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If China Can Fund infrastructure with Its Own Credit, So Can We
Ellen Brown
May 15th-19th has been designated “National Infrastructure Week” by the US Chambers of Commerce, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and over 150 affiliates. Their message: “It’s time to rebuild.” Ever since ASCE began issuing its “National Infrastructure Report Card” in 1998, the nation has gotten a dismal grade of D or D+. In the meantime, the estimated cost of fixing its infrastructure has gone up from $1.3 trillion to $4.6 trillion.
While American politicians debate endlessly over how to finance the needed fixes and which ones to implement, the Chinese have managed to fund massive infrastructure projects all across their country, including 12,000 miles of high-speed rail built just in the last decade. How have they done it, and why can’t we?
A key difference between China and the US is that the Chinese government owns the majority of its banks. About 40% of the funding for its giant railway project comes from bonds issued by the Ministry of Railway, 10-20% comes from provincial and local governments, and the remaining 40-50% is provided by loans from federally-owned banks and financial institutions. Like private banks, state-owned banks simply create money as credit on their books. (More on this below.) The difference is that they return their profits to the government, making the loans interest-free; and the loans can be rolled over indefinitely. In effect, the Chinese government decides what work it wants done, draws on its own national credit card, pays Chinese workers to do it, and repays the loans with the proceeds.
Long Knives Out for Trump
Stephen Lendman
He’s a longtime establishment figure. How else could he become super-rich, able to be the GOP standard bearer, then president?
Yet he’s portrayed as an outlier. Undemocratic Democrats and media scoundrels despise him for preventing Hillary from getting the nation’s top job.
An unrelenting blitzkrieg persists to demonize, weaken and delegitimize him, a softening up process aimed at ousting him from office by forced resignation, impeachment or more sinister means.
If dark forces want him removed, he’s likely powerless to stop them. It’s too early to definitively know, but things appear headed in the direction of ending his presidency - further testimony to America’s debauched system, fantasy democracy, not the real thing.
The New York Times is his leading media antagonist, bashing him relentlessly since mid-2015, serving as Hillary’s press agent throughout the campaign season, disgracefully calling her “one of the most broadly and deeply qualified president candidates in modern history” - a shameless perversion of truth.
Erdogan in Washington
Stephen Lendman
A thuggish security entourage accompanies his foreign trips, clashing with critics when demonstrations are held.
In April 2016 at Brookings, deplorably invited to speak, they made Washington resemble Ankara, clashing with peaceful demonstrators, protesting his crackdown on press freedom, other human rights abuses, war on Turkish Kurds and support for terrorist groups in Syria.
They assaulted journalists covering his talk, outside and inside the venue, including regime critic Adem Yavuz Arslan. They clashed with DC police after demands to remove protesters were rejected.
During Erdogan’s May 16 White House visit, one of many tinpot despots Trump and congressional leaders support, his thuggish security entourage again instigated street violence, viciously attacking Kurdish protesters.
Pence Begins Presidential Campaign Unofficially
Eric Zuesse
On Wednesday, May 17th, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who has built his political career as both a fundamentalist Christian, and a client of the libertarian Koch brothers’ extensive fundraising network, made his unofficial but starting bid to become the U.S. President: he formed an organization to raise funds from billionaires and centi-millionaires, in order for Pence to be able to distribute those wealthy investors’ funds to Republican politicians (especially to ones in the U.S. Senate and House) whom Pence favors, and who might reasonably then be expected to return that favor by their supporting a Pence bid to become the U.S. President. Of course, the Presidency is the only American political office that's higher than Pence’s current one, the Vice Presidency.
Confrontation between militants plays into hands of Syrian army
Anna Jaunger
The Syrian Army continues to conduct its successful counter-terrorist operations. On May 14, after heavy fighting against ISIS, the government forces managed to take full control over al-Jarrah in eastern Aleppo. Undoubtedly, not only high spirit, cohesion and unity, but also panic in the ranks of the radicals contributes to the Syrian Army's success.
Thus, recently, the number of violent clashes between various radical groups once acting as a united front against the government of Bashar Assad, has increased. As a result, the real number of casualties among them has already reached hundreds of dead and seriously wounded.
The NYT Disgracefully Suggests North Korean Responsibility for Last Friday’s Global Malware Attack
Stephen Lendman
The Times provides daily reasons to ignore its disinformation and fake news.
Citing unnamed intelligence and private security officials, it claimed “new digital clues point to North-Korean-linked hackers as likely suspects” for what happened - while admitting no incriminating evidence exists, adding:
“(I)t could be weeks, (maybe) months, before investigators” learn the origin of attacks, possibly never knowing names of culprits. At this stage, blaming anyone for what happened is irresponsible - impossible to know unless and until reliable evidence is found. None so far exists.
US Political Schizophrenia
Stephen Lendman
The Mayo Clinic calls the disease “a severe mental disorder in which people interpret reality abnormally, (including) some combination of hallucinations, delusions, and extremely disordered thinking and behavior that impairs daily functioning, and can be disabling.”
It’s “a chronic condition, requiring lifelong treatment.” Symptoms include beliefs not based on reality - bad enough in people, potentially catastrophic for nuclear powers afflicted this way.
Vladimir Putin called America “political(ly) schizophreni(c),” - an out-of-control monster threatening world peace, my comment not his, though no doubt we’re likeminded.
US Wants Syria Balkanized and Destroyed
Stephen Lendman
Russian and US objectives are world’s apart in Syria. Moscow hopes de-escalation zones can be an important step toward conflict resolution, wanting them instituted nationwide, a major turning point if achieved.
Neocon policymakers in Washington want endless conflict, regime change, and Syrian sovereignty destroyed, balkanizing the country part of their scheme.
US special forces and marines in northern Syria, bordering Turkey, aided by US terror-bombing, want the territory split from Damascus.
A similar scheme is intended for southern Syria, bordering Jordan and Iraq, an unnamed Syrian military source saying government forces won’t let US-led Western and rogue regional allies create a buffer zone to be used as a safe haven for terrorists they support.
Russian-language Investia cited a military source, saying government forces intend securing control over parts of the Damascus road to Baghdad - to secure arms and munitions supplied from Iraq.
Putin’s Beijing Press Conference
Stephen Lendman
In Beijing for its Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation and regional integration, Putin commented at length for reporters.
His remarks are always refreshingly candid and straightforward - polar opposite how duplicitous US-led Western leaders operate, why whatever he says is important and trustworthy.
The Kremlin web site said he “answered media questions following a working visit to the People’s Republic of China.”
Dispensing with opening remarks, he got straight to taking and answering questions. He stressed that nearly all officials in Beijing (including from North Korea) “see growing uncertainty in major political and economic power centres (including in America where anti-Trumpism rages and in troubled EU countries)…”
Israeli Minister Calls for Assassinating Assad
Stephen Lendman
The US/Israeli axis represents humanity’s greatest threat - serial aggressors, partners in high crimes, waging endless wars.
Today is the most perilous time in world history because of their sinister agenda - along with the threat NATO represents.
Housing and construction minister Yoav Galant formerly was an IDF general, heading its Southern Command, in charge of December 2008/January 2009 preemptive naked aggression on Gaza - later criticized by then-attorney general Yehuda Weinstein for illegally seizing public land, judged unfit to be IDF chief of staff.
Elected to the Knesset in 2015, he’s part of Netanyahu’s extremist regime. As housing and construction minister, he’s responsible for expanding illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian land, ruthlessly displacing its legal occupants.
On Tuesday, he called for assassinating Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, fabricating accusations against him, saying he “does not have a place in this world.”
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