by Lee Camp Basic income has been tried successfully countless times. So why the hell isn’t the US government implementing it? This article was originally published by Scheerpost. Here’s how the world should operate in simple terms: A certain country or region or city or township or Hobbit hole tries something in order to help their society or group or hovel – if it works, other places then do it. If it doesn’t work, other places don’t do it. It’s like when you were a kid and you saw your brother slide down the banister and rack himself on the newel post – You then thought, “Maybe that activity is not for me.” But if he didn’t nail himself in the jewels, you probably thought, “I think I’ll try that.”  That’s how the United States government should work, but it doesn’t. For-profit healthcare, corporate personhood, the drug war, funding terrorists overseas that we call “moderate rebels,” etc. – all of these things have been tried, they fu***n’ suck every time, and we keep doing them. The U.S. continually racks itself on the newel post all day long and then responds, “I think I’ll try that again.”  But the reverse should be true also – if a city or country anywhere in the world tries something and it works great, we should do it.  This brings me to Universal Basic Income: everybody receiving money from a government simply for being a citizen, no questions asked. It’s high time we try it in the US and see whether it works. Oh wait, I just remembered – it’s been tried countless times and worked every damn time. How do I know that? …Reading.  As Rutger Bregman details in his book “Utopia For Realists,” UBI has been tried many times — in Canada, Alaska, Africa, the US, Europe, and more. Even backwards lawless lands like North Carolina have experimented with it. There was a study in Britain where 13 men who had lived on the streets for years were given £3,000 each (about $4,500 at the time). Did they use it for hundreds of pricey almond milk lattes, or giant bags of crack, or maybe just wad it up into balls and wipe themselves with them? Nope, turns out they didn’t do any of those things. Eighteen months after receiving the money, over half were no longer homeless, and all of them had improved their lives significantly. As Bregman noted, “Even The Economist had to conclude that ‘the most efficient way to spend money on the homeless might be to give it to them.’” No! We can’t possibly do that! We here in the US have to take the money meant to help the homeless and launder it through all kinds of plans and incentives and bureaucratic digestive tracts that result in one out of every 100 people in extreme poverty receiving a gift certificate for a free basket of breadsticks at Arby’s.  In another program Bregman describes, everybody in a village in Kenya was given $500, about a year’s wages. Several months later, the village had been completely transformed. People had better jobs, sturdier home structures, and healthier kids. “In Namibia figures for malnutrition took a nosedive (from 42% to 10%), as did those for truancy (from 40% to nothing) and crime (down by 42%),” writes Bregman.  So, basically there’s almost a silver bullet to ending poverty and decreasing crime. Well, we better avoid it like the plague. Let’s go back to giving homeless people a can of soup and a pair of mismatched socks. If they collect enough cans and socks, they can build a house out of them The point is basic income has been tested numerous times. By 2010, there were income transfer programs for 110 million families in 45 different countries. In North Carolina, in 2001 the Cherokee were getting $6,000 a year per family thanks to a casino they had built. When that started, for most of those families that money took them out of extreme poverty, and the Cherokee children saw drastic changes. Their crime rates, behavioral issues, and alcohol abuse went down significantly. The money literally changed their lives. (And sure, all casinos are based on drunk people spending money they don’t have on machines they don’t know are rigged in hopes of getting money they will never get. But you can’t get mad at the Cherokee because that’s also the basic definition of capitalism: Drunk people spending money we don’t have on machines we don’t know are rigged in hopes of getting money we’ll never get.)  The University of Manchester summarized many UBI programs in poor African communities. They found, overall, the money was put to good use: Poverty decreased, and while the programs cost less than other so-called solutions, there were myriad long-term benefits that impacted  health and safety. How shocking! The thing we know works seems to work! (Hopefully somebody can study this a little more and find out if it works.) Bregman then writes of NGO workers, “So why send over to Africa expensive white folks in SUVs when we can simply hand over their salaries to the poor?” Great point. At the very least, let’s give away the SUVs.  The latest basic income “test” reported-on last month in Fast Company showed that it worked yet again in Hudson, NY. Despite all of these successful trials, people still argue, “We can’t have basic income because the poor will just use it for beer and cigarettes!” Well, first of all – So what? The world’s on fire. Beer and cigarettes sound like just what the doctor ordered. In fact, I think we’re at the point when we can call alcohol and tobacco survival foods. (I am a longtime supporter of Universal Basic Beer and Cigarettes.)  But perhaps more importantly, as Bregman notes, “A major study by the World Bankdemonstrated that in 82% of all researched cases in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, alcohol and tobacco consumption actually declined.” Declined? Well, then I have to say these poor people have their priorities completely wrong. Another major argument against UBI is, “It’s not fair. Giving people money for doing nothing simply isn’t fair.” My response to that is twofold. First, it actually is fair because the money would go to literally everyone. Hence the word “universal” in the name. (It would be weird to have something called “Universal Basic Income” that only went to a vintage clothing store clerk named Stanley.) Secondly, who told you fairness mattered in life? Who told you fairness has anything to do with our stupid world? There’s no fairness. In the first three seconds you come out of the womb, life is not fair. You’re covered in blood and mucus, some doctor slaps you on the ass, and you’re told your name is something you’ve never even heard before! Completely unfair. You’re just lying there going, “Chet? My name’s CHET?!”  Some people are born rich as sh*t. Some people are born poor as sh*t. Some people are born hot as sh*t. (I mean, not as a baby but… later. You get the point.)  Some people are born in wealthy areas with safe streets, good schools and clean water. Some people are born in poverty with crime-ridden streets, terrible schools, and water that has a crispy film on the top like a cancerous crème brulée. In our society, on average, men get paid more than women, white people get paid more than Black people and Native people, and most everyone gets paid more than ugly people. (I’m not even kidding – ugly people earn up to 15% less per hour in the workplace.) Society. Is. Not. Fair.  So if I say that universal basic income would solve several of society’s problems and someone responds that UBI’s not fair, they’re being completely illogical. It’s like if I said a law against killing endangered species would save the exotic birds, and you retort, “But we can’t do that because it’s not purple.”

