In 2018, the ICJ court ruled the US must lift sanctions on humanitarian goods to Iran [Yves Herman/Reuters]
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled that Iran has the right to recover two billion dollars in frozen assets in the United States.
In a ruling issued on Wednesday, the 15-member court in The Hague said Tehran can proceed with a bid to recover the assets, which Washington says must go to victims of attacks blamed on Iran.
Judges rejected US claims the case should be thrown out because Iran had “unclean hands” from alleged links to “terrorism”, and the international tribunal in The Hague did not have jurisdiction over the lawsuit.
Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, chief judge at the ICJ, said the court “unanimously rejects the preliminary objections to admissibility raised by the United States of America”.
The court also “finds that it has jurisdiction” to rule on the case, which was filed by Iran in 2016, Yusuf said at the end of an hour-long reading of the judgment.
The court will hold further hearings on the case.
Wednesday’s ruling threatens to further escalate the dispute between the rivals and comes after a decision in October when the same court ordered the US to lift sanctions on humanitarian goods destined for Iran.
Tensions between Tehran and Washington are already high around the anniversary of the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Republic’s revolution, as well as Wednesday’s Middle East summit in Poland, which observers say is aimed at isolating Iran.
In 2016, the US Supreme Court ruled Iran must give the cash to American survivors and relatives of victims of attacks, including the 1983 bombing of US Marine barracks in Beirut.
Iran said the US decision breached the 1955 Treaty of Amity with the US, an agreement signed before Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution severed relations between the former allies.
The ICJ is the top court of the United Nations and was set up after World War II to resolve disputes between member states. Its rulings are binding and cannot be appealed, but it has no means of enforcing them.
‘Bad faith’
Relations have been strained since US President Donald Trump‘s decision to pull out of an international nuclear deal with Iran and reimpose sanctions.
Iran first lodged the case on the frozen funds in June 2016, accusing Washington of breaking the decades-old bilateral treaty dating from the time of the US-backed shah, who was deposed in the revolution.
Tehran said the US had illegally seized Iranian financial assets and those of Iranian companies.
In October, Richard Visek, a US State Department legal official, told the ICJ that “Iran comes to the court with unclean hands – indeed, it is a remarkable show of bad faith”.
In 2018, Iran won a legal victory when the ICJ ruled the US must lift sanctions against Tehran targeting humanitarian goods such as food and medicine.
In response, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington was terminating the 1955 friendship treaty.
Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton also announced the United States was pulling out of the 1961 Optional Protocol and Dispute Resolution of the Vienna Convention.
The protocol establishes the ICJ as the “compulsory jurisdiction” for disputes unless nations decide to settle them elsewhere.
The US withdrawal from the 1961 protocol also comes after the Palestinians went to the ICJ to challenge the US move of its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.
Mercury is one of the most toxic substances known to the human race, and any scientist or doctor would agree. That being said, there is a dangerous scientific theory that plagues the medial industry: That it’s somehow ok to be exposed to ‘trace amounts’ of mercury. This makes absolutely no sense, because when it comes to the toxicity of substances like mercury, any amount can have a detrimental effect on human biology. Sure, you may not die, but mercury poisoning is very real and can have significant long-term health effects. And how big is a ‘trace’ amount of mercury compared to the size of a neuron or a neuronal pathway, anyways?
What’s really concerning is that mercury is still added to many vaccines, including some flu shots as well as some vaccines that are administered to the elderly and those in third world countries. The bioaccumulation of these substances, including after being given a vaccine, has never been studied. Heavy metal contamination is one of the biggest problems today, yet the medical industry completely ignores it, thus there is very little awareness surrounding this issue.
In nature, toxic metals generally are bound with other elements rather than being present in their pure form. However, with the advent of large-scale industrial processes to extract metals from naturally occurring compounds, humans let the genie out of the bottle, contributing significantly to the distribution of mercury, aluminum and other heavy metals in the environment. When released from nature’s semi-protective hold, these “invariably toxic” metals wreak havoc on living systems, including humans, animals and plants alike.
