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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.
US/Israeli Attempted Color Revolution in Lebanon?
by Stephen Lendman
Longstanding US/Israeli plans call for redrawing the Middle East map, replacing independent governments with pro-Western puppet regimes, balkanizing Iraq, Syria, Iran and other regional countries for easier control, looting their resources, and exploiting their people.
Analyst Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya says plans call for "creating an arc of instability, chaos, and violence extending from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Iran, and the borders of NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan” - by color revolutions or wars. Violent protests rock Beirut - ongoing for days, a so-called “You Stink” campaign over uncollected rubbish, people demanding “corrupt” government officials resign for letting it pile up.
Israel Flagrantly Violates Core International Law
by Stephen Lendman
Israel wages daily war on millions of Palestinians, filling its gulag with thousands for their political beliefs, including politicians for belonging to the wrong parties.
Currently, 14 PLC members are imprisoned - six on fabricated charges and kangaroo military court convictions, eight uncharged, untried, solely for their political affiliations. None committed any crimes.
Israel is an apartheid police state, far worse than South Africa’s former regime. A previous article said the following: In 2002, Archbishop Desmond Tutu visited Israel. He was "very deeply distressed" by what he saw. He condemned Israeli apartheid. It's worse now than ever.
Daesh (ISIS) Heritage Destruction in Syria is a War Crime and Crime against Humanity. The UN must consider R2P to stop it now
Franklin Lamb
The Ancient Citadel, Damascus
This observer imagines that it’s probably not politically very correct among quite a few, including formerly this observer, to even mention the idea. But is it not the case dear reader that the continuing rampant and irreversible cultural terrorism ravaging Syria will not be halted by an anemic elusive “international political solution” anytime soon? Hence what is warranted for serious consideration at UN HQ and without further delay is a limited and tightly monitored UN-led intervention to end the destruction of our cultural heritage? Specifically by considering a quick short-leashed employment of Responsibility to Protect (R2P)?
(Social media photo showing Baalshamin destruction on 8/23/2015)
(Photo credit: Elizabeth Roberts)
“I am seeing Palmyra being destroyed right in front of my eyes. God help us in the days to come. Our darkest predictions are unfortunately taking place,” my friend, Dr. Abdul-Karim, the Director-General of Syria’s Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) recently explained, adding that he was somehow not totally surprised to learn that the Islamic State had destroyed the second century AD Temple of Baalshamin (shown before and after its destruction.
The temple stood less than 100 yards from the Roman amphitheater where the Islamic State held a summary trial with unanimous verdict and mass execution, killing 25 Syrian army prisoners last spring. Baalshamin was built in AD 17 as a place of worship dedicated to the Phoenician god of storms and the sky, expanded under the reign of the emperor Hadrian in 130 AD and during the time of Queen Zenobia and her husband Septimius Odaenathus, the King of Kings of Palmyra, it evolved into a major worshiping site for a number of deities.
Dead Cat Bounce Tuesday?
by Stephen Lendman
Whether market panic in recent days signals the six-year bull market’s end remains to be seen. Bull and bear markets take time to unfold. They don’t happen overnight.
Yet days of global panic with valuations way exceeding fundamentals suggest at minimum a major correction, selloff, down cycle, give it any name you wish is long overdue to rectify significant imbalances and may have begun.
Sharp reversal days punctuate all bull and bear markets - profit-taking or buying dips to cash in short term. They can be stunning.
The 2008-09 market crisis saw six of the 10 largest ever Dow point advances:
Israel’s War on Gazan Children
by Stephen Lendman
A new Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P) report is damning, providing more evidence of shocking Israeli war crimes - titled “Operative Protective Edge: A War Waged on Gaza’s Children.”
Saying Israeli aggression killed over 2,250 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including 547 children. Another 3,374 were injured - “including over 1,000 children whose wounds rendered them permanently disabled.”
DCIP-I’s research “found overwhelming and repeated evidence” of willful Israeli high crimes against peace - including multiple daily attacks on civilian residential neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, UN shelters, and numerous other non-military targets.
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