There seems to be an interesting double bluff at work at the moment calling into question exactly how displeased Beijing truly is with the Baekdu Kim regime.

“…what is China doing zeroing out oil trade that is quite obviously continuing? That question is arguably the most important one of all. Is China covering up its support, or covering up pressure?”

Xi Jinping has described how he refuses to go along with the United Nations’ nearly unanimous condemnation of North Korea’s conduct because the situation is “sensitive” and “complicated.” I agree that it is sensitive, but there seems little “complicated” about Beijing’s unwillingness to jeopardize their foreign investments– environmental and humanitarian costs be damned.
Followup to the Peterson analysis here.

Posted by: Monolycus | Feb 14 2016 15:14 utc | 3

@dahoit I am disgusted with a lot of people this morning, including the media in practically every country. The German media is just a PR department, the Guardian is blaming Russia for everything, and even Ban Kee Moon had to tell the FT that they misquoted him about Russia. I don’t know where to run.

Posted by: Mischi | Feb 14 2016 16:30 utc | 5

The British Press is ALL red top tabloid since Tony Blair took out BBC over the Iraq War. About the only place a possibility exists to find somewhat unadulterated information are the Tory papers which have escaped the MI5/MI6 war on information. Tory papers e.g. Telegraph, Times carry their own brand of neoconservative/neoliberal agendas. For all British Press – caveat emptor – caveat viator.

Posted by: Formerly T-Bear | Feb 14 2016 17:52 utc | 7

Bernie parroted the Zionist line that it is Iran that is fueling terror around the world, and it is trump that has not yet made the required pilgrimage to the Wall. Just saying…

Posted by: Shadyl | Feb 14 2016 19:13 utc | 9

Piotr Berman @ 8, Bernie has a background which shows his real intentions. The question is whether he could bypass the powerful establishment, if he get elected, to implement many of what promised. I believe that the support of the American people will be crucial on that.

Posted by: nmb | Feb 14 2016 19:35 utc | 11

Skimmed a few hits on Bernie, using this search term:
site:wsws.org bernie war
It does not look good. Looks like more “hope and change”. Worse than I thought.
Fuck. Nothing’s going to change. Might as go well enjoy what’s left of the weekend before the nukes start flying.
b, is this an open bar? Chipnik, how are those burger patties coming along? I’ll uh… I’m just going to step outside for a bit.

Posted by: dumbass | Feb 14 2016 20:17 utc | 13

Ding dong, Scalia is dead.

Posted by: guest77 | Feb 14 2016 21:24 utc | 15

SAA is at Raqqah’s dorstep:
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/02/13/450173/Syria-Raqqah-Daesh-Tabqa-Assad

Posted by: LXV | Feb 14 2016 22:01 utc | 17

who lectures posters about commenting on something by ending with ”’on my blog”’?

Posted by: james | Feb 14 2016 22:40 utc | 19

@20 karlof1… i am sure they’re right.. that’s what happens when an insecure and repressive regime changes the guard with a newbie.. newbie has to come in and make like he is tougher then the last creep..

Posted by: james | Feb 14 2016 22:56 utc | 21

james @21
I wasn’t too surprised by the student’s descriptions, but it’s hard to find such observations, which is why I shared it. Unfortunately, life for the Saudi hoi polloi’s only going to worsen and the repression increase. I doubt it will exist as a state by 2100, although its remaining lifespan’s likely much less.

Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 14 2016 23:23 utc | 23

@1 oui
Thanks for the link to the sickening news of the 5th column’s latest machinations.
It’s pretty clear that we Americans now have zero representation in DC, so my thought is that we should at least go on record denying the legitimacy of the US Government’s unrepresentative acts … I was originally thinking of the upcoming midnight passage of the TPP, but the USG’s ‘recognition’ of occupied Palestine as part of Israel certainly needs repudiation just as badly.
Do you – does anyone – have an inside track on an internet ‘we the undersigned’ operation? I realize they all exist as devices to commodify those who sign, but perhaps some are better than others? more to the point, perhaps, some are no doubt operated from the bowels of hell itself. Maybe the best bet would be Obama’s own ‘petition the White House’ page, or whatever it’s called?
I think I’ll prepare statements of the ‘To whom it may concern, we Americans are no longer responsible for the following crimes committed or debts incurred by our former Government …’ variety. Probably one page with … the TPP and Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 as the first? or separate pages for each successive crime/outrage?
Im open to suggestions.