Cura Annonae (“care of Annona”) was the term used in ancient Rome, in honour of their goddess Annona, to describe the import and distribution of grain to the residents of the cities of Rome and, after its foundation, Constantinople. Rome imported most of the grain consumed by its population, estimated to number one million people by the second century AD. An important part of this was the grain dole or corn dole,[a] a government program which gave out free or subsidized grain, and later bread, to the poorest residents of the city of Rome. The dole was given to about 200,000 people, and is an early and long-lasting example of a social safety net. A regular and predictable supply of grain and the grain dole were part of the Roman leadership’s strategy of maintaining tranquility among a restive urban population by providing them with what the poet Juvenal sarcastically called “bread and circuses“. In 22 AD, the emperor Tiberius said that the Cura Annonae if neglected would be “the utter ruin of the state”.[1] The most important sources of the grain, mostly durum wheat, were Roman Egypt, North Africa (21st century Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco), and Sicily. The logistics of moving the grain by sea from those places to Rome required many hundreds of ships, some very large, and an extensive system for collecting the grain and distributing it inside Rome itself. The archaeological records of the grain trade are sparse, due to the perishability of grain which has made its detection difficult for archaeologists.[2] It is unknown when the Cura Annonae ended. Some form of it may have persisted as late as the 6th century for Rome, but far less grain was shipped compared to earlier periods; in Constantinople, a reduced form of it lasted as late as the 7th century. Tiberius was correct that the Cura Annonae was tied to the health of the city of Rome: the population of the city of Rome declined precipitously during the last years of the Western Roman Empire. After Rome’s decline, no city in Europe would assemble the transportation network required to feed a million inhabitants until the 19th century. History of the grain dole The city of Rome grew rapidly in the centuries of the Roman Republic and Empire, reaching a population approaching one million in the second century AD.[3] In the early centuries of the Republic (509-287 BC), the Roman government intervened sporadically to distribute free or subsidized grain to its population. Regular distribution began in 123 BC with a grain law proposed by Gaius Gracchus and approved by the Roman popular assembly. Adult male citizens (over 14 years of age) of Rome were entitled to buy at a below-market price five modii, about 33 kilograms (73 lb), of grain monthly. Approximately 40,000 adult males were eligible for the grain. In 62 and 58 BC the number of Romans eligible for grain was expanded and grain became free to its recipients. The numbers of those receiving free or subsidized grain expanded to an estimated 320,000 before being reduced to 150,000 by Julius Caesar and then set at 200,000 by Augustus Caesar, a number that remained more or less stable until near the end of the Western Roman Empire.[4][5] In the 3rd century AD, the dole of grain was replaced by bread, probably during the reign of Septimius Severus (193-211 AD). Severus also began providing olive oil to residents of Rome, and later the emperor Aurelian (270-275) ordered the distribution of wineand pork.[6] The doles of bread, olive oil, wine, and pork apparently continued until near the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD, although the decline in the population of the city of Rome reduced the quantities of food required.[7] The dole in the early Roman Empire is estimated to account for 15 to 33 percent of the total grain imported and consumed in Rome.[8] Supply By the late 200s BC, grain was being shipped to the city of Rome from Sicily and Sardinia. In the first century BC, the three major sources of wheat were Sardinia, Sicily, and North Africa, i.e. the region centered on the ancient city of Carthage, present day Tunisia. With the incorporation of Egypt into the Roman empire and the rule of the emperor Augustus (27 BC – AD 14), Egypt became the main source of supply of grain for Rome.[9] By the 70s, the historian Josephus was claiming that Africa fed Rome for eight months of the year and Egypt only four. Although that statement may ignore grain from Sicily, and overestimate the importance of Africa, there is little doubt among historians that Africa and Egypt were the most important sources of grain for Rome.[10] To help ensure that the grain supply would be adequate for Rome, in the second century BC, Gracchus settled 6,000 colonists near Carthage, giving them about 25 hectares (62 acres) each to grow grain.[11] Grain made into bread was, by far, the most important element in the Roman diet. Several scholars have attempted to compute the total amount of grain needed to supply the city of Rome. Rickman estimated that Rome needed 40 million modii (272,000 tonnes) of grain per year to feed its population.[12] Erdkamp estimated that the amount needed would be at least 150,000 tonnes, calculating that each resident of the city consumed 200 kilograms (440 lb) of grain per year.[13] The total population of Rome assumed in calculating these estimates was between 750,000 and one million people. David Mattingly and Gregory Aldrete[14] estimated the amount of imported grain at 237,000 tonnes for 1 million inhabitants;[15] This amount of grain would provide 2,326 calories daily per person not including other foods such as meats, seafood, fruit, legumes, vegetable and dairy. The Historia Augusta, states that Severus left 27 million modii in storage, enough for 800,000 inhabitants at 225 kilograms (496 lb) of bread per person per annum.[16] Read more here: Cura Annonae

by F. William Engdahl via William Engdahl

Image: Pope Francis in Colombo Author: Prasanna Welangoda License: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license License Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pope_Francis_in_Colombo.jpg

Holy Moly! The most globalist and interventionist Pope since the Crusades of the 12th Century has formalized an alliance with the largest figures in global finance led by none other than that noble banking family, Rothschild. The new alliance is a joint venture they call “Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican.” The venture is one of the more cynical and given the actors, most dangerous frauds being promoted since Davos WEF guru and Henry Kissinger protégé, Klaus Schwab, began to promote the Great Reset of the world capitalist order. What and is behind this so-called Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican?

On their website they proclaim in a typical UN doublespeak, “The Council for Inclusive Capitalism is a movement of the world’s business and public sector leaders who are working to build a more inclusive, sustainable, and trusted economic system that addresses the needs of our people and the planet.” A more sustainable, trusted economic system? Doesn’t that sound like the infamous UN Agenda 21 and its Agenda 2030 daughter, the globalist master plan? They then claim, “Inclusive Capitalism is fundamentally about creating long-term value for all stakeholders – businesses, investors, employees, customers, governments and communities.”

They continue, “Council members make actionable commitments aligned with the World Economic Forum International Business Council’s Pillars for sustainable value creation—People, Planet, Principles of Governance, and Prosperity—and that advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.”

In announcing the deal with the Vatican, Lynn Forester de Rothschild declared, “This Council will follow the warning from Pope Francis to listen to ‘the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor’ and answer society’s demands for a more equitable and sustainable model of growth.”

Their reference to Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum is no accident. The group is yet another front group in what is becoming a globalist bum’s rush to try to convince a skeptical world that the same people who created the post-1945 model of IMF-led globalization and giga-corporate entities more powerful than governments, destroying traditional agriculture in favor of toxic agribusiness, dismantling living standards in industrialized countries to flee to cheap labor countries like Mexico or China, will now lead the effort to correct all their abuses? We are being naïve if we swallow this.

Rothschild and pals

First off it is useful to see who are the “inclusive” capitalists joining forces with the Pope and Vatican. The founder is a lady who carries the name Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild. She is the wife of the 90-year old retired mega-billionaire head of London’s NM Rothschilds Bank, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild. Lady Lynn however is from “commoner” roots, born into a US working class family in New Jersey whose father, as she tells, worked two jobs to put her and her brothers through law and medical schools. She seemed to have had some influential mentors, as she went to Wall Street then to telecoms including Motorola and made reported tens of millions before hooking up with Sir Evelyn and his reported $20 billion in assets. Reports have it that Henry Kissinger played a personal role in encouraging the Transatlantic union of the two.

Lady Lynn is interesting as well beyond her famous husband. According to the list of names of those who flew on the private jet of convicted child sex trafficker and reported Mossad operative Jeffrey Epstein, one name that appears is “de Rothschild, Lynn Forester.”

It is interesting to note, that the same Lynn Forester in 1991, before she took Sir Evelyn as her husband, generously let a British friend have full use of one of Lynn’s Manhattan apartment properties, following the apparent murder of the woman’s father, British media tycoon and Mossad agent, Robert Maxwell. The British friend of Lynn, Ghislaine Maxwell, today is awaiting trial for complicity in child sex trafficking as the partner of Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell reportedly maintained the Manhattan address of Lady Lynn until very recently to register a bizarre non-profit called Terramar that she and Epstein set up in 2012, allegedly aimed at saving our oceans. When Epstein was arrested she quickly dissolved the non-profit. One of the donors to Ghislaine’s TerraMar was something called the Clinton Foundation, which leads to the next friend.

Lady Lynn has another long-time friend named Hillary Clinton, whose husband, Bill, was also logged on Epstein’s Lolita Express private jet, around two dozen times. Lynn and her new husband, Sir Evelyn, in fact were so close to the Clintons that in 2000 the Rothschild newlyweds spent part of their honeymoon as guests at the White House of Mr and Mrs Clinton. Lady Lynn after that became a major fund-raiser in 2008 and again 2016 for a possible Hillary bid for President, called a “bundler.” She also advised Hillary on her economic program, a free market one based on Adam Smith as she described it in an interview once.

Lady Lynn’s “Guardians”

The Rothschild venture with the Vatican at this point, in addition to co-founder Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, includes hand-picked money moguls and their select foundations who pompously call themselves the “Guardians.” That’s a term sounding more like a South Side Chicago gang or some kind of mafia overlords. They call themselves the moral guardians, together now with their new friends at the Vatican, for reform of capitalism.

The Guardian member list includes Rajiv Shah, the CEO of the Rockefeller Foundation, and former partner of the Gates Foundation’s AGRA scam to introduce GMO seeds in Africa. The Rockefeller Foundation has been involved in promoting a pandemic “lockdown” since 2010, and is a core part of the WEF Great Reset agenda. He just released a Rockefeller report, Reset the Table: Meeting the Moment to Transform the US Food System.

Rothschild’s Guardians also include Darren Walker the CEO of the Ford Foundation. Those two foundations, Ford and Rockefeller, have done more to shape an imperial American foreign policy than even the US State Department or CIA, including the funding of the failed Green Revolution in India and Mexico, and the creation by Rockefeller funds of GMO crops.