Modern-day scientists have been amassing evidence of mercury’s toxicity for decades, with a growing focus in recent years on the metal’s association with neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A new review article in the multidisciplinary journal Environmental Research pulls together a wide body of literature with the aim of summing up current research and emerging trends in mercury toxicology. Geir Bjørklund, the study’s lead author, is the founder of Norway’s non-profit Council for Nutritional and Environmental Medicine and has published prolifically on topics related to heavy metals, autoimmune disorders and ASD. – Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Mercury is present everywhere in our environment, and exposure to mercurial compounds is now widespread, despite feeble attempts to ban some uses. Bjørklund et al.’s review covers all three categories of mercury: elemental, organic and inorganic. Exposure to volatile elemental mercury can come about as a result of occupational contact or vapor from dental amalgam fillings. Organic mercury—the most frequent form of exposure, according to Bjørklund and colleagues—exists as methylmercury (in fish) and ethylmercury (in the vaccine preservative thimerosal). Coal-fired power plants send inorganic mercury into the environment, where the toxic metal works its way up the marine food chain. Mercury plays no constructive metabolic role whatsoever, and humans have not evolved effective mechanisms to excrete it. Children with ASD have a particularly hard time detoxifying and excreting mercury.
Below is a video from the University of Calgary, in which researchers look at a neuron isolated from snail brain tissue. In the video, it’s displaying normal, linear growth. Growth “cones” in all species have identical structure and behavioural characteristics. So, regardless of the species, this is what mercury does to the body.
Jesus Christ healed the sick using medical marijuana, researchers claim
“Entheogen – a term coined by Professor Ruck – refers to any substance used to induce spiritual experiences. The use of entheogens such as cannabis, peyote and psilocybin mushrooms has been linked to the formation of nearly all the world’s religions, so it’s perhaps no surprise that cannabis likely played a role in the birth of Christianity.”
(NaturalNews) Although some may find the idea a bit challenging to their traditional religious beliefs, there is ample historical and scientific evidence that Jesus Christ was a cannabis user and that he used the plant to heal the sick.
In 2003, High Times published an article written by Chris Bennett titled “Was Jesus a Stoner?” which explored the likelihood that cannabis was a key ingredient in the “anointing oil” used by Jesus and his followers in rituals and for healing purposes.
Bennett’s argument was backed by scholarly works that provided scientific evidence supporting his assertions. Since the article appeared, other researchers have examined and debated the theory, with many agreeing that it has merit.
From the original High Times article:
“Christ” is the Greek translation of the Hebrew “Messiah.” In modern English, this term would be translated as the “anointed one.” The title “Christ” was only placed upon he who had “God’s unction upon him.“
This holy anointing oil, as described in the original Hebrew version of the recipe in Exodus (30:22-23), contained over six pounds of kaneh-bosem, a substance identified by respected etymologists, linguists, anthropologists, botanists and other researchers as cannabis, extracted into about six quarts of olive oil, along with a variety of other fragrant herbs. The ancient anointed ones were literally drenched in this potent mixture.
Kaneh-bosem = cannabis?
Kaneh-bosem certainly does sound like the modern day term cannabis, and there is little doubt that hemp was widely used by the Hebrew culture in those times.
As reported by High Times, Carl P. Ruck, professor of classical mythology at Boston University, wrote:
“There can be little doubt about a role for cannabis in Judaic religion…. There is no way that so important a plant as a fiber source for textiles and nutritive oils and one so easy to grow would have gone unnoticed… the mere harvesting of it would have induced an entheogenic reaction.”
Ritual and medicinal use of cannabis
Entheogen – a term coined by Professor Ruck – refers to any substance used to induce spiritual experiences. The use of entheogens such as cannabis, peyote and psilocybin mushrooms has been linked to the formation of nearly all the world’s religions, so it’s perhaps no surprise that cannabis likely played a role in the birth of Christianity.