Posted by: jfl | Feb 14 2016 23:55 utc | 25

@25 To whom it may concern
@26 karlof, ‘The USA will continue as a state …’
Ok, you’re an historian … that’s still just a bald assertion, though, right? Even counting the pixie dust 😉
‘Will it still have the same political system and constitution? I hope not, but the current crises aren’t nearly big enough to cause the turmoil required for overhauling the system and its organizational law.’
Won’t stop me from trying … and the crises are catching up, quickly. I think we need an alternative to fascism out there when the collapse does come. And I think the first requirement is the Open election amendment, although the real meat and potatoes come with the Recall, Referendum, and Initiative Amendment.
Of course, we will have to stir our stumps to seize control of our government to enact them.
I have no kids, so I share my worries/proposals with all of you.

Posted by: jfl | Feb 15 2016 1:12 utc | 27

26
Please read some basic physical chemistry before you predict the end times from ‘ocean acidification’, it makes you sound like a mouth breather at a head banger concert.
First of all, measurement of pH, both diurnal and tidal, by the Monterrey Institute shows that pH varies by a factor of 10x rhythmically throughout the day, week, month and year. There are no more than 100 marine stations regularly measuring temperature and pH globally, many of those are out of calibration, since pH sensors are especially prone to drifting.
So there’s that.
Do understand what that means? The New Green Theocracy is basing their prediction on 100 of 352,670,000,000,000,000,000 possible gallons of seawater sampled, and sampling techniques themselves are only accurate to 0.1 pH, while seawater changes ±1.0 pH on a regular basis.
Second, and the convincing, confirming analysis: If you took all the atmosphere, of which CO2 is only 400 millionths of the volume, and you condensed it into liquid, it would occupy on a tiny fraction of the volume of the oceans, and that 400 millionths share of C02, which has only increased by +40 millionths during the Petrocene Epoch, raises the pH of condensed atmosphere, before ocean dilution, by about 0.01008, and after dilution, by ~0.000426 pH.
It is a physical impossibility, based on a Big Lie, and I was an observer on that Big Lie, when marine shellfish biologists, threatened with the end of funding for their shellfish labs, came up with the ‘acidification’ nonsense, based on shellfish mortalities in an Oregon estuary which drained a massive acidic peat bog! The acid was from outflows, not the ocean.
So now you have a Mil.Gov drone crime behind the obvious and proveable physical chemistry.
And if you still need a slap in the face reality check from real biology now, the ocean’s planktonic drift is continually taking CO2 out of solution and turning it into carbonates, then those plankton are dying and sinking to the bottom of the abyss with those carbonates, as they have done for billions of years, since C02 was 35,000 millionths of the atmosphere.
35,000 millionths, they tell us, and yet everything survived to today, everything we see and touch survived 35,000 millionths of C02 at some time long in the past, except land dinosaurs, who were also mouth breathers and deserved to go extinct.
Worry about your liver. Natural bio-chemistry has the CO2:pH balance handled.

Posted by: NoReply | Feb 15 2016 2:54 utc | 29

Greece failed and betrayed the EU when they sent 1 million so called refugees into the EU without even taken a name from the invaders who killed 130 innocent people in Paris and raped german and swedish women.
Only fools could ever again believe a word the greeks or turks say, their promises are in vain because we know they never keep their word. CLOSE THE EU BORDERS, north of Greece.
Hungary, Slovenia and Bulgaria are the new EU borders, we need to seal these borders with soldiers/walls. Nobody must pass without proper EU VISAS or else we can just dismantle the EU.

Posted by: RussianBoy | Feb 15 2016 3:49 utc | 31

Sorry if this is already posted; no time to read the comments today.
Don’t want you to niss a truly informative audio interview of Andrew Korybko. He’s the American who went to school in Russia, tremendously knowledgeable. It’s a loong interview, and as it progresses he gets more excited & talks faster & faster– very informative.
http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/02/14/episode-122-sunday-wire-the-art-of-crisis-with-guest-andrew-korybko/ Audio interview Andrew Korybko at about 67

Posted by: Penelope | Feb 15 2016 5:50 utc | 33

>> If I recall the right-wing government in 2014 had the situation under control.
Yeah, right! And the water flowing down the river was still above sea level!
Can I get an “It’s contained!”? Amen.

Posted by: dumbass | Feb 15 2016 10:08 utc | 35

Any clues who will lead the Supreme Court’s seances to determine original intent will be now?