The head of DuPont, a GMO giant and chemicals group is another Guardian as well as scandal-ridden vaccine and drug companies, Merck and Johnson & Johnson. Merck lied about the risks of its arthritis drug Vioxx until more than 55,000 users died of heart attacks. Johnson & Johnson has been involved in numerous frauds in recent years including around negative effects of its anti-psychotic drug Risperdal, illegal presence of cancer-causing asbestos in its baby powder, and potentially thousands of legal actions for its role as a leading supplier of the opioid in Purdue Pharma’s deadly prescription painkiller OxyContin.

Other Guardians include CEOs of Visa, Mastercard, Bank of America, Allianz insurance, BP. In 2016 Visa along with USAID were behind the catastrophic Modi experiment to introduce a cashless economy in India.

Notable also is Guardian Mark Carney, former Bank of England head and also advocate of cashless digital central bank currencies to replace the dollar. Carney is now United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance.

Carney is also a Board member of the Davos World Economic Forum, the public promoter of the Global Reset of capitalism to impose the dystopian Agenda 2030 “sustainable” economy. In fact several of Rothschild’s Guardians are on the WEF Board, including billionaire Marc Benioff, founder of cloud computing Salesforce, and OECD head Angel Gurria. And ex-Credit Suisse CEO, Tidjane Thiam is on the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum.

Other Guardians of the inclusive capitalism transformation include the head of Bank of America, which bank was sued by the US Government for fraud connected with the 2008 US subprime mortgage crisis, as well as for laundering money for the deadly Mexican drug cartels and Russian organized crime. The select Guardian list also includes Marcie Frost, the controversial head of CalPERS, the huge fraud-ridden California state pension fund managing over $360 billion.

The head of State Street Corporation, one of the world’s largest asset management companies with US$3.1 trillion under management, is another Guardian. In January 2020 State Street announced it would vote against directors of companies in major stock indices that do not meet targets for environmental, social and governance changes. This is what is called Green Investing, as part of so-called Socially Responsible Investing. The WEF strategy, pushed also by WEF board members like Larry Fink of BlackRock, reward companies that they deem “socially responsible.” This is the key to the inclusive capitalism agenda of not just Rothschild’s inclusive capitalism Guardians, but also the WEF.

Their website claims that the Guardians manage more than $10.5 trillion dollars and control companies that employ 200 million workers. Now a brief look at their new Vatican partner.

Vatican Morals?

Ironically, or maybe not, Pope Francis, the partner chosen to give Rothschild’s group of mega-capitalists “moral” credibility, is himself embroiled in what could be the largest financial scandals, fraud and misuse of church funds in the modern history of the Vatican. That, despite the fact Pope Francis declared as new Pope in 2013, one of his main tasks would be to clean up the scandal-ridden Vatican finances. That has hardly taken place even after more than six years. Some Vatican observers even claim the financial corruption has worsened.

The unravelling scandal revolves around now-disgraced Cardinal Angelo Becciu who until 2018 was de facto chief-of-staff to the Pope and regular confidante. Becciu was Substitute for General Affairs in the Secretariat of State, a key position in the Roman Curia until June, 2018 when the pope elevated him to Cardinal, ironically enough, responsible for the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Becciu, clearly no saint, was able to invest hundreds of millions even billions over years of Church funds, including donations for the poor in Peter’s Pence, into projects he chose with a former banker from Credit Suisse. Projects included €150 million share in a luxury London real estate complex and $1.1 million into a film, Rocketman, about the life of Elton John. That comes to light as the ongoing Vatican child sex scandals caused Pope Francis to defrock Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, the first Cardinal to fall in the Church’s deep sexual abuse charges.

Italian press reports that the Pope knew about the dubious investments of Becciu and even praised them before the depth of the scandals broke. In November, 2020 Italian police raided the residence of Becciu’s former Vatican accountant and found €600,000 in cash and evidence the Vatican employee received $15 million in fake invoicing over years.

With a background like this, the new Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican of Lynn de Rothschild warrants close scrutiny as they clearly plan big things along with Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum to “reform” the world economy, and it won’t be nice or moral we can be sure.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

The emergence and acceptance of Modern Monetary Theory has turned our economic system upside down.Skeptics of its substance and sustainability have been brushed aside temporarily but expect the MMT experiment to collapse and end in ruin. To us that believe in old school economics, debt matters and is tied directly to interest rates and inflation. Central banks across the world claim the lack of inflation is the key force driving their QE policy and permitting it to continue, however, the moment inflation begins to take root much of their flexibility will be lost. This translates into governments being forced to pay higher interest rates on their debt.

With America’s national debt now blowing past 29 trillion dollars, it is important to keep the numbers in perspective. Nothing is as sobering as looking at future budgets. Those of us rooted in the tried and true economics relied upon in the past are worried. For years the argument that “This Time Is Different” has flourished but history shows that periods of rapid credit expansion always end the same way and that is in default. This also underlines the reality that any claims Washington makes about the budget deficit being under control is a total lie.

Click (Here) To View National Debt Clock

America is not alone in spending far more than it takes in and running a deficit. This does not make it right or mean that it is sustainable. Much of our so-called economic growth is the result of government spending feeding into the GDP. This has created a false economic script and like a Ponzi scheme, it has a deep relationship to fraud.

Global debt has surged since 2008, to levels that should frighten any sane investor because debt has always had consequences. Much of the massive debt load hanging above our heads in 2008 has not gone away it has merely been transferred to the public sector where those in charge of such things feel it is more benign. A series of off-book and backdoor transactions by those in charge has transferred the burden of loss from the banks onto the shoulders of the people, however, shifting the liability from one sector to another does not alleviate the problem.

When the 2018 financial year budget was first unveiled it was projected to be $440 billion. An under-reported and unnoticed later report painted a far bleaker picture. The report titled the “Mid-Session Review” forecast the deficit much higher than originally predicted. The newer report predicted the deficit would come in at $890 billion which is more than double what they predicted in March of 2017.

Such a miss should bring up the question of whether the discrepancy in the 2018 budget is an outlier or a sign of incompetence. This is especially troubling because what was projected as a total budget deficit of $526 billion for the 2019 Fiscal Year was later revised to a staggering $1.085 trillion. Not only should the sheer size of these numbers trouble us but we should remember that until recently some Washington optimists were forecasting that deficits would begin to decline in 2020 and that we would even have a small surplus of 16 billion in 2026. Since then, the wild spending those in charge have justified due to Covid-19 has blown the lid off that glimmer of hope and replaced it with more trillion-dollar deficits going forward.

Back then, the summary that began on page one of the Mid-Session Review came across as a promotional piece using terms like MAGAnomicics. It praised and touted the Trump administration for its vision and great work. This is a time when it would be wise to remember numbers don’t lie but the people using them do. That report is an example of how to re-frame a colossal train wreck into something more palatable. The report even went so far as to assure us that the deficit would fall to 1.4 percent of the GDP in 2028, from what was then 4.4 percent.

As a result of the American economy having survived with little effect what was years ago was described as a “financial cliff” the American people have become emboldened and now enjoy a false sense of security. Today instead of dire warnings we hear news from Washington and the media about how the stock market continues to push into new territory and all is well.

In 2019, National Debt Hit 23 Not 12 Trillion dollars

The chart to the right predicted that by 2019 the national debt would top 12 trillion dollars, instead it hit 23 trillion. Projections made by the government or any group predicting budgets based on events that may or may not happen at some future date are simply predictions and not fact. This means that such numbers are totally unreliable. The ugly truth many people ignore is that starting in 2018 entitlements became the driving force that will carry the deficit higher and higher into nosebleed territory. Even though we have seen deficits reach unprecedented levels the deficits in our future will be dramatically worse.

It isvery disturbing that so many people have forgotten or never taken the time to learn recent financial history. By recent, I’m referring to the last fifty to one hundred years. The path that Fed Chairman Paul Volcker set right decades ago has again become unsustainable and many people will be shocked when this reality hits. Do not underestimate the value of insight gained from decades of economic perspective. It tells us the economy of today is far different from the way things have always been.

