IQ, Age and Race

September 30, 2018 Algora Blog Leave a comment

Intellectual capacity is much more malleable in children than in adults. This is well known in the IQ literature, including studies on African and Euro Americans. When Dickens and Flynn (2006) analyzed the results of the 2002 standardization sample for the WISC (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children), they found that IQ starts off high in African American children and then declines with age:

African-American WISC scores
Age — IQ
4 — 95.5
12 — 90.5
15 — 88.8
24 — 84.5

Dickens and Flynn (2006) similarly note that these scores show a gain of 5-6 points over the scores of black children thirty years earlier. But the decline of black IQ with age has remained stable. This decline also shows up in the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study —a longitudinal study of black, biracial (black/white), and white children adopted into white middle-class Minnesota families (Scarr and Weinberg, 1976; Weinberg, Scarr, and Waldman, 1992). The children’s IQs were measured at 7 years of age and again ten years later:

——————- Age 7 Age 17
Black children –—- 97 — 89
Biracial children – 109 — 99
White children –– 112 – 106

Finally, we see this age effect in a study of children fathered by soldiers stationed in Germany and then raised by German mothers (Eyferth 1961). One third of the children were between 5 and 10 years old and two thirds between 10 and 13 years old. The study found no significant difference in IQ between children with white fathers (83 subjects) and those with black fathers (98 subjects), the mean IQ being about 97 for both groups.

So Chanda has discovered what many IQ researchers have long known: if you place children in an enriched learning environment, they will do much better on IQ tests. Unfortunately, this improvement will not last. It will “wash out” and disappear by adulthood. This was pointed out by Franz Boas (yes, the same Franz Boas!) in a speech delivered in 1894 under the title “Human Faculty as Determined by Race”:

“When we compare the capacity for education between the lower and higher races, we find that the great point of divergence is at adolescence and the inference is fairly good that we shall not find in the brains of the lower races the post-pubertal growth in the cortex to which I have just alluded.” (Boas, 1974, p. 234)

Among humans in general, intellectual capacity seems to decline with age. Indeed, there are statements in the literature that IQ declines from one’s twenties onwards (presumably among European Americans). Is this decline due to natural aging processes? Or is it prewired into the human organism?

Perhaps the ability to acquire new information became less useful with age in ancestral humans. What we call ‘intelligence’ may have originally been an infant trait that humans lost as they grew up. With the expansion of our cultural environment, natural selection would have progressively extended this infant trait into older age groups, and more so in some populations than in others.

By way of analogy, lactose tolerance was originally an infant trait and is still so in most human populations. It has become an adult trait in those populations that have long practiced dairy farming and adult consumption of milk.

References

Boas, F. (1974). A Franz Boas Reader. The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883-1911, G.W. Stocking Jr. (ed.), Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Dickens, W.T., and J.R. Flynn. (2006). Black Americans reduce the racial IQ gap. Evidence from standardization samples. Psychological Science, 17, 913-920.

Eyferth, K. (1961). Leistungen verscheidener Gruppen von Besatzungskindern in Hamburg-Wechsler Intelligenztest für Kinder (HAWIK). Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie, 113, 222-241.

Scarr, S., and Weinberg, R.A. (1976). IQ test performance of Black children adopted by White families, American Psychologist, 31, 726-739.

Weinberg, R.A., Scar, S., and Waldman, I.D. (1992). The Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study: A follow-up of IQ test performance at adolescence. Intelligence, 16, 117-135.

It's All About Jews

Will London, Paris and Tel-Aviv be sanctioned by Moscow and Washington?

September 27, 2018 Algora Blog 2 Comments

By Thierry Meyssan
The confrontation which recently occurred in Lattakia may result in a complete global redistribution of the cards. There are two reasons for this, the second of which is being hidden from the Western world. First of all, it cost the lives of 15 Russian soldiers; secondly, it not only implicates Israël, but also the United Kingdom and France. This is potentially the most dangerous crisis in more than 60 years. We now have to find out whether President Trump, currently in the middle of his election campaign, is capable of supporting his Russian counterpart, in order that the United States and Russia may sanction the colonial powers as they did in 1956, during the Suez crisis.

JPEG - 47.4 kb Moscow, 20 September 2018 – the Chief of Staff for the Israëli Air Force, General Amikam Norkin, arrives in a hurry to present his version of events. Once these proofs were checked and compared with other recordings, it transpired that Israël was lying straight-faced.