It’s easy to understand the role, considering the near-miraculous healing properties of the plant. We are now beginning to rediscover the myriad medicinal uses for cannabis – remedies that have been known for thousands of years, but which have been forgotten amidst the government-created anti-marijuana hysteria that has existed in the United States for more than half a century.
Fortunately, those attitudes are changing now, and the Christ–cannabis connection debate is perhaps an example of an overdue reexamination of some of our collective beliefs that have been clouded by propaganda.
What would Jesus do?
Those familiar with the history of the outlawing of marijuana in the U.S. are well aware that this was a direct result of pressure by corporate interests. Then later, of course, the failed War on Drugs went into full swing, and punishing marijuana users and dealers became big business for law enforcement and run-for-profit prisons.
Cannabis and the hemp plant in general offer us a cheap, effective and renewable source of a great number of beneficial products – some with almost miraculous properties – but since there is little profit in it for Big Pharma and other big business interests, the progress toward legalization has been slow and met with bitter opposition every inch of the way.
One might wonder, what would Jesus think about that?
From The Guardian:
Quoting the New Testament, Mr Bennett argues that Jesus anointed his disciples with the oil and encouraged them to do the same with other followers. This could have been responsible for healing eye and skin diseases referred to in the Gospels.
“If cannabis was one of the main ingredients of the ancient anointing oil _ [sic] and receiving this oil is what made Jesus the Christ and his followers Christians, then persecuting those who use cannabis could be considered anti-Christ,” Mr Bennett concludes.
Russian companies’ stocks attracted the most foreign investment in 5 years, adding nearly $576 million in January, the Central Bank of Russia reported. Investors also actively poured money into Russian bonds despite US sanctions.
Russian companies’ stocks attracted the most foreign investment in 5 years, adding nearly $576 million in January, the Central Bank of Russia reported. Investors also actively poured money into Russian bonds despite US sanctions.
The ruble-based Moscow stock exchange (MOEX) index has reached a new all-time high, surging 6.4 percent since the beginning of the year, the regulator said in its report on liquidity of the banking sector and the financial markets issued on Tuesday.
The index hit several records in January, finishing the month at 2536.28 points, and later reached a new all-time high of 2551.97 points on February 6.
The Russian state bond market (OFZ) also attracted foreign investors. Non-residents expanded their investment into Russian bonds by $837 million, the highest figure since January 2018. Half of them were purchased at auctions, while the other half at secondary market, where the inflow of foreign investment has been recorded for the first time in a year, according to the central bank.
“In January the situation in the Russian financial market significantly improved due to the growth of global demand for risky assets,” the regulator explained in the report. It added that softening of the US Federal Reserve’s rhetoric on monetary policy, as well as the progress in US-China trade talks and the rise of oil prices back to $60 per barrel positively affected investors’ sentiment.
Also on rt.comRuble flexes its muscle after Moody’s lifts Russia’s rating to investment gradeLast week, Moody’s upgraded Russia’s credit rating from Ba1 to investment grade level of Baa3 with a stable outlook, acknowledging the “positive impact” of government policies. In October, Moody’s senior vice president predicted the return of foreign investment to the Russian market due to the financial results shown by its companies.
Last year, Russia made a top 5 list of Europe’s most attractive destinations for foreign investments, according to the data published by professional services firm EY.
(ZH) — For 8 years, we took every opportunity to point out that under Barack Obama’s administration, US debt was rising at a alarmingly rapid rate, having nearly doubled, surging by $9.3 trillion during his term.
And while the absolute pace is slower, the trajectory of US debt under the Trump administration looks set to be no different.
We note this because as of close of Monday, the US Treasury reported that total US debt has risen above $22 trillion for the first time; or $22,012,840,891,685.32 to be precise (11 months after topping $21 trillion).
“Reaching this unfortunate milestone so rapidly is the latest sign that our fiscal situation is not only unsustainable but accelerating,” said Michael A. Peterson, chief executive officer of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a nonpartisan organization working to address the country’s long-term fiscal challenges.
