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Showing posts with label U.K.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U.K.. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Honest Government Ad | The Economy
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Saturday, February 29, 2020
George Galloway | On Neoliberalism, Foreign Policy, and more
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Wednesday, September 4, 2019
US, UK and France May be Complicit in War Crimes in Yemen
UN Report
Global Research, September 04, 2019
JURIST 3 September 2019
A UN panel reported Tuesday that the US, UK and French governments may be complicit in war crimes for their assistance to the Saudi-led coalition that is attacking and starving civilians in Yemen as a military tactic.
The panel’s report, drawn from interviews with more than 600 victims and witnesses involved with the half-decade long violence in Yemen, describes a pattern of human rights abuses. These include indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, shelling non-military targets and intentionally impeding international aid including food from reaching civilians. In a press release accompanying the report, the panel stated that “the governments of Yemen and the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, as well as the Houthis and affiliated popular committees have enjoyed a pervasive lack of accountability for violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.” In addition, the panel referred a list of more than a 160 people considered “main actors” who are believed to have intimate involvement with the ongoing war crimes to UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet for further inspection. The report called on the international community to monitor the situation in Yemen more closely and ensure protection and justice for the people of Yemen.
In addition, the panel said that it was imperative for “other States to refrain from providing arms that could be used in the conflict,” alluding to the governments of Britain, France and the US. All three countries continue to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia that have been used in the violence. The US Congress passed a bill in July prohibiting the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia that would be used in Yemen, but President Donald Trump vetoed the measure. A British court recently held that UK arms sales were unlawful because the British ministers failed to take into account the civilian damage that the weapons could cause.
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/un-us-uk-france-complicit-war-crimes-yemen/5688071
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UK Parliamentarians Voted to Take Control of the Agenda. Majority UK MPs Oppose Johnson’s No-Deal Brexit
Global Research, September 04, 2019
On Tuesday by a 328 – 301 majority, UK parliamentarians voted to take control of the agenda.
They want a measure debated to prevent Britain from leaving the EU without a deal with Brussels — either by the current October 31 deadline or later if it’s extended again.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson expelled 21 Tory MPs from the ruling party for voting Tuesday against a no-deal Brexit — including former Chancellor Philip Hammond and Winston Churchill’s grandson Nicolas Soames.
Following his parliamentary defeat, Johnson said he’ll seek a motion to call for general elections.
According to the 2011 Fixed Term Parliament Act, a two-thirds majority is needed to approve a snap election. It can also be held following a majority no-confidence vote by MPs.
The Commons Library estimate on how quickly a general election may be held puts it no earlier than October 24, a week before the current Brexit deadline.
Since Johnson became prime minister on July 24, his public approval rating surprisingly rose 10%. Yet Tories are more unpopular than the reverse.
Labor is second to Tories in public support, but it eroded in favor of Remain-backing Liberal Democrats.
Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn and Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson said they’ll only support a snap general election if parliament blocks a no-deal Brexit.
According to the UK-based betting and gaming firm Oddschecker, a snap general election is highly likely — putting the odds at more than 4 – 1.
If held, Tories may retain power. Polls show they lead opposition parties. Currently, most MPs oppose a no-deal Brexit because of its disruptive effects.
New elections will be like a second Brexit referendum. In 2016, Brits voted to leave the EU by a 52 – 48% majority.
Current polls show most Brits oppose a no-deal Brexit. In an August YouGov poll, 47% of respondents opposed leaving the EU without a deal, only 21% in favor.
At the same time, a BMG Research poll showed only 34% support for a no-deal Brexit — 49% favoring either a delay, remaining in the EU, or a new referendum. Only 19% believe Johnson will negotiate a new deal with Brussels.
Other polls show more opposition to leaving the EU without a deal than favoring the idea. If new elections are held, chances are majority MPs would oppose a no-deal Brexit, though nothing is certain in advance.
In late August, Johnson suspended parliament for five weeks, an attempt to ram through a no-Brexit deal most MPs oppose, and are attempting to block before so-called end of the parliamentary session prorogation begins from next week through October 14.