Back in September of 2012, I wrote an article reflecting on how the economy of today had been greatly shaped by the actions that took place starting around 1979. Interest rates, inflation, and debt do matter and are more significant than most people realize. Rewarding savers and placing a value on the allocation of financial assets is important. It should be noted that many Americans living today were not even born or too young to appreciate the historical importance and ramifications of the events that took place back then. The impact of higher interest rates had a massive positive impact on corralling the growth of both credit and debt. It acted as a crucial reset to the economy which lasted for decades. Below is a copy of that article.

A Time For Action, 1980?

In his book “A Time For Action” written in 1980 William Simon, a former Secretary of the Treasury tells how he was “frightened and angry”. In short, he sounded the trumpet about how he saw the country was heading down the wrong path. William Simon (1927 – 2000) was a businessman and a philanthropist. He became the Secretary of the Treasury on May 8, 1974, during the Nixon administration, and was reappointed by President Ford and served until 1977.

I recently picked up a copy of the book that I had read decades ago and while re-reading it I reflected on and tried to evaluate the events that brought us to today. As often the future is unpredictable, looking back, it is hard to imagine how we have made it this long without finding long-term solutions and addressing the concerns that Simon wrote about so many years ago. Back then it was about billions of dollars of debt, today it is about trillions of dollars. It appears that something has gone very wrong.

Do Not Underestimate The Importance Of The Reset By Paul Volcker In 1980

By the end of the 70s inflation started to soar. Only by taking interest rates to nosebleed levels was then-Fed Chairman Paul Volcker able to bring inflation back under control. Paul Volcker, a Democrat was appointed as Federal Reserve chairmanby President Carter and reappointed by President Reagan. Volcker is widely credited with ending the stagflation crisis where inflation peaked at 13.5% in 1981. He did this by raising the fed fund rate which averaged 11.2% in 1979 to 20% in June of 1981. This caused the prime rate to hit 21.5% and slammed the economy into a brick wall. This also affected and shaped the level of interest rates for decades.

Rates Today Are Ready To Fall Off The Chart!

This action and the increased interest rates in the following years are credited by many to have caused Congress and the President to eventually balance the budget and bring back some sense of fiscal integrity and price stability to America. As the debt from the Vietnam war and soaring oil prices became institutionalized we moved on. Interest rates slowly dropped and the budget came under control. In recent years spending has again started to grow and at the same time taxes have been cut. This has slowly occurred over years and has been ingrained in the system.

In 2012, with our debt at 23 trillion and growing the path has again become unsustainable and many people will be shocked when reality hits. As our debt climbs some Americans feel just as frightened and angry as Simon did so many years ago. America has kicked the can down the road, failing time and time again to face the tough decisions. Part of the problem is the amount of debt has grown so large that we can no longer imagine or put a face on it. Until now, a series of different events have delayed the day of reckoning that will eventually arrive.Many of us see it coming, but the one thing we can bank on is that when it arrives most people will be caught totally off guard.

Summary of the current situation

Today we stand at the abyss, yet no one sees or feels threatened by a “financial cliff.” Insane spending has become the new normal. Who would have thought it would come to this? The updated revisions of the past have been washed away and replaced with more numbers, larger numbers. What we are witnessing today is insane. It is time to revisit the issue of how interest rates, inflation, and debt all come together. While this is not what those in charge want, it will happen. Simply put, there will be a reckoning, this time is not different.

by Thierry Meyssan via Voltaire Net

COP26 is an entertaining show, designed to divert the public’s attention from what is going on. The IPCC, the COP’s committee of climate experts, does not predict the apocalypse to deaf governments, but provides them with a discourse to justify their political ambitions. Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, who are resolutely hostile to the financial projects of the COPs, have refused to attend, while the big bankers are talking about 100 billion dollars of investment.

James Bond “usually arrives at the climax of his highly lucrative films strapped to a doomsday device, desperately trying to figure out which coloured wire to pull to turn it off, while a red digital clock mercilessly sounds a blast that will end human life as we know it (…) We’re pretty much at the end of the road. ) We are in much the same position, my fellow world leaders, as James Bond is today – except the tragedy is that this is not a film and the doomsday device is real,” Boris Johnson told the COP26 podium with a straight face.

« UN Climate Change Conferences » are always accompanied by apocalyptic rhetoric, but never result in quantifiable and verifiable commitments. They only result in promises signed with great fanfare, but always couched in the conditional.

The conference currently taking place in Glasgow, UK, from October 31 to November 12 2021, is no exception. It began with a spectacular video of a dinosaur announcing the possible extinction of the human species at the UN General Assembly and continued with a keynote speech by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on what James Bond would do about the climate challenge. The drama continued on the streets with a demonstration led by Greta Thunberg to declare all the world’s governments illegitimate and to denounce the “failure” of the conference which has only just begun.

The political leaders who have called for saving humanity from an imminent end are the same ones who are investing billions of dollars in nuclear weapons capable of wiping human life off the planet [1].

The least we can say is that this conference is quality entertainment for the world’s spectators, not a diplomatic meeting to reduce greenhouse gas production. So what is the reality behind this circus and why are all the UN member states taking part?

The geophysicist Milutin Milanković (1879-1958) thought of climate variations as a function of changes in the earth’s orbit and the planet’s inclination. After being ridiculed during his lifetime, his theory is an authoritative explanation of paleoclimate variations. It could also explain the smaller-scale changes of recent years.

« GLOBAL WARMING »

To answer these questions, we first need to get rid of some erroneous beliefs about ’global warming’.

We wrongly ’believe’ that ’global warming’ threatens the survival of our species. The climate has always changed, not in a linear way, but in cycles. The Earth was warmer seven centuries ago than it is today. Here in France, the glaciers in the Alps were smaller than they are today and there were wild camels in Provence. Some of our coasts were further out to sea than they are today, but others were further back, etc.

We have seen that the warming of the climate in Europe corresponds to the industrial revolution. This is why we ’believe’ that the climate changes we are witnessing have been accelerated by the industrial production of greenhouse gases over the last two centuries. This is possible, but concomitance is not causality. There are other hypotheses, including that of the Yougoslavian geophysicist Milutin Milanković based on variations in the Earth’s orbit (eccentricity, obliquity and precession of the equinoxes).

By creating the IPCC, Margaret Thatcher intended to take the lead in a new industrial revolution based on oil and nuclear power. In practice, her policy was to close down much of British industry and to financialise its economy; this led to COP26 and the use of the rhetoric of global warming to justify the indebtedness of the Third World to the City.

MARGARET THATCHER’S CREATION OF THE IPCC

Let’s turn to the UN conferences. In 1988, Canadian and British Prime Ministers Brian Mulroney and Margaret Thatcher convinced their partners (the United States, France, Germany and Italy) to fund an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organisation. Shortly afterwards, Mrs Thatcher claimed that greenhouse gases, the ozone hole and acid rain required intergovernmental responses [2]. This rhetoric masked political objectives. It was, as her advisers would confirm, to put an end to the coal miners’ unions and to promote a new industrial revolution, based on North Sea oil and nuclear power [«Le prétexte climatique», seconde partie : « 1982-1996 : L’écologie de marché », par Thierry Meyssan, Оdnako (Russie) , Réseau Voltaire, 22 avril 2010.]].

The IPCC is not a learned academy of climate scientists at all, but as its name suggests an ’intergovernmental group’. It does not discuss climate science, but climate policy. The vast majority of its members are not scientists, but diplomats. The climate experts who sit on the panel are not there as scientists, but as experts in their government delegation, i.e. as civil servants. All their public interventions are controlled by their government. It is therefore preposterous to speak of a “scientific” consensus when referring to the political consensus that prevails in this assembly. This is not to understand the functioning of intergovernmental institutions.

Contrary to what Greta Thunberg thinks, the IPCC does not predict the apocalypse to deaf governments. It faithfully obeys them and, together with climate scientists, develops a rhetoric to justify policy changes that normal people would otherwise refuse.

The work of the IPCC is the basis for an annual ’Conference of the Parties’ (COP) to the ’United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’ (UNFCCC). The 26th edition is being held in Glasgow (COP26). In its first report, in 1990, the IPCC considered an unambiguous increase in the greenhouse effect “within the next few decades or more” as “unlikely”. But what was true in 1990 has become heretical in 2021.

