Sunday, October 28, 2018
Facebook Purge of Alternative Media Is 'Just the Beginning,' Boasts DC Neocon Operative
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgXv6igtW3c
Owen Jones meets Slavoj Žižek | 'Hillary Clinton is the problem, not Donald Trump'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnI6E7WiHNE
Gorbachev: Trump Ditching Nuclear Treaty With Russia Poses 'Dire Threat to Peace'
"There will be no winner
in a 'war of all against all'—particularly if it ends in a nuclear war. And
that is a possibility that cannot be ruled out."
While the Trump administration
ignores warnings from nuclear experts and pursues plans to exit the Cold
War-era intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty (INF) with Russia, former
President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev—who initially signed the deal
with former President Ronald Reagan—has joined the chorus of voices cautioning
that ditching it poses "a dire threat to peace" by increasing the
risk of armed conflict.
Since reports emerged
last week that President Donald Trump's warmongering National Security Adviser
John Bolton was working within the administration to garner support for
dismantling the 1987 treaty, as experts have denounced the move as "stupid
and reckless" and a "colossal
mistake," the president and Bolton have doubled down, justifying the looming
withdrawal by claiming that
Russia is violating the deal by developing the 9M729 ground-launched cruise
missile.
Reflecting on the landmark
agreement, which led to significant reductions in both American and Russian
stockpiles of nuclear weapons, Gorbachev wrote in a New York Times op-ed published
Thursday: "I am being asked whether I feel bitter watching the demise of
what I worked so hard to achieve. But this is not a personal matter. Much more
is at stake. A new arms race has been announced."
Gorbachev noted that Trump's
decision to withdraw comes as American "military expenditures have soared
to astronomical levels and keep rising," and in the context of the
president's disdain for global cooperation. "There will be no winner in a
'war of all against all'—particularly if it ends in a nuclear war. And that is
a possibility that cannot be ruled out," the former Soviet leader warned.
"An unrelenting arms race, international tensions, hostility, and
universal mistrust will only increase the risk."
"With enough political
will, any problems of compliance with the existing treaties could be
resolved," Gorbachev pointed out. "But as we have seen during the
past two years, the president of the United States has a very different purpose
in mind. It is to release the United States from any obligations, any
constraints, and not just regarding nuclear missiles."
While urging the United States
and Russia "to return to dialogue and negotiations," he also called
on other nations to refuse to support a new nuclear arms race.
"I hope that America's
allies will, upon sober reflection, refuse to be launchpads for new American
missiles. I hope the United Nations, and particularly members of its Security
Council, vested by the United Nations Charter with primary responsibility for
maintaining international peace and security, will take responsible
action," he concluded. "Faced with this dire threat to peace, we are
not helpless. We must not resign, we must not surrender."
In addition to Gorbachev's
piece, the Times published on Thursday an op-ed in
which George Shultz, Reagan's former secretary of state, argued that "now
is not the time to build larger arsenals of nuclear weapons. Now is the time to
rid the world of this threat. Leaving the treaty would be a huge step backward.
We should fix it, not kill it."
Sanders and Varoufakis Announce Alliance to Craft 'Common Blueprint for an International New Deal'
The pair hopes to promote a
"progressive, ecological, feminist, humanist, rational program" for
not only Europe, but the entire world
After arguing in a pair of Guardian op-eds last
month that a worldwide progressive movement is needed to counter the unifying
rightwing "that sprang out of the cesspool of financialized
capitalism," former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis announced in
Rome on Friday that he and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) plan to officially
launch "Progressives International" in the senator's state on Nov.
30.
Varoufakis told BuzzFeed
News that the movement aims to challenge an emerging extremist alliance of
nationalist political figures—from immigration critics such as Italian Deputy
Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer to
President Donald Trump's ex-White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, who
is working to
garner voter support for rightwing parties ahead of the May 2019 European
Parliament elections.
"The financiers are
internationalists. The fascists, the nationalists, the racists—like Trump,
Bannon, Seehofer, Salvini—they are internationalists," Varoufakis said.
"They bind together. The only people who are failing are
progressives."