Anti-no-deal Brexit MPs control parliament after Tuesday’s vote. They seek an extension of the October 31 deadline until end of January 2020, EU approval required.
Johnson said
“(t)here are no circumstances in which I will ask Brussels to delay. We are leaving on 31 October, no ifs or buts.”
He’s in trouble. He lost his first crucial vote in parliament, 21 Tory MPs defied him and were expelled from the party, and he lost his ruling majority after Phillip Lee defected to the Lib Dems — its party members against Brexit or for holding a second referendum.
During Tuesday’s parliamentary session, Lee left Tory benchers and joined Lib Dem MPs — because Johnson is pursuing a “damaging Brexit,” he said separately.
Following events on Tuesday, former MP George Galloway said the following:
“It is chaos in Parliament. Britain is effectively now ungoverned just weeks before we’re supposed to leave the European Union,” adding:“Not since Hitler was at the Channel ports in 1940 and Chamberlain was brought down and replaced by Sir Winston Churchill has Britain been in a more chaotic and precarious place.”
What’s ahead is anyone’s guess.
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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Featured image is from Pixabay
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Stephen Lendman, Global Research, 2019
https://www.globalresearch.ca/uk-parliamentarians-voted-take-control-agenda-majority-uk-mps-oppose-johnsons-no-deal-brexit/5688083
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Friday, August 30, 2019
Reality Check: Bank of England Governor Criticizes the Petrodollar!
Global Research, August 30, 2019
GR Editor’s Note.
Mark Carney is a Canadian citizen and former senior official at Goldman Sachs before becoming Governor of the Bank of Canada (2008-2013).
He was the first foreign national since the founding of the Bank of England in 1694 to be appointed to the position of Governor (2013- ). He broadly reflects the interests of the The Washington Consensus and the Anglo-American banking establishment. He is a candidate for the position of Managing Director of the IMF.
Carney talks about “dislodging the U.S. currency” with a view to developing “a diversified multi-polar financial system”.
But what does this new global currency arrangement –which he describes as a “Synthetic Hegemonic Currency (SHC)–imply?
Is it not a process of integration of the dollar process, namely the dollarization of existing national currencies under a new (dollar hegemony) SHD label?
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, August 30, 2019
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It is remarkable that Bank of England Governor Mark Carney recently spoke publicly about “the U.S. dollar’s “destabilizing” role in the world economy”, going on to suggest that “central banks might need to join together to create their own replacement reserve currency (see link at end of article).” This is very significant because in his capacity as Bank of England Governor, Carney serves as Chairman of the Monetary Policy Committee, giving him a major role in directing national economic and monetary policy.
The destabilizing role Carney’s referring to is the massive free ride that European-American capitalists (EACs) have enjoyed since going off the gold standard in 1971 and creating the petrodollar in 1974. Since then, EACs have raided the treasury so ruthlessly and completely that the financial system in the U.S. collapsed into insolvency in 2008.
The fiat, petrodollar has allowed EACs to project military power beyond America’s borders to an extent unprecedented in human history without collapsing the economy as happened to imperial Rome. The results are 800+ military bases and facilities in over 60 ‘nations.’ EACs have used the petrodollar arrangement to finance aggressive and illegal military actions in the Americas, Afrika and the Middle East for the past thirty years.
EACs and their European brothers have also used their domination of foreign currency reserves, totaling a whopping 82%, as a weapon to coerce recalcitrant ‘nations’ into following their dictates with the imposition of economic sanctions. EACs have placed heavy sanctions on several nations that possess major strategic petroleum reserves, effectively attempting to manipulate the oil market in their favor. While European capitalists have recently been a bit more circumspect in their efforts to maintain the supremacy of European capitalist men than their American brothers, they have yet to completely break ranks.
Domestically, the U.S. economy is running on fumes. Citizens have been stuck with stagnant wages, the loss of jobs resulting from manufacturers deserting the U.S. for ‘nations’ with cheaper production costs, brutal changes in work conditions such as the explosion of part time and contract jobs, the loss of benefits, rising cost of living, disastrous health care, crumbling public education, crumbling infrastructure, etc.