Posted by: Formerly T-Bear | Feb 15 2016 17:53 utc | 37

@ 38
Strange man, strange life, strange ideas, strange end. As you say – ‘nothing to see here’.
Suppose one will have to wait until the movie comes out, Depp would be good for the lead role, what with those Pirate things.

Posted by: Formerly T-Bear | Feb 15 2016 21:26 utc | 39

Aristide Allies Celebrate New Haitian President

According to local media, the Lavalas movement was heavily represented at the inauguration ceremony for President Privert, in the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, which some had not visited since their leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide was toppled 12 years ago in a coup.

Hope it’s going to work out for the Haitians.

Posted by: jfl | Feb 15 2016 23:31 utc | 41

We’ve been measuring ocean pH for over a hundred years. It’s never “acidic”; the term is used to mislead the layman, who assumes that acid is less friendly to life. (Not true, most everything you eat is acidic). However the ocean does vary in the degree of alkalinity. This cyclic behavioral is about 30 years long and coincides w the warm and cool phase of the oceans. For instance, NASA has confirmed that the Pacific has entered its cool phase, which usually lasts for about 30 years. This cool/warm/cool oscillation is not controversial; it’s called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. There’s a similar one for the Atlantic & it too has entered its cool phase. Cold water can hold more CO2 than warm water, so it is less alkaline (but never acidic). Eg, If your carbonated soda is warm when you open it, the CO2 rushes to escape.
It seems the original “research” chose the part of this S curve from the bottom of the cool period to the top of the warm period. It was de-bunked by a scientist who was aware that we’ve been measuring pH for much longer. Of course there can always be local circumstances causing local decrease in alkalinity, from bottom to top circulation and so on.
—
A 2004 paper by two of PMEL’s (Pacific Marin Environmental Laboratory) senior oceanographers – Dr Richard Feely and Dr Christopher Sabine – is often cited in support of “ocean acidification” theory and is reproduced, in simplified form, at NOAA’s website. It also formed part of testimony that Feely gave to Congress in 2010, again to the effect that increasing atmospheric CO2 is causing a reduction in seawater pH.
Their report appears to depend on cherry-picked data and misleading projections in defiance of real-world evidence. Their major error is that they included data beginning only from 1988. But ocean pH has been measured for 100 years, and when the full record is included it indicates NO ocean acidification.
http://www.breitbart.co­­­m/london/2014/12/23/noaagate-how-ocean-acidification-could-turn-out-to-be-the-biggest-con-since-michael-manns-hockey-stick/
http://media.breitbart.com/media/2014/12/mwacompilationofglobalocean_phjan82014.jpg chart summarizing pH since 1910.

Posted by: Penelope | Feb 16 2016 7:03 utc | 43

Wow;Over at the Indy,they have a story Chelsea Clinton is worried about releasing all the drug felons as Sanders says.Holy moly?Who the f*ck is this little pos?Shillary hopefully,lost the black vote with that one.And Sanders needs that black vote desperately,hence his nice take on Obombas terrible admistration.
And the Israelis arrested the Israeli head of Wapo.Wow,they are eating their own now.
Every rag has Trump and Sanders hit pieces.
Best line of the day;”I looked over at Rubio and he was a swimming pool”.(sweat)Trump.

Posted by: dahoit | Feb 16 2016 15:33 utc | 45

blackwater-group-abandons-taiz-front-in-west-yemen

The US based Blackwater Group has reportedly abandoned the Ta’iz front in western Yemen after suffering heavy casualties over the last two months while fighting alongside the Saudi-led Coalition forces and the Hadi loyalists.
Local activists have reported this news after they intercepted a communication between Blackwater officers and members of the Saudi-led Coalition in the coastal province of Ta’iz.
In a matter of two months, the Blackwater Group has lost well over 100 casualties at the volatile Ta’iz front, including operatives from a dozen countries around the world.

Posted by: Nana2007 | Feb 16 2016 21:44 utc | 47

Egypt closes Rafah crossing after rare 3-day opening

The statement said 2,439 people from Gaza used the rare opportunity for leaving the enclave on the Mediterranean while 1,122 entered and 334 were turned back by Egyptian authorities.
Gaza has been under a crippling siege by the Israeli regime for nearly a decade with Gazans using the snap openings of the Rafah crossing as the only way to get in touch with the outside world.

Arab ‘brotherhood’ at work. USrael – Egypt, to the Palestinians, no difference. In fact USrael,Egypt, the Sunni Gulfies, the EU, the rest of the world … no difference. The whole world … doesn’t even wring its hands any longer over the long, tortured, attempted extermination of the Palestinian people.

