has started a lie and manipulation campaign falsely – and ridiculously – predicting BREXIT may jeopardise the world economy. There are no reasons or explanations given whatsoever for such nonsense. People have to blindly believe the authorities (sic) of the International Monetary Fund. The only reason BREXIT may have a negative impact, is if the powers that control the dollar-economy – the minute elite of less than 1% – manage to fabricate another crisis in Europe and accuse BREXIT for it. This is entirely possible. The criminals controlling the mendacious “system” know no scruples in oppressing and enslaving the world.
The British voters’ preference for LEAVE, is giving rise to higher aspirations – EUREXIT, a challenge already in the crosshairs of several EU countries’ populations – though not necessarily shared by their undemocratic puppet governments – including Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland – and the list goes on. An alternative economic and monetary model is already available and being launched. “Economy of Resistance” counters neo-fascist globalisation imposed around the world by the west. This for our times revolutionary concept, though not new, is already successfully applied by Russia and Iran, using local banking and local money to promoting local capacities and resources to replace imports by building internal production facilities, creating labour, scientific research and adding in-country value. Resistance Economy may effectively defeat the dollar hegemony and western economy of war, destruction and assassinations, replacing it with an economy of equal opportunities, justice and peace.
The Empire’s European castle of vassals is crumbling. Right in front of our eyes. But Nobody seems to see it. The European Union (EU), the conglomerate of vassals – Trump calls them irrelevant, and he doesn’t care what they think about him, they deserve to be collapsing. They, the ‘vassalic’ EU, a group of 28 countries, some 500 million people, with a combined economy of a projected 19 trillion US-dollar equivalent, about the same as the US, have submitted themselves to the dictate of Washington in just about every important aspect of life.
The EU has accepted on orders by Washington to sanction Russia, Venezuela, Iran – and a myriad of countries that have never done any harm to any of the 28 EU member states. The EU has accepted the humiliation of military impositions by NATO – threating Russia and China with ever more and ever more advancing military basis towards Moscow and Beijing, to the point that Brussels’ foreign policy is basically led by NATO.
It was clear from the very get-go that the US sanctions regime imposed on Russia and all the countries refusing to submit to the whims and rules of Washington, directly and via the EU, was hurting the EU economically far more than Russia. This is specifically true for some of the southern European countries, whose economy depended more on trading with Russia and Eurasia than it did for other EU countries.
The ‘sanctions’ disaster really hit the fan, when Trump unilaterally decided to abrogate the “Nuclear Deal” with Iran and reimpose heavy sanctions on Iran and on “everybody who would do business with Iran”. European hydrocarbon giants started losing business. That’s when Brussels, led by Germany started mumbling that they would not follow the US and – even – that they would back European corporations, mainly hydrocarbon giants, sticking to their contractual arrangements they had with Iran.
Too late. European business had lost all confidence in Brussels EU Administration’s feeble and generally untrustworthy words. Many breached their longstanding and, after the Nuclear Deal, renewed contracts with Iran, out of fear of punishment by Washington and lack of trust in Brussel’s protection. Case in point is the French-British petrol giant, Total, which shifted its supply source from Iran to Russia – no, not to the US, as was of course, Washington’s intent. The damage is done. The vassals are committing slow suicide.
The people have had it. More than half of the European population wants to get out of the fangs from Brussels. But nobody asks them, nor listens to them – and that in the so-called heartland of ‘democracy’ (sic). That’s why people are now up in arms and protesting everywhere – in one way or another in Germany, France, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Hungary, Poland – the list is almost endless. And it can be called generically the ‘Yellow Vests”, after the new French revolution.
The latest in a series of the US attacking Germany and German business – and German integrity, for that matter – are the US Ambassador’s, Richard Grenell, recent threats to German corporations with sanctions if they work on Nord Stream 2, the 1,200 km pipeline bringing Russian gas to Europe, to be completed by the end of 2019. It will virtually double the capacity of Russian gas supply to Europe. Instead, Washington wants Europe to buy US shale gas and oil, and especially keeping Europe economically and financially in the US orbit, avoiding in any way a detachment from Washington and preventing the obvious and logical – an alliance with Russia. This attempt will fail bitterly, as various German Ministers, including Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, have loudly and with determination protested against such US hegemonic advances. Well, friends, you have bent over backwards to please your Washington Masters for too long. It’s high time to step out of this lock-step of obedience.
In France, this past weekend of 12 / 13 January, the Yellow Vests went into round 9 of protests against dictator Macron, his austerity program and – not least – his abject arrogance vis-à- vis the working class. A recent public statement of Macron’s is testimony of this below-the-belt arrogance:
– Translated:
“Too many French don’t know the meaning of ‘effort’ which explains at least partially the trouble this country is in.”
The Yellow Vests and a majority of the French population want nothing less than Macron’s resignation. Protesters are consistently and largely under-reported by Christophe Castaner, the French Interior Minister. This past weekend the official figure was 50,000 demonstrators, countrywide, when in reality the figure was at least three times higher. The official French version would like the public at large, inside and outside of France, to believe that the Yellow Vest’s movement is diminishing. It is not. To the contrary, they are demonstrating all over France, and that despite the Macron regime’s increasing violent repression.
RT reports, on Macron’s orders the police are becoming more violent, using military suppression to control protesting French civilians. Thousands have been arrested, and hundreds injured by police brutality. Nevertheless, the movement is gaining massive public support and the ‘Yellow Vests” idea is spreading throughout Europe. This spread is, of course, hardly reported by the mainstream media. In fact, 80% of the French back the Yellow Vests and their idea of a Citizen Initiated Referendum (RIC for “Référendum d’initiative citoyenne”), under which citizens could propose their own laws that would then be voted on by the general public. The RIC could effectively bypass the French Parliament, and would be enshrined in the French Constitution. A similar law exists since 1848 in Switzerland and is regularly applied by Swiss citizens. It is a way of Direct Democracy that any country calling itself a “democracy” should incorporate in its Constitution.
The UK is in shambles. Thousands are taking to the streets of London, organized by the People’s Assembly Against Austerity”, calling for general elections to replace the failing Tory Government. They are joined by the French Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests), out of solidarity. Many of the UK protesters are also wearing high-visibility yellow vests. This is in direct correlation with the ever-growing louder debacle over BREXIT – yes, or no and how. At this point nobody knows what Britain’s future is going to be. Propaganda and counter-propaganda is destined to further confuse the people and confused people usually want to stick to the ‘status quo’. There is even a movement of pro “remain” propaganda, organized by some members of the European Parliament. Imagine! – Talking about sovereignty, if Brussels cannot even leave the Brits alone decide whether they want to continue under their dictate or not.
Hélas, the Brits are largely divided, but also past the stage of being swayed by foreign propaganda, especially in this delicate question of leaving the EU – which a majority of Brits clearly decided in June 2016. Prime Minister, Theresa May, has screwed-up the BREXIT process royally, to the point where many Brits feel that what she negotiated is worse than “no deal”. This has likely happened in close connivance with the unelected EU ‘leadership’ which does not want the UK to leave and under strict orders from Washington which needs the UK in its crucial role as a US mole in the European Union.
On 15 January 2019, the UK Parliament will vote on whether they accept the negotiated BREXIT conditions, or whether they prefer a ‘no deal’ BREXIT, or will request an extension for further negotiations under Article 50 of the “Treaty of Lisbon” (which was imposed by the heads of state of the 28 members, without any public vote, and is a false stand-in for a EU Constitution). Other options include a general election – and let the new leadership decide; or a second referendum which after two years is legally possible. The latter would likely cause severe public unrest, followed by atrocious police oppression – as already often witnessed in the UK – in which case, let’s just hope civil war can be avoided.
For weeks, the Yellow Vest movement has spread to Belgium and The Netherlands. For similar reasons – public discontent over austerity, EU dictatorship over Belgian and Dutch sovereignty. Last Friday, one of the Belgian Yellow Vests was overrun by a truck and killed. Authorities reported it as an accident.