The Federal Reserve has added to the malaise with quantitative easing, in other words, printing money. In the aftermath of the financial collapse of 2008, the Fed bought up all that bad paper created by fraudulent casino capitalists that caused them to go insolvent in the first place thereby creating an ominous asset bubble.
The instability that Carney is talking about is the unbalanced, unstable, dystopian conditions created by EACs in their bloody determination to retain their supremacy by any means necessary without regard for friend or foe.
At the same time, several non-European nations have gained considerable economic strength over the same period beginning in the 1990’s. These nations, primarily located in Asia, are determined to lessen and eventually eliminate the outsized power that EACs have to manipulate their currencies and economies via the fiat, petrodollar and military coercion.
They are determined to slowly extricate their economies from global capitalism and thus protect themselves from coercion, manipulation and control. So, they are steadily adding to their strategic mineral reserves by buying gold, slowly ditching U.S. Treasury Notes, establishing currency swaps with trading partners, engaging in barter trade, developing independent interbank messaging systems and giving crypto currencies serious consideration. It is, perhaps, this rather morbid reality that motivates Carney to be so forthright in criticizing what EACs have been doing.
He goes on to suggest,
“The best solution to dislodge U.S. currency would be a diversified multi-polar financial system, something that could be provided by technology!”
Perhaps it is difficult to take this seriously in light of what European capitalists and their European-American brothers have done for the past 150 years but maybe it’s time that we do. The fact is that cycles are an integral part of how things work in this universe. The decline and collapse of such an ruthless, unbalanced, pseudo political economy as capitalism was inevitable from its beginnings in England 500 years ago.
Here’s the kicker:
“As a consequence, it is an open question whether such a new Synthetic Hegemonic Currency (SHC) would be best provided by the public sector, perhaps through a network of central bank digital currencies,” Carney said.
Let that sink in for a moment! Carney is the governor of the Bank of England. He is a capitalist administrator in a major institution of global capitalism.
Clearly, international power relations are changing dramatically. We will predict that within 5 generations capitalism will no longer be the world’s dominant political economy. It will be replaced by hybrid economies that some will call ‘socialist’ (see China, Venezuela, etc.), however, the political economy that ultimately comes to dominate globally cannot be predicted at this time.
One thing’s for sure, capitalism is dying and, once gone, will never return. That’s why European-American capitalists, who have ‘carried the flag’ most aggressivelyfor elite European men, are so desperate and behaving so erratically recently and will probably continue to do so as long as they can.
What does this mean for Afrikans in America? Good question!
In the short term, that is, over the next 10 years, we can expect more of the same in America, that is, repeated economic recessions, increased inflation, stagnant wages, declining social services, environmental degradation, increased violence, increased underemployment and unemployment, increased police violence and mass incarceration, increased ethnic and ‘racial’ tension, etc. In other words, more of what has been happening for the past 30 years.
Therefore, Africans in America should focus on building the institutions our people will need to survive the coming dystopian conditions in America.
We need to focus on building up our communities.
We need to institutionalize the knowledge, training and skills needed to ensure the viability and survival of our people.
It’s up to us.
Evolve the Revolution!
The Marathon Continues!
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The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Cheikh Amma Diop, Global Research, 2019
https://www.globalresearch.ca/bank-england-governor-criticizes-petrodollar/5687591
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Monday, August 26, 2019
Brexit Britain: The Serious Question of Becoming a “Failed State”
Global Research, August 26, 2019
TruePublica 25 August 2019
This is the formal description of a failed state – “A failed state is a political body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer function properly. A state can also fail if the government loses its legitimacy even if it is performing its functions properly. For a stable state, it is necessary for the government to enjoy both effectiveness and legitimacy.”
It’s hard to even contemplate a country like Britain crumbling to the point of becoming a failed state. In the above description, it would be true to say that Britain’s political system has become weak and unstable and that the government is not really in control of the immediate or near future. Certainly, the government’s legitimacy is questionable.
