A coalition of evangelical Christian leaders is condemning the role of "radicalized Christian nationalism" in feeding the political extremism that led to the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by supporters of former President Donald Trump.
In an open letter, more than 100 pastors, ministry and seminary leaders, and other prominent evangelicals express concern about the growing "radicalization" they're seeing, particularly among white evangelicals.
The letter notes that some members of the mob that stormed the Capitol carried Christian symbols and signs that read, "Jesus Saves," and that one of the rioters stood on the Senate rostrum and led a Christian prayer. The letter calls on other Christian leaders to take a public stand against racism, Christian nationalism, conspiracy theories and political extremism.
Read more at:
Evangelical Leaders Raise Alarms About Christian Nationalism In Their Ranks : NPR
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Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts
February 25, 2021
February 19, 2021
Coronavirus: US life expectancy falls by a year amid pandemic
Life expectancy in the US fell by a full year in the first half of 2020, a change experts say was fuelled by the growing coronavirus pandemic.
The life expectancy for the entire population dropped to 77.8 years, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control.
"This is a huge decline," Dr Robert Anderson, the CDC's Chief of Mortality Statistics, told the Associated Press.
Read more at: Coronavirus: US life expectancy falls by a year amid pandemic - BBC News
The life expectancy for the entire population dropped to 77.8 years, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control.
"This is a huge decline," Dr Robert Anderson, the CDC's Chief of Mortality Statistics, told the Associated Press.
Read more at: Coronavirus: US life expectancy falls by a year amid pandemic - BBC News
February 13, 2021
Cuba: Biden Will Try to Close Guantanamo After ‘Robust’ Review – by Ben Fox
President Joe Biden will seek to close the prison on the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay following a review process, resuming a project begun under the Obama administration, the White House said Friday.
Read more at: ttps://www.nbcmiami.com/news/politics/biden-administration/biden-will-try-to-close-guantanamo-after-robust-review/2382249/
Read more at: ttps://www.nbcmiami.com/news/politics/biden-administration/biden-will-try-to-close-guantanamo-after-robust-review/2382249/
February 6, 2021
EU taxation of multinationals—bypassing the unanimity blockage – by Tommaso Faccio and Francesco Saraceno
he French car-service company Heetch recently displayed an advertising campaign on the streets of Paris (see photo), which proudly affirmed its presence in many French cities but not in Luxembourg—a clear allusion to the tax headquarters of some of its competitors. The fact that ‘paying taxes in France’ has become a commercial argument shows that the issue of corporate avoidance is rising up the public agenda in many countries.
Yet the G20 process on taxing digital firms and introducing a global minimum tax to limit tax competition, led by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, failed to reach consensus in 2020, mostly because of determination by the United States to protect its digital giants. The European Commission has made clear that, were the G20 to fail to deliver a global solution by mid-2021, it will act. But the EU is stuck between a rock—the US position will likely not change with the new administration—and a hard place: its own tax havens.
Read more at: EU taxation of multinationals—bypassing the unanimity blockage – Tommaso Faccio and Francesco Saraceno
Yet the G20 process on taxing digital firms and introducing a global minimum tax to limit tax competition, led by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, failed to reach consensus in 2020, mostly because of determination by the United States to protect its digital giants. The European Commission has made clear that, were the G20 to fail to deliver a global solution by mid-2021, it will act. But the EU is stuck between a rock—the US position will likely not change with the new administration—and a hard place: its own tax havens.
Read more at: EU taxation of multinationals—bypassing the unanimity blockage – Tommaso Faccio and Francesco Saraceno
January 30, 2021
The Netherlands: New Economic Theory: Could Amsterdam's New Economic Theory Replace Capitalism? - by Ciara Nugent
In April 2020, during the first wave of COVID-19, Amsterdam’s city government announced it would recover from the crisis, and avoid future ones, by embracing the theory of “doughnut economics.” Laid out by British economist Kate Raworth in a 2017 book, the theory argues that 20th century economic thinking is not equipped to deal with the 21st century reality of a planet teetering on the edge of climate breakdown. Instead of equating a growing GDP with a successful society, our goal should be to fit all of human life into what Raworth calls the “sweet spot” between the “social foundation,” where everyone has what they need to live a good life, and the “environmental ceiling.” By and large, people in rich countries are living above the environmental ceiling. Those in poorer countries often fall below the social foundation. The space in between: that’s the doughnut.
Amsterdam’s ambition is to bring all 872,000 residents inside the doughnut, ensuring everyone has access to a good quality of life, but without putting more pressure on the planet than is sustainable. Guided by Raworth’s organization, the Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL), the city is introducing massive infrastructure projects, employment schemes and new policies for government contracts to that end. Meanwhile, some 400 local people and organizations have set up a network called the Amsterdam Doughnut Coalition—managed by Drouin— to run their own programs at a grassroots level.
Now, Amsterdam is grappling with what the doughnut would look like on the ground. Marieke van Doorninck, the deputy mayor for sustainability and urban planning, says the pandemic added urgency that helped the city get behind a bold new strategy. “Kate had already told us what to do. COVID showed us the way to do it,” she says. “I think in the darkest times, it’s easiest to imagine another world.”