As Sanders wrote in the Guardian,
"At a time of massive global wealth and income inequality, oligarchy,
rising authoritarianism, and militarism, we need a Progressive International
movement to counter these threats." Warning that "the fate of the
world is at stake," the senator called for "an international
progressive agenda that brings working people together around a vision of
shared prosperity, security, and dignity for all people."
Varoufakis, denouncing the
global "brotherhood" of financiers and "xenophobic rightwing
zealots" who foment divisiveness to control wealth and politics, said in
the Guardian that those who join the movement "need to do more
than campaign together," and proposed the formation of "a common
council that draws out a common blueprint for an International New Deal, a
progressive New Bretton Woods."
In addition to the forthcoming
progressive alliance—which incoming Mexican president Andrés Manuel López
Obrador, or AMLO, will reportedly be invited to join—Varoufakis is leading the
campaign efforts of European Spring, a new progressive political party, for the
upcoming European Parliament elections.
The former Greek finance
minister, who resigned from his position in 2015 over clashes with EU leaders
about his country's bailout plans, was in Rome on Friday to challenge the
financial policies of Salvini, who is refusing to
put forth a new 2019 budget after the European Commission rejected his
government's proposal because it would raise Italy's deficit in violation of
eurozone rules.
As BuzzFeed reports:
Varoufakis bashed the Italian
government for seeking special treatment instead of demanding new budget rules
that would benefit all of Europe. But Varoufakis also believes that financial
reform requires a more centralized financial system—national governments
currently have to bail out banks when they get into trouble, even though the
euro and investments flow across borders. He also said the tax cuts contained
in the Italian budget would benefit the rich instead of stimulating economic
growth.
"Austerity for the many
and socialism for the bankers has given rise to the present fascist moment in
Italy, to the collapse of the political center everywhere, and to the
reactionary, divided Europe that Mr. Trump dreams of," Varoufakis said.
"Today, here in Rome we're saying enough. Another Italy, another Europe is
not only possible, but it is here," in the form of his party's
"progressive, ecological, feminist, humanist, rational program."
'While the Rest of the World Burned,' Billionaires Made More Money in 2017 Than Any Other Year in History
"The past 30 years have
seen far greater wealth creation than the Gilded Age."
During a year in which so much
of the world faced deep
poverty, the corrosive
effects of austerity, and extreme weather caused
by the worsening human-caused climate crisis—from devastating
hurricanes to deadly
wildfires and floods—one class of individuals raked in more money in 2017
than any other year in recorded history: the world's billionaires.
According to the Swiss bank
UBS's fifth annual billionaires
report published on Friday, billionaires across the globe increased
their wealth by $1.4 trillion last year—an astonishing 20 percent—bringing
their combined wealth to $8.9 trillion.
"The past 30 years have
seen far greater wealth creation than the Gilded Age," the UBS report notes.
"That period bred generations of families in the U.S. and Europe who went
on to influence business, banking, politics, philanthropy, and the arts for
more than 100 years."
UBS estimates that the world
now has a total of 2,158 billionaires, with 179 billionaires created last year.
The United States alone is home to 585 billionaires—the most in the world—up
from 563 in 2017.
Meanwhile, according
to a June report by U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and
Human Rights Philip Alston, 18.5 million Americans live in extreme poverty and
"5.3 million live in Third World conditions of absolute poverty."
No money for health or
infrastructure, all the money in the world for yachts. https://t.co/AYa5Mk8L9j
— Josh Shepperd
(@joshshepperd) October
26, 2018
A significant percentage of
the "newly created" billionaires are hardly the self-made men—and
they are overwhelmingly
men—of popular lore. According to UBS, 40 of the 179 new billionaires
created last year inherited their wealth—a trend that has driven an explosion
of wealth inequality over the past several decades.
According to UBS, this trend
will continue to accelerate over the next 20 years, given that there are
currently 701 billionaires over the age of 70.
"A major wealth
transition has begun. Over the past five years (2012–2017), the sum passed by
deceased billionaires to beneficiaries has grown by an average of 17 percent
each year," the UBS report concludes. "Over the next two decades we
expect a wealth transition of $3.4 trillion worldwide—almost 40 percent of
current total billionaire wealth."
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)