On 17 September 2018, France, Israël and the United Kingdom carried out a joint operation against Syrian targets. During the brief moments of combat, a Russian reconnaissance plane was brought down by Syrian ’friendly fire’. Study of the recordings shows that an Israëli F-16 had flown hidden behind the Ilyushin Il-20 in order to confuse the Syrian Air Defences.

The destruction of a Russian military aircraft by the fault of Israël, during a joint operation by the United Kingdom, France and Israël, caused consternation in all the chancelleries. Since the start of hostilities in Syria seven years ago, if there were a ’red line’, it was that the different protagonists should never endanger Russian, US, or Israëli forces.

We are sure about very little of what actually happened, except that :
a British Tornado took off from Cyprus to land in Iraq. During the flight, it violated Syrian air space in order to scan the Syrian defences and make the allied attack possible.
less than an hour later, four Israëli F-16s and a French frigate, L’Auvergne, fired on targets in the Syrian governorate of Lattakia. The Syrian air defences protected their country by firing their S-200s against the French and Israëli missiles.
During the battle, an F-16 used a Russian Ilyushin Il-20 as a shield. The Ilyushin was flying a surveillance mission over the area, localising jihadist drone launch sites. The Syrian defences fired a missile, aiming for the thermal signal of the Israëli aircraft. Theoretically, therefore, it could have destroyed the Russian plane by mistake.

This is, however, implausible, because S-200 missiles are equipped with a reconnaissance system able to distinguish between friendly and enemy targets, which the Russian Minister for Defence successively confirmed, then denied. In any case, the Ilyushin was destroyed, without our knowing for certain how, or by whom.

The cowardice of the British and French leaders led them to censor all information concerning their responsibility in this operation. London made no comment, and Paris denied the facts. Neither the BBC, nor France-Television dared to mention the subject. For these two countries, more than ever, the reality of external politics is excluded from the democratic debate.

Immediate interpretation of the events

We do not know if the destruction of the Russian aircraft (causing the death of the 15 men on board) can be blamed on the Israëli pilot – which seems highly unlikely – on the Israëli army, or on the alliance which carried out the attack.

On the answer to this question hangs the possibility of conflict between four nuclear powers. The situation is therefore extremely serious. It has no precedent since the creation of the Russian Federation, at the end of 1991.

The British-French-Israëli aggression is the response by these three countries to the Russian-Turkish agreement signed only a few hours earlier at Sotchi. It came into play after the US refusal, at the beginning of September, to bomb Syria under false pretences, and the sending of a US delegation into the Arab world in order to express its disagreement with the British-French initiatives [1].

The Sotchi agreements were signed by Turkey under intense pressure from Russia. In Teheran, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had refused to sign the Memorandum concerning the withdrawal of the jihadist and Turkish forces in Idlib. This had not pleased President Vladimir Putin, who answered first of all by reaffirming the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria [2] and, furthermore, by underlining for the first time the illegitimacy, under international law, of the Turkish military presence in the country. Ten days later, a very unsettled Mr, Erdoğan accepted an invitation to Russia.

The Sotchi agreement, while distancing Turkey a little further from NATO with its energy contracts, forced Ankara de facto to withdraw from a part of the territory that it occupies, allegedly to better protect the pseudo-« rebels » gathered in the governorate of Idlib [3]. Besides this, Turkey only has one month in which to confiscate the heavy weaponry of its friends from Al-Qaïda and Daesh in the demilitarised zone [4].

This agreement was obviously unacceptable for London, Paris and Tel-Aviv :
in the end, it plans for the disappearance of the jihadists as an army, while London has been supervising, training and manipulating them for decades [5] ;
the end of the dream of a French mandate over Syria and of the creation of a new French colony in the North of the country, under the phoney name of Kurdistan (Kurdistan is legitimate only within the frontiers which were recognised by the Sèvres Conference, in 1920.) In other words, not in Iran, nor Iraq or Syria, but only in what is now known as Turkey [6]).
the end of the regional domination of Israël, faced with a stable Syria under Russian protection.

Mid-term interpretation of the events

The British-French-Israëli military alliance has not entered into action since the Suez Canal crisis in 1956. At that time, Anthony Eden, Guy Mollet and David Ben Gourion joined their forces in order to humiliate the Arab nationalists, particularly the Egyptian Gamal Abdel Nasser, and to re-establish the British and French colonial empires (« Operation Musketeer »).

This is exactly what happened with this new attack : as was confirmed by the Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, none of the targets under attack were linked in any way to Iran or Hezbollah. This British-French-Israëli action had nothing to do with the international struggle against the jihadists in general and Daesh in particular. It also had no connection with the overthrow of the Syrian Arab Republic or its President, Bachar el-Assad. Its main objective was to kill military scientists, in particular the rocket specialists from the Institute of Technical Industries in Lattakia.