Read more at: Could Amsterdam's New Economic Theory Replace Capitalism? | Time
Amsterdam’s ambition is to bring all 872,000 residents inside the doughnut, ensuring everyone has access to a good quality of life, but without putting more pressure on the planet than is sustainable. Guided by Raworth’s organization, the Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL), the city is introducing massive infrastructure projects, employment schemes and new policies for government contracts to that end. Meanwhile, some 400 local people and organizations have set up a network called the Amsterdam Doughnut Coalition—managed by Drouin— to run their own programs at a grassroots level.
Now, Amsterdam is grappling with what the doughnut would look like on the ground. Marieke van Doorninck, the deputy mayor for sustainability and urban planning, says the pandemic added urgency that helped the city get behind a bold new strategy. “Kate had already told us what to do. COVID showed us the way to do it,” she says. “I think in the darkest times, it’s easiest to imagine another world.”
Read more at: Could Amsterdam's New Economic Theory Replace Capitalism? | Time
January 7, 2021
USA - discrimination alive and well in America: Black activists say double standard at play in response to pro-Trump rioters
Trump supporters gesture to U.S. Capitol Police in the hallway outside of the Senate chamber at the Capitol in Washington D.C. Black activists are decrying what they saw as a double standard when it comes to police responding to protests involving Black social justice activists and white pro-Trump supporters. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press)
The co-founder of Black Lives Matter in Canada said she believes police would have responded more aggressively if protesters storming the U.S. Capitol had been members of the anti-racism group instead of supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump.
"I want to be very clear that if those were Black Lives Matter protesters I think that would have been a massacre," Sandy Hudson told CBC News. "I think that we would all be dead."
Read more at: Black activists say double standard at play in response to pro-Trump rioters | CBC News
The co-founder of Black Lives Matter in Canada said she believes police would have responded more aggressively if protesters storming the U.S. Capitol had been members of the anti-racism group instead of supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump.
"I want to be very clear that if those were Black Lives Matter protesters I think that would have been a massacre," Sandy Hudson told CBC News. "I think that we would all be dead."
Read more at: Black activists say double standard at play in response to pro-Trump rioters | CBC News
January 4, 2021
Global Happiness list: Netherlands one of the top 10 happiest countries globally in 2020 ranking 6th - Finland No 1 - US 18 th.- Turkey 79 th. - lowest: Afghanistan 110 th.
The World Happiness Report ranks 156 countries around the world according to how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be. 2020 marks the eighth edition of the report and has the theme “environments for happiness”. It examines data from 2017, 2018, and 2019 to put together a conclusive ranking.
The ranking is compiled using data from the Gallup World Poll, in which respondents are asked to evaluate the happiness of their own lives on a scale of one to 10. Using the survey results, the ranking also shows the estimated extent to which six different factors impact happiness:
Gross Domestic Product per capita, Life expectancy, Social support, Freedom, Corruption,
According to the 2020 report, the 10 happiest countries in the world are: 1) Finland 2) Denmark 3) Switzerland 4) Iceland 5) Norway 6) The Netherlands 7) Sweden 8) New Zealand 9) Austria 10 Luxembourg
Read more at: Almere Digest
The ranking is compiled using data from the Gallup World Poll, in which respondents are asked to evaluate the happiness of their own lives on a scale of one to 10. Using the survey results, the ranking also shows the estimated extent to which six different factors impact happiness:
Gross Domestic Product per capita, Life expectancy, Social support, Freedom, Corruption,
According to the 2020 report, the 10 happiest countries in the world are: 1) Finland 2) Denmark 3) Switzerland 4) Iceland 5) Norway 6) The Netherlands 7) Sweden 8) New Zealand 9) Austria 10 Luxembourg
Read more at: Almere Digest
December 19, 2020
USA Economy: Disparity for everyone to see in a country which claims to be the greatest in the world ?
North Texas Food Bank (NTFB) distributed more than 600,000 pounds of food for about 25,000 people on Saturday, according to spokeswoman Anna Kurian. There were 7,280 turkeys distributed to families, Kurian told CNN.
Read more at: Thousands of cars form lines to collect food in Covid-hit Texas - CNN
Read more at: Thousands of cars form lines to collect food in Covid-hit Texas - CNN
November 13, 2020
The Origins of the EU: How the CIA Created the EU - by Eric Zuesse
The details are supplied in an exhaustive 1,000-page biography of Jean Monnet by Éric Roussel, which was published only in France in 1996, and which seems to have been successfully suppressed. It has never been translated, and has no reviews even at Amazon. However, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of UK’s Telegraph newspaper has provided some of the core information from it. Furthermore, Richard J. Aldrich’s 2003 The Hidden Hand also provides key details, such as by Aldrich’s saying, on page 366, about the American Committee for a United Europe: ACUE, more than any other American front organization of the Cold War, was a direct creature of the leading lights of the CIA. Indeed, it was so replete with famous CIA figures that its ‘front’ was very thin. Its early years seemed to have formed something of a laboratory for figures such as [Bill] Donovan, [Allen] Dulles, [Walter] Bedell Smith and [Tom] Braden, before they moved on to other projects in the mid-1950s. Over its first three years of operations, 1949-51, ACUE received $384,650, the majority being dispersed to Europe. This was a large sum, but from 1952 ACUE began to spend such sums annually. The total budget for the period 1949-60 amounted to approximately $4 million. As the quantity of money flowing across the Atlantic began to increase, ACUE opened a local Paris office to monitor more closely groups that had received grants. By 1956, the flood of increased funding was prompting fears among the Directors of ACUE that its work would be publicly exposed.