Greece– The MS-media report all is ‘donkey-dory’, Greece is recovering, has for the first time in many years a positive growth rate and is able to refinance herself on the open capital market. Greece is no longer dependent on the irate and infamous troika (European Central Bank – ECB, European Commission and IMF). Reality is completely different, as about two thirds of the Greek population are still hovering around or below the survival level – no access to public health care, affordable medication, public schools – umpteen times reduced pensions, most public assets and services privatized for a pittance. Nothing has fundamentally changed in the last years, at least not for the better and for the majority of the people. The troika has allowed the Greek to go to the private capital markets – to boost falsely their, the Greek’s, image among the international public at large, basically telling the brainwashed populace, “It worked, we, the troika, did a good job”.
Nothing worked. People are unhappy; more than unhappy, they are indignant. They demonstrated against Angela Merkel’s recent visit to Athens, and their protests were violently oppressed by police forces. What do you expect – this is what has become of Europe, a highly repressive state of spineless vassals.
On Wednesday, 16 January, the Greek Parliament may hold a Vote of Confidence against or for Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. The official and make-believe reason is supposedly the controversy over the name of Macedonia, which in fact has long been settled. The real reason is the public’s discontent about the continuous and increasing blood-letting by never-ending austerity, sucking the last pennies from the poor. According to Lancet, the renowned British health journal, the Greek suicide rate is soaring. Nobody talks about it. – Will Tsipras survive a possible Vote of Confidence? -If not – early elections? – Who will follow Tsipras? – Don’t be fooled by the term ‘democracy’. – The elite from within and without Greece will not allow any policy changes. That’s when people à la Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) may come in. Civil unrest. Enough is enough.
In Italy the coalition of the 5-Star Movement and the small right-wing brother, Lega Norte, is pulled to the far right by Lega’s Matteo Salvini, Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister. Mr. Salvini is clearly calling the shots – and his alliance is firing strongly against Brussels and with good reason, as Brussels is attempting to impose rules on Italy’s budget, while the same rules do not apply equally to all EU member states. For example, Macron, France’s Rothschild implant, has special privileges, as far as budget overrun margins are concerned. Mr. Salvini’s anti-Brussels, anti-EU stance is no secret, and he has a lot of Italians behind him. An Italian Yellow Vest movement cannot be excluded.
The empire’s vassal castle is crumbling – and not even silently.
Then there are the former Soviet satellites, Hungary and Poland, turned right wing – don’t appreciate Brussels meddling with Hungary’s anti-immigration policy and in Poland over a controversial overhaul of the Judiciary system. Never mind whether you agree or not with individual country actions, both cases are clear interferences in these nations’ sovereignty. Though upon the European Court of Justice’s strong warning, Poland indeed blinked and reinstated the judges fired in the judiciary reform process. Poland’s love for NATO, and Brussels use of the NATO leverage, may have played a role in Poland’s reversal of decision. Nevertheless, discontent in Poland as in Hungary among the public at large remains strong. Migration and the Judiciary are just the visible pretexts. The legendary tip of the iceberg. Reality is on a deeper level, much deeper. These countries are both reminded of what they considered the Soviet Union’s handcuffs. “Freedom” is not being dictated by Brussels.
The triad of systematic and willful destabilization and destructionof what we know as the Greater Middle East and western world is what we have to be aware of. The east, mostly Russia and China, is a challenge being tackled simultaneously, impressively for the brainwashed westerner, but rather meekly for those who are informed about Russia’s and China’s military might and intelligence capacity.
This drive of destabilization cum destruction comes in three phases. It started with the Middle East which for the most part has become a hopeless hell-hole, a source of indiscriminate killing by the western allies, say, the emperor’s puppets and mercenaries, resulting in millions killed and in an endless flood of refugees destabilizing Europe – which is the second phase of the triad. It’s in full swing. It happens right in front of our eyes – but we don’t see it.
It’s the Yellow Vests, austerity, increasing inequality, unemployment, social sector’s being milked to zilch by the financial system, popular uprisings’ oppression by police and military forces; it’s reflected by the dismal powerlessness of the people – that leads to “enough is enough” in the streets. That’s the way it’s all wanted. The more chaos the better. People in chaos are easily controlled.
Now comes phase three of the triad – Latin America. It has already started three or four years back. Countries that have struggled for decades to eventually break loose with some form of ‘democracy’ from the fangs of empire, are gradually being subdued with fake elections and ‘internal’ parliamentary coups, back into the emperor’s backyard. The Southern Cone – Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay – is ‘gone’, except for Bolivia. Peru, Colombia, Ecuador all the way to Guyana are governed by neoliberal, even neonazi-shaded Lords of Washington. But there is still Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and now also Mexico that have not caved in and will not cave in.
In an extraordinary analysis, Thierry Meyssan describes in “The Terrible Forthcoming Destruction of the Caribbean Basin” – see this, how the Pentagon is still pursuing the implementation of the Rumsfeld-Cebrowski plan. This time, aiming at the destruction of the “Caribbean Basin” States. There is no consideration for friends or political enemies, Thierry Meyssan observes. He goes on predicting that after the period of economic destabilization and that of military preparation, the actual operation should begin in the years to come by an attack on Venezuela by Brazil (supported by Israel), Colombia (an ally of the United States) and Guyana (in other words, the United Kingdom). It will be followed by others, beginning with Cuba and Nicaragua, the ‘troika of tyranny’, as per John Bolton.
Only the future will say to what extent this plan will be implemented. At the outset, its ambitions exceed the crumbling empire’s actual capacity. When it comes all down to one single denominator, it’s the current western financial system that must go. It is private banking gone berserk. We are living in a financial system that has gone wild and running havoc, uncontrolled – a train of endless greed that is loosely speeding ahead and doesn’t know when it will hit an unyielding steel-enforced brick wall – but hit it will. It is a mere question of time. People are sick and tired of being milked no end by a fraudulent pyramid system – constructed by the US and her dollar hegemony and maintained by globalized private banking.
We are living in a private banking system that has nothing to do with economic development, but everything with a greed-driven domination of us, consumers, sold on debt and on money that we don’t control, despite the fact that we earned it with our hard labor; despite the fact that it is our added value to what we call the economy. No – this system is totally disrespectful of the individual, it is even ready to steal our money, if it needs to survive – our banking system. It takes the liberty of “administering” it and basically appropriating it. Once our money is in a private bank, we have lost control over it. And mind you and get it into your brains, private banks do not work for you and me, but for their shareholders. But through hundreds of years of indoctrination, we have become so used to it, that being charged interest for borrowing our own money, through an intermediary who does nothing, absolutely nothing but wait for profit to fall into its lap – has become the ‘normality’.
It isn’t. This system has to be abolished, the faster the better. Private banking needs to be eradicated and replaced by local public banking that works with local currencies, based on local economic output, way removed from globalized concepts that help steel resources, empty local social safety nets – all under the guise of austerity for progress. We should know better by now. There is no austerity for progress – has never been. This fraudulent IMF-World Bank concept has never worked, anywhere.
We have to de-dollarize our money, de-digitize our money and pool it through a public banking system for the purpose of people’s growth, hence a society’s or nation’s growth. There is currently one good example, the Bank of North Dakota. The BND has helped the US State of North Dakota through the 2008 and following years crisis, with economic growth instead of economic decline, with almost full employment, versus skyrocketing unemployment in the rest of the US and the western world. We need to build our common wealth with sovereign money, backed by our sovereign economies.
As the empire and its vassals are crumbling badly, they are shaking in their foundations, it is time to rethink what we have been taking for granted and for ‘normal’ – a fraudulent and deceptive monetary system, backed by nothing, no economy, not even gold – we are living on sheer fiat money, made by private banking by a mouse-click – and by letting us be enslaved by debt.