The first conferences were devoted to informing and raising public awareness of climate change. It was clear to everyone that some regions would become uninhabitable and that some populations would have to move. It was only over time that people began to say that the changes would become so great that they could threaten the survival of the entire human race. This change in discourse was not due to a sudden scientific discovery that challenged a one-day truth, but to the changing needs of governments.

Consumer society is on the brink: you can’t sell people what they already have. If industries collapse, jobs disappear and governments are toppled. There is only one way to avoid this: for example, in the late 1990s, most Western companies were computerised. It became impossible to sell computers. So the hoax of the century was propagated: the “Y2K bug”. All computers were going to crash on January 1, 2000 at 00:00. Everyone bought computers and software. Of course, no plane crashed, no lift stopped, no computer crashed. But Silicon Valley was saved and people were now going to invest in consumer computers. Today the solution is the “energy transition”. For example: you can’t sell several cars to the same consumer, but you can exchange your petrol car for an electric one. Of course, electricity is usually made with oil and requires batteries that cannot be recycled. In the end, with the energy transition, the planet will be more polluted than before. But this is not something to think about.

The theory of the human origin of global warming ensures the personal wealth of former Vice President Al Gore, who is its main lobbyist. At the end of the 1990s, the same Al Gore created the Y2K hoax. He made Bill Gates’ fortune and developed Silicon Valley.

THE CLIMATE EXCHANGE, THE ONLY ADVANCE OF THE COP

During President Bill Clinton’s term, the US took control of the IPCC so that it pushed for the Kyoto Protocol (COP3) but never signed it. The Vice President, Al Gore, was in charge of US energy policy. He approved the war in Kosovo in order to build a trans-Balkan pipeline. But while the Protocol was originally intended to limit emissions of five greenhouse gases and three chlorofluorocarbons, he pushed for the creation of CO2 emission rights for industries and forgot about the other gases. After leaving the White House, he founded the Chicago Climate Exchange with bankers from Goldman Sachs and funding from Blackrock. As the US never signed the Kyoto Protocol, it did not work well. So he opened branches on the other four continents, which grew rapidly. Today, he receives a fee for each trade in CO2 emission rights. To develop his business, he became a climate activist and produced the film An Inconvenient Truth. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, although this work is more about advertising his stock exchange than science [3].

For the record, the statutes of the Climate Exchange were drafted by a young, unknown lawyer, Barack Obama. Soon afterwards he entered politics in Chicago and was suddenly elected President of the United States four years later. Once in the White House, Barack Obama would develop a plan to use climate hysteria to reform the global financial system. This is the plan that will be adopted by COP21 in Paris and should be implemented by COP26 in Glasgow.

It is the deal of the century: to implement the COP26 resolutions, states will have to adapt their industry and go into debt. Global warming may be man-made, but the looting of economies is certain.
Global Banking & Finance Review

THE NEXT COP ACHIEVEMENT: GREENING FINANCE

This one is being organised by the UK with the help of Italy. Four Brits are in charge: two former ministers, Alok Sharma (Economy, Industry and Industrial Strategy) and Anne-Marie Trevelyan (International Development), a former governor of the UK and Canadian banks, Mark Carney, and a lobbyist, Nigel Topping. None of these people know anything about climate science. All of them, however, have plans to reform the Bretton Woods institutions (the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank).

It is because they are opposed to this financial project and not at all to the fight against air pollution that the Russian and Chinese presidents, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, are not participating in this conference.

The COP26 website states:
it is about “Mobilising finance. To meet our targets, developed countries must deliver on their promise to mobilise at least $100 billion in climate finance. The international financial institutions must play their part and we must work to unlock the trillions in private and public sector finance needed to ensure global net zero.

What is expected to be signed off at the end of the conference is the creation of a body comprising

• the Asian Development Bank
• the African Development Bank
• Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
• the Caribbean Development Bank
• the European Investment Bank
• European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
• Inter-American Development and Investment Bank
• Islamic Development Bank
• the World Bank
• and 450 major companies
  to mobilise this money.

It is important to understand that it is no longer possible to indebt poor countries (and therefore to keep them on a leash) because the World Bank and especially the IMF are no longer credible. All governments now know that grants and loans from international institutions come with drastic conditions that make their countries vulnerable; that when the time comes to pay back, they will no longer own anything.

With COP26, the bankers will be able to lend money to save humanity and, in the process, become the owners of the countries whose leaders have trusted them [4]..

Translation
Roger Lagassé

[1] « Ils défendent le climat tout en préparant la fin du monde », par Manlio Dinucci, Traduction Marie-Ange Patrizio, Il Manifesto (Italie) , Réseau Voltaire, 2 novembre 2021.

[2] Speech to the Royal Society, Margaret Thatcher, Septembre 27, 1988.

[3] “1997-2010: Financial Ecology”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Оdnako (Russia) , Voltaire Network, 7 December 2015.

[4] « Les nouvelles armes financières de l’Occident », par Manlio Dinucci, Traduction Marie-Ange Patrizio, Il Manifesto (Italie) , Réseau Voltaire, 9 novembre 2021.

Here is the rendering to scale of the Boeing 757 hitting the Pentagon:

Smoke billows from the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Photo: AFP / Stephen Jaffe

Below is the result of the impact, Boeing 757’s exit out of the Pentagon’s first row of concrete offices (back of the impact entry point).

Can a Boeing 757, essentially a hollow aluminum tube, cut through massive steel columns, wings and all, without even slowing down? If you haven’t seriously thought about where did the planes disappear,  the answer is: no real planes were involved in 9/11 as Ace Baker convincingly demonstrated in his 2012 film 9/11 The Great American Psy-Opera:

 

Part 7 – 8:

Part 6 – 8:

For a shorter version, see the 18-minute collation of the most telling excerpts of the series, made by Laurent Guyénot :

by Yves Smith via Naked Capitalism

Earlier this week, the Financial Times posted a comment by famed investor George Soros, Investors in Xi’s China face a rude awakening. This article would have been very useful if it had stuck to its headline warning, which is more or less along the lines that Xi has made very clear that he’s not going to allow investors, above all foreign investors, to exercise more influence in Chinese business and society.

However, Soros then goes on in a vein that the article subhead accurately summarizes: “The leader’s crackdown on private enterprise shows he does not understand the market economy.” Oh, contraire, China’s success has been built on learning from the mistakes of other Asian countries that developed quickly but then fell prey to financialization, particularly Japan, and had difficulties making the transition from being export and investment led to consumption led.

In particularly, Soros is cheesed off at Xi restricting foreign investment, particularly in stocks. First, China is a capital exporter. It doesn’t need foreign funds. Second, despite the Anglopshere idealization of public stock markets, China doesn’t need one either, although getting rid of the one it has now would be messy and very disruptive.

As Amar Bhide pointed out in a landmark Harvard Business Review article, Efficient Markets, Deficient Governance, anonymous, freely traded shares inherently lead to poor governance. Public companies cannot share critical business information that investors need to make informed decisions. Transient shareholders also lack the motivation and means to improve the performance of the companies they’ve invested in. Bhide has pointed out in other venues that while all other types of investments, such as derivatives and venture capital, existed in pre-modern times, arms length share trading did not because stock is a legally vague and weak promise.

And despite the idealization of share ownership, it’s almost entirely divorced from the funding of business. The most important source for new investment is retained earnings. Second is borrowing. Share sales are a distant third. The overwhelming majority of stock trading is shuffling paper among investors.

The most charitable interpretation of Soros’ position is that he suffers from a China version of the saying attributed to Charles Wilson, “What’s good for GM is good for America,” which here becomes, “What’s good for people like me of course is good for China.” Except as Michael Hudson explains, it isn’t.

Below are sections of the Soros article, with Hudson’s remarks in bold italics:

Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has collided with economic reality. His crackdown on private enterprise [what the classical economists called rent-seeking and unearned income] has been a significant drag on the economy [meaning the economy’s polarization concentrating wealth and income in the hands of the richest One Percent]. The most vulnerable sector is real estate, particularly housing. China has enjoyed an extended property boom over the past two decades, but that is now coming to an end. Evergrande, the largest real estate company, is over-indebted and in danger of default. This could cause a crash. [That’s just what is needed.]