The emerging European Economic Community (EEC) and the growing Western intelligence community overlapped to a considerable degree. This is underlined by the creation of the Bilderberg Group, an informal and secretive transatlantic council of key decision-makers [representatives of the billionaires who controlled U.S. and U.S.-allied international corporations]. Bilderberg was founded by Joseph Retinger and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands in 1952 in response to the rise of anti-Americanism in Europe. … Retinger secured support from Averell Harriman, David Rockefeller and Walter Bedell Smith. The formation of the American wing of Bilderberg was entrusted to Eisenhower’s psychological warfare chief, C.D. Jackson, and the funding for the first meeting, held at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Holland in 1954, was provided by the CIA.
Funds for these CIA operations came not only from the U.S. Treasury but from private sources, America’s super-rich, and, also from organized gangsters, as was revealed in the 1998 classic by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press. This off-the-books funding comes from narcotics kingpins throughout the world, as protection-money, which is essential to keep them in business. So, the EU was financially fueled from all of these sources, and, basically, was a bribing-operation (to end up getting the ‘right’ people into the EU’s Parliament, etc.), in addition to be receiving funds from what might be considered idealistic philanthropic donors (because the dream of a united Europe had long preceded the grubby version of it that the CIA created for Europeans). The EU was a Cold War operation, from the very start. Though the Cold War was allegedly ideological, it was actually the result of a decision that U.S. President Harry S. Truman made on 26 July 1945, for the post-WW-II U.S. to achieve, ultimately, the world’s first all-encompassing global empire. The EU was designed to serve the political aspects of that, and NATO the military aspects, for America’s European ‘allies’ (America’s European vassal nations). The aim was for the Soviet Union (subsequently only Russia) to become surrounded by enemies, so that, in the final analysis, the U.S. and its ‘allies’ would be offering the U.S.S.R. “a deal they can’t refuse.” This deal (quite fitting to come from an international gangland operation such as America’s Deep State) would be inclusion in the U.S. empire, on terms that are set solely by the U.S. Government — either this, or else conquest. Then, the same thing would be done to China.
Pritchard issued two important articles about this, the first being his 19 September 2000 “Euro-federalists financed by US spy chiefs”: DECLASSIFIED American government documents show that the US intelligence community ran a campaign in the Fifties and Sixties to build momentum for a united Europe. It funded and directed the European federalist movement. … One memorandum, dated July 26, 1950, gives instructions for a campaign to promote a fully fledged European parliament. It is signed by Gen William J Donovan, head of the American wartime Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the CIA.
The documents were found by Joshua Paul, a researcher at Georgetown University in Washington. They include files released by the US National Archives. Washington’s main tool for shaping the European agenda was the American Committee for a United Europe, created in 1948. The chairman was Donovan, ostensibly a private lawyer by then.
The vice-chairman was Allen Dulles, the CIA director in the Fifties. The board included Walter Bedell Smith, the CIA’s first director, and a roster of ex-OSS figures and officials who moved in and out of the CIA. The documents show that ACUE financed the European Movement, the most important federalist organisation in the post-war years. In 1958, for example, it provided 53.5 per cent of the movement’s funds.
The European Youth Campaign, an arm of the European Movement, was wholly funded and controlled by Washington. The Belgian director, Baron Boel, received monthly payments into a special account. When the head of the European Movement, Polish-born Joseph Retinger, bridled at this degree of American control and tried to raise money in Europe, he was quickly reprimanded.
The leaders of the European Movement — Retinger, the visionary Robert Schuman and the former Belgian prime minister Paul-Henri Spaak — were all treated as hired hands by their American sponsors. The US role was handled as a covert operation. ACUE’s funding came from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations as well as business groups with close ties to the US government.
Read the complete report at: How the CIA Created the EU - Modern Diplomacy
The emerging European Economic Community (EEC) and the growing Western intelligence community overlapped to a considerable degree. This is underlined by the creation of the Bilderberg Group, an informal and secretive transatlantic council of key decision-makers [representatives of the billionaires who controlled U.S. and U.S.-allied international corporations]. Bilderberg was founded by Joseph Retinger and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands in 1952 in response to the rise of anti-Americanism in Europe. … Retinger secured support from Averell Harriman, David Rockefeller and Walter Bedell Smith. The formation of the American wing of Bilderberg was entrusted to Eisenhower’s psychological warfare chief, C.D. Jackson, and the funding for the first meeting, held at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Holland in 1954, was provided by the CIA.