Enough is enough. The Yellow Vests have understood. They want to get rid of their “Macron” who keeps propagating the fraud. It is time to rethink and restart, as the crumbling is getting louder and louder. Empire’s European vassal state is falling apart and will pull Washington and its hegemonic war and money machine along into the abyss.
AS GERMANY AND FRANCE COME APART SO TOO WILL THE EU
When is a nation-state no longer a functional state? It’s an interesting question to ask of the European nation-states trapped in the devolving European Union. Longtime correspondent Mark G. recently posed seven indicators of dissolving national sovereignty; here’s his commentary:
In France the “Ghosts of 1968” have become the Poltergeists of 2018. This looks like another real watershed in European and world history. Once again Parisian mobs have appeared and have collectively realized they now hold the real power. And their issues are all anti-EU (European Union) and anti-NWO. (New World Order)
I’m honing my German Collapse Scenario as more data flows in, as it is in ever-faster and larger quantities. ‘Germany’ will implode in parallel with the EU.
So-called ‘states’ with:
1. no effective military forces
2. no control of their own borders
3. no control of their currency and banks
4. a government with a ‘diverse’ population in which the majority either has no loyalty to Berlin (recent ‘refugee’ immigrants) or has dropped its loyalty (large parts of Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg), and which is also losing the allegiance of the many eastern European immigrants in Germany. These people are among the most energized opponents of the ‘refugee’ influx.
5. Fast rising anarchy and lawlessness by the recent ‘refugee’ immigrants, and which is well known to the population, as are the official orders to the police to minimize crime statistics reporting by not opening official cases.
6. A mass media believed by no one due to the bald lies it broadcasts 24/7 daily about numbers 1-5.
…will soon cease to exist. This is confirmed by:
7. The continuing spiral of the ruling post WWII political parties into their own political black holes. CDU/CSU on the right and SDP on the left have all lost their hold on the modern German population.
The biggest joke of all is that Theresa May is negotiating the terms of “Brexit” from the EU with a political corpse and not a viable polity. Another round or lap is coming soon. Personally I think the only thing staving off another eurozone banking crisis is the absolute certainty that no imaginable German government can currently agree to the slightest external concession without risking an internal political collapse.
Thus all the various Eurozone elites involved are refraining from provoking such a crisis for calculated narrow reasons. This leaves it to a European mob in some capital to initiate it by confronting a national government with either internal political collapse or re-entering EU-wide monetary and fiscal conflict with the ECB/EU gang. And yes, I’m sure you spotted the next part. Poland and Hungary acting on behalf of the Phoenix Rising Ersatz Austro-Hungarian Empire will twist the EU’s tail at that time as hard as they can for maximum regional advantage.”
The fracturing of Germany is conventionally viewed as somewhere between implausible and impossible, and the same can be said of France and Germany drifting apart and the EU dissolving: the mainstream is committed to presenting Germany, the German-French alliance, the euro and the EU as rock-solid.
Yet if we follow the logic and evidence presented in these seven points, we are forced to conclude that the fractures in France, Germany and the EU are widening by the day, and that the ceaseless propaganda spewed by the ruling elites isn’t mending the fractures or restoring the illusion of stability.
Regarding the French yellow vest dissenters: the 80,000 mobilized security forces are intentionally seeking to incite violence to justify crushing the yellow vest dissenters with massive paramilitary force: French Democracy Dead or Alive?
In the long run of history, the apparent solidity of 20 or 30 years can shatter very rapidly as populations under increasing financial and political stress default to much more enduring divisions and loyalties.
Posts: 1,909
Threads: 44
Joined: Feb 2017
Reputation:
4
WHITHER BREXIT AND WHITHER BRITAIN AND THE FUTURE OF THE EU AND EUROPE
IS CORBYN’s SOCIALISM POSSIBLE WITHIN THE EU? Lapavitsas and Jay
https://therealnews.com/stories/is-corby...as-and-jay
CLASS STRUGGLE OVER BREXIT
Lapavitsas and Jay
https://therealnews.com/stories/class-struggle-over-brexit-lapavitsas-and-jay
PAUL JAY: What the heck is going on in the United Kingdom? I spent a few hours today watching Parliament as they voted, and voted, and voted, on various amendments of a government resolution to put off the Brexit coming, looming hard Brexit nobody seems to want, but seems to continue to loom. The Parliament was kind of in chaos. Britain does not seem to know where to go. Prime Minister Elizabeth May is voted down on proposal after proposal; in fact, the only proposal she could get through Parliament today was to try to go back to the EU and postpone the Brexit. Here’s a little taste of what it sounded like; Jeremy Corbyn talking about the Labour motion. Go ahead and roll the clip, please.
SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Order. Order. The ayes to the right, 412. The nays to the left, 202.
The ayes to the right, 412. The nays to the left, 202. So the ayes have it. The ayes have it.
JEREMY CORBYN: Mr. Speaker, I reiterate our conviction that a deal can be agreed based on our alternative plan that can command support across the House. And I also–and I also reiterate our support for a public vote, not as a political–not–Mr. Speaker–not as political point scoring, but as a realistic option to break the deadlock. The whole purpose, Mr. Speaker, the whole purpose ought to be to protect communities that are stressed and worried. Those people are worried about the future of their jobs and their industries. Our job is to try to meet the concerns of the people who sent us here in the first place.
PAUL JAY: That is my–the beginning is my favorite part. Order, order. I can’t do it quite the way he did it. But that’s, in fact, exactly what the United Kingdom does not have now. The political process seems anything but ordered. Now joining us to try to make some sense of what happened today and what’s going on with this whole Brexit mess is Costas Lapavitsas. Costas is professor of economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He’s also the author of the book The Left Case Against the EU. Thanks, Costas, for joining us today.
PAUL JAY: So, you were down outside Parliament today, and you’ve been following all this. So give us a bit of an update, where we’re at in the process, if one can call it that. And then the bigger question I have is how did the British elites, it seems to me, so lose control of all of this? When James Cameron, the prime minister–I don’t know, what is it, two years ago?–when they launched the referendum, they, one, they thought they’d win. And the British elites, I don’t think they wanted to unleash such chaos. So start with what happened today, and then let’s get into the bigger picture.
COSTAS LAPAVITSAS: OK. It is very easy to get confused about the shenanigans in British Parliament. The series of amendments, votes, and so on, and you lose track of what’s happening. So just to simplify and to give the gist of what has taken place the last three days, because there’ve beenthree consecutive days of voting, what has happened is this. On the first day, Parliament has decided that it does not want to support the deal that Theresa May has negotiated with the European Union. So that’s the first thing. That’s out, as far as Parliament’s concerned.
Second thing the Parliament decided the next day is that it does not want under any circumstances to end up with an exit from the European Union without a deal. A no-deal Brexit. That’s out, as far as Parliament is concerned. And what then it decided today, in view of what it had decided in the previous two days, is logical. Today it decided that it wishes to ask for an extension of the Brexit period, because of course the clock is ticking. On the 29th of March, the United Kingdom will be out of the European Union under current arrangements, because that’s what the law of the land says. So today Parliament has asked for an extension. How long that extension will be we will see. It’s not firmed up yet. We will see.
PAUL JAY: Didn’t the resolution that passed call for essentially a three month extension?
COSTAS LAPAVITSAS: Essentially that.
PAUL JAY: But the EU has to agree to this. That’s the other question.
COSTAS LAPAVITSAS: Sure. And there is room for play, room for maneuver on the part of the government. And that’s what I can tell you is the next step. Because although Parliament has voted to reject Theresa May’s deal, that’s what we got this series of votes, actually, the deal is still on the table. In truth the deal is still on the table. And what is being in play at the moment is a complex game of maneuvering and so on whereby the Prime Minister Theresa may is attempting to blackmail the hard right of her own party to make them support the deal, even at the 11th hour. So there’s every chance that her deal will be put in front of the Parliament again in the next few days, as we are approaching the 11th hour, as I said, as we’re approaching the 29th, and the clock is ticking. She might ask for an extension such that it will put enormous pressure on her own right wing, which has been the hardest of the Brexiters, and forced them to back a deal, because if they don’t there might be any Brexit at all.