This is therefore the resumption and continuation of the policy of targeted assassinations waged by Israël for the last twenty years, successively against the Iraqi, Iranian, and now Syrian scientists. It is one of the pillars of colonial policy : to prevent the submitted populations from attaining the same level of education as their masters. In former times, the Westerners forbade their slaves from learning to read under pain of death. Today, they eliminate their scientists.This policy was relaunched with the British-French-US bombing of 14 April 2018, in which the only target destroyed was the Scientific Research Centre in Barzeh [7], then with the breakdown of the 5+1 agreement with Iran (JCPoA) which forced the country to close its nuclear physics faculties (May 8, 2018).

It was a joint initiative : the jihadists destroy the past, the Westerners destroy the future.

Long-term interpretation of the events

Since the deployment of Russian troops in Syria, on 13 September 2015, to help Syria in its fight against the terrorists, the allies of the United States have understood the impossibility of carrying out the US plan without risking a world war. With the arrival of Donald Trump at the White House, they have progressively questioned their war objectives, abandoned the plans of the « Friends of Syria » and fallen back on their respective historical strategies [8].

It is this logic that led them to reform the alliance which provoked the Suez crisis, and it is this same logic which pushed Germany to distance itself from them.

At the beginning of the First World War, the British, French and Russian empires decided on the partition of the world which they would implement as soon as they had gained victory. The treaty was negotiated by Mark Sykes, Georges Picot and Sergueï Sazonov. During the course of the World War, however, the Tsar was overthrown by the Bolcheviks, which meant that the areas of the world originally reserved for the Russian empire were once again up for grabs. Finally, at the end of the World War, only the part of the plan relative to the Middle East was applied, under the name of the « Sykes-Picot » agreement.

The return of Russia to the international game obviously brings into question the British-French colonial sharing of the Middle East. The foreseeable clash has just occurred, either accidentally or deliberately, with the destruction of the Ilyushin Il-20 during the joint British-French-Israëli military operation.

How to react

The bewilderment of the international community in the face of this brutal awakening of a century-old conflict can be measured by the Twitter silence from the White House.

During the Suez crisis, the Israëli troops engaged were twice as numerous as all the British and French forces together. The total number of coalition forces was about 250,000 men. This was therefore a very large-scale operation compared to that of Lattakia. But it remains true that the two sequences work from the same diplomatic logic, and may lead to the same developments.

During the Suez crisis, in the middle of the Cold War, the Soviet Union threatened the United Kingdom, France, and Israël with a nuclear riposte if they refused to withdraw from Egypt. At first, NATO supported the Europeans in threatening Moscow with a World War, before changing its mind. In the middle of the Cold War, therefore, the United States temporarily supported the USSR in order to halt the European folly.

For Washington, allowing the Europeans to pursue their plans was the equivalent of pushing all the Arab nations into the arms of the Soviets. Apart from that, it simply was not feasible to accept the French-British intervention at the same time as they were denouncing the repression of the Hungarian revolution by the Warsaw Pact.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vice-President Richard Nixon launched a monetary attack against the pound sterling, sent their naval and airborne forces to interfere with the British-French-Israëli complex, and forbade the use of French military material financed by US funds.

International peace was preserved thanks to certain third parties such as the Secretary General of the UNO, Dag Hammarskjöld (who was assassinated three years later, and was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize); the Canadian Minister for Foreign Affairs Lester B. Pearson (who also received the Nobel Peace Prize); and the leader of the non-aligned nations and Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru.

The Suez crisis profoundly upset not only international political life, but also the national reality of the United Kingdom, France and Israël.
Circumventing the European vetos at the Security Council, the UNO General Assembly called for the withdrawal of the invaders and created the first United Nations intervention force.
In the United Kingdom, the House of Commons demanded the end of colonial politics to the profit of the promotion of the economic interests of London via the Commonwealth.
In France, the Communists, the Gaullists and the Poujadists (including Jean-Marie Le Pen) united against the Centrists and the Socialists; a configuration that has never been seen since. Six years later, President De Gaulle considered that by recognising the independence of Algeria, he would put an end to military collaboration with the colonial state of Israël and restore the policy of friendship and collaboration with the Arab peoples, which had always characterised France, apart from its colonial period [9].