Funds for these CIA operations came not only from the U.S. Treasury but from private sources, America’s super-rich, and, also from organized gangsters, as was revealed in the 1998 classic by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press. This off-the-books funding comes from narcotics kingpins throughout the world, as protection-money, which is essential to keep them in business. So, the EU was financially fueled from all of these sources, and, basically, was a bribing-operation (to end up getting the ‘right’ people into the EU’s Parliament, etc.), in addition to be receiving funds from what might be considered idealistic philanthropic donors (because the dream of a united Europe had long preceded the grubby version of it that the CIA created for Europeans). The EU was a Cold War operation, from the very start. Though the Cold War was allegedly ideological, it was actually the result of a decision that U.S. President Harry S. Truman made on 26 July 1945, for the post-WW-II U.S. to achieve, ultimately, the world’s first all-encompassing global empire. The EU was designed to serve the political aspects of that, and NATO the military aspects, for America’s European ‘allies’ (America’s European vassal nations). The aim was for the Soviet Union (subsequently only Russia) to become surrounded by enemies, so that, in the final analysis, the U.S. and its ‘allies’ would be offering the U.S.S.R. “a deal they can’t refuse.” This deal (quite fitting to come from an international gangland operation such as America’s Deep State) would be inclusion in the U.S. empire, on terms that are set solely by the U.S. Government — either this, or else conquest. Then, the same thing would be done to China.
Pritchard issued two important articles about this, the first being his 19 September 2000 “Euro-federalists financed by US spy chiefs”: DECLASSIFIED American government documents show that the US intelligence community ran a campaign in the Fifties and Sixties to build momentum for a united Europe. It funded and directed the European federalist movement. … One memorandum, dated July 26, 1950, gives instructions for a campaign to promote a fully fledged European parliament. It is signed by Gen William J Donovan, head of the American wartime Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the CIA.
The documents were found by Joshua Paul, a researcher at Georgetown University in Washington. They include files released by the US National Archives. Washington’s main tool for shaping the European agenda was the American Committee for a United Europe, created in 1948. The chairman was Donovan, ostensibly a private lawyer by then.
The vice-chairman was Allen Dulles, the CIA director in the Fifties. The board included Walter Bedell Smith, the CIA’s first director, and a roster of ex-OSS figures and officials who moved in and out of the CIA. The documents show that ACUE financed the European Movement, the most important federalist organisation in the post-war years. In 1958, for example, it provided 53.5 per cent of the movement’s funds.
The European Youth Campaign, an arm of the European Movement, was wholly funded and controlled by Washington. The Belgian director, Baron Boel, received monthly payments into a special account. When the head of the European Movement, Polish-born Joseph Retinger, bridled at this degree of American control and tried to raise money in Europe, he was quickly reprimanded.
The leaders of the European Movement — Retinger, the visionary Robert Schuman and the former Belgian prime minister Paul-Henri Spaak — were all treated as hired hands by their American sponsors. The US role was handled as a covert operation. ACUE’s funding came from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations as well as business groups with close ties to the US government.
Read the complete report at: How the CIA Created the EU - Modern Diplomacy
November 7, 2020
USA - Live: Joe Biden elected president of the United States after winning Pennsylvania - by Lauren Chadwick
Joe Biden is the president-elect of the United States after being projected to win the battleground state of Pennsylvania. He is also projected to win the state of Nevada.
Read more at: Live | Joe Biden elected president of the United States after winning Pennsylvania | Euronews
Read more at: Live | Joe Biden elected president of the United States after winning Pennsylvania | Euronews
November 4, 2020
US Election 2020 - final results will be days off: Tighter than expected vote may take days to resolve
Mr Trump, a Republican, claimed to have won and vowed to launch a Supreme Court challenge, baselessly alleging fraud, while Mr Biden, a Democrat, said he was "on track" to victory.
Read more at: US Election 2020: Tighter than expected vote may take days to resolve - BBC News
Read more at: US Election 2020: Tighter than expected vote may take days to resolve - BBC News
October 25, 2020
America's Latest Export: The Conspiracy Theorists Crazies have crossed the Atlantic and QAnon is now in Europe–by Mark Scott
If you don't know what QAnon is this is how wikileaks divines the cult - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAnon.
At first glance it’s not a natural fit. The U.S. conspiracy theory — now with millions of acolytes worldwide — alleges a vast deception to undermine U.S. President Donald Trump. It blends anti-government, anti-lockdown and anti-Semitic rhetoric with unfounded beliefs about a vast pedophile ring run by the global elite. Its followers adhere to a quasi-religious belief that a great savior — aided by “Q,” an anonymous government insider from whom QAnon gets its name — will protect followers from the dark forces behind the conspiracy.
In the U.S., discussion about QAnon has broken into the political mainstream. When Trump was asked to disavow the group at a recent town hall event, he first said he knew “nothing about QAnon” but then added: “I do know that they are very much against pedofiles.
Despite its digital roots, this conspiracy based, populst, ultra -right-wing QAnon has extended its reach into the real world, with attendees at protests against anti-coronavirus measures and supportive of conspiracy theories spreading its talking points across Europe, the U.S. and other parts of the world.
Read more at: QAnon goes European – POLITICO
At first glance it’s not a natural fit. The U.S. conspiracy theory — now with millions of acolytes worldwide — alleges a vast deception to undermine U.S. President Donald Trump. It blends anti-government, anti-lockdown and anti-Semitic rhetoric with unfounded beliefs about a vast pedophile ring run by the global elite. Its followers adhere to a quasi-religious belief that a great savior — aided by “Q,” an anonymous government insider from whom QAnon gets its name — will protect followers from the dark forces behind the conspiracy.