PAUL JAY: Now, there are supposed to be European parliamentary elections. And in theory, if Britain is still in the EU, they should be running for these elections. I mean-
COSTAS LAPAVITSAS: That’s exactly what Theresa May wants to blackmail her right with, her right wing with. Because if they go for a long extension, which the Tory party, especially the right wing, does not want, then Britain will have to field European elections. They will get into the process of months of negotiations, and so on. Then it might be possible that there will be a general election or another referendum, or complications through Britain taking part in the Euro elections. That’s not what the extreme, the far right of the Tory party wants. And so Theresa May is blackmailing them. That’s basically what’s happening. She’s basically telling them if you don’t back me, even in the next few days, there might not be any Brexit at all.
PAUL JAY: There’s a lot of fracture lines in this struggle. Sections of the working class, sections of the British elites, want to stay in Europe. And vice versa, sections of the elites want to get out, and sections of the working class want to get out. When you get to how the Labour Party sees Brexit and how May and the right wing of the Conservative Party see Brexit, what’s the substance of the difference of what these two visions of Brexit are?
COSTAS LAPAVITSAS: OK. Now, these are the real questions for those who want to approach the issues from the perspective of political economy, from the perspective of socialist, radical politics. You see, it is very easy to get lost through the shenanigans of Parliament. It’s very easy to get lost in the day-to-day politicking that is now taking place in Parliament, which, incidentally, shows the demise of democracy in the UK. I’ll come back to that.
Now, when we look at the social forces involved in this, things become clearer. One thing that has become the obvious to all involved in this process is that the main centers of power in this country, economic power, in the first instance; in other words, the City of London, the financial interest; but also big industrial and commercial capital, particularly big industrial commercial capital with extensive expert interests. Those core elements of British capital, the British ruling class, do not want Brexit under any circumstances. They are forced, therefore, to remain.
I say this because a lot of people on the left are hopelessly confused on this. The City of London detests Brexit. It doesn’t want it. Big business, corporations and so on, don’t want Brexit, by and large. The main ones. They’ve made it very clear. They’ve wheeled out Japanese investors, as well; Japanese big businesses, U.S. big businesses, to say the same thing in this country, and so on. They’ve made it very clear that Brexit is not for them. They’re very happy in the European Union. You should have no doubt at all about it. That’s really the first important element in this.
Now, the problem is, the political expression of the British ruling class, the historic political expression of the British ruling class, the Tory Party, in other words, is split. The problem, then, is political. It’s not social or economic. It’s not as if there is a strong section of the British ruling class, a dynamic section that wants out of the European Union because it wants to capture global markets. And so these are fantasies. The problem is political. There is a section of the Tory Party, on the far right of the Tory Party, which-
PAUL JAY: Let me just add, quite allied, if I understand correctly, with Trump-type politics. Even some of the same players are involved.
COSTAS LAPAVITSAS: Exactly. Quite close to Trump-type politics. But obviously with British peculiarities. This is Britain. This is a European country. Britain is much more like the rest of Europe than it is with the United States, I should say. It’s a European country, still. Nonetheless, there is a section of the Tory Party, elements of which are very close to Trump, it’s true. That section of the Tory party doesn’t speak for any particularly well-organized section of the capitalist class. Certainly no well-organized economic interest, though there are some economic interests that support them. It’s not that. It is political. These people are very concerned about national sovereignty, and the way in which national sovereignty projects itself in Britain and the European Union. And they want to recapture national sovereignty the way they understand it. Politics is the main issue. And that section of the Tory Party has not been prepared to compromise in the slightest, and they’ve been prepared to oppose the main centers of economic and social power among the European [inaudible].
PAUL JAY: And in that way, again, it’s very similar to the United States, because in the referendum campaign it was all xenophobic, racist. The kind of language was very Trumpian language. So that section of that political stratum–it must have its own odd billionaire involved the same way Trump does rallying the far right of the of the working class.
COSTAS LAPAVITSAS: Well, let’s come to the working class in a minute. But some of these people have got rich people. Some of this political section of the Tory Party have got rich people behind them, of course. Some of them have got big interest themselves. But I repeat, that is not the core of the British ruling class. It’s a complete misapprehension. The centers of power in the British ruling class want the European Union. They’ve told us many, many times. So basically this is what has taken place on the side of the ruling class. The split, the political split in the ruling class is really what is important. It’s precisely because of this split that the referendum has gone the way it has gone. Because when the question of Europe was posed to the British people in 2016, it became a point on which all the frustrations, anger, disillusionment, general disaffection with neoliberal politics and neoliberal policies of the last four decades could concentrate. And these were, this was particularly obvious in the large concentrations of working class people in the country. But not only. Also in the South; key areas and so on. There is no doubt about it. The poor and the working class, especially the traditional working class in this country, voted for Brexit. And they voted for Brexit because they realised that the main centers of power wanted remain. They wanted the European Union. And if they wanted the European Union, the others did not.
It became one of these issues over which class anger coming from below could focus on and express itself. And it was able to express itself nationally because of the split in the Tory Party. If the Tory Party was united, the anger of the poor, the working class, and so on, would never have been able to express itself. We’ve seen this time and again in Europe. What made Britain different is this split at the top, the split in the Tory Party. So the anger of the working class and of the poor could manifest itself nationally. Obviously not all of the working class thinks the same. Obviously not. That’s never been the case. But there is no doubt at all about it. Study after study has shown it. The poor, the marginal workers of this country, want change. Don’t let anyone tell you that this has changed. The proportions have not changed. If you go to the working class areas of the North, in particular, or other urban centers, people want Brexit. They want Brexit, still. Now, some of them have formulated that in terms of anger against immigrants, with some racist elements, and so on. Of course. The working class doesn’t find its own ideology off the shelf. It has to be organically developed through it. And that is part of what the left ought to do. And that’s whert we come to the left expression of political opinion this country. The Labour Party, and the left more generally, in this country in Europe.
The left so far has failed abysmally on the question of Europe. And part of the reason for the predominance of right-wing views among working people, to a certain extent, in this country and elsewhere, is the failure of the left. The left suffers from–I don’t know how to call it. Europeanism. It’s a kind of disease. It’s a new disease that has affected the European left, and it affects particularly the grey cells of the brain. Because if you’ve got it, you seem to abandon all kinds of political economy. You seem to think in moralizing terms, and to think in terms of ultimate goods and fantasies about what should happen in the world or shouldn’t happen in the world.
The left has failed to analyze things in class terms, and has failed to give people a class handle for their anger, and to direct it where it should go. In that context, confusion has prevailed.
PAUL JAY: So explain what Corbyn’s view of Brexit is, and how does it differ from May’s?
COSTAS LAPAVITSAS: Let me come to–specifically to the Labour Party. Because I see that the left has been confused. And that holds very clearly for the left on the continent, [inaudible] European left. In some ways the British left is more and less confused than the European left. What’s happening on the Labour Party among Labour Party supporters is astounding. Because some of the most traditional electoral bases of the Labour Party, the working class and the poor, want Brexit, as I’ve indicated. That’s very, very clear, in area after area, city after city.
PAUL JAY: Let me ask a quick question. Given that it might be a hard Brexit or something like it, and all of the stories of how that’s going to disrupt the British economy and various other things, that hasn’t changed the mood of people about it?
COSTAS LAPAVITSAS: People who say that don’t know the British well enough. Or the British working class well enough. It hasn’t really significantly affected proportions. Obviously we don’t know and we will not know until and unless some other vote or some other general measure of what they think, ballot measure. But every indication up to now shows that the line runs along the same path, pretty much. The same proportion, 50/50. Pretty much.