Putting this in context, total US debt has now risen by over $2 trillion since Trump took office… but notably slower than Obama’s pace of borrowing…
We doubt today’s milestone will be celebrated on Trump’s twitter account.
And while some can argue – especially adherents of the socialist Magic Money Tree, or MMT, theory – that there is no reason why the exponential debt increase can’t continue indefinitely… the CBO’s long-term forecast of debt issuance is, basically, apocalyptic as the following chart confirms…
But it gets worse, as Double Line’s Jeff Gundlach recently noted…
And worse still – The Fed ain’t buying like it was during Obama’s reign…
“Net borrowing needs will continue to increase due to the expected increase in the deficit combined with funding needs coming from the Fed’s debt run off,” said Margaret Kerins, global head of fixed-income strategy at BMO Capital Markets Corp.
“Given the global backdrop with Brexit and China’s economy slowing down, there is really a bid for safety, liquidity and quality — which means Treasuries — and that’s keeping yields in check to some degree.”
Of course, at some point the market will finally start focusing on America’s long-term – and very much unsustainable – debt picture as the CBO has warned year after year. When it does, and when there is another major selloff in stocks, US Treasurys will no longer be the “safe haven.” If and when that happens, that will be the signal that the time to get out of Dodge has finally arrived.
The debt eclipsing $22 trillion “is another sad reminder of the inexcusable tab our nation’s leaders continue to run up and will leave for the next generation,” said Judd Gregg and Edward Rendell, co-chairmen of the nonpartisan Campaign to Fix the Debt, a project of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Especially if The Dems win in 2020 and GND is unleashed.
Almost everyone that goes out to visit one of our major cities on the west coast has a similar reaction. Those that must live among the escalating decay are often numb to it, but most of those that are just in town for a visit are absolutely shocked by all of the trash, human defecation, crime and public drug use that they encounter. Once upon a time, our beautiful western cities were the envy of the rest of the world, but now they serve as shining examples of America’s accelerating decline. The worst parts of our major western cities literally look like post-apocalyptic wastelands, and the hordes of zombified homeless people that live in those areas are too drugged-out to care. The ironic thing is that these cities are not poor. In fact, San Francisco and Seattle are among the wealthiest cities in the entire nation. So if things are falling apart this dramatically now, how bad will things get when economic conditions really start to deteriorate?
Let’s start our discussion by looking at the rat epidemic in Los Angeles. Thanks to extremely poor public sanitation, rats are breeding like mad, and at this point they have even conquered Los Angeles City Hall…
Officials at Los Angeles’ City Hall are considering ripping all of the building’s carpets up, as rats and fleas are said to be running riot in its halls.
A motion was filed by Council President Herb Wesson on Wednesday to enact the much needed makeover amid a typhus outbreak in the downtown area.
Wesson said a city employee had contracted the deadly bacterial disease at work, and now he’s urging officials to investigate the ‘scope’ of the long-running pest problem at the council building.
People from all over the world are drawn to Los Angeles because of what they have seen on television, but it is truly a filthy, filthy place. The number of homeless has been rising about 20 percent a year, public drug use is seemingly everywhere, and there are mountains of trash all over the place. Needless to say, rats thrive in such an environment, and the epic battle that one L.A. journalist is having with rats was recently featured in the L.A. Times…
Eastside, Westside, north and south, they’re everywhere. If you’re a rat, the California housing crisis has not hit you yet and it never will.
At our house, it sounded like the rats were having relay races in the ceiling, and they don’t wear sneakers. Your eyes blink and your leg twitches as you drift off to sleep knowing that if the plague comes back, you are living at ground zero.
In our garden, they devoured entire heads of lettuce. They destroyed my squash just before it was ripe and ready to eat. They stole my tomatoes, cilantro and Anaheim chili peppers. Were they bottling their own salsa?