In the U.S., discussion about QAnon has broken into the political mainstream. When Trump was asked to disavow the group at a recent town hall event, he first said he knew “nothing about QAnon” but then added: “I do know that they are very much against pedofiles.
Despite its digital roots, this conspiracy based, populst, ultra -right-wing QAnon has extended its reach into the real world, with attendees at protests against anti-coronavirus measures and supportive of conspiracy theories spreading its talking points across Europe, the U.S. and other parts of the world.
Read more at: QAnon goes European – POLITICO
October 5, 2020
USA: Trump’s Turn From Immigration to the Enemy Within - by Ryan Devereaux
Trump’s shift from demonizing immigrants to targeting leftists is straight out of the fascist playbook.
Read more at: Trump’s Turn From Immigration to the Enemy Within
Read more at: Trump’s Turn From Immigration to the Enemy Within
October 1, 2020
Italy: Mike Pompeo Denied Audience With Pope Francis | HuffPost
The Vatican denied U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s request for an audience with Pope Francis this week, saying the pope would not see Pompeo in the midst of the ongoing American election.
“Yes, he asked,” Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin told The Associated Press as Pompeo is in Europe for a weeklong visit. “But the pope had already said clearly that political figures are not received in election periods. That is the reason.”
Pompeo will still meet with Parolin and other top Vatican officials during the visit, but the refusal was seen by some as the latest example of a political rift between the United States and the Vatican. During a religious freedom conference this week, Pompeo issued a strong denouncement of a deal the Catholic Church signed two years ago with China related to the appointment of bishops, which it is considering extending.President Donald Trump has taken a hard line against China, as has Pompeo, in the leadup to the U.S. election in November. The secretary of state has also taken unusual efforts to use his political authority to promote religious freedom.
Read more at:
Mike Pompeo Denied Audience With Pope Francis | HuffPost
September 11, 2020
USA - California wildfires: California wildfire smoke reaches Europe
Wildfires continued ravaging portions of the western United States on Friday, stoked by gusty winds and dry conditions.
Although some weather relief appears to be en route in the coming days, millions of acres have already burned. Homes and businesses have been engulfed, and injuries to both residents and first responders continue mounting. More than a dozen deaths, including at least 10 in California, have been reported.
Note EU-Digest: Tonight the Dutch KNMI weather report also mentioned that the haze which covered the Netherlands today was directly related to high altitude smoke that was drifting in from the California fires over Europe.
Western wildfires live updates: California wildfire smoke reaches Europe
Although some weather relief appears to be en route in the coming days, millions of acres have already burned. Homes and businesses have been engulfed, and injuries to both residents and first responders continue mounting. More than a dozen deaths, including at least 10 in California, have been reported.
Note EU-Digest: Tonight the Dutch KNMI weather report also mentioned that the haze which covered the Netherlands today was directly related to high altitude smoke that was drifting in from the California fires over Europe.
Western wildfires live updates: California wildfire smoke reaches Europe
August 28, 2020
US Presidential elections: Foreign observers can flag unethical voting practices - by Markos Kounalakis
Authoritarian nations, semi-legitimated dictatorships and dying democracies are regularly subjected to international observers whom they grudgingly allow into their countries to monitor elections. The United States sends teams of former government officials and private-sector volunteers around the world to certify —and sometimes condemn — electionpractices and results. They bear witness to vote tampering, citizen intimidation, ballot stuffing, polling place irregularities and outright
stolen elections. They also often get to watch inspiring people power and real democracy at work.
It’s now America’s turn.
his year, the global democratic community needs to gear up and step in to oversee, monitor and judge the fairness of November’s U.S. presidential election. Germany, Sweden,Japan, India, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Chile, Ethiopia, Tunisia, Israel, and other nations all need to up their game. They should immediately train and send new volunteers to conduct sweeping election monitoring across America, mostly in tough battleground states.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) already has a 500-person delegation slated to monitor America’s process. It should crank up those numbers significantly, especially since OSCE recently raised concerns around November’s “most challenging” election.
Read more at:https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article245309125.html?fbclid=IwAR3Nxc7YDGeEPKftVEKi5N4wmm4BvUh-YktK2UEB7LcZR7S0yXpwxJfRF88
stolen elections. They also often get to watch inspiring people power and real democracy at work.
It’s now America’s turn.
his year, the global democratic community needs to gear up and step in to oversee, monitor and judge the fairness of November’s U.S. presidential election. Germany, Sweden,Japan, India, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Chile, Ethiopia, Tunisia, Israel, and other nations all need to up their game. They should immediately train and send new volunteers to conduct sweeping election monitoring across America, mostly in tough battleground states.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) already has a 500-person delegation slated to monitor America’s process. It should crank up those numbers significantly, especially since OSCE recently raised concerns around November’s “most challenging” election.