So some of the traditional strongest supporters of the Labour Party, the areas in which, which are naturally labor, want Brexit. But the membership of the Labour Party, especially in recent years, does no longer comprise primarily working class people. And the poor. Significant numbers of middle class people have entered the Labour Party.
PAUL JAY: Let me interject for a second, because the terminology is different in the United States. Somehow in the United States ‘middle class’ means the kind of people with a job, and the poorer people without a job, where everywhere else in the world more or less ‘middle class’ means not working class; more professionals and this sort of thing. Go ahead.
COSTAS LAPAVITSAS: That’s what I mean by middle class. Yeah, I use the term in the–deploy the term in the British or European usage.
PAUL JAY: The reason for the difference–because in the United States there’s only a middle class, because there’s actually not a class society at all. So there’s a middle class; of course there’s not really an upper or lower. And it’s all nonsense. But at any rate, go ahead.
COSTAS LAPAVITSAS: Yeah, of course. I understand that about the U.S., but I’m using it the British way. So basically, in my judgment, the membership of the Labour Party, a lot of the people who are active in it, come from what I called the middle class just a few minutes ago, by which I mean layers which have got more professional type of employment; comparatively better conditions; better housing; better education; that kind of thing. That’s where sort of the membership of the Labour Party comes from, and they are strongly for remain. These people are strongly for remain.
So you’ve got a massive problem within the Labour Party whereby large numbers of its elected working class, poor, are solidy for leave, and its membership is solidly for remain. The problem becomes even more pronounced because some of the leaders of the Labour Party comes from the Blair years, and those Blairites who used to run the Labour Party for many, many years, are also ardent Europeanists. Ardent Europeanists.
PAUL JAY: Let me just for a second, for our North American audience, for Blair you can think more like Bill Clinton-type politics, or Barack Obama, to some extent. But essentially worse.
COSTAS LAPAVITSAS: Worse, actually.
PAUL JAY: Worse. Yeah, worse. Yeah. You’re right. Because Blair, amongst other things, supported George Bush in the Iraq war, and such. So yeah, worse.
COSTAS LAPAVITSAS: Blair is actually a byword for dishonesty and perfidy in politics in this country and elsewhere. So there is still a body of Blairites in the Labour Party, especially in the parliamentary Labour party, the members of Parliament. And they’ve got very strong positions of leadership in the Labour Party. But of course, two, three years ago Jeremy Corbyn was elected to the leadership, and that is proper left. That is proper left, and that understands that the European Union is not the progressive project. The European Union is not an anticapitalist project. They also understand that if you want to do things that will change Britain and attract British capitalism and neoliberalism, you’ve got to take on the European Union. They understand that. But the reality they’re faced with in terms of their membership, in terms of their electorate, in terms of their members of Parliament, is very, very difficult. So they’d be navigating a minefield. What has been happening in the Labour Party is that the leadership has been navigating a minefield. A veritable minefield. That perhaps would help your audience understand the complexity of the responses.
PAUL JAY: So let me go–again, let me ask, in terms of the very substance of what Corbyn in the opening of this segment is talking about, the Labour vision of Brexit, what–put some meat on the bones. How do they see Brexit taking place, and how does differ from the Tories? And from the right wing of the Tories?
COSTAS LAPAVITSAS: Now we come to the, in a sense, analytical and intellectual problems of the left as a whole faces with Brexit and the European Union. Incidentally, one thing you’ve got to remember is that historically the British left, and I mean the organized left within the Labour Party but also the left outside the Labour Party, historically the British left has been probably the most euroskeptic left in Europe. I’ve lived in this country for 40 years. I well remember when I came here all that time ago the Labour Party had a very strong contingent of people who talked in the most disparaging terms of the European Union as a capitalist club that was going to do nothing good for workers, and it’s inevitably going to be proven right. However, the Labour Party has lost track of that. And that is that this characteristic all pretty much the whole of the European left.
So in that respect, it is characteristic of the European left, which has been afflicted by Europeans. And as I’ve mentioned to you, the issue here is-
PAUL JAY: Can I just quickly add for people again in our audience, when you’re saying European–the disease of afflicted, of Europeanism, if I’m understanding that, is where European finance capital operates far more collaboratively to dictate to, discipline, all of the countries of the European to, essentially, for the betterment of this pool of European capital. More collaboratively and less competitively.
COSTAS LAPAVITSAS: When you’re saying that you’ve got a view of the European Union implicit in this. And you’re thinking the European Union, essentially, is a governments club, as it is a set of institutions created by big business and the capitalist elites of Europe to further their own interests in complex and sophisticated ways. And I would agree with that. That’s exactly what the European Union needs. The conclusion I would draw from it and the conclusion that a lot of people on the left used to draw from it is of course the European Union is not a good thing for workers, and it’s not a good thing on the left. It’s not a left wing project. It’s actually a capitalist project.
And therefore the left, especially the left that is radical, socialist, and wants to change things, which is what the left has historically been, the left ought to be critical and rejectionist towards the European Union. To me all of this has long been obvious. You know, it’s a question of the degree to which you reject the European Union, and how you do it.
PAUL JAY: OK. The counter to that, I guess, would be yeah, but what if the Brexit is led by the far right, and the left is so weak that you’re going to wind up with a very far right controlled Brexit, and maybe in those conditions it’s not so good?
COSTAS LAPAVITSAS: Lots of people come up with it. I’ve got two answers. The first is that what actually happens after Brexit, or if Brexit be comes a reality, will depend in good measure on what the left will itself do to make Brexit a reality, and the ideas the left is putting on the table. If the left doesn’t put ideas on the table about the left Brexit, which I think is the only sensible Brexit, and some of us have been doing that systematically in the last few months, if the left doesn’t do that, they can hardly complain.
PAUL JAY: Well, is the Labour Party doing that?
COSTAS LAPAVITSAS: Some people within the Labour Party are.
PAUL JAY: No, I mean Corbyn. Is Corbyn’s vision of Brexit a left vision?
COSTAS LAPAVITSAS: Corbyn is trapped in what I just mentioned to you. Corbyn’s going to have an equation to solve in the Labour Party which is impossible, practically, to solve. He’s been navigating a minefield. It’s obvious that Corbyn doesn’t really–he would prefer a kind of Brexit. But his party doesn’t. And he’s got a terrible problem, because every time he attempts to put these ideas across, his MPs, members of Parliament, rebel. And he’s got problems from his party membership, which is actually more and more–has become more and more pro-Europe. They’ve created a complete fantasy of what Europe is and they’ve latched themselves onto that.
So to come back to what you said about the right wing Brexit. The first point is the left should put on the table its own ideas about the left Brexit, which is the only Brexit that can make sense. The second point I want to make in this is yeah, I recognize a right wing Brexit, a Tory Brexit, could get problems for working people. But just imagine what a Tory remain will be like. Just imagine what it would be for this country to remain in the European Union, in other words for Brexit to fail, and still you have a right wing government. That possibly would be the worst outcome for Britain, because it would indicate to people that democracy counts for nothing; you can vote on referenda, you can take positions. It counts nothing. Your vote may be negated. And in the end you will end up with the Tories, right wing people, still managing the economy, still managing political lives, and within the European Union. It will tell people that this totality of capitalist institutions in Europe, which basically sets the terms for the economy and society in Europe, is not changed.
Posts: 1,909
Threads: 44
Joined: Feb 2017
Reputation:
4
WEALTH CONCENTRATION DRIVES A NEW GLOBAL IMPERIALISM
https://www.globalresearch.ca/wealth-con...sm/5671426
Regime changes in Iraq and Libya, Syria’s war, Venezuela’s crisis, sanctions on Cuba, Iran, Russia, and North Korea are reflections of a new global imperialism imposed by a core of capitalist nations in support of trillions of dollars of concentrated investment wealth. This new world order of mass capital has become a totalitarian empire of inequality and repression.