Posted by: jfl | Feb 17 2016 0:29 utc | 49

Some good news …
Brazil ditching dollar to boost Iran trade

Trade Minister Armando Monteiro has said Brazil seeks to boost business relations with Iran after the lifting of sanctions on Tehran, even though Washington has opted to maintain its “primary” embargo on the country.
“Everyone is racing after Iran now. The trade potential is very big,” Monteiro told Reuters on Tuesday.
He said Brazil will find ways to settle payments and the type of payment and currency in transactions with Iran which President Dilma Rousseff could visit this year.

Trading in USD is like wearing a sign that says, “Kick me!” on your back. The US can impound [steal] your dollars at any time for any reason … or for no reason at all. It’s holds well over 100 billion of Iran’s USD, unusable by Iran, and it began its string of thefts back in 1979.
Any nation is foolish to leave their financial assets in a currency the criminal USG can just help itself to at any time.
Have Unions Cheated Death With Scalia Gone?

Equality loving people breathed easier after Justice Scalia’s last breath. And labor activists partied like it was New Years eve. Their would-be hangman dropped dead and unions gained a stay of execution.
Scalia’s timely departure implies that the landmark union case “Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Association” will be a 4-4 stalemate, meaning the pro-labor status-quo prevails.

Shamus goes on to say, “The solace is temporary. Unions can’t assume the next Justice won’t be another Scalia.”
That’s true, but isn’t it amazing what a difference a day makes? Isn’t death a beautiful, life-enabling thing?

Posted by: jfl | Feb 17 2016 12:29 utc | 51

@33 pen
Thanks for the link to the interview with Andrew Korybko. I listened to about an hour of it. I followed up on his link to Kelly Greenhill, and found her paper, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement as an Instrument of Coercion, very interesting. Her figure 1 shows, in its 4th quadrant, exactly the position in which Germany and Sweden, for instance, find themselves today, with their populations split between those who are suffering the Concentrated Costs of the weaponized migration and those deriving the Concentrated Benefits of the weaponized migration, with both maximized.
The costs are obvious and real … inbred distrust, dislike of non-German/non-Swedish immigrants and so resentment of the actual costs of providing them space and sustenance.
The benefits are more ephemeral … confirmation of their pretense as a ‘superior’, more-civilized nation.
The costs are borne by everyone, but they burden chiefly the less well-off and conservative portion of the population. The benefits accrue chiefly to the well-off, liberal population exclusively. And so the strife within each nation is at a maximum, with the political class in a lose-lose situation. They alienate one or the other part of the population no matter what they do.
I haven’t finished with the article yet myself, there is a lot of information and analysis therein. Somebody – himself, not just someone – posted a link to another, earlier paper of hers on the series of migrations used by Fidel Castro against the US forty and more years ago, but this paper generalizes on that and on lots of other data besides. It’s quite something. Written in 2010.
The solution, of course, is for the CBs and the CCs both to analyse just how they got into their present situation, and then to roll back the conditions that have driven the Middle Easterners and North Africans from home, so they can return. Which is what everyone but the USrael/the EU/KSA+the Gulfies/Turkey wants:
1) stop following the directions of the US’ and of their EU vassals
2) end the death, devastation, destruction, and deceit that the USrael/the EU and their local proxies are ‘lavishing’ on the Middle East
3) instead of bribing the butcher Erdogan in the hopes of him ending the endless stream of migrants they are together all creating, use that money insted to rebuild, as much as possible, the dd&d done to Iraq, Syria, Libya … and Ukraine. It’s the same story in all those places.
Of course, there is little chance that “those who have caused the situation – [will] realize, now, what [they] have done“. That they will learn from history.
But that’s exactly what they need to do … rather those who have been deceived and betrayed need to realize the deceit and betrayal of those who have ‘lead’ them into their present sad situation … and replace them all. Whatever that takes.
Thanks again for the link.