….One of the reasons why middle-class families are unwilling to have more than one child is that they want to make sure that their children will have a bright future. [This is true of every advanced nation today. It is most extreme in the neoliberalized countries, e.g., the Baltics and Ukraine – Soros’s poster countries.]

We have skipped over Xi’s crackdown on the private tutoring industry…as if tutoring is essential to providing for security and an adequate standard of living for the next generation. How about strong public education, including remedial and advanced tracks, and vocational/technical training for those not bound to universities?

Back to Soros and Hudson:

Xi does not understand how markets operate [meaning that he rejects rapacious rent-seeking, exploitative free-for-all, and shapes markets to serve overall prosperity for China’s 99 Percent]. As a consequence, the sell-off was allowed to go too far [by which he means, too far to maintain the dominance of the One Percent; it seeks to reverse economic polarization, not intensify it]. It began to hurt China’s objectives in the world [meaning America’s neoliberal objectives for how it had hoped to make money for itself off China].

Recognising this, Chinese financial authorities have gone out of their way to reassure foreign investors and markets have responded with a powerful rally. But that is a deception. Xi regards all Chinese companies as instruments of a one-party state…

Pension fund managers allocate their assets in ways that are closely aligned with the benchmarks against which their performance is measured. [The tragedy of financializing pensions is that fund managers are rated on making money financially – in ways that hurt the industrial economy by promoting financial engineering instead of industrial engineering.]

Almost all of them claim that they factor environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) standards into their investment decisions. [At least, that’s what their public relations advisors advertise. Exxon claims to be cleaning up the environment by expanding offshore oil drilling in Guyana, etc. As for “social standards,” the neoliberal mantra is trickle-down economics: by making our stock prices rise, by stock buybacks and higher dividend payouts, we are helping wage-earners earn a pension, even though we are offshoring and de-industrializing the economy, de-unionizing it and “freeing” the economy from consumer and workplace protection laws.]

….The US Congress should pass a bipartisan bill explicitly requiring that asset managers invest only in companies where actual governance structures are both transparent and aligned with stakeholders. [Wow. Such a bill would block Americans from investing in many American companies whose behavior is not at all aligned with stakeholders. What proportion: 50%? 75%? More?] This rule should obviously apply to the performance benchmarks selected by pensions and other retirement portfolios.

If Congress were to enact these measures, it would give the Securities and Exchange Commission the tools it needs to protect American investors, including those who are unaware of owning Chinese stocks and Chinese shell companies. That would also serve the interests of the US and the wider international community of democracies. [So Mr. Soros wants to block the US from investing in China. That is President Xi’s objective also: China doesn’t need U.S. dollars, and is in fact de-dollarizing.]

There are a lot of reasons to criticize Xi and the Chinese regimes, but combatting foreign influence and a bit late in the game pushing back against high levels of inequality are not among them.

And Soros presents himself as having superior insight into China, and then acts as if an American strike on Chinese public companies would dent them. Good luck with that.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

You can’t have a civilization without civility. We may possess technology that is more advanced than any previous generation of Americans has had, but when it comes to how we treat one another and how we conduct ourselves, we are the worst generation in U.S. history by a very wide margin. We have truly become a “Hollywood culture”, and I don’t mean that in a good way. The average American spends 238 minutes a day watching television, and it is inevitable that putting so much garbage into our minds is going to result in garbage coming out. Most Americans learn how to express themselves by emulating what they see on their screens, and so now we have tens of millions of extremely crude people running around all over the place.

If you spend any time in public at all, you know exactly what I am talking about. Most Americans dress like slobs, act like pigs and endlessly spew profanity wherever they go.

This is something that Mark H. Creech discussed in an article that he published this week…

While at the grocery store this week, a woman was ahead of me in the checkout line using the word, “Mother F&*#@%.” To the left of me, in another line, was a different woman on her cell phone. I could overhear her saying to someone, “F&$#” this, and “F*#@” that. I felt that I was drowning in a cesspool of profanity.

Recently, my wife said she was in the checkout line at Walmart, and a man was using such language without any inhibitions. Not being the kind of person to hold back, Kim said to him, “Sir, would you please not use that language? There are children present.” To which the man defiantly replied, “No!” His companion then backhanded him on the arm and said to, “Cut it out.” That was the end of it.

Sadly, it has gotten to a point where even our national leaders are not afraid to use profanity.

Earlier this week, it was being reported that Kamala Harris used profanity while engaged in a heated discussion about the crisis in Afghanistan…

Vice President Kamala Harris reportedly refused to stand alongside Joe Biden as he addressed the nation on the Afghanistan chaos, allegedly saying “you will not pin this shit on me” despite her massive role in Biden’s US troop withdrawal decision.

Before Biden gave an 18 minute speech to justify his decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan as the Taliban took over the country, Kamala Harris reportedly refused to stand alongside him as he spoke. “You will not pin this shit on me,” Harris reportedly said. However in April, Harris had bragged that she played a key role in Biden’s decision to withdraw, as was reported by Politico. She even confirmed that she was the last person in the room with the President during the major discussion regarding his decision to pull out US troops by September 11.

And profane language that Joe Biden once used about Afghanistan received renewed attention this week because of the drama unfolding in Kabul…

According to Holbrooke, when Biden was asked about America’s obligation to maintain their presence in Afghanistan to protect vulnerable civilians, he scornfully replied by referencing the US exit from southeast Asia in 1973.

‘**** that, we don’t have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.’

Of course foul language is not just limited to one side of the aisle.

Our leaders like to consider themselves the pinnacle of civilization, and they have often criticized the Taliban for tearing down historical statues and forcing women to wear masks.

But over the past year, far more statues have been torn down inside the United States than the Taliban ever dreamed of tearing down, and at this point we are forcing everyone to wear masks.

Critics say that the Taliban does not allow freedom of speech, but when Taliban officials were asked about this they simply pointed out that Facebook is even worse when it comes to freedom of speech.

And they are right.

Critics say that the Taliban treats women horribly, and that is certainly true.

But women are treated shamefully in our nation too. Here is one example…

A creep groped a woman on a Brooklyn street this week — and then pummeled her when she tried to fight back, disturbing new video shows.

The 26-year-old woman was walking at the corner of South 4th Street and Havemeyer Street in Williamsburg around 2:15 a.m. Saturday when a stranger approached from behind and grabbed her buttocks, video released by cops early Tuesday shows.

When the woman attempted to slap the suspect, he socked her in the face multiple times, the clip shows.

And here is another example…

The woman and her boyfriend were on their way to the Chicago Transit Authority Red Line subway at State Street and Jackson Boulevard Saturday night. They were waiting for the elevator at ground level to go down to the platform.

But they never made it. Instead, trouble found them, surrounded them, and attacked them.

They were viciously assaulted by a large gang of teens, and the woman was pummeled so badly that she actually needs plastic surgery…

“I need plastic surgery, because the bones are broke, and still bleeding inside,” the woman said.

The scars and bruising are concealed behind the shades the woman now wears over her eyes. But the pain is deeper.

Murder rates were way up all over the country last year, and they are way up again all over the country this year.

We have become a brutal, violent, blood-soaked country, and that is because we have a brutal, violent, blood-soaked culture.

At one time the U.S. could lecture the rest of the world about morality because we lived in a civilized society. But now we have lost whatever moral high ground we once possessed, and at this point we need the rest of the world to lecture us.

So what is going to happen as the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted on a daily basis continues to steadily disappear?

I am deeply, deeply concerned about our future, and this is a theme that I explored in my new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse”.

We are in a highly advanced state of social decay, and it is getting worse with each passing year.

In recent days, I have heard so much criticism of the Taliban’s culture, and many of those criticisms are right on target.

But our culture is detestable too, and it has become that way because of the choices that we have made as a society.

By Zheng Guichu via Global Times

Brakelights come on as vehicles head out of Los Angeles on the Interstate 10 freeway on May 27. Photo: AFP

Torrential rain in Central China’s Henan Province, typhoon In-fa on the East China Sea, deadly floods in Europe, heatwaves in North America, and severe sandstorms in Mongolia… The world has witnessed plenty of instances of extreme weather in 2021. Mother Nature has warned human kind time and again, in her own ways, that man and nature coexist in the same ecosystem, and that mankind must respect and protect nature, and follow its laws.