The position of the Western powers concerning the aggression on Lattakia is all the more difficult because, in violation of their agreement with Russia, the Israëlis only informed Moscow of their operation a long time after it had begun, and only one minute before they began firing. As for the Pentagon, they affirmed that they had not been warned at all. But let us not forget that the Israëli-Russian mutual non-aggression pact in Syria only exists because Israël is the US arsenal for the Middle East, housing (with Italy) the stocks of US weaponry for the entire region. If Israël truly did not inform the Pentagon of its actions in advance, then it can not benefit from US protection, and consequently the mutual non-aggression pact may be called into question by Russia.

The Russian response depends on the position of the White House, which we do not know for the moment. It must be guided by a desire to lessen tension, if possible, and also to maintain dissuasion by punishing the guilty party or parties as soon as the Kremlin names them. It is not necessary for Russia to make this sanction public as long as the chancelleries concerned are informed.

The Russian response

Russia has the choice of seeing in the destruction of their aircraft nothing more than a mistake by an Israeli pilot, or by the Israëli army, or again, by all three of the states implicated (the United Kingdom, France and Israël). The Russian Minister for Defence, Sergueï Choïgou, telephoned his Israëli counterpart, Avigdor Lieberman to inform him that he held Israël responsible for the accident, and reserved the right to riposte. A little later, President Putin declared « This is a series of tragic events, because our plane was not shot down by an Israëli aircraft ». He was careful to distinguish this situation from that of the deliberate destruction of a Sukhoï 24-M by Turkish fighters in November 2015. We are therefore heading towards the public designation of Israël as the sole responsible and a secret sanction against the three states involved.

The Israëli chargé d’affaires in Moscow, Keren Cohen Gat, was summoned by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, while in a knee-jerk reaction, Israëli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to shovel the responsibility for the accident onto Iran. An Israëli delegation, led by the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Amikam Norkin, rushed off to Moscow with unprecedented haste. They contested the claims of the Russian Minister for Defence, affirmed that Israël was innocent, and that all the blame belonged to the negligence of the Syrians.

President Donald Trump, a great admirer of Richard Nixon’s foreign policy, was thus provided with the perfect occasion to finish with the British-French-Israëli support for the US deep state. However, in the middle of his election campaign, he can not afford to give the impression of supporting the Russian rival while he beats up his allies. He is therefore seeking a way of presenting his internal public with this major change of direction. From this perspective, during an interview with Hill TV, he condemned the US engagement in the Greater Middle East which was decided by his predecessor George Bush Jr after the attacks of 11 September 2001.

On 23 September, the spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defence, General Igor Konashenkov, presented the synthesis of Russian intelligence and the information transmitted by Syria and Israël.
He accused the Hebrew state of having deliberately violated the mutual non-aggression agreement of 2015 by not giving Russia advance notice of its attack and by lying about its targets.
He accused it of having endangered civilian flights present in this zone of the Mediterranean, and of being responsible for the destruction of the Ilyuchin Il-20.
He denounced its non-assistance to the Russian soldiers when their plane stalled.
He also accused General Amikam Norkin of lying by pretending that the Israëli jets had already returned to Israël when the Russian plane stalled and crashed.
Finally, he deflected the accusations of amateurism laid at the door of the Syrian Anti-Air Defence System.

However, he abstained from publicly blaming the United Kingdom and France, who were nonetheless just as concerned by his remarks against Israël.

In case the White House should find an acceptable narrative of the facts for its electors, Russia could forbid the United Kingdom, France and Israël from making any intrusion into the maritime, terrestrial and aerial space of Syria without the authorisation of Damascus. London and Paris would have to cease their threats of bombing under whatever pretext at all (false chemical weapons) and withdraw their special forces. This measure would be valid for all protagonists in general, except for the United States and, in Idlib, for Turkey.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation
Pete Kimberley

[1] “Who wants to relaunch the war in Syria?”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Al-Watan (Syria) , Voltaire Network, 4 September 2018.

[2] “Joint Statement by Iran, Russia and Turkey dealing with Syria”, Voltaire Network, 7 September 2018.

[3] “The battle of Idleb is pushed back”, Translation Anoosha Boralessa, Voltaire Network, 22 September 2018.

[4] “Memorandum on Stabilization of the Situation in the Idlib De-escalation Area”, Voltaire Network, 17 September 2018.

[5] See the second part of Right Before our Eyes. From 9/11 to Donald Trump, Thierry Meyssan, Soon publish by Progressive Press.

[6] “The Kurdistan projects”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 5 September 2016.

[7] “The fiasco of the bombing raid on Syria”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 24 April 2018.

[8] “Finding a way out of the war against Syria”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 11 September 2018.

[9] « Conférence de presse de Charles De Gaulle, extrait relatif à Israël », Réseau Voltaire, 27 novembre 1967.

Cold War

US’ Foreign Policy

September 27, 2018 Algora Blog Leave a comment

I recommend a decent atlas and a pirated PDF copy of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “The Grand Chessboard.” And a good supply of your mood-altering chemical of choice. I’d suggest a dry red wine of some sort, but I’m no expert.
Afghanistan has a lot of natural resources, mineral mostly; weird metals that are critical to electronics. But more than that, it’s location, location, location. There’s been talk of oil and gas pipelines from Iran to China. And from the -stan countries south to the Pakistani ports on the Indian Ocean. None of that can happen if Afghanistan is a flaming dumpster fire. Also Afghanistan is right in the middle of the -stan countries Russia still considers their area of control, China, Pakistan, Iran, India; with huge-mongous mountains in the way every other way to get from Point A to Point B. There may not be a more strategically-located spot, if one is of a mind to dominate southern Asia.

Syria and Iraq are similarly strategically-located. Libya has a lot of oil, just across the Mediterranean from Europe. After Libya fell, all of a sudden there was a lot of trouble with “Jihadis” in Algeria, also with lots of oil, also just across the Mediterranean; and in Nigeria and Chad. Nigeria has a lot of oil, and there’s talk of a pipeline from Nigeria north to the Mediterranean, crossing…Chad and either Algeria or Libya. Interesting.

Heading East in Africa, there’s a lot of oil in the south of Sudan. Now there’s a totally feckless “independent” state of South Sudan there. And where that oil would want to go to get to market would go through Somalia. Every time anybody gets the upper hand in the chaos in Somalia, the US bombs the **** out of them and the other side gets a lot of weapons. Interesting.

The Chinese had built a lot of oil infrastructure in all those places, and that investment has been among the first things bombed by “Jihadis” whenever they show up. Almost like “Jihadis” hate money. Which they don’t seem to anyplace else; curious. And it’s weird how the “Jihadis” seem to hate everybody the US wants dispossessed.

The strategy is for the US to control Europe and China’s access to energy. Meanwhile, surrounding the EU, Russia and China with little dumpster fires, arming the most unreasonable and violent people in every area, demolishing civil society and making the perimeter of those rivals to US supremacy in Eurasia dangerous and unstable, applying pressure to every fracture line in societies on those areas.

The US can’t just invade Eurasia, but it can splinter it and create so much chaos Russia, China and the EU have all they can handle just staying afloat. That increases internal tensions in those areas, which the US can exploit. The goal is to break up all those nations and associations so the smaller, bickering groupings can be set against each other under the Pax Americana.

Yes, it’s some crazy. But Brzezinski made that his life’s work, and I haven’t seen anything in US foreign policy these past 40 years that doesn’t conform to it.

Can the reason for Afghanistan be so hard to see now ?

US foreign policy supports the workings of a thriving criminal economy in which the demarcation between organized capital and organized crime has become increasingly blurred.

The heroin business is not “filling the coffers of the Taliban” as claimed by US government and the international community: quite the opposite! The proceeds of this illegal trade are the source of wealth formation, largely reaped by powerful business/criminal interests within the Western countries. These interests are sustained by US foreign policy.

Decision-making in the US State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon is instrumental in supporting this highly profitable multibillion dollar trade, third in commodity value after oil and the arms trade.

The Afghan drug economy is “protected”.

The heroin trade was part of the war agenda. What this war has achieved is to restore a compliant narco-State, headed by a US appointed puppet.

The powerful financial interests behind narcotics are supported by the militarisation of the world’s major drug triangles (and transshipment routes), including the Golden Crescent and the Andean region of South America (under the so-called Andean Initiative).

Including Vatican and Royals all over the World. TPTB still believe Slaves and Drugs are the best way to profit & CONTROL.

Western Hegemony's Collapse

Roman Empire’s Demise

September 20, 2018 Algora Blog Leave a comment

It was the horses and north European deforestation that changed everything. Roman horse got bigger, barbarians were burning pine forests north of Rome thus creating paved roads. By 3-4 century horse breeds got bigger and could haul a serious load of goods. Costs of trade over sea met the costs of land trade at the end of Roman empire, suddenly Mediterranean trade routes were obsolete and hinterland area changed.

Constantinople was now a main trade hub, because the silk road was getting busier and land trade replaced Red Sea route.