But let’s not be too hard on Los Angeles, because the same things that are going on there are happening in major cities all over the western portion of the country.
For example, a massive rat infestation recently forced authorities to close a shockingly filthy homeless encampment under a bridge in Salem, Oregon…
Amid the trash, human despair and anguish, one weeping woman prepared to leave the most recent place she knows as home without any real inkling of where she’ll go next.
Terry Balow, an outreach worker with the Salvation Army, has been here for the darker moments of living life under a bridge — anger, mental illness, drug use and human frustration boiling over at times everywhere one looks.
Yet it was a rat infestation and concern about human health that prompted the city of Salem to move the campers out.
“It just grew and grew and got worse,” Balow said. “It’s badder than people can imagine.”
Yes, there have always been homeless encampments in this country, but in modern times we have never faced anything on the scale that we are facing now.More than half a million Americans are homeless right now, and that number continues to grow. And as it grows, communities will increasingly be forced to make some tough decisions.
I am quite eager to talk about San Francisco, but before we get to the City by the Bay, let’s take note of something that just happened in Denver.
If you are into public defecation, you will be very happy to learn that Denver just made it legal…
First, the obvious: The Denver City Council has voted unanimously to decriminalize a number of offenses, including defecating in public. Also, urinating in public. Camping on public or private land without permission. Panhandling. And lying across public rights-of-way, such as sidewalks.
Democrat Mayor Michael Hancock and city officials explained the new ordinances are designed to protect immigrants — legal and the other kind — from “unintended consequences.” These consequences were fines and longer jail terms, as has been customary in most places for violating the behavioral norms of civilized American society.
If only America’s founders could see us now.
They would be so proud.
Speaking of public defecation, San Francisco has become world famous for the piles of human poop that constantly litter their streets. During one seven day stretch last summer, a total of 16,000 official complaints were submitted to the city about human feces.
Blessed with such beautiful natural surroundings and so much wealth, San Francisco should be a great place to visit, but that definitely is not the case.
San Francisco is a pretty good place to “hang out with a sign.” People are rarely arrested for vagrancy, aggressive panhandling or going to the bathroom in front of people’s homes. In 2015, there were 60,491 complaints to police, but only 125 people were arrested.
Public drug use is generally ignored. One woman told us, “It’s nasty seeing people shoot up — right in front of you. Police don’t do anything about it! They’ll get somebody for drinking a beer but walk right past people using needles.”
In San Francisco they actually give out free syringes to drug addicts, and it is being reported that they handed out a total of 5.8 million free syringes in 2018.
There’s just one problem – well, more than one – despite spending an extra $1.8 million last year in an effort to retrieve needles, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the department handed out about 2 million more syringes than it got back… many of which are now washing around the streets of one of the richest cities in America (along with the feces of their users).
And with so much public drug use going on, it should be no surprise that crime is completely and totally out of control. Here is more from John Stossel…
Each day in San Francisco, an average of 85 cars are broken into.
“Inside Edition” ran a test to see how long stereo equipment would last in a parked car. Their test car was quickly broken into. Then the camera crew discovered that their own car had been busted into as well.
It has been said that “as goes California, so goes the country”, and if this is where the rest of the nation is headed then we are in serious trouble.
I hope my American hosts will forgive me for raising this, but the squalor we saw in The City was frightful. San Francisco has always been one of favourite US cities, but the degree of homelessness, mental illness and drug abuse we saw on this trip was truly shocking. Walking round SF on a Sunday Morning and we saw sights we couldn’t believe. This must be one of the richest cities in the world – home to 4 of the 10 richest people on the planet according to Wiki. I asked friends about it, and they shrugged it off.. “The City has always attracted the homeless because of the mild weather,”.. “It’s a drug thing”.. “its too difficult”… “you get used to it..”
Well, I didn’t.