Read more at:https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article245309125.html?fbclid=IwAR3Nxc7YDGeEPKftVEKi5N4wmm4BvUh-YktK2UEB7LcZR7S0yXpwxJfRF88
August 27, 2020
Capitalism: if it can still be revived, needs a complete overhaul
Capitalism’s failures arise from two of its defining elements. The first is perpetual growth. Economic growth is the aggregate effect of the quest to accumulate capital and extract profit. Capitalism collapses without growth, yet perpetual growth on a finite planet leads inexorably to environmental calamity.
Those who defend capitalism argue that, as consumption switches from goods to services, economic growth can be decoupled from the use of material resources. A paper in the journal New Political Economy, by Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis, examined this premise. They found that while some relative decoupling took place in the 20th century (material resource consumption grew, but not as quickly as economic growth), in the 21st century there has been a recoupling: rising resource consumption has so far matched or exceeded the rate of economic growth. The absolute decoupling needed to avert environmental catastrophe (a reduction in material resource use) has never been achieved, and appears impossible while economic growth continues. Green growth is an illusion.
A system based on perpetual growth cannot function without peripheries and externalities. There must always be an extraction zone – from which materials are taken without full payment – and a disposal zone, where costs are dumped in the form of waste and pollution. As the scale of economic activity increases until capitalism affects everything, from the atmosphere to the deep ocean floor, the entire planet becomes a sacrifice zone: we all inhabit the periphery of the profit-making machine.
This drives us towards cataclysm on such a scale that most people have no means of imagining it. The threatened collapse of our life-support systems is bigger by far than war, famine, pestilence or economic crisis, though it is likely to incorporate all four. Societies can recover from these apocalyptic events, but not from the loss of soil, an abundant biosphere and a habitable climate.
There is no going back: the alternative to capitalism is neither feudalism nor state communism. Soviet communism had more in common with capitalism than the advocates of either system would care to admit. Both systems are (or were) obsessed with generating economic growth. Both are willing to inflict astonishing levels of harm in pursuit of this and other ends. Both promised a future in which we would need to work for only a few hours a week, but instead demand endless, brutal labour. Both are dehumanising. Both are absolutist, insisting that theirs and theirs alone is the one true God.
From March to June 2020, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos saw his wealth rise by an estimated $48 billion. The journal might also have added that 40 million workers had filed for unemployment compensation and that prison labor was being paid $1 per hour to fight deadly forest fires in California.
Bezos describes his strategy similarly, asserting that “the stronger our market leadership, the more powerful our economic model…we will make bold rather than timid investment decisions where we see a sufficient probability of gaining market leadership advantages.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has conveyed the same approach, but more to-the-point; for many years, he allegedly ended staff meetings shouting, “Domination!”
The cliché is that we are all in this together. This is so only in the sense that some of us own luxury yachts capacious enough to hold luxury lifeboats while the bottom third clings to leaky life preservers. The mortgages of even many middle-class citizens are soon to be underwater.
What does it mean to have wealth approaching six-figure billions? Sen. Everett Dirksen once famously quipped “a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you are talking real money.” It is helpful to translate these highly abstract big numbers into the real goods and services one could command with this money.
A state-of-the-art naval destroyer costs about one billion, about the cost of an NBA franchise. One can add a few luxury homes and still have spent only a small fraction of one’s wealth. Clearly possession of an ever-growing stream of goods seems to be an unlikely motivator of the mega wealthy.
During the pandemic, as during the world finance crisis, power has been both the means and the end of domestic and international economic policy. During the early stages of the global economic crisis, government responded by creating a $700 billion facility to purchase troubled assets from banks, but only about 10 percent of these expenditures went to lowering mortgage interest rates.
Federal Reserve treatment of the big finance center banks was much more generous. It lowered the interest rate charged member banks to near zero, a figure it held for almost a decade. The effects of this policy were not neutral.
Lower rates in the financial sector were supposed to encourage new investment in the real economy but instead did little more than stimulate a bull market in stocks and cheap money to finance stock buybacks and leveraged mergers and acquisitions. (Yves Smith , founder of the blog Naked Capitalism, points out that the only industry for which cheap money is a resource that might encourage further investment is finance. So much for restoring the productivity of main street.)
Monopoly power and concentrated wealth do immense harm to the bottom third of the wealth spectrum. We have returned to Franklin Roosevelt’s one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. Late last year The Los Angeles Times reported: “New research establishes that after decades of living longer and longer lives, Americans are dying earlier, cut down increasingly in the prime of life by drug overdoses, suicides, and diseases such as cirrhosis, liver cancer, and obesity… the authors of the new study suggest that the nation’s lifespan reversal is being driven by diseases linked to social and economic privation, a healthcare system with glaring gaps and blind spots, and profound psychological distress.”
So what does a better system look like? There is no complete answer, and it also seems no one person does have. But a rough framework is emerging. Part of it is provided by the ecological civilisation proposed by Jeremy Lent, one of the greatest thinkers of our age. Other elements come from Kate Raworth’s doughnut economics and the environmental thinking of Naomi Klein, Amitav Ghosh, Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, Raj Patel and Bill McKibben. Part of the answer lies in the notion of “private sufficiency, public luxury”. Another part arises from the creation of a new conception of justice based on this simple principle: every generation, everywhere, shall have an equal right to the enjoyment of natural wealth.