Also, Saint Bernard pass opened for trade connecting England, Normand and Venice by land. The horse killed the Rome. Before the horse and European deforestation, trade over land was about 6x more costly than sea trade, Rome was a weighted centre of Mediterranean sea, a natural port and a natural centre of the world (trade area) at the time, an unmatched comparative advantage. Alps made the peninsula almost unassailable. Although Carthage had a very good central Mediterranean position, Carthage hinterland couldn’t measure up to Rome and its access to wood and stone. Carthage had no chance.

it was always all about the money.

Cold War

China Halts Licenses For US Companies Amid Tariff Battle

September 11, 2018 Algora Blog Leave a comment

CashMcCall says:

China is winning. China Trade is 4 Trillion a year and up 15% a year. US Trade is falling. Trump Tariffs were levied against Supply chain goods. 95% of China trade to the US is supply chain. Companies like Cummins engine and Rustoleum import their own Chinese made products as components for their US production.

Trump tariffed phenols for example and hundreds of other chemicals. Some dumbass Trumptard claimed that the phenols should be made in Merica, they could not be made cheaper than the US companies that make them in China and ship them globally. Even with a tariff of 100% they would still be cheaper than making them in the USA.

So American paint and coating companies import the phenols for products mixed in the USA for domestic and export markets. Trump Tariffs on phenols only hurt US paint and coating companies. ALL BTW have requested exemptions from Trump Tariffs and are getting them. Thus the Trump Tariffs are a paper tiger fraud.

China is also moving to bypass the Trump Tariffs. They are shipping the US Chinese factory made phenols to the Asian Tigers such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. The Asian tigers are then packaging and adding value and shipping to the USSA. There are no tariffs from phenols from the Asian Tigers. Trinh Thi Thu Trang is a leading paint coating producer and private labeler out of Vietnam.

But it gets worse for Merica. The Asian tigers and cubs are also setting up mixing lines for epoxy, and paint coating and shipping finished products to the USA cheaper than they can be made in Merica. Thus, just as happened with Smoot Hawley, international competition has taken away US foreign ready made markets. So this is why Trump’s Tariffs are nothing but a blowhard song in the wind. The Tariffs are just a Goldman scheme to buy cheap emerging market while selling off US Tech.

This is also why Trump Tariffs have not reported any accounting for how much Tariff tax has been collected. This is because it is all a Trump Fraud. Once the realization was noted that Chinese imports to the US were up 15% with Tariffs, the Trump Tariffs collections immediately became suspect.

Since then, the Asian Tiger imports to the US are up 20%. There is no DNA to trace the origin of the China and Asian Tiger chemicals. RPM International a leading US coating company has operations in China. They make Rust Oleum products BTW.

So you see, old dottard, low tech, no-brains Trump is just scamming the tards. With Tards all they can think of is their anti-Chinese racism and their stupid orange blowhard. Meanwhile, China has outflanked the Orange idiot, and is shipping [exporting] US ready made markets through Asian affiliates. Trump is just a fraud. He can’t stop any of this.

Trump admin projected $582 million tariffs from steel imports and $195 million from Aluminum WITH NO EXEMPTIONS! This is a bogus number. Even if you accepted this Trump bullshit, it doesn’t even come close to the $1.6 Trillion in damages to the US Farmer which are verifiable.

This is why you have not seen any decline in Chinese PMI, manufacturing and why Chinese exports are at record levels. Look no further than to John Deere to see how US Companies are doing. The Trump Tariff plan is leaking like a sieve. Trump’s a fraud.

China produces

90% of PCs
80% of Air Conditioners
80% of Energy Saving Light Bulbs
74% of Solar Cells
70% of Mobile Phones
63% of shoes
60% of cement
49% of pork
48% of coal
45% of shipbuilding

etc etc etc

Western Hegemony's Collapse

‘Five Eyes’ spying worldwide private correspondence

September 4, 2018 Algora Blog Leave a comment

A global network of intelligence agencies wants easier access to your private and encrypted messages. In a barely veiled warning to tech companies, it has promised to make things tough for those that don’t comply.

After a meeting on Australia’s Gold Coast last week, ministers for the intelligence agencies of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – known as the ‘Five Eyes’ – have shared their vision for worldwide snooping in a joint statement.

In the official communique, the ministers outline the importance of reading private messages in the fight against terrorism and crime, citing “the urgent need for law enforcement to gain targeted access to data.”

The spy chiefs paid lip service to the importance of encryption for privacy purposes, but went on in another statement to call for increased powers to access private data. Cracking your files, they argue, is no more sinister than a patrol cop searching your vehicle or house.