The global 1%, comprised of over 36-million millionaires and 2,400 billionaires, employ their excess capital with investment management firms like BlackRock and J.P Morgan Chase. The top seventeen of these trillion-dollar investment management firms controlled $41.1 trillion dollars in 2017. These firms are all directly invested in each other and managed by only 199 people who decide how and where global capital will be invested. Their biggest problem is they have more capital than there are safe investment opportunities, which leads to risky speculative investments, increased war spending, privatization of the public domain, and pressures to open new capital investment opportunities through political regime changes.
Power elites in support of capital investment are collectively embedded in a system of mandatory growth. Failure for capital to achieve continuing expansion leads to economic stagnation, which can result in depression, bank failures, currency collapses, and mass unemployment. Capitalism is an economic system that inevitably adjusts itself via contractions, recessions, and depressions.
Power elites are entrapped in a web of enforced growth that requires ongoing global management and the formation of new and ever expanding capital investment opportunities. This forced expansion becomes a worldwide manifest destiny that seeks total capital domination in all regions of the earth and beyond.
Sixty percent of the core 199 global power elite managers are from the US, with people from twenty capitalist nations rounding out the balance. These power elite managers and associated one percenters take active part in global policy groups and governments. They serve as advisors to the IMF, World Trade Organization, World Bank, International Bank of Settlements, Federal Reserve Board, G-7 and the G-20. Most attend the World Economic Forum. Global power elites engage actively on private international policy councils such as the Council of Thirty, Trilateral Commission, and the Atlantic Council. Many of the US global elites are members of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Business Roundtable in the US. The most important issue for these power elites is protecting capital investment, insuring debt collection, and building opportunities for further returns.
The global power elite are aware of their existence as a numerical minority in the vast sea of impoverished humanity. Roughly 80% of the world’s population lives on less than ten dollars a day and half live on less than three dollars a day. Concentrated global capital becomes the binding institutional alignment that brings transnational capitalists into a centralized global imperialism facilitated by world economic/trade institutions and protected by the US/NATO military empire. This concentration of wealth leads to a crisis of humanity, whereby poverty, war, starvation, mass alienation, media propaganda, and environmental devastation have reached levels that threaten humanity’s future.
The idea of independent self-ruling nation-states has long been held sacrosanct in traditional liberal capitalist economies. However, globalization has placed a new set of demands on capitalism that requires transnational mechanisms to support continued capital growth that is increasingly beyond the boundaries of individual states. The financial crisis of 2008 was an acknowledgement of the global system of capital under threat. These threats encourage the abandonment of nation-state rights altogether and the formation of a global imperialism that reflects new world order requirements for protecting transnational capital.
Institutions within capitalist countries including government ministries, defense forces, intelligence agencies, judiciary, universities and representative bodies, recognize to varying degrees that the overriding demands of transnational capital spill beyond the boundaries of nation-states. The resulting worldwide reach motivates a new form of global imperialism that is evident by coalitions of core capitalist nations engaged in past and present regime change efforts via sanctions, covert actions, co-options, and war with non-cooperating nations—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea and Russia.
The attempted coup in Venezuela shows the alignment of transnational capital-supporting states in recognizing the elite forces that oppose Maduro’s socialist presidency. A new global imperialism is at work here, whereby Venezuela’s sovereignty is openly undermined by a capital imperial world order that seeks not just control of Venezuela’s oil, but a full opportunity for widespread investments through a new regime.
The widespread corporate media negation of the democratically elected president of Venezuela demonstrates that these media are owned and controlled by ideologists for the global power elite. Corporate media today is highly concentrated and fully international. Their primary goal is the promotion of product sales and pro-capitalist propaganda through the psychological control of human desires, emotions, beliefs, fears, and values. Corporate media does this by manipulating feelings and cognitions of human beings worldwide, and by promoting entertainment as a distraction to global inequality. Recognizing global imperialism as a manifestation of concentrated wealth, managed by a few hundred people, is of utmost importance for democratic humanitarian activists. We must stand on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and challenge global imperialism and its fascist governments, media propaganda, and empire armies.
Posts: 1,909
Threads: 44
Joined: Feb 2017
Reputation:
4
NETANYAHU BELIEVING THAT HE WILL RULE THE WORLD AS WITH NIMROD - PHARAOH AND ALL THE REST:
“JUST WHEN THEY THINK THEY HAVE IT - THE EARTH- UNDER THEIR CONTROL IT IS SNATCHED AWAY FROM THEM”
SUCH WILL BE THE CASE WITH BIBI TRUMP - POMPEO - KUSNER AND THE REST OF ANTICHRIST’S RETINUE
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU's PLAN TO RULE THE WORLD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awCwuJjZCTU&feature=youtu.be
Posts: 1,909
Threads: 44
Joined: Feb 2017
Reputation:
4
NEW WORLD ORDER COMMUNISM BY THE BACKDOOR
Posts: 1,909
Threads: 44
Joined: Feb 2017
Reputation:
4
SO EXACTLY WHERE IS FACEBOOK'S LIBRA AND INDEED SILICON VALLEY TAKING THE DIGITAL WORLD? IS THIS JUST ABOUT DATA OR ABOUT CREATING THE NEXT PHASE IN GLOBALISATION, THE SURVEILLANCE SOCIETY AND THE NWO. ALSO WHO CONTROLS IDENTITY IN A DIGITAL AGE? IS THIS THE RISE AND RISE OF THE DIGITAL WILD WEST OR ARE THERE REGULATIONS INBUILT. ALSO WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PRIVATE INTERESTS CONFLICT WITH PUBLIC INTERESTS?
WE ALREADY KNOW THAT THE PUBLIC BANKING SYSTEM HAS BEEN HI-JACKED BY PRIVATE BANKING CARTELS SUCKING WEALTH INTO THE COFFERS OF THE 1%. WE CAN BE FORGIVEN TO ASK IS THIS ALL A SILLY-CON BY SILICON VALLEY? IS THE SOLUTION TO ALL THESE DEVELOPMENTS IN THE DIGITAL WORLD TO JUST DO IT AND DIVE IN OR JUST SAY NO OR CAN WE NAVIGATE A THIRD WAY? ALSO MAYBE THIS WILL BE THE ONLY PLACE ON THE WEB THAT HAS THE SPIRITUAL VISION AND CONSCIOUSNESS TO NOTE SOMETHING REMARKABLE. ARE THE SEISMIC QUAKES HITTING UPTO 7.1 ON THE RICHTER SCALE TAKING PLACE UNDER SILICON VALLEY RECENTLY A WARNING FROM THE HEAVENS ABOVE THAT COSMIC NATURAL LAW ULTIMATELY REIGNS AND THAT CERTAIN INDIVIDUALS HAVE NO RIGHT TO ACT AS MAMMON AND PHAROAHS OF THE NWO. MANKIND HAS ARRIVED AT A CROSSROADS TO LITERALLY GO UP OR DOWN. THE CHOICE RESTS IN OUR HANDS TO CREATE A DESTINY THAT WORKS FOR ALL OR JUST THE 1%.
FACEBOOK’S LIBRA CURRENCY MONETIZES IDENTITY AND THREATENS PRIVACY
July 5, 2019
Bill Black discusses Facebook's new proposed crypto-currency, called “Libra.” Facebook could use this technology to standardize identity and create a world of ultimate surveillance, and then profit from it, says Black
THE SECRETS OF SILICON VALLEY: WHAT BIG TECH DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW
Once a sleepy farming region, Silicon Valley is now the hub of a global industry that is transforming the economy, shaping our political discourse, and changing the very nature of our society. So what happened? How did this remarkable change take place? Why is this area the epicenter of this transformation? Discover the dark secrets behind the real history of Silicon Valley and the Big Tech giants in this important edition of The Corbett Report.