The moral case for egalitarian reforms is overwhelming. Obscene wealth disparities are a product of political and economic power, not virtue or extraordinary talent. On the center Left the most popular proposals are various versions of a wealth tax. Such proposals should surely be part of any reform package.
A wealth tax would begin to redress the damage inflicted by four decades of socialism for the rich. And it should be framed that way in order to counter in advance the inevitable carping that tax reformers are motivated by envy. Nonetheless more needs to be promoted in order to address the causes as well as consequences of this inordinate wealth concentration.
Trying to address wealth inequality without addressing monopoly power is like trying to stop a boat with a hole in the bottom from sinking by bailing out the water, but not plugging up the hole.
In addition, it is essential to develop policies that give working-class citizens more voice in designing the economic instruments that will produce future wealth for us all. Antitrust law, cooperatives, labor rights to organize, and democratization of the Fed would all be parts of such reform packages.
The moral choice seems to be, do we stop life to allow capitalism to continue, or stop capitalism to allow life to continue?
The window of opportunity to make radical changes to the defunct Capitalist system is getting smaller by the day, and if not dealt wih rapidly, is surely to result in civil unrest and violence of which the likes have never been seen before.
Those who defend capitalism argue that, as consumption switches from goods to services, economic growth can be decoupled from the use of material resources. A paper in the journal New Political Economy, by Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis, examined this premise. They found that while some relative decoupling took place in the 20th century (material resource consumption grew, but not as quickly as economic growth), in the 21st century there has been a recoupling: rising resource consumption has so far matched or exceeded the rate of economic growth. The absolute decoupling needed to avert environmental catastrophe (a reduction in material resource use) has never been achieved, and appears impossible while economic growth continues. Green growth is an illusion.
A system based on perpetual growth cannot function without peripheries and externalities. There must always be an extraction zone – from which materials are taken without full payment – and a disposal zone, where costs are dumped in the form of waste and pollution. As the scale of economic activity increases until capitalism affects everything, from the atmosphere to the deep ocean floor, the entire planet becomes a sacrifice zone: we all inhabit the periphery of the profit-making machine.
This drives us towards cataclysm on such a scale that most people have no means of imagining it. The threatened collapse of our life-support systems is bigger by far than war, famine, pestilence or economic crisis, though it is likely to incorporate all four. Societies can recover from these apocalyptic events, but not from the loss of soil, an abundant biosphere and a habitable climate.
There is no going back: the alternative to capitalism is neither feudalism nor state communism. Soviet communism had more in common with capitalism than the advocates of either system would care to admit. Both systems are (or were) obsessed with generating economic growth. Both are willing to inflict astonishing levels of harm in pursuit of this and other ends. Both promised a future in which we would need to work for only a few hours a week, but instead demand endless, brutal labour. Both are dehumanising. Both are absolutist, insisting that theirs and theirs alone is the one true God.
From March to June 2020, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos saw his wealth rise by an estimated $48 billion. The journal might also have added that 40 million workers had filed for unemployment compensation and that prison labor was being paid $1 per hour to fight deadly forest fires in California.
Bezos describes his strategy similarly, asserting that “the stronger our market leadership, the more powerful our economic model…we will make bold rather than timid investment decisions where we see a sufficient probability of gaining market leadership advantages.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has conveyed the same approach, but more to-the-point; for many years, he allegedly ended staff meetings shouting, “Domination!”
The cliché is that we are all in this together. This is so only in the sense that some of us own luxury yachts capacious enough to hold luxury lifeboats while the bottom third clings to leaky life preservers. The mortgages of even many middle-class citizens are soon to be underwater.
What does it mean to have wealth approaching six-figure billions? Sen. Everett Dirksen once famously quipped “a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you are talking real money.” It is helpful to translate these highly abstract big numbers into the real goods and services one could command with this money.
A state-of-the-art naval destroyer costs about one billion, about the cost of an NBA franchise. One can add a few luxury homes and still have spent only a small fraction of one’s wealth. Clearly possession of an ever-growing stream of goods seems to be an unlikely motivator of the mega wealthy.
During the pandemic, as during the world finance crisis, power has been both the means and the end of domestic and international economic policy. During the early stages of the global economic crisis, government responded by creating a $700 billion facility to purchase troubled assets from banks, but only about 10 percent of these expenditures went to lowering mortgage interest rates.
Federal Reserve treatment of the big finance center banks was much more generous. It lowered the interest rate charged member banks to near zero, a figure it held for almost a decade. The effects of this policy were not neutral.
Lower rates in the financial sector were supposed to encourage new investment in the real economy but instead did little more than stimulate a bull market in stocks and cheap money to finance stock buybacks and leveraged mergers and acquisitions. (Yves Smith , founder of the blog Naked Capitalism, points out that the only industry for which cheap money is a resource that might encourage further investment is finance. So much for restoring the productivity of main street.)
Monopoly power and concentrated wealth do immense harm to the bottom third of the wealth spectrum. We have returned to Franklin Roosevelt’s one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. Late last year The Los Angeles Times reported: “New research establishes that after decades of living longer and longer lives, Americans are dying earlier, cut down increasingly in the prime of life by drug overdoses, suicides, and diseases such as cirrhosis, liver cancer, and obesity… the authors of the new study suggest that the nation’s lifespan reversal is being driven by diseases linked to social and economic privation, a healthcare system with glaring gaps and blind spots, and profound psychological distress.”