I found it quite shocking the number of folk sleeping rough on the sidewalks, the smell of weed and drug impedimenta everywhere, the filth, mental illness and degradation on view just a few meters from the financial centre driving Silicon Valley. It’s a city where the destitute seem to have become invisible to the Uber hailing elites. We found ourselves hopping on one of the beautiful F-Route Trolley Buses to find nearly every seat occupied by someone lugging around their worldly possessions around in a plastic bag. It was desperately sad.
San Francisco has a new mayor, and they are going to spend millions upon millions of dollars to try to clean up the streets.
But it won’t be easy to turn things around, because more drug users and homeless people are moving into the city every single day…
And San Francisco is generous. It offers street people food stamps, free shelter, train tickets and $70 a month in cash.
“They’re always offering resources,” one man dressed as Santa told us. “San Francisco’s just a good place to hang out.”
So, every week, new people arrive.
We like to think that we are setting a positive example to the rest of the world, but the truth is that they are laughing at us.
If we keep doing the same things we will keep getting the same results, and right now there are no signs that the overall direction of this nation will change any time soon.
Tulsi Gabbard, Hawaii’s democratic congresswoman and one of many entrants in the crowded 2020 presidential race, is already turning heads thanks to her anti-interventionist foreign policy approach and progressive stance on a variety of issues, making her an outlier among establishment Democrats.
If her pre-campaign messaging and campaign launch speech are any indicator, the potential presidential contender has no intention of backing down – especially when it comes to her strong advocacy of medical marijuana and harsh criticisms of the criminal justice system and pharmaceutical industry.
Declaring her formal entrance into the Democratic Party presidential primaries, Gabbard issued a rousing call to end the for-profit prison industry, which has seen private corrections corporations rake in profits while shirking prisoners’ and immigrant detainees’ food, health care, and other essential services while exploiting incarcerated people as essentially slave labor.
“We must stand up against private prisons, who are profiting off the backs of those caught up in a broken criminal justice system,” Gabbard said.
Continuing, she added that “a system that puts people in prison for smoking marijuana while allowing corporations like Purdue Pharma, who are responsible for the opioid-related deaths of thousands of people, to walk away scot-free with their coffers full.”
Purdue Pharma, the company responsible for making the OxyContin narcotic pill, was recently exposed in court filings by the Massachusetts attorney general to have deliberately conspired to mislead doctors and patients about the dangerous and addictive nature of the opioid in hopes of maximizing company profits.
Gabbard added:
“This so-called criminal justice system, which favors the rich and powerful and punishes the poor, cannot stand.”
Gabbard, an Iraq war veteran and member of Congress since 2013 who previously served as a state legislator in Hawaii and city council member in Honolulu, has long been a supporter of progressive cannabis laws and opponent of federal prohibition laws.
Last year, pro-legalization political advocacy committee National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML PAC) hailed Gabbard as a leader in the fight for criminal justice reform and the decriminalization of marijuana on a federal level.
In their endorsement of the congresswoman from Hawaii, the group laid out her extensive work demanding sensible cannabis policies:
“She is the lead Democratic sponsor of the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act, which would take marijuana off the federal controlled substances list. She introduced the Marijuana Data Collection Act, which lays the groundwork for real reform by producing an objective, evidence-based report on current state marijuana laws. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has called for closing the gaps between federal and state law to resolve current contradictions and provide legally abiding marijuana businesses with clear access to financial services. She also co-sponsored the Marijuana Justice Act to reform unjust federal marijuana laws and empower minority communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the failed War on Drugs, the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act to allow equal banking access and financial services for marijuana-related businesses, and the RESPECT Resolution to encourage equity in the marijuana industry.”
Gabbard has also drawn a sharp nexus between the demands of Big Pharma lobbyists and continued prohibition laws. Last year, she shredded then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions for rescinding the Obama-era Department of Justice memo, or Cole Memorandum, that instructed federal prosecutors to not enforce federal prohibition laws in states that legalized marijuana, characterizing the move as one which would “exacerbate an inhumane, ineffective system that tears families apart.”