“Privacy laws must prevent arbitrary or unlawful interference, but privacy is not absolute,” they said. Recognizing that some encrypted data can be nearly impossible to crack, the agency chiefs called on tech companies to turn over the keys voluntarily.

“The governments of the Five Eyes encourage information and communications technology service providers to voluntarily establish lawful access solutions to their products and services,”reads the statement.

And if the companies don’t cooperate voluntarily, the Five Eyes have ways of making them talk. Stubborn companies may be hit with “technological, enforcement, legislative, or other measures,” the agencies warned, without elaborating on what those measures might be.

With encryption methods growing ever more sophisticated, securing the cooperation – voluntary or otherwise – of tech companies makes the job of law enforcement and spy agencies that much easier. To that end, the ministers present at last week’s meeting invited several “senior digital industry representatives” who did not accept the invitation.

Exactly what kind of access the spy chiefs want is also unclear. It could involve developers turning over access to an individual user’s messages when requested by law enforcement, or companies installing so-called ‘backdoors’ into their hardware which could be accessed at will by governments or law enforcement.

Earlier this summer, US lawmakers proposed legislation that would block the latter approach. A bipartisan bill introduced in the House of Representatives said that “backdoors in otherwise secure products make Americans’ data less safe, and they compromise the desirability of American goods overseas.”

The bill was introduced two years after the FBI threatened to take Apple to court in order to attempt to force the tech giant to create software to unlock an iPhone belonging to one of the shooters responsible for a massacre in San Bernardino, California. One day before the court hearing was scheduled, the FBI backed off, as it had found an Israeli firm able and willing to crack the phone.

The tech industry was divided on the case. Apple fought tooth and nail against the FBI, and the company said that America’s founding fathers “would be appalled” by the invasion of privacy. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg supported Apple, as did renegade cyber security developer John McAfee. Microsoft CEO Bill Gates threw his support behind the FBI, saying he supported unlocking the phone in this “specific case.”

With the Five Eyes set to put the squeeze on tech companies again, those in the industry will once again have to choose where they stand on the liberty versus security spectrum.

Economics/Statistics

Bank of England

September 3, 2018 Algora Blog Leave a comment

By Ken Livingston
Ken Livingstone: Decade after 2008 crisis, no changes made, richest get richer, inequality growing
Getty Images

This month marks 10 years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers created the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, but governments have failed to make changes necessary to prevent a similar collapse.

Back in the 1930s, the US government responded to the Great Depression by introducing new laws that made it illegal for the local high street banks, in which we all deposit our own money, to make risky gambling decisions.

If anything, the financial sector is growing more powerful and wealthier than at any time in the past. More and more of the wealth created across the world is going into the pockets of the richest one percent and via methods that mean they seldom pay any tax whatsoever. The result is that across the Western world inequality is getting dramatically worse and the lives of ordinary people are being squeezed and it is the anger of ordinary people responding to this injustice that fuelled the vote to elect Trump as president and to take Britain out of the European Union. To understand how we can cope with this we need to look at the history of how the financial services became the predominant global power.

Over the centuries there have been several unsuccessful attempts to reform the City of London’s financial centre. Following the creation of the Labour Party one of its central planks was its opposition to the City and in particular the independent Bank of England. The leading Labour politician in London, Herbert Morrison, towards the end of WWI said: “Is it not time London faced up to the pretentious buffoonery of the City and wipe it of the municipal map. The City is now a square mile of entrenched reaction, the home of the devilry of modern finance and that journalistic abortion, the stunt press. The City is an administrative anachronism.”

Over the decades that followed the Labour Party continued to pledge to abolish the corporation and include it in the wider London government. Labour’s current shadow chancellor John McDonnell said: “The traditional Labour position was to control the finances of the country in the long term interests of its people.”

In the run up to the 1945 election Labour leader Clement Attlee said: “Over and over again we have seen that there is in this country another power than that which has its seat at Westminster. The City of London, a convenient term for a collection of financial interests, is able to assert itself against the government of the country. Those who control money can pursue a policy at home and abroad contrary to that which has been decided by the people. The first step in the transfer of this power is the conversion of the Bank of England into a state institution.”

When the Bank of England was created in 1694 it was largely to provide credit for building our navy and ushered in a financial revolution which led to the creation of mortgage markets, Lloyds of London insurance, a stock exchange, a financial press and the rapid expansion of overseas trade. But although Attlee’s government did nationalise the bank in 1946, the bank had powerful cards to play, in particular its control over the nation’s money.