So what does a better system look like? There is no complete answer, and it also seems no one person does have. But a rough framework is emerging. Part of it is provided by the ecological civilisation proposed by Jeremy Lent, one of the greatest thinkers of our age. Other elements come from Kate Raworth’s doughnut economics and the environmental thinking of Naomi Klein, Amitav Ghosh, Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, Raj Patel and Bill McKibben. Part of the answer lies in the notion of “private sufficiency, public luxury”. Another part arises from the creation of a new conception of justice based on this simple principle: every generation, everywhere, shall have an equal right to the enjoyment of natural wealth.
The moral case for egalitarian reforms is overwhelming. Obscene wealth disparities are a product of political and economic power, not virtue or extraordinary talent. On the center Left the most popular proposals are various versions of a wealth tax. Such proposals should surely be part of any reform package.
A wealth tax would begin to redress the damage inflicted by four decades of socialism for the rich. And it should be framed that way in order to counter in advance the inevitable carping that tax reformers are motivated by envy. Nonetheless more needs to be promoted in order to address the causes as well as consequences of this inordinate wealth concentration.
Trying to address wealth inequality without addressing monopoly power is like trying to stop a boat with a hole in the bottom from sinking by bailing out the water, but not plugging up the hole.
In addition, it is essential to develop policies that give working-class citizens more voice in designing the economic instruments that will produce future wealth for us all. Antitrust law, cooperatives, labor rights to organize, and democratization of the Fed would all be parts of such reform packages.
The moral choice seems to be, do we stop life to allow capitalism to continue, or stop capitalism to allow life to continue?
The window of opportunity to make radical changes to the defunct Capitalist system is getting smaller by the day, and if not dealt wih rapidly, is surely to result in civil unrest and violence of which the likes have never been seen before.
August 7, 2020
The Netherlands: The US Center for Disease control gives travel 3 warning for visitors to the Netherlands related to Covid-19 and potential terrorist strikes
The
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a
Level 3 Travel Health Notice for the Netherlands due to COVID-19. and potential terrorist strikes .
Improved conditions have been reported within the Netherlands.Visit the Embassy's COVID-19 page for more information on COVID-19 in the Netherlands.
Terrorism:
Terrorists continue plotting possible attacks in the Netherlands.
Terrorists may attack with little or no warning, targeting tourist
locations, transportation hubs, markets/shopping malls, local government
facilities, hotels, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, parks, major
sporting and cultural events, educational institutions, airports, and
other public areas.
August 6, 2020
The Netherlands: Dutch Dr. Fauci Thinks Masks Won't Work. Here's Why: by Hannah Osborne
 |
| Dutch PM Mark Rutte |
Following a meeting with mayors last week, Minister for Medical Care Tamara van Ark reaffirmed the national standpoint.
"From a medical point of view, there is no evidence of a medical effect of wearing face masks, so we decided not to impose a national obligation," Politico quotes her as saying.
At present, the only places where people in the Netherlands need to wear masks are on public transport and at airports. City mayors have also introduced orders about mask use in busy shopping centers.
Note Almere Digest: These are very unorthodox suggestions on masks wearing by the Dutch Rutte Government . A Dutch saying goes : "Baat het niet, schaden doet het ook niet."- Even if it doesn't help, It does not do any harm.Yes indeed, wearing masks has shown to help slow the spread of the Coronavirus, and more important Mr. Rutte, it saves lives in the process .
Mr. Rutte, also, please don't follow President's Trump's conflicting advice on masks, or anything else, for that matter. But I am sure you are aware of his mental shortcomings.
Read more at:
Dutch Dr. Fauci Thinks Masks Won't Work. Here's Why
July 29, 2020
EU: Facebook cries foul on EU request for internal documents - by Andrew Rettman
Facebook, a US tech giant known for abusing its users' private
information, has said the European Commission was now attempting to do
the same to Facebook employees' data.
The firm filed its complaints at the EU court in Luxembourg, after the commission asked to see internal documents containing any of 2,500 search phrases as part of an anti-trust enquiry.
Brussels-based news agency MLex first revealed Facebook's legal counter-strike in a story on Monday (27 July), citing anonymous sources.
US congressmen were also due to cross-examine Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday in a separate investigation into alleged abuse of the firm's online "dominance", but the hearing was postponed due to a clash with a memorial service for a US civil rights leader.
Zuckerberg founded the California-based firm in 2004 initially as a platform for US students to talk to each other.
Read more at:
Facebook cries foul on EU request for internal documents
The firm filed its complaints at the EU court in Luxembourg, after the commission asked to see internal documents containing any of 2,500 search phrases as part of an anti-trust enquiry.
Brussels-based news agency MLex first revealed Facebook's legal counter-strike in a story on Monday (27 July), citing anonymous sources.
US congressmen were also due to cross-examine Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday in a separate investigation into alleged abuse of the firm's online "dominance", but the hearing was postponed due to a clash with a memorial service for a US civil rights leader.
Zuckerberg founded the California-based firm in 2004 initially as a platform for US students to talk to each other.
Read more at:
Facebook cries foul on EU request for internal documents
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