In September 2020, China took the initiative to pledge that it will strive to cut carbon dioxide emissions after 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060, otherwise known as the “3060” target. Following China’s announcement, many other countries updated their emission reduction targets with a view to better tackle the climate issue.

However, those with ill intents still claim that China’s “3060” target is not ambitious enough, sensationalizing the notion that “China is the largest greenhouse gas emitter” in a bid to negate China’s emission reduction efforts.

It is the lavish lifestyle of Western countries that has mainly contributed to massive carbon emissions. Perhaps it’s time for the reckoning of their luxury emissions, which are the extra carbon emission generated from luxuries, distinguishable from essential needs.

According to a study by China International Capital Corp, in 2017, household carbon emissions accounted for 60-80 percent of the total emissions in wealthy developed countries. Meanwhile the figure in China is 40 percent, which is only half of the US.

In terms of electricity consumption, industrial production contributed to more than 70 percent of the total power consumption in China, while in the US the figure was less than 30 percent. Per capita, the electricity consumption of US households in 2019 was six times higher than that of Chinese households. According to an article published in 2020 on the Journal of Cleaner Production, a renowned journal on environmental science, per capita, the carbon footprint of the US is 18.1 tons, which is conspicuously higher than the global average of about 5 tons.

These numbers shed light on the high carbon lifestyle of developed countries, particularly the US, which values living in luxury over reducing their emissions for the greater good.

When torrential rain, wildfires hit Mother Earth as a result of climate change, Western countries still use the blame game on China rather than focusing on changing their domestic lavish lifestyles, which are a major contributor to the world’s massive carbon emissions. Graphic: Feng Qingyin/GT

Western countries produce most food waste

If food waste was a country, it would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, said a United Nations report in 2013.

Results of a 2017 UN research showed that European and North American countries, which accounted for less than 20 percent of the global population, were responsible for 60 percent of the global food waste.

Its no wonder that many wealthy Western countries like France, Germany, the UK and the US were among the world’s top 10 producers of food waste, according to statistics from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

Trucks deliver trash at a transfer dtation in Washington DC, the US on July 10, 2018. Photo: AFP

The meat-heavy diet of the Westerners leaves a high carbon footprint. Livestock produce gases like methane, and meat consumption creates much more carbon emissions than eating vegetables or fruits.

As a 2020 study by the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems shows, in Western countries like the US, meat is the largest contributor (56.6 percent) of carbon emissions of an average meal. In contrast, meat only accounts for 36.6 percent of the carbon footprint of an average Chinese meal, according to Beijing Review due to a tendency to consume rice as the staple food.

Clearly, the Western media’s narrative that the Chinese consumption of meat is the main culprit for climate change goes against evidence.

Americans enjoy luxurious housing standards
The US boasts its large territory and low population density. While Americans enjoy the abundance of land, they have also squandered vast amounts of resources.

According to the US Census Bureau, the average living space per person for new single-family US houses surpassed 98 square meters in 2015. Plus, many Americans are used to keeping their air conditioners on 24/7. The bigger their houses, the more air conditioning they need, hence more waste of energy. At the same time, high-carbon household appliances such as coffee machines, ovens, dish washers and dryers are must-haves for lots of American families.
According to the American Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, an ordinary dryer in a US household consumes 1,079 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. This alone is equivalent to the annual power consumption of an average Chinese family.

US’ transportation emissions are strikingly high

The US is a nation on wheels. Traditional models of vehicles like American muscle cars and pick-up trucks, which are famous for their powerful engines and high fuel consumption, are popular in the US. Meanwhile, Chinese roads are increasingly filled with electric vehicles.

Car ownership statistics show that in 2019, Americans have 0.8 vehicles per person, four times higher than that of Chinese. In 2016, 21 percent of American households owned three or more cars, while only 9 percent didn’t have access to a vehicle.

Moreover, the US public transit is troubled by obsolete facilities and few users. It may be surprising in the the US, the No. 1 developed country in the world, that the majority of regional public transit systems are underdeveloped. Issues like the lack of bus stops, long intervals between departure times and safety risks are common.

As a study by the Cato Institute underscores, the nationwide public transit ridership in the US has declined since 2014 and only 5 percent of American passengers now choose public transit to travel. Less than 3 percent of the US population in the 50 largest urban areas commute to work via public transit. Poor public services have pushed more Americans to drive themselves, which leaves a larger carbon footprint behind.

Western playbook all too familiar

Conversely, subways, buses, and other convenient means of public transit are the first choice in most parts of China. In addition, China has the world’s longest high-speed railway network. Powered by electricity, high-speed railway has a lower carbon footprint than most other means of transport, given its comparatively high transport capacity and low emissions per passenger or cargo unit. For example, as early as 2011, the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway service was only 3.64 kilowatt-hours in 100 kilometers per passenger. That is 12 times lower than a commercial passenger flight, eight times lower than a sedan, and three times lower than a mid-sized bus. Considering future advancements in technology, China’s high-speed railway system will see an even lower carbon emission.

Though Western countries live larger carbon footprint lives, they dictate the standards of the carbon footprint and can therefore still control the narrative. The West has played a dominant role in formulating the existing emissions calculation system. This system has yet to provide an effective calculation of luxury emissions, and indirectly allows for a grey area where anti-China powers make false allegations against China.

It’s easy to see that the lifestyle of the Chinese people is much more environmentally friendly than developed nations like the US.

A woman holds a dog in her arms as forest fires approach the village of Pefki on Evia island, Greece on August 8. Greece and Turkey have been battling devastating fires for nearly two weeks as the region suffered its worst heatwave in decades, which experts have linked to climate change. Photo: AFP

According to calculations from a UK-based environmental group in 2007, if everyone on Earth lived like the Americans, the Europeans or the Japanese, it would require 5.6 Earths, 3.9 Earths and 2.9 Earths. But if everyone lived like the Chinese, it would only take 0.9 Earths.

A recent article by a German climate expert, Uta Steinwehr, also points out that the per capita carbon dioxide emissions of China is 7.1 tons, which ranks 48th in the world and is much lower than Western countries. Even though the US obsessively blames China, the American per capita emissions is 16 tons, which is twice China’s number and then some.

There is no denying that China’s carbon emissions have risen in recent years, but this increase came from a quickly developing manufacturing sector. This is an inevitable component of rapid economic development and a by-product of being the world’s factory.

At the same time, a higher quality of life for 1.4 billion people naturally means some increase in carbon emissions. As people in the West love to say, if everyone is equal before God, Chinese people are also entitled to a decent life.

With a first-mover advantage in the Industrial Revolution, leading Western powers achieved modernization within a short period of time. However, this achievement came at the expense of severe damages to the global environment and emissions that catalyzed climate change. Now, these countries suddenly have a conscience and lecture the developing world to produce less carbon emissions. In reality, this is an attempt to cling to their privileges by curbing the development of other countries.

The Western playbook is all too familiar: Act recklessly with no regard for the consequences, then apologize and make up for the mess. Surely, China will not follow this old trick because China knows that clean waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets. More importantly, China has long championed fairness and justice in climate change, particularly the principle of shared but differentiated responsibilities. China has firmly stood for the development interests of developing countries.

Announcing the ambitious “3060” target means China, a developing country with 1.4 billion people, is determined to complete a mission in just three decades what would take developed nations 50 to 60 years. It speaks volumes about the conviction and responsibility of China.

As a verse from Chairman Mao Zedong’s poem goes, “In a peaceful world, young and old share alike warmth and cold.” To foster a community of life for man and nature, solidarity and cooperation are the only choice. At this critical juncture, if the West still makes climate action into a card in geopolitical games, a tool to attack other countries, or an excuse to raise trade barriers, then it’s time for a reckoning in history of not only this old blame game but also these new luxury emissions.

by Tom Fowdy

is a British writer and analyst of politics and international relations with a primary focus on East Asia.