Interestingly when Labour lost the 1951 election Winston Churchill’s government did not repeal the nationalisation of the bank. That may well be because Churchill had discovered that during WWII the governor of the Bank of England had transferred a substantial proportion of Britain’s gold reserves to Nazi Germany because we owed them the gold but the governor of the bank never consulted the government before he did this.

Although Attlee had nationalised the bank it continued to be run by the same group of old Etonian merchant bankers. Although the government had acquired powers to issue directions to the bank it admitted in 2010 that ‘Thus far the power has not been used.’

When Harold Wilson’s Labour government was elected in 1964 and discovered that our trade deficit was twice what the outgoing Tories had admitted he gave in to pressure from the bank’s governor to slash most of his spending promises, causing him to say “Who is prime minister of this country Mr Governor, you or me?”

Some chancellors of the Exchequer have been a bit firmer with the bank than Wilson was. When Tory Ken Clarke became chancellor after Britain’s eviction from the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992, he constantly resisted the almost monthly demand from the governor to increase interest rates. Ken represented a constituency with a still substantial manufacturing sector and he knew increasing interest rates may very well benefit the financial sector but usually damaged our manufacturing.

Increasing interest rates have an impact on driving up unemployment and whilst that post-war Attlee government kept interest rates to two percent and unemployment fell to its lowest level in the post-war era, most Tory and Labour governments have given in to the demand for an increase in interest rates which means we have never been able to get our unemployment down to the level of 1951.

Whilst the City continues to be a vastly powerful institution, it was transformed by Thatcher when she pushed through a massive deregulation of the financial sector in 1986. Before then the City was dominated by the old Etonian elite, now it was overwhelmed by foreign financiers descending and turning it into a genuinely more international institution.

When Tony Blair became Labour’s leader he did a deal with the City promising them not to increase regulation of their powers and practices. This therefore made it easier for him to win the next election without opposition from the financial sector funding the Tories. Blair had effectively turned the Labour party into a vehicle the City fell in love with and finally scrapped Labour’s long-term commitment to incorporate the City into the Greater London Council.

Even more bizarre was Blair’s decision to change the balance of votes inside the City. Before Blair came to power nine thousand residents living in the City had one vote each but businesses in the City could vote as well and had twenty-three thousand votes between them. Blair allowed them to increase their votes to thirty-two thousand. The Guardian pointed out that he was giving companies ‘Carte blanche to run the City.’ Now the Bank of China, Moscow’s Narodny bank, KPMG and Goldman Sachs are voting in British elections. Tony Benn was one of a few Labour MPs who opposed this saying “We are considering a corrupt proposal, we are being asked to legalise the buying of votes for political purposes. The City is an offshore island moored in the Thames with a freedom that many other offshore islands would be glad to have.”

After WWII the creation of the Eurodollar market allowed US banks to shift money to London in order to avoid the restrictions placed on them in the USA. Britain made matters worse when it allowed many of its former small colonies to become tax havens. Just one building in the Cayman Islands is the legal headquarters for 12,000 corporations. In just the second quarter of 2009 the UK got net financing of $332 billion from three of its Crown dependencies which had just become offshore tax havens. The island of Jersey had effectively become an extension of the City. The Caymans have become the fifth largest financial centre in the world with over 80,000 companies headquartered there including three quarters of the world’s hedge funds.

Some presidents have tried to tackle this. In 1961, President Kennedy tried to get Congress to pass legislation to “Drive these tax havens out of existence.” His assassination brought that to an end and, half a century on, President Obama’s promise to sponsor a bill to stop tax haven abuse in 2008 was eviscerated by financial lobbyists working in congress and brought no control over all the tax evasion and avoidance. Not surprisingly, no sooner had Obama won the Democratic Party’s nomination for president than he was straight off to Wall Street to promise them he would not limit their powers if he became president.

Here in Britain the government claims that there is only twenty billion pounds worth of tax evasion and avoidance, but some economists estimate that it could be a hundred and twenty billion, and similar tax dodging carries on all around the world. Since Margaret Thatcher deregulated the banking system in 1986 and President Clinton abolished the bank regulation laws in 1998 the world’s been transformed with wealth being shifted all around the planet so that the super-rich and the giant corporations don’t have to pay their share of tax. The consequence of this has been a huge increase in inequality in Britain – it had doubled in the last forty years so that it is now as bad as it was in 1914. Labour’s new leadership under Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell would almost certainly be committed to reforming this appalling and unaccountable concentration of power, so we can expect the financial sector to do everything in its power to stop Jeremy getting into Downing Street.

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Monthly Archives: September 2018

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