Posts: 1,909
Threads: 44
Joined: Feb 2017
Reputation:
4
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN. THE US DESTRUCTION OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE
Larry Romanoff
https://www.globalresearch.ca/save-queen/5693500
This is a little-known and never-discussed part of US history, but yet one of the major factors that propelled the US to its overwhelming manufacturing and economic supremacy after the Second World War. It involves the final destruction of the British Empire, for which no thinking person would have regrets, and also the conditions obtaining after the end of World War II. The First World War caused Britain to lose about 40% of its former Empire and wealth, and the Second World War completed this task, but not without the little-known predatory intercession of America.
During the Second War, Britain needed huge volumes of supplies of food, raw materials, manufactured goods, armaments and military hardware. But Britain’s factories were being destroyed by the war, and in any case lacked sufficient productive capacity. Britain also increasingly lacked money to pay for those goods, its solution being to purchase on credit from its colonies. Canada, India, Australia, South Africa, and many other nations supplied England with necessary goods and war materials, on promise of future payment. The plan was that after the War ended, Britain would repay these debts with manufactured goods which a rebuilt Britain would be able to supply. These debts were recorded in the then British currency of Pounds Sterling, and maintained on ledgers in the Bank of England, commonly referred to as “The Sterling Balances”.
After the Second War ended, the US was the world’s only major economy that had not been bombed to rubble, a nation with all its factories intact, and able to operate at full capacity producing almost everything the world needed. The US had enormous capacity to supply, but the many countries of the British Empire, whose economies were in sound condition and had money to pay, were refusing to buy from the US since they were waiting for the UK to rebuild and repay the outstanding debts with manufactured goods. The US government and corporations realised that this enormous market consisting of so many of the world’s nations, would remain closed to it for perhaps decades, that it would have little or no commercial success in any part of the former British Empire so long as those Sterling Balances remained on the ledgers in the Bank of England. And this is one place where the true nature of America comes into sharp focus, an incident which serves better than many to illustrate the story of American “fair play” and of the US creating “a level playing field”.
At the end of the war, Britain, physically devastated and financially bankrupt, lacked factories to produce goods for rebuilding, the materials to rebuild the factories or purchase the machines to fill them, or with the money to pay for any of it. Britain’s situation was so dire, the government sent the economist John Maynard Keynes with a delegation to the US to beg for financial assistance, claiming that Britain was facing a “financial Dunkirk”. The Americans were willing to do so, on one condition: They would supply Britain with the financing, goods and materials to rebuild itself, but dictated that Britain must first eliminate those Sterling Balances by repudiating all its debts to its colonies. The alternative was to receive neither assistance nor credit from the US. Britain, impoverished and in debt, with no natural resources and no credit or ability to pay, had little choice but to capitulate. And of course with all receivables cancelled and since the US could produce today, those colonial nations had no further reason for refusing manufactured goods from the US. The strategy was successful. By the time Britain rebuilt itself, the US had more or less captured all of Britain’s former colonial markets, and for some time after the war’s end the US was manufacturing more than 50% of everything produced in the world. And that was the end of the British Empire, and the beginning of the last stage of America’s rise.
Americans have been propagandised into believing that their country selflessly supported the European war effort, and generously planned and financed the entire rebuilding of all of war-ravaged Europe. Their heads are full of ‘lend-lease’, the “Marshall Plan” and much more. But here we have three silent truths: One is that the US assisted Europe and the UK primarily because it needed markets for its goods. US corporations found little purchasing power in the European nations that were now largely destroyed and bankrupt, and without these markets the US economy would also have crashed. It was commercial self-interest rather than compassion or charity that prompted the US financial assistance to the UK and Europe. All the US did was provide large-scale consumer financing for the products of its own corporations, with most of the ‘financing’ never leaving the US. The Marshall Plan was mostly a welfare program for American multinationals. The second truth is that Europe and England paid heavily for this financial assistance. It was only in 2006 that Britain finally paid the last installment on the loans made to it by the US in 1945. The third is that the post-war financing of Europe was not primarily for reconstruction but as the foundation for an overwhelming political control that has largely persisted to this day. Funds from the American’s vaunted Marshall Plan were spent more to finance Operation Gladio than European reconstruction.
As William Blum so well noted in one of his articles, the US was far more interested in sabotaging the political left in Europe than in reconstruction, and Marshall Plan funds were siphoned off to finance political victories for the far right, as well for the violent terrorist program known as Operation Gladio. He also correctly mentioned that the CIA skimmed off substantial amounts to fund covert journalism and propaganda, one of the conduits being the Ford Foundation. As well, the US exercised enormous economic and political restrictions on recipient countries as conditions for the receipt of funds, most being used to help re-entrench the European bankers and elites in their positions of economic and political power (after a war that they themselves instigated) rather than to assist in reconstruction. In the end, the Europeans could have done as well without this so-called ‘assistance’ from the US, and Europe would have been far better and more independent today had they refused the offer. The conviction of most Americans that their nation ‘rebuilt’ Europe is pure historical mythology created by propaganda and supported by ignorance.
Posts: 1,909
Threads: 44
Joined: Feb 2017
Reputation:
4
WHAT HAPPENS IN THREE CITIES OF THE WORLD IS ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL IN UNDERSTANDING HOW THE WORLD POLITICAL ECONOMY IS RUN. MOST PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE A CLUE WHICH 3 CITIES I AM TALKING ABOUT BECAUSE NO ONE EVER TALKS ABOUT THIS. ALSO THE WAY THE WORLD IS MOVING IN OUR ERA THERE IS A 4TH CITY WHICH WILL RULE ROOST AND THAT IS JERUSALEM AS GLOBAL VISION 2000 HAS JUST HELD A CONFERENCE IN LONDON ON THIS THEME. YOU WILL CERTAINLY NOT LEARN THAT IN THE TOP BUSINESS SCHOOLS OF THE WORLD. THE 3 CITIES OR RATHER CITIES WITHIN CITIES ARE THE POTOMAC IN WASHINGTON DC, THE CITY OF LONDON IN LONDON AND THE VATICAN IN ROME. THE LINKAGE BETWEEN GLOBAL MILITARY POWER, MONEY POWER AND IDEOLOGICAL CONTROL IS INTERCONNECTED AND ONE. ONE CAN GO FURTHER IN THIS FRAMEWORK AS WE HAVE TO DISCARD ALL WE HAVE BEEN TOLD AND TAUGHT ABOUT RIGHT AND LEFT WING POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT AS IT IS ALL A HALL OR MIRRORS. ALSO IF WE TAKE THIS DIAGNOSIS AND ANALYSIS OF POWER, CONTROL AND AUTHORITY SERIOUSLY WE NEED TO FACTOR IN THE SATANIC DAJALLIC DIMENSION.
IT'S PROBABLY TOO MUCH TO TAKE IN IF YOU HAVE BEEN BROUGHT UP IN A SECULAR MATERIALISTIC OUTLOOK. IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND THIS YOU WILL NEED A MENTAL IF NOT SPIRITUAL DETOXIFICATION PROCESS. BUT IF YOU ARE ON THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH YOU NEED TO DISCARD THE OLD PARADIGMS OF DECEIT AND PURIFY YOUR MIND, SPIRIT AND BODY AND ENTER THE REALM OF THE UNIVERSAL PARADIGM SHIFT WHICH IS ALSO SEEKING TO ESTABLISH A MORAL POLITICAL ECONOMY. AS ONLY THIS CAN DELIVER AN UNIVERSAL JUST AND PEACEFUL WORLD FOR HUMANITY, NATURE AND THE PLANET. MORE WILL FOLLOW ON THIS IN ORDER THAT YOUR SEARCH FOR TRUTH LEADS YOU TO THE CORRECT DESTINATION RATHER THAN THE ABYSS.