“Sessions’ actions to protect the bottom lines of the for-profit private prison industry, and Big Pharma whose opioids and drugs flourish in part due to the marijuana prohibition, while trampling on states’ rights and turning everyday Americans into criminals is an injustice,” she wrote on Twitter.
And in a 2017 statement calling for an end to federal prohibition, Gabbard demanded that the government “work for people like veterans and healthcare advocates instead of pharmaceutical lobbyists who will continue to push dangerous and addictive painkillers even amidst an opioid epidemic.”
Gabbard isn’t the only contender to call out the pharmaceutical industry’s role in stalling marijuana legalization and criminal justice reform.
Recent entrant and New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillebrand has also blasted Big Pharma, noting:
“To them, it’s competition for chronic pain, and that’s outrageous because we don’t have the crisis in people who take marijuana for chronic pain having overdose issues … It’s not the same thing. It’s not as highly addictive as opioids are.”
Last month at Davos, George Soros turned around completely on China, echoing the Trump administration (of all things) in warning the world against the rise of China versus his previous stance.
The main reason for this shift in Soros’ attitude on China stems from his fear that the European Union will not achieve its goals of becoming the next great world power and subjugate the Chinese, but rather dissolve like the Soviet Union on which it is based.
He finally aired those fears in another of his infamous op-eds over at Project Syndicate (link through RT here). In sum, they are simply that Europeans must chuck off that which makes them individuals for the sake of Mother Europe.
The European Union is the highest ideal and, as such, should be that for all decent Europeans. This is the highest form of collectivist thinking.
And it’s time to circle the wagons against the ravening hordes of people who don’t like getting slowly bled to death, their culture eradicated, their neighborhoods destroyed and their dignity as people shot in the face with tear gas.
I’ve read megalomaniacal treatises in my life, but this one was impressive to say the least.
At least he didn’t lament the EU’s mistakes by invoking omelette’s and eggs.
I could (and maybe should) go into a point by point counter of all of Soros’ terrible assumptions but we’ve all heard variations on this Marxist twaddle for years.
The important part of this op-ed is not the substance, which itself designed to be chum for conservatives to lose their minds over, but the reason it was written in the first place.
George Soros is losing.
People with power only come out of the closet and plead like this when they are losing. Empires don’t negotiate, they dictate. The same goes for billionaire financiers who are the product of the bubbles they helped blow but refuse to accept the responsibility for when they pop.
No, that’s the fault of those savage Euroskeptics not being sufficiently committed to the cause. Y’all aren’t woke enough in Soros-land.
People like Soros buy influence behind the scenes to get what they want. Soros outing himself from behind the curtain is telling of how anxious he has become.
Instead of sounding like a prophet, he comes off as a clueless old leftie with a lot of money in his pocket talking his book.
To those truly woke to Soros’ schtick, I say what else is new?
He is no different than the tired and moldy Marxists in the Democratic Party here in the U.S. and their useful idiots, arguing that Socialism hasn’t failed, it simply hasn’t been properly implemented yet.
So 150 million dead people (not counting the wars) in the 20th century wasn’t refutation enough?
You can rebrand it ‘Democratic Socialism’ or ‘Stakeholder Capitalism’ all you want, but in the end it is still just a bunch of dudes and dudettes, sitting around playing god while the rest of us toil waiting for the costs of going along with them rising above the cost of overthrowing you.
Welcome to the World Socialism Built.
Democratic Socialism has been the dominant political ideology of the age, going back to the Progressive Era. Y’all have been in charge in some form or another for the past 90 years and Soros thinks the reason his social engineering experiment called the EU is failing because of outdated political party systems he sees as vestiges of the fight between labor and capital.
I’m not shocked George has gotten this all wrong since he made his money fixing currency markets, having gotten his money neither through labor or the creation of capital goods.
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Soros mistook getting uber-rich in a corrupt system somehow validated his sense of superiority, versus just being a crook.
Hubris is the downfall of all rulers and would-be Emperors. And if he lived in a different time he may have been able to pull this off.