Brexit has in some way disabled almost all parts of government including its civil service from performing its normal functions properly. The institutions that support civil society have been thoroughly undermined by the governing party since 2010. Sovereignty is now challenged, not least because the union itself looks set to fail but also because the agenda of some foreign policy decisions are not being made within Britain’s own government. Britain does have a strong economy and even if a deep recession occurs, which is now expected as a direct result of Brexit – the economy will continue, albeit in a weakened state.
The question of Britain becoming a failed state is, is now being raised by economists, political commentators, columnists and quietly within parliament itself. Type in the keywords into your favourite search engine – ‘Britain Failed State.’ Results returned come from all over the world and from some serious thinkers.
On its current trajectory from the Tory coalition government of 2010 to the referendum to this point – the next ten years look very bleak.
If you don’t think so, just look at Chris Patten’s (1) recent comments –
“Failed states used to be largely the preserve of the developing world, where the institutions of democracy do not have deep roots. But given the extent to which the Brexit campaign has undermined Britain’s institutions through lies, it is reasonable to worry that the country will soon come to resemble a tinpot dictatorship.”
Is it an exaggeration, sensationalist even, to speculate that Britain could become a failed state asks the Irish Times.
Raphael Hogarth, a respected political commentator, writes for The Times and is an Associate for the Institute of Government also thinks Britain is heading for state failure.
“If (Johnson) maintained his commitment to take the UK out of the EU without a deal on 31st October, “come what may,” “do or die,” ignoring the letter of the statute or even a court judgment clarifying it for him, then that would be the end of the rule of law in this country. It is no exaggeration to say that the United Kingdom would have become a failed state.”
Rupert Strachwitz is a political scientist and Executive Director of the Maecenata Foundation, a Berlin-based Think Tank on Civil Society and also heads the Maecenata Institute, the foundation’s policy and research centre. He makes the point that on its current trajectory, Britain’s state of affairs has now reached crisis point.
“The widespread failure of its governing elites to come to terms with reality over a period of somewhere near 100 years is now making the whole fabric of the United Kingdom crumble and may indeed bring it down. Britain is in a state of emergency.”
David Pratt – the foreign affairs editor of The National had a conversation with someone who spent decades working for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Having operated in a few failed states, that person at the FCO was at pains to point out that the idea of the UK slipping into failed state status was not as daft at it might sound. Pratt makes a point of highlighting how failed states lose territory (the union for example), fails to deliver public services and allows “non-state actors” (like Trump) to increasingly influence, if not take control. And it is true to say that –
“more and more of the UK’s citizens no longer believe that their government is really legitimate.”
Then there is the global organisation whose task it is to monitor such things as state failure. Just a few months ago, the results of the annual Fragile States Index (2019) was published. Five countries made the rankings as this year’s “most worsened”. In referring to Britain it said:
“After scoring among the top 10 most worsened countries in the 2018 FSI, the United Kingdom is this year the fourth-most worsened country, The United Kingdom has again seen increases in its indicator scores for Group Grievance, Factionalized Elites, and State Legitimacy, among the same indicators that have been driving the country’s spiral over the past decade — indeed, more long-term, the United Kingdom is now ranked as the 15th most worsened country on the FSI since 2009.”
Then there is the very first duty of government – security. As our article says in – “Will critical infrastructure fail in November?” – national infrastructure systems are definitely threatened and more than heavily overstretched by Brexit. That much has been confirmed by the government with various leaks from last year and more recently in the last week or so.
In a report by TruePublica, last week entitled – The near-collapse of national security and policing we wrote:
“Boris Johnson’s pledge to recruit 20,000 new police officers will fail to undo the damage caused by years of Conservative budget cuts, senior officers have warned. New analysis suggests that more than 46,000 will have to be hired to meet the target and replace officers leaving the service over the next three years and that’s not including 15,000 officers ordered into back-office administration. The staffing crisis in the NHS has been described as a national emergency and ironically, the British Army is now even recruiting foreign nationals as it too faces a crisis as numbers of new recruits has fallen by one third. In addition, Nearly one-third of MI5 officers are now focused on Northen Ireland and the ending of EU security and cyber-security sharing is highlighted as a significant risk to the public. It is Brexit that brings these weaknesses of national security and public safety into sharp focus.”