Posted by: jfl | Feb 17 2016 15:45 utc | 53

EU plan for military intervention against “refugee boats” in Libya and the Mediterranean

The report, dated 29 January 2016, is written by the Operation Commander, Rear Admiral Enrico Credendino of the Italian Navy, for the European Union Military Committee and the Political and Security Committee of the EU. It gives refugee flow statistics and outlines the performed and planned operation phases (1, 2A, 2B and 3), the corresponding activities of the joint EU forces operating in the Mediterranean and the future strategies for the operation.
One of the main elements within the report is the planned, but still pending transition from Phase 2A (operating in High Seas) to Phase 2B (operating in Libyan Territorial Waters) due to the volatile government situation in Libya, where the building of a ‘Government of National Accord’ (GNA) is still under way.
The report presses the responsible EU bodies to help speed up the process of forming a ‘reliable’ government in Libya that in return is expected to ‘invite’ EU forces to operate within their Territorial Waters (Phase 2B) and later even give permission to extend the EU military operations onshore (phase 3).
In the last month there have been half a dozen high level meetings between EU and US officials (including with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Rome) as it is claimed by the US military that upto 5,000 Islamic State fighters have taken control over parts of the Libyan coast. Serious pressure has been placed on Libya’s major power groupings to speed up the completion of the GNA and ‘invite’ Western forces. A GNA invititation was expected in January. Libyan press has reported that US, UK and French special forces have already arrived (there is no public admission by the Western countries). Within europe, Italy and the UK have been the driving forces behind the military intervention.

Posted by: Nana2007 | Feb 17 2016 17:39 utc | 55

Found this analysis by F. William Engdahl to be interesting:
http://journal-neo.org/2016/02/17/washington-s-machiavellian-game-in-syria/
give some feedback if any of you have time to read.
http://journal-neo.org/2016/02/17/washington-s-machiavellian-game-in-syria/

Posted by: crone | Feb 18 2016 4:50 utc | 57

US Airstrikes Destroy More Than $500 Million in ISIS Cash Reserves

“It’s a significant amount of cash that we believe was in those various collection points before we struck them,” said Col. Steve Warren, the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, told reporters at a Pentagon briefing on Wednesday.
According to Warren, the U.S. now estimates that “hundreds of millions of dollars” in cash has been destroyed by airstrikes targeting ISIS financial centers, an increase from the vague “tens of thousands” he had described in recent weeks. But Warren declined to provide a range for the new estimate.

James Risen, Pay any price : greed, power, and endless war

Within weeks of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad’s Firdos Square in April 2003, a televised event that came to symbolize the ouster of Saddam’s regime in Iraq by the U.S.-led military coalition, unmarked trucks started backing up to the loading docks at the East Rutherford Operations Center. There, they were filled end to end with dozens of pallets of shrink-wrapped $100 bills. The trucks then moved out, down the New Jersey Turnpike, carrying billions of dollars in cash. They hauled their cargo of riches past Newark, where nearly one third of the people live below the poverty level.
The trucks stopped at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, D.C., where the palletized cash was transferred to the cargo holds of air force C-17 transport planes. The aircraft taxied down the runway and took off for Iraq, making intermediate stops in Germany and Kuwait. Finally, the planes landed at Baghdad International Airport, where the cash was unloaded and counted in the presence of both American and Iraqi personnel.
What happened next is still one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Iraq war.
Between $12 and $14 billion, mostly in $100 bills, was taken from East Rutherford and flown into the war zone of Iraq in 2003 and 2004, with virtually no supervision or safeguards. Another $5.8 billion was sent from the New York Federal Reserve to Baghdad by electronic funds transfers. All told, approximately $20 billion was sent to Iraq without any clear orders or direction on how the money was to be used. The controls on the money were so lax that few credible records exist of exactly how much cash there was or where the cash went once it arrived in Baghdad.
Almost certainly, a portion of it ended up in the hands of some of the most powerful Iraqi leaders of the post-Saddam era. Billions of dollars in cash were wasted. And billions more simply disappeared.
Now, there is explosive new evidence that for the first time may help to solve the mystery of the missing cash. Approximately $2 billion of the money that was flown from the United States to Baghdad was stolen and secretly transported out of Iraq in what may be one of the largest robberies in modern history.
American investigators have traced the missing cash to Lebanon. It is believed to have been stolen after it arrived in Baghdad, and then secretly transported to Lebanon, where it has been hidden away ever since. Between $1.2 and $1.6 billion is believed to be hidden in a bunker in a rural village in Lebanon, according to current and former U.S. officials. These officials have received reports that the cash was stolen and stored in the bunker with the knowledge of several of Iraq’s most prominent leaders.
At least several hundred million dollars in additional cash is also being hidden in several other locations in Lebanon, according to former U.S. officials, bringing the total amount stolen from Iraq and moved to Lebanon to approximately $2 billion. The figures of how much money was stolen and transported out of Iraq are inexact, but the reality is indisputable. One former American official even reported seeing the cash for himself, stored in the bunker in Lebanon.
In addition to cash, hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of gold was stolen from the Iraqi government and is also being hidden in Lebanon, current and former U.S. officials have said.
The CIA and FBI, along with the Pentagon and State Department, have all been told about the theft of the cash, and have received evidence about the bunker in Lebanon and other locations where the cash is believed to be hidden. But the agencies have not tried to retrieve the money. Nobody went after it during the Bush administration, nor has the Obama administration tried. Instead, the U.S. government has kept the entire matter secret.

What the right hand giveth, the left hand taketh away.
@57 crone, @58 Lozion
I noticed that he started off pooh-poohing the idea of distracted if not demented officials in Washington setting US ‘policy’, went around the block a couple of times, and then basically came back to the conclusion : distracted if not demented officials in Washington are setting US ‘policy’.

Posted by: jfl | Feb 18 2016 6:40 utc | 59

Trump is attacked by Pope;Trump says its a disgrace for a religious leader to question ones faith.
Over at the Graun the liberal hypocrites are having a field day,as they forget the Pope is a guest of Mexico,is fully on board the refugee train of open borders which Europe and America are being inundated with.Thus he has skin in the game.Well Donald has American skin in the game,and I have a feeling Americans aren’t going to like the Pope sticking his nose in American sovereignty.
I like the guy, he means well, he must adhere to the Christian principles or be perceived a hypocrite.
The Pope,as we,should be attacking the CA and SA govts. which have let their nations down by repression,and American dollars in bank accounts,instead of America.We’ll deal with our criminals,I hope.
The Zionist enemy will try to have a field day with this,watch.

Posted by: dahoit | Feb 18 2016 18:48 utc | 61

From the same article, Michael Hudson’s description of the TPP …
The New Global Financial Cold War

Bonnie Faulkner:
What is the aim of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty and how is it at odds with the Asian Infrastructure Bank, the AIIB?
Michael Hudson:
I could give a glib answer and say the aim is to reduce the population by 50%, to starve people, abolish pensions and spread poverty. That actually is the effect.
The cover story pretends to be about trade, but the real agenda is to force privatization and disable government regulation. This reverses what was central to the whole Progressive Era. For the last 300 years, the assumption of Europe and North America was that you were going to have a mixed economy, with governments investing in infrastructure, roads and other transportation, communications, water and sewer systems, gas and electricity. The role of government infrastructure was to provide these basic needs at minimum cost in order to promote a low-cost, competitive economy. That’s how America got rich. That’s how Germany industrialized and how the rest of Europe did. Bit the aim of the Trans-Pacific Partnership is to reverse and privatize public investment. Its ideology is that the economy should be owned and operated by private owners, private enterprise, whose aim is short-term profit.
There are a number of related aims: to nullify environmental protection regulations that cost money, to nullify protection of labor, and to nullify attempts to tax natural resources or economic rent. The idea is to turn roads and the transport system into toll roads, which will be owned by foreigners and run at a high charge. The Internet and the water system will be sold off and made into toll systems, to charge for their services and for other basic needs. This will impose a neo-feudal rentier economy throughout the world as the finance, industrial and real estate (FIRE) sector takes over the government sector.
I think you could say that at the broadest level, the idea is to roll back the Enlightenment and restore feudalism. That may sound like an extreme statement, but people don’t realize how radical the TPP’s investment agreements are. For instance, when Australia raised the charges on cigarettes and included health warnings on the packs, Philip Morris sued, insisting that Australia pay it what Philip Morris would have made if people would have continued to smoke and get cancer at the existing rate.
When Ecuador tried to sue oil companies for pollution, the oil companies sued, and now the country has to pay the oil company the amount of profit it would make if it continued to produce oil by polluting the land – to an infinite degree. No government anywhere in the world that signs this will be free to regulate the environment or even to enact new taxes on rent-seeking or other private enterprise.
Essentially, the new buyers of the roads, the water systems, the sewer systems, can use these as rent extraction opportunities without anti-monopoly regulations. That means they can charge whatever the market will bear, and treat foreign countries sort of like New York City cable customers are treated. I live in Forest Hills in Queens. We have one supplier, Time Warner. If I want cable, I have to pay what they charge, and it has nothing to do at all with their cost of production. I have to rent their cable box, not buy one of my own.
That’s what economic rent is. It’s a revenue above the cost of production. For hundreds of years the economics of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill and Thorstein Veblen wrote about how to create an economy that would produce everything at its actual, technologically and socially necessary cost, without any free lunch, that is, without any kind of unearned income (*“economic rent”*).
The aim of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its European version is to promote unearned rent extraction. Rentier interests have backed [as] a body the kind of junk economics to replace classical economics, against the Progressive Era and social democracy, to create a right-wing ideology that they call free trade. The term is Orwellian doublethink.
Bonnie Faulkner:
Have these rulings by the World Trade Organization been enforced against these countries you mentioned, such as Australia?
Michael Hudson:
I think Philip Morris failed, but it forced the government to spend tens of millions of dollars in legal fees. It’s almost impossible for a poor government like Ecuador or even Australia, to spend the legal fees that it costs to defend themselves against a battery of corporate lawyers. Under the TPP, the referees would be drawn from the corporate sector and its law firms.
The judgments and rules are made outside of government and outside of laws that voters enact. So corporate oligarchy replaces democracy. Decisions as to how much governments will have to pay corporations in compensatory damages are made by a small group of referees in a revolving door with the corporate sector. In effect, they will work as lobbyists for these corporations.

Posted by: jfl | Feb 19 2016 20:18 utc | 63

US launches airstrikes against Libya

US warplanes struck Libya in the early morning hours Friday killing as many as 50 people at what the Pentagon alleges was a “training camp” of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the northwestern port town of Sabratha, near the Tunisian border.
The mayor of the town, Hussein al-Thwadi, told Reuters that the target was a building in Sabratha’s Qasr Talil district, which had been home to many foreigners. Many of the victims were Tunisians and at least two women were reported among the dead.
The Pentagon indicated that the bombing was aimed at assassinating one man, Noureddine Chouchane, a Tunisian national described as a “senior facilitator in Libya” and alleged to be a suspect in the March 2015 terrorist attack that killed 22 people at the Bardo Museum in Tunis.
US officials allowed that they were still “assessing” who had actually been killed in the strike and were unsure if Chouchane was among the dead. …
The growth of ISIS in Libya—the Pentagon claims that the group has as many as 5,000 fighters there—was the byproduct of successive US imperialist interventions in the region. The same Islamist fighters that Washington used as proxies in the war to topple Gaddafi were funneled, along with massive quantities of arms taken from Libyan government stockpiles, into Syria to wage another regime change war coordinated by the CIA against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Now, some of these same elements have returned to Libya. …
Just as the war in 2011 was not about human rights, so the new war being prepared today is not about terrorism. In both cases, the objective is the semi-colonial subjugation of Libya and appropriation by competing energy conglomerates of its oil and gas reserves, the largest on the African continent.

Just as Iraqis were and are killed, year in and year out over the past quarter century, and their country devastated and destroyed, reduced to the US’ ‘permanent’ base of terrorist operations in the Middle East, so too are Libyans now being slaughtered and their land being reduced by the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Terrorist in Chief.
People are recounting now that the ‘shores of Tripoli’ in the US Marines ‘hymn‘ reflect the US’ debut as ‘cops of the world‘ in 1805. The US’ has exported its terrorist ‘racket‘ for over two centuries now, and is still dreaming of a ‘new American Century‘ of terror.
The US has become the world’s nightmare.

Posted by: jfl | Feb 20 2016 18:16 utc | 65

to jfl, at 65
That’s some sloppy B.S. Who needs good facts when you have bad rhetoric? Barbary pirates had seized vessels and demanded ransom. US only stepped in as world cop when post-WWII UK couldn’t afford it anymore.

Posted by: rufus magister | Feb 21 2016 0:11 utc | 67

no doubt

Posted by: rufus magister | Feb 21 2016 1:01 utc | 69

Why don’t you go back to justifying the execution of apostates and the rape of their widows?

Posted by: rufus magister | Feb 21 2016 2:41 utc | 71

in re 66
Could it be that our self-styled “revolutionary right-wing forces” are undertaking to rearrange some deck chairs?
The irruption on the Maidan was preceded by serious political instability. Yatsenyuk only survived a non-confidence vote by substantial parts of Poroshenko’s party and the Opposition Bloc leaving the chamber; pressure by DC is thought to have played a part. The “Fatherland” party of Yulia Tymoshenko and the “Samopomich” party (based in Lviv) had previously left the governing coaliion. The encampment was proceeded by attacks on Russian banks, as well as properties of the Donbass oligarch Akhmetov.
And need it be said? — UAF compliance with the ceasefire terms of Minsk-2 remains poor.

Posted by: rufus magister | Feb 21 2016 15:13 utc | 73

https://www.rt.com/uk/333172-cameron-brexit-boris-johnson/
“British Prime Minister David Cameron warned London Mayor Boris Johnson Sunday about the dangers of sharing a Brexit platform with UKIP leader Nigel Farage and firebrand progressive George Galloway.”
Didn’t see that coming.

Posted by: ruralito | Feb 22 2016 6:25 utc | 75

ac grayling , prof of philosophy of london
**china is an imperialist, irredentist, massively human-rights-violating totalitarian state that will use any means to get its way** [sic]
i pointed out to the good prof , that’d be fukus [fuck uk+us] down to a t !!
the normally very articulate prof was lost for words, he stuttered..*why u smart aleck* ! [sic]
i further pointed out that he ought to be in the dept of philosophistry ?
{1]
hehehehe
————————-
Johnnie Carson, U.S. assistant secretary for African Affairs,
*China is a “very aggressive and pernicious economic competitor with no morals.*
they sure seem to be cut from the same mould dont they these perfidous albions and their murkkan cousins ?
hehehehe
[1]
http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2010/03/whos-bold-whos-ignoring-obamas-china.html

Posted by: denk | Feb 23 2016 2:09 utc | 77

Johnnie Carson, U.S. assistant secretary for African Affairs,
*China is a “very aggressive and pernicious economic competitor with no morals.*
————————————–
exhibit s = sudan.
first came the terrarists attacks…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk › …
Oct 27, 2008 – Five Chinese oil workers kidnapped in Sudan nine days ago have been killed
cnn
Jan 29, 2012 – Militants captured 70 construction workers, including Chinese nationals, in Sudan’s volatile South Kordofan state,
Sun Jan 13, 2013 4:14pm EST
Chinese workers abducted in Sudan’s Darfur
[couldnt document them all, these are just the tip of an iceberg .
tens of thousands of chinese engineers, workers have died in attacks by terrarists, ran a mob rioters,
regime change, *air disasters* for the past three decades]
seeing those indomitable chinese aint gonna be scared off by some two bit terrarists, plan b kicked into action, the balkanisation of sudan.
*With the oilfields being located primarily in the south of the country, the US led the charge to dismantle Sudan and create a South Sudan that would be dependent on US finance and military muscle (provided by AFRICOM and US clients such as Uganda and Rwanda) for its very survival.* [1]
to uncle sham’s utter chargrin, the chinese didnt sulk on their loss and waste no time dealing with the newly minted *made in usa* south sudan !
that calls for plan c !
* The continuing violence and bloodshed in South Sudan – a result of internal power struggles between competing US aligned factions – is merely collateral damage in Washington’s growing proxy war with China.
…………………….
If one asks the question “who benefits from the South Sudanese civil war?” the answer is clear. The USA is presently the ONLY beneficiary of the ongoing horrors in South Sudan for this latest round of conflict has once again shut down the Chinese run oil fields in the country.*
……………………………………
doesnt this *civil war* in south sudan looks a bit too conveeeenient ?
by now everyone and his cat should knows that uncle sham, the pro arsonist ,doesnt make his blood soaked fortune by sitting on his ass waiting for calls, he starts the fire himself !
*the USA via the CIA has been paying the salaries of the South Sudanese Army (SPLA) since 2009. In other words, both the soldiers (“rebels”) supporting Riek Machar and the soldier supporting President Salva Kiir are being paid by the USA, paid to kill each other* [2]
crisis, alarm, solution.
works like a charm since 1875 !
[1]
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-expands-military-net-over-africa-checking-chinas-influence/5370053
[2]
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/23/the-usa-v-china-in-south-sudan/

Posted by: denk | Feb 24 2016 2:53 utc | 79

Haiti Rises: A Time for Solidarity

“Reflecting on struggles everywhere, we came to the conclusion that a people can’t be sovereign if they don’t have the right to vote. No people can retain their dignity if their vote does not count.”
“We say NO, WE WILL NOT OBEY ILLEGITIMATE OFFICIALS. Self-defense is a legitimate universal law. Civil-Disobedience is an accepted universal right when a people confronts an illegal regime. The right to elect a government is universally accepted as a way for people to protect its existence. Today, confronted by the danger presented by local and international colonialists, the Haitian people have started a RESISTANCE FOR EXISTENCE movement. They ask for people to people solidarity from everywhere on the planet.”
  —From a Statement issued by 68 Haitian Grassroots Organizations on January 22, 2016.

We should heed their call.

Posted by: jfl | Feb 25 2016 0:27 utc | 81