BLACK POPE, LUCIFER AND THE JESUITS
http://www.volkwordtwakker.nl/en/truth-o...he-jesuits
The Jesuits and the Black Pope
Everything starts with Lucifer, Satan. The current power in this world is in the hands of those who worship him. And those that you think they have the power not more than jumping jacks on the world stage.
Regularly read your stories about how the Black Pope, head of the Jesuits, would be the most powerful man on earth. This is not so because above him are a number of families from The Papal Bloodlines, descended from Satan directly and ultimately determine what happens in the world.
(Logo of the Jesuits - "IHS" are the first three letters of JESUS in the ancient Greek.)
(former Black Pope Peter Hans Kolvenbach along with former pedophile Pope)
Senior Jesuits are Luciferians, they believe in Lucifer. The Dutchman Peter Hans Kolvenbach is the former General of the Jesuit order. The General of the Jesuits is called "black pope".
(Former Black Pope Peter Hans Kolvenbach)
Many people forget this man when it comes to major players in the secret societies. The Jesuit order has had a great influence on the formation of the Bavarian Illuminati, and this organization is used as a lightning rod / front for the Vatican. (See diagram)
Von Weishaupt (also known as Johann Adam Weishaupt - founder of the illuminatenorden in 1776), after all, was trained by Jesuits in canon law (Catholic canon law). Many of the former monarchies were generally not pro Vatican, the Vatican so it worked out well that the Bavarian Illuminati wanted to disrupt the monarchies.
The other kabal families like the Rothschild family only the auditors of the Kabal and follow the traditional order of the Jesuits. Also, they are nothing more than puppets and lightning. (See diagram)
Peter Hans Kolvenbach General of the International Military Order of the Society of Jesus is seen by many as one of the main people responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The New World Order is the fourth empire, an empire under the Vatican under Lucifer. Since the secretions of the Roman Catholic Church during the Reformation does the Luciferian cult everything possible to regain full control.
(Kolvenbach and his former staff)
The Jesuits (officially established by Pope Paul III in 1540), the Military Intelligence Service of the Vatican. And controlling a large part of the actions of the so-called "illuminati" and the hierarchy in the Vatican.
(Jesuit power structure)
The two people who represent these bloodlines in practice:
- Pepe Orsini - Italy
- Henry Breakspear - Macau, China
The most powerful man in the world Pepe Orsini, also known as the Grey Pope. Not the white stuff and not, as often assumed, the Black Pope. A little further down, we find the most powerful organization in the world, the Jesuits. This order, also called the secret service of the Vatican, is headed by a General, better known as the Black Pope. And yes, the Black Pope is powerful, but not the most powerful man on earth. The former "president of the EU," Herman "Catholic bastard" Van Rompuy belonged to the Jesuit sect and is responsible for more than one murder million people in the Middle East and Africa.
Among the Jesuits also contains the Illuminati and are not, as many people think, the famous families like the Rockefellers. of the thirteen Illuminati families are:
The "black pope" is practically the service from within the Vatican and not the regular pope. The Knights of Malta are also under the control of the Jesuits. All the misery of the past centuries is almost always suffer back into a black pope. The involvement of the Vatican and the Jesuits at the NAZI regime is well documented. H. Himmler founded the SS to the model of the Jesuit order.
(Headquarters issue in the Vatican.)
From 1963 also includes the Vatican officially join the club of Satan. This has become known by a now-deceased Jesuit priest Father Malachi Martin who wrote a book about this event.
Malachi Martin, a former Jesuit priest and Vatican insider, writes in his book "Windswept House: a Vatican Novel" that there was a satanic ritual in 1963, in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. During this event named "Placing on the throne of the fallen archangel Lucifer" Satan was formally placed on the throne in the Vatican. Simultaneously were held in America rituals to ratify this "throne". Pope Paul the Sixth, which from 1963 to 1978 was a function would have once said: "The smoke of Satan has entered the church and around the altar", referring to the satanic ritual. And he should know, elected a week before the ritual ...
The Church has thus officially secretly brought under the power of Satan. Was it in 1963 for an occult stronghold, after the ritual is merged with the Vatican utterly demonic side. Unfortunately know many sincere priests, bishops and Catholics nothing from here. Still does not change the fact that they are currently stuck in an occult stronghold which plays a key role in the coming New World Order.
Furthermore, Martin writes in another book, The Keys of this Blood, "the incident of Satanic pedophilia - rites and practices - has already been documented by some bishops and priests as widely dispersed as Turin in Italy to South Carolina in the United States. The sectarian practices of Satanic pedophilia are considered by professionals to be the highlight of the rituals of the Fallen Archangel ".
Shortly before his death gave Malachi Martin a few interviews in which he confirms the satanic practices within the church. A short section of such interview you find at the bottom of this article.
Lucifer, Satan has the world in its grip. Not surprising that pedophiles quietly sit back in the topfunkties and will never worry about. Almost everything in this world, every organization or structure, ends or begins with Satan.
They have taken control of several organizations together with the Military Order of Malta, such as:
- The United Nations
- NATO
- European Commission
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Several central banks
- Large bedrijfen (SP 500)
- Secret services - Secret services
- Different societies and cults like Freemasonry (Freemasonry) ( "The Brotherhood") and Opus Dei.
Nevertheless, if you all people worldwide marketing in those positions of power against the population you're talking about a fraction. Light and love is really in the majority! But only if the sheeple once wake up and realize that they do not allow control and dominate Satan, maybe then something will change.
The holders of the post of black pope over the years:
(1) - Ignatius Loyola (1541-1556).
St. Ignasius of Loyola
Founder of the Jesuit order in 1534.
(2) - Diego Lainez (1558-1565).
(3) - Francis Borgia (1565-1572).
Francis Borgia from the notorious Borgia family. The Borgias had many unacknowledged children who also include names of the Jesuit order infiltrated.
(4) - Everard Mercurian (1573-1580).
(5) - Claudius Aquaviva (1581-1615).
(6) - Mutius Vitelleschi (1615-1645).
(7) - Vincent Caraffa (1646-1649).
(8) - Francis Piccolomini (1649-1651).
(9) - Alexander Gottifredi (1652-1652).
(10) - Goswin Nickel (1652-1664).
(11) - John Paul Oliva (1664-1681).
(12) - Charles de Noyelle (1682-1686).
(13) - Thyrsus Gonzalez de Santella (1687 to 1705).
(14) - Tamburnini Michelangelo (1706-1730).
(15) - Francis Retz (1730-1750).
(16) - Ignatius Visconti (1751-1755).
(17) - Aloysius Centurione (1755-1757).
(18) - Lorenzo Ricci (1758-1775)
(19) - Thaddeus Brzozowski (1805-1820).
(20) - Luigi Fortis (1820-1829).
(21) - Jan Roothaan1829-1853).
(22) - Peter Beckx (1853-1887).
(23) - Antonio Maria Anderledy (1887-1892) (.
(24) - Luis Martin (1892 to 1906).
(25) - Franz Xavier Wernz (1906-1914).
(26) - Wlodimir Ledochowski (1915-1942).
(27) - Jean-Baptiste Janssens (1946-1964).
(28) - Pedro Arrupe (1965-1983).
(29) - Peter Hans Kolvenbach (1983-2008)
Jesuit General during the attacks in the USA on September 11, 2001. It is remarkable that Kolvenbach the first black pope who called for his resignation from the position of black Pope. The appointment black stuff is for life or until it appears that the black pope a "heretic." Resides now in Syria.
(30) - Adolfo Nicolás Pachón (2008 - ????).
(The current black Pope.)
Summary taken from: Thomas E. Zeyen, SJ Jesuit Generals: A Glance into a Forgotten Corner, University of Scranton Press, 2004.
Source: http://www.odvn.nl/de-jezuieten-en-de-zwarte-paus
|