Leaving aside the constitutional crisis that Brexit brings – the almost inevitable breakup of the union, there are other issues.
Simon Wren-Lewis – Emeritus Professor of Economics and Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford has advised the government on economics in the past. He makes comment about what we can expect, not just about the economic effects of Brexit, but how trade deals really work:
“Donald Trump supports Brexit because he knows the UK will be desperate to do a trade deal with the US when it leaves, and he knows people desperate to do a deal are vulnerable to exploitation. In this case, no deal may well be better than a bad deal, but the government will sign it anyway because it will look good at the time, and the harm it does can be delayed or fudged. This illustrates a basic political point. Countries are much stronger as part of a group than they are on their own. We have already seen how the EU has backed the Irish government in trying to keep to the Good Friday Agreement alive, and when the UK crashes out just watch the EU’s efforts to diminish the economic costs on the Irish economy.”
The truth is that whether you agree with Brexit or not, Wren-Lewis is right in what he says. Brexit will see the end of the Irish peace-process, if not officially immediately, most certainly in blood being spilt, which is already happening. He is correct to say that wealth lost through a slowing or recessionary economy is wealth you can’t get back. Everyone, especially those less able to defend themselves will be poorer for Brexit. And he is, of course, right about that trade deal with the USA.
Wren-Lewis also asserts that state failure arrives because the producers of information have made it fail – and continue to do so.
Then we come to another problem with Brexit. And although it looks a bit bleak now, well, it looks worse as we go forward into the future when asking some salient questions that have to be answered (2). These questions are raised by Mike Smithson, an expert in betting on political outcomes (described as the most influential person in the British political betting community).
(1) What the consequences of a No Deal Brexit will mean for our politics. (Will those who voted for it benefit from it? And if not, how will they react? And how will those who bear its costs behave?).(2) What the Remainers/Anti-No Dealers will do. (Will they campaign to rejoin the EU? And, if not, where will their votes go?).(3) What sort of relationship Britain will have with the EU in future. (And how it will get it).
These questions have profound consequences as they play out. For instance, if Britain tried to rejoin the EU after leaving it, the terms and conditions it would receive would be considerably worse than the country currently enjoys – that much we know. If Britain leaves the EU, which it is now expected to do, the country will be considerably worse off – that much has been calculated, estimated, reported and analysed ad nauseam by every government and non-government economic expert in the land. So how will an electorate, angered even more than it currently is, react when the trajectory is down no matter what road is chosen.
Britain has been backed into a corner with no good exit points to choose from. According to many experts, Britain will need to slash public services, raise the national debt and/or national taxes (or a combination thereof) to pay for the problems that Brexit brings. The country is being advised that there is no way out of this self-inflicted national catch-22. It will likely drag on and on, cause more division, and create a more forceful, maybe physical response to those in power.
Just remember how the Yellow Vests Movement got a grip in France. That was a response to a higher cost of living, falling wages and a government in power who refused to listen and it is by no means a stretch of the imagination for a post-Brexit Britain to experience something similar. This is why the government is more prepared for public violence on the streets of Britain than anything. And there’s a reason. They have not forgotten the London/England riots of 2011 which saw large scale looting, arson, and mass deployment of police, which also resulted in the deaths of five people along with several hundred £million in repairs cost. There were 3,443 crimes across London alone and over 3,000 were arrested – caused by an unexpected spark.
The Brexit bomb is ticking. Is it not really that much of an exaggeration to say that the United Kingdom could become a failed state with a few more tweaks by the wrong people in the right places.
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Notes
(1) Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong and a former EU commissioner for external affairs, Chancellor of the University of Oxford.
(2) Season of Myths, Brexit Britain
Featured image is from TP
The original source of this article is TruePublica
Copyright © True Publica, TruePublica, 2019
https://www.globalresearch.ca/brexit-britain-question-becoming-failed-state/5687237
JUST NEWS published this article following the Creative Commons rule. If you don't want your article to appear in this blog email me and I will remove it asap.
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