Aerial view of road intersection in Shanghai at night. © Getty Images / Kosamtu

The US, stuck in the ideological stereotype that ‘Communist states can’t innovate,’ has vastly underestimated China’s technological resolve and jumped head first into a contest that is a lot harder to win than Washington believed.

A new study by Harvard’s Growth Lab has found that “the technological level of China’s exports increased through the trade war with the US, according to a new ranking, which predicts the Chinese economy will grow faster than India’s over the next decade.”

It further states that the “complexity of China’s exports” has rapidly caught up with that of the US, from being half that of its rival 20 years ago to a near parity now. The study also suggests China is overcoming the impact of Washington’s tariffs and technology wars against it, an effort by the US which has been relentless, by increasing its high-tech exports to other regions.

Growth Lab manager Tim Cheston is cited by Bloomberg as saying that “Chinese exports are now at the level of having nearly filled all known areas of global products.” Their primary goal now is to “move from taking know-how from across the world, into true innovation,” he adds.

The study comes amid growing pressure from American business leaders and groups to remove tariffs on China, claiming that these have been damaging, a claim which was swiftly dismissed by the White House.

The study’s findings nicely illustrate the predicament the US faces, and why, for that matter, it is so obsessed with blacklisting Chinese firms and attempting to block their rise in high-end technology. However, it is also a sharp indication that those efforts are not yielding results, and will not slow down China’s growth trajectory. What we are seeing now is a phenomenonwhereby China “moves up the global supply chain” through increasing technological prowess, not out of it, as some would hope.

While China is always known for manufacturing and exports, the term ‘Made in China’ has traditionally, albeit misleadingly, represented a cheap, low-end product of a poor quality. But that doesn’t quite capture the fact that not only is such discourse an orientalist stereotype, but undercuts and seemingly misses the transformation taking place in China’s own manufacturing and industrial capabilities over the past two decades.

The ‘what’ that China makes is changing, and this serves to undercut the industries which America traditionally dominates. This is why Washington has responded to the new geopolitical environment with a tidal wave of protectionism, and a new-found appetite for home-grown industrialism.

US President Joe Biden says he wants to “win” the 21st century and ‘own the technologies’ of the future, precisely because it is feared that China’s progress will eventually take that from them. His recent comments concerning cyberattacks came with a mix of bellicosity and condescension, showing how this fear of Chinaincreasingly shapes the national mindset.

As a result, America’s technological war against China has been ferocious. The Biden and Trump administrations have forcibly weaponized the semiconductor supply chain to blacklist hundreds of Chinese technology firms in their bids to prevent these from accessing critical components the US feels it wields advantages in, while others have been slapped with investment bans to prevent US capital reaching them.

The most notable target of all these actions has been Huawei and, in the midst of it all, China has quickly recognized that itmust race to self-sufficiency in semiconductor supplies in order to counter America’s bottlenecks and continue its development. The ability to produce high-end technology is ultimately the key between an advanced economy and a developing one, because it is “top of the value chain” – herein is what America hopes to cut off.

I like to think of South Korea as a model of what China’s economy will ultimately emulate, should it succeed. You have your leading technological conglomerates – Samsung, Hyundai and LG. They all produce sought-after critical semiconductor and chip technology, which is used to produce a range of compelling electronic products which dominate Korea’s economy, including computers, home appliances and smartphones. This creates a circuit of consumption, innovation and high-end production that drives Korea’s economy forwards, allowing it to rapidly become a high-income economy.

As a clear example, China’s semiconductor industry is increasingly overcoming hurdles. China has recently mastered the production of42-, 28- and 14-nm chip nodes, the latter of which is still sufficient to power the vast majority of electronic devices. The first China-made lithography machine is expected to debut later this year, showing they are already on the ‘ladder’ towards catching up to established players, and breaking free from the Dutch manufacturer ASML. As a different example, one should note how China’s own space agency, founded only in 1993, is in the process of leapfrogging NASA by proposing a Moon Base with Russia by the 2030s, as well as a human mission to Mars.

To put it lightly, the US has, arguably, vastly underestimated China’s own technological resolve and jumped head-first into a contest that may be a lot harder than they believe. Finally, one should realise that Chinese civilization was one of the greatest early innovators in human history, establishing many things the west had yet to learn. Only a myriad of ideological and racist stereotypes is blocking the west from recognizing China’s rapid technological advance, and US policies to disrupt it are not yielding results. America might be best focusing on its own capabilities.

Paul Cudenec via: Winter Oak

“The people have woken up – at last!” declared local Gilet Jaune rebel Michelle as she watched the vast crowds assembling on the main square of Montpellier in southern France.

She has been involved with the Yellow Vest movement since the very start of the popular revolt against the Macron regime in November 2018.

Two years ago, in April 2019, another Gilet Jaune told me on the same spot, the Place de la Comédie, that France was witnessing “a turning point in history”.

Despite the vast levels of militarised repression used against the Yellow Vests, not to speak of the relentless propaganda in the mass media, the movement never abandoned the struggle.

Only the “emergency” of the Covid crisis pushed it, more or less, off the streets.

The spirit of revolt has not been very much in evidence in France since March 2020, with the population divided and fearful, as elsewhere.

But now, with the announcement that vaccine passports will be required for cafés, restaurants, leisure centres, shopping malls and trains, something seems to have snapped.

The arguments about viruses and masks and lockdowns now seem less relevant in the face of this chilling assault on the most fundamental of human rights.

Even the jab itself is not really the issue any more, with those who have already had it joining in the protests against the totalitarian laws due to come into place on August 1.

I was impressed by the turn-out for the emergency protest in Montpellier on Wednesday July 14, but Saturday’s numbers were on a completely different scale.

Even the authorities at the Préfecture admitted that there were 5,000 on the streets on a hot Mediterranean afternoon.

The crowd represented a very wide cross-section of the local population. The Gilets Jaunes had already started this process of breaking down the old “left” and “right” political divisions in favour of a broad popular struggle against the power elite.

But the process has now clearly gone a step further, with a new mood of defiant unity that must be striking fear into the hearts of Macron and his cronies, not to speak of Klaus Schwab and the global string-pullers.

The sense of possibility has been increased by the news that the French Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti is under criminal investigation for allleged “conflicts of interest”.

“We don’t want the pass sanitaire!” chanted the thousands in Montpellier.“Macron resign!” “Résistance!” “Liberté!”

It was the same picture everywhere, with massive numbers not just in Paris, but all across France, as this compilation sets out.

The people took to the streets in Aix-en-Provence, Quimper, Annecy, Lyons, Perpignan, Nice, Metz, Lille, Dijon, Caen, Toulouse, Reims, Saint-Brieuc, Pau, Strasbourg, Rouen, La Rochelle, Brest, Mulhouse, Bayonne, Narbonne, Saint-Étienne, Albi, Nîmes and La Réunion.

They protested in Toulon, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Nantes and Rennes. Tear gas was used on protesters at Besançon and demonstrators blocked a main road at Chambéry.

The politics of division seem to be failing as the French people come together to defend the principles of liberté, égalité and fraternité on which their republic is supposed to be founded.

I bumped into a couple of anarchist friends on the protest and also took a leaflet from a group called Arme Révolutionnaire Marxiste.

This condemns the “Apartheid sanitaire” being imposed by the state: “Treated like fearful cattle, ever more controlled, divided and stripped of our freedoms, we are condemned by power to still further exploitation.

“But this time the government’s medicine is not going down, there are more and more of us all the time who understand the reality of this medical mascarade, just as we understand better and better the scam of elections”.

Insisted Gilet Jaune Michelle: “This vaccine passport just can’t happen. We can’t give up”.

P.C.

Disobdience! We are not QR codes.“Our children are not guinea pigs” “My body does not belong to medicine”Yes to unconditional freedomFor enlightened choice66 million men and women can still say no. Resist! You are not alone!Down with the techno-medical dictatorship!“Together, ‘vaccinated’ or not. No to intimidation, constraint, discrimination. Yes to free choice, equality, fraternity”Vaccinated or not, united and in solidarity for our freedoms!You are powerful, Act like it.A lie repeated a thousand times becomes a truth