But global communications, the natural forces of decentralization and the basic laws of both physics and economics caught up with him before his dreams could come to light.
If there was ever a moment that signaled the end of the European Union, it was George Soros admitting, in public, that we should look on all his works and despair.
A censored documentary has surfaced online, detailing alleged Israeli lobbying campaigns in the United States. The documentary, filmed by Al Jazeera, exposes how pro-Israeli organisations monitor the activities of American students and try to influence US lawmakers.
Electronic Intifada, an online news publication covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has obtained a never-released Al Jazeera investigation into how pro-Israeli advocacy groups influence US politics.
The four-part documentary, titled The Lobby — USA, was filmed by an Al Jazeera undercover journalist, called “Tony”, who infiltrated the Israeli lobby during a five-month operation and earned the trust of its leaders.
Tony is said to have volunteered for the Israel Project, a US-based nonprofit, which he learned had contacts in numerous news agencies, such as Bloomberg, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and BuzzFeed, who worked on “neutralising the undesired narratives”.
This effort to get “special treatment” from the United States is allegedly spearheaded by senior officials in Israel, including Sima Vaknin-Gil, director general of Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry.
“If we want to win, we have to change our ways,” she was quoted as telling a gathering of the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington, DC. “And this is waging a holistic campaign against the other side.”
According to the film, this effectively means dragging Israel’s political opponents out of their “comfort zone” and discrediting the messenger rather than discussing the message. Specifically, this refers to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, a campaign pressuring Israel to stop its alleged mistreatment of Palestinians.
A project called “Israel Cyber Shield” was rolled out in the US; it effectively is a cyber intelligence unit that spies on the activists of the BDS movement using state-of-the-art Israeli intelligence systems.
The investigation claims that pro-Israel groups, such as the Israel on Campus Coalition, are monitoring the activities of American students, including those on social media, and alerting their partners in intelligence circles if something worrying “pops up”.
The Israeli Embassy in the US, according to a recorded conversation with its former director of community affairs, is also working with several groups that train faculty, providing these groups with “funding and connections”.
And a funny story took place at a meeting of a pro-Israel advocacy group, when a journalist from the Algemeiner newspaper offered Tony to go undercover and spy on BDS activists on campus to report about “any potential level of danger or difficulty”.
Moreover, apart from US campuses, major effort is concentrated on wowing US congressmen who have influence on foreign policy — and the documentary hints that Washington and Tel Aviv enjoy such a good alliance for a reason.
The undercover reporter worked for David Ochs, the founder of HaLev, an organisation that helps young Jewish professionals attend the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — one of the most influential lobbyist groups in the United States.
Jim Moran, a now-retired representative from Virginia, was quoted as saying that those who have AIPAC backing and support Israel are more likely to get elected to Congress.
Ochs cited a fundraiser organised by an AIPAC-linked pro-Israel advocacy group for Anthony Brown, who is currently serving as the US Rep. from Maryland. “This is the biggest ad-hoc political group and definitely the wealthiest in DC,” he said. The gathering was attended by senators and congressmen from both parties.”
The meeting was apparently held to buy support from US lawmakers with under-the-table cash donations. Ochs is heard as saying: “It’s the AIPAC group. It makes a difference. It really, really does. It’s the best bang for your buck and the networking is phenomenal.”
“Congressmen don’t do anything unless you pressure them. They kick the can down the road, unless you pressure them. And the only way to do that is with money.”
While the White House is concerned with foreign interference in its domestic affairs, accusing Russia and China of attempts to sway public opinion, recent claims that pro-Israeli lobbyists buy the favour of US lawmakers have prompted accusations of anti-Semitism.
On Monday, freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar ignited a Twitterstorm and drew condemnation from a plethora of public figures, including Nikki Haley and Chelsea Clinton, after tweeting “It’s all about Benjamins baby” and “AIPAC”, in reference to the Israeli lobby in the US.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone