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Privatization Is at the Core of Facsism
Eric Zuesse
Privatizations are increasingly fashionable, such as in Greece, Ukraine, the U.S., and UK — and privatizations are a central feature of fascism.
The core of fascism is the idea that there is some elite, whether ‘Aryan’ or ‘chosen by God,’ or otherwise, who should run things, and that everyone else exists in order to serve that elite. Inevitably, this official elite consists of the people whom the powers-that-be assign as constituting the owners of almost everything that’s valuable. Increasingly, things become those people’s private possession — even what was formerly a public asset becomes now private. Beaches become private. Schools become private. Natural resources become private. It’s not just the art that was stolen by the Nazis and privatized to them and/or shown at museums that they control, which becomes private; it’s whatever the elite want to have, and to control: it’s all now private. That’s the fascist ideal.
The legal system accommodates the legal owners, in any fascist nation, just as the legal system accommodates the legal owners in any nation at all. And, in fascism, the legal owners are the aristocracy, which are the people who have helped bring the system into being as it now is. Typically, they are the aristocracy that already exists in the given nation, if it was formerly a democracy (aristocrats tend to hate democracy; so, they bring into being fascism to replace it), but they can also be a group that is partially new and that is also partially composed of merely the winning segment of the old aristocracy — the segment of the old aristocracy that had won the type of intra-aristocratic conflict that always exists, within any aristocracy. Whereas any aristocracy is always at war against the public, there are also competitions within any aristocracy to determine which aristocrats will be the dominant ones.
The Primacy Of Jewish Genes
By Gilad Atzmon
The Guardian reported this week that a study of Holocaust survivors revealed that the Jewish trauma is passed on to its children's genes. The conclusion from a research team at New York’s Mount Sinai hospital led by Rachel Yehuda stems from the genetic study of 32 Jewish men and women who had either been interned in a Nazi concentration camp, witnessed or experienced torture or who had had to hide during the second world war.
Unlike The Guardian, that published a dry report of this 'scientific revelation', I am puzzled. What is the meaning of this scientific news? Does it suggest that the kids of Holocaust survivors are better adapted to the next holocaust or does it suggest alternatively that the heirs of Shoah survivors have inherited the trauma and are now entitled to German reparation money until the end of time?
Right-Wing DC Court of Appeals Upholds Unconstitutional Surveillance
by Stephen Lendman
Virtually unrestricted data mining tramples on Fourth Amendment rights brazenly. In December 2013, Federal District Court of the District of Columbia Judge Richard Leon ruled NSA spying unconstitutional, saying:
“The threshold issue is whether plaintiffs have a reasonable expectation of privacy that is violated when the Government indiscriminately collects their telephone metadata along with the metadata of hundreds of millions of other citizens without any particularized suspicion of wrongdoing, retains all of that metadata for five years, and then queries, analyzes, and investigates that data without prior judicial approval of the investigative targets."
"I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary' invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval." "Surely, such a program infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment."
Washington Intends Breaching Iran Nuclear Deal
by Stephen Lendman
The dawn of a new era in US/Iranian relations didn’t arrive on July 14 in Vienna - with consummation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOC). Far from it.
Washington’s deal-making history is deplorable - a record of betrayal, consistently breaching agreements since the beginning of the republic, proving its word isn’t its bond.
On Friday, Obama’s Treasury sanctions czar, Adam Szubin, arrived in Israel - to reassure its regime of continued US hardline anti-Iranian policy, ready to impose new “severe financial penalties for its (nonexistent) sponsorship of terrorism and support of military proxies,” according to The New York Times.
He’ll reassure Israeli officials about Washington’s “continued efforts to target Iran’s (nonexistent) malign activities” - intending “intensif(ied) sanctions (to) ensur(e) they bite even deeper,” he explained.
Washington agreeing in Vienna to remove Iranian sanctions was a Big Fat Lie. In return for ending some (on Iran’s nuclear program), new ones apparently will be imposed offsetting them, the usual US dirty game, pledging one thing, doing another with disturbing regularity.
Wall Street Rally: Hold the Cheers
by Stephen Lendman
Days of market turbulence likely haven’t ended. They’ve been more severe than any time since late 2008/early 2009.
Hindsight may show upswing days were classic dead-cat bounces - a combination of short-covering and market manipulation.
An August 26 Wall Street Journal article should give investors pause - headlined “Margin Calls Bite Investors, Banks,” saying:
“Loans backed by investment portfolios have become a booming business for Wall Street brokerages. Now the bill is coming due - for both the banks and their clients.”
Bank of America and other lenders are issuing margin calls. Investors either have to put up more money to cover portfolio losses or sell holdings underlying their loans.
Why and How All Large Estates Should Be Taxed to Death
Eric Zuesse
All non-taxation of estates at death is feudal; it’s systematic continuation of feudalism, into our own era.
Here’s a good example to show this: U.S. National Public Radio’s (NPR’s) reporter Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, headlined on August 25th, “For Brazil's 1 Percenters, The Land Stays In The Family Forever,” and she reported that, in that country, the aristocracy own half of the land, and that whenever a building on their land is sold, 2.5% of the sale price must go to the land’s owner, the heir-aristocrat, in a perpetual tithing-system to the hereditary Portuguese aristocracy (including the Roman Catholic Church), who have descended from the Portuguese colonizers to whom Portugal’s king had granted the land 515 years ago, in payment for their having conquered the native Indians and stolen their land for the king. The king didn’t give them all of what these conquistadors had stolen for him, but only what he felt they deserved for their services, of theft from the people who had previously owned the land, or lived on it. (Among the receiving aristocracy was the Roman Catholic Church, for its services assisting these thefts, by approving them — declaring them to reflect God’s will.)
Obama’s Ukrainian Forces Break Minsk Agreement: Resume Invasion
Eric Zuesse
The U.S.-backed Ukrainian Armed Forces, on Wednesday August 26th, resumed their all-out war against the breakaway Donbass region, according to an announcement on August 27th by the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Deputy Commander, Eduard Basurin. Donetsk is the largest city in Donbass — the region that broke away from Ukraine after the February 2014 U.S. coup in Kiev, which threw out the democratically elected Ukrainian President, for whom the residents of Donbass had voted over 90%. If this apparent re-invasion of Donbass by U.S.-backed forces is true, it would flagrantly violate the Minsk II Agreement that Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Francois Hollande had achieved, and that the warring parties had signed, six months ago, on February 11th.
Phony Reports of Russian Casualties in Ukraine Resurface
by Stephen Lendman
Russian Casualties in Ukraine
Throughout 17 months of Kiev aggression on Donbass, reports of alleged “Russian aggression” have been a complete fabrication - including fake numbers of nonexistent military casualties.
No matter. Phony anti-Russian accusations persist - the latest from Forbes magazine (its motto: “The Capitalist Tool”). Its source: a dubious Delovaya Zhizn (Business Life) Russian web site.
Its March 2015 article headlined “Increases in Pay for Military in 2015” claimed “official figures (reveal) the number of Russian soldiers killed or made invalids in eastern Ukraine” - the story a complete hoax, falsified information later removed, picked up in its original form by Forbes, then reported by NBC News, the London Independent, The Times Europe, the International Business Times, Daily Beast, other publications and Washington’s Radio Free Europe/Radio Europe propaganda - all repeating the same Big Lie without checking sources for verification. None exist.
Ukrainians Overwhelmingly Oppose Junta Rule
by Stephen Lendman
Ukraine is a Nazi-infested police state - an illegitimate US-installed coup d’etat regime, run by criminal thugs, wrecking the economy, abolishing freedoms, waging war on their own people.
No wonder a poll conducted by Rating Group Ukraine found 0% full support for its regime. Poroshenko scored 3% full support, 21% partial support, and overwhelming opposition to his rule.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk had 0% full support. Kiev’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) scored 1%. Random sampling included respondents from all Ukrainian regions except Donbass - victimized by Kiev aggression.
Results conflict with regime claims about achieving “national consensus.” None whatever exists. People worldwide want fundamental freedoms. Kiev offers none. Poll numbers show the regime is overwhelmingly despised.
Ukraine’s mismanaged economy is dysfunctional - teetering toward collapse. Borrowed money is used to wage war.
The Greatness of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Or not?
Eric Zuesse,
Many people are aware that U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt skillfully lured Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor so as to get the American public to support joining England’s war against Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.
Until the Pearl Harbor attack, all of FDR’s efforts to win the U.S. public’s support for going to war against Hitler had failed miserably, and time was rapidly running out to turn the war’s tide away from Hitler and global dictatorship, and toward Churchill and a possible world future of democracy (the latter being the world future which has made our lives as good as they are, not the hell that Hitler had intended them to be). FDR’s effort to join the war was blocked by congressional Republicans, allied with a few determinedly pacifist Democrats such as Montana’s Senator William E. Borah, people who ignored the ideological stakes, vast though those were, if they even opposed fascism at all (which in many cases is questionable). Communism was widely hated because America’s rich hated it and propagandized heavily against it; so, Stalin’s perfidies were well-publicized, but Hitler’s and other fascists’ vilenesses weren’t so clearly and unambiguously presented, especially because many of America’s aristocrats were very profitably doing business with Nazis and were hoping to become invited onto what then seemed likely to be the winning team after the war between Churchill and Hitler would be over. Both the Congress and the American public were against FDR on the war-issue, and yet FDR needed to turn all of them around on it, and to do it fast. The process to do this violated moral rules; and, in some respects, it even violated U.S. laws; but FDR did what he had to do, in order to save the world, by joining Churchill’s war against Hitler.
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