International Affairs
Military experts are accusing coalition forces in Libya of using depleted uranium in their air strikes. This deadly substance can cause cancer and physical mutations in those who come into close contact with it. These claims are coming as the ongoing NATO-led campaign is being stepped up with no clear end in sight. The Journalist Conn Hallinan said that Washington sold depleted uranium bombs to its NATO allies and the ill effects of the controversial weapon will be felt in Libya for decades to come. Libya is being bombed under the guise of democracy and humanitarian issues. The U.S. have used similar tactics of using depleted uranium in Fallujah, Iraq during 2003. The results of this action was evil and appalling. U.S. is one of the few countries that have refused to sign onto the UN's Human Rights Commission ban on the element or depleted uranium. Kenneth O'Keefe is the managing director of the Samouni Project in Gaza. He was an U.S. marine that was assigned to the Gulf war back in the 1990's when the element was first utilized. He talked with Russia Today to describe his experiences. The Libyan war like the war in the Ivory Coast is about neo-imperialists (from the US, UK, France, NATO, etc.) trying to dominate the Third World more, especially in the Middle East & Africa. The cost of war is costing lives, our resources in America, and the emotional stability of soldiers including their families as well. They exploit soldiers immorally as cannon folder. Radiation used as weaponry is similar to what Hitler did against innocent victims during WWII. Depleted uranium spreads thousands of miles across the world.
Economic History is a long journey among the histories of humanity. We have a depression here in America and the world. Some fear fascism or another evil totalitarian system that can take over the world in a global government. Capitalism itself was never the same in history. It has changed and continues to change now. Even China has embraced more market based policies in its nation. In the 21st century, we see globalization causing a more global political economy (with proposals of a global economic system and international political organizations here now). To understand basic economic history, it's fine to learn about the economic theories and political philosophies. We should do this even if you disagree with some of them in order to see the present economic reality now. Mercantilist writers like Friedrich List and Alexander Hamilton wrote critiques of Liberal economic concepts. List criticized a worldwide economy and instead wanted a national economy to handle economic conditions (that Adam Smith didn't adhere to). List didn't believe a universal union of confederation of nation to establish peace in international free trade. List wanted the merging of the political and economic realms and then allows the political realm to have more power than the economic realm. Of course, liberal economics believe in the free market view. They believe that the political and economic realms should be separate in order to allow businesses to be free (under the free market) to enhance economic output and economic development. Adam Smith believed in the invisible hand of the free market in his volume of his "The Wealth of Nations" back in 1776. List wrote that historically, a political had to precede an economic union. By the 19th century and beyond, major banking dynasties wanted use their economic union to form a political union to follow in its footsteps. The global hegemonic power of Great Britain supported this liberal economic theory (which is the ideological ancestor of Austrian Economics). The Bank of England was created back in 1694. It was a private central bank that would issue currency to the nation and lend it to the government plus interest at interest (which would be paid back to the Bank of England shareholders). These shareholders make up the private banking dynasties. Does this sound familiar? Yes, it sounds very similar to the Federal Reserve private banking system. From the 16th to 19th centuries, the nation-state and capitalism grew along with central banking. The economies in many nations were secondary or submissive to the political structure of nations. Liberal theorists oppose the economy to be submissive to the state like of course Adam Smith. He lived when the American colonies fought against the British imperial forces in North America. America created its independence after the Revolutionary War. This war had many reasons like the high colonial tax (on tea and other imports from foreign nations like France). This was done in an effort to promote the mercantilist assumptions that the colony should only survive and trade with the metropole (imperial hegemon) – which extracts the resources of the nation in trade for material goods to that nation, creating a dependence upon the colonial power. The colonists didn't want a foreign imperial power to control inflation and devaluation of a currency to rule colonial conditions. Even the Founding Fathers of the United States knew that you have to control your own currency if one is to have true sovereignty and independence. America won and Britain lost that hit their mercantilist system bad. The French Revolution cam and the European bankers infiltrated the French Revolutions. They didn't give short term credit to the government; they have delayed food to Paris. This caused hunger riots by Parisians. The bankers soon supported a general in the Revolutionary Army named Napoleon to restore order. Napoleon supported the bankers and created the Bank of France in 1800 (which was privately owned by the bankers. The bankers owned its share and even Napoleon bought shares in the bank). Napoleon had his empire and when he tried to attack England and tried to declare himself more powerful than the bank of France, the elite turned against him. The Rothschilds ascended to the throne of international banking with the Battle of Waterloo. After the French Revolution, the Rothschilds have established banking houses in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Vienna and Naples. Some people believed that Nathan Rothschild made insider trading during the Battle of Waterloo and some don't. What is true is that the Rothschild family has links to both the Vatican and Freemasonry. The British Empire followed the liberal economic concepts of Adam Smith from 1815 to 1914. Free markets and the invisible hand were supported by the elite. Yet in reality, the markets were really free and its hands have visible in imperialism, colonialism, and bigotry. Although, some who were in favor of mercantilism tried to justify colonization. Adam Smith did believe in some regulation to handle equity issues between employers and labor. Yet, extremists took Smith's ideas on its head to promote a radical liberal economic order.
In America, the European elites wanted to promote a privatized central bank in America. To their credit, many Americans opposed this plan. Alexander Hamilton and even George Washington wanted such a bank, but his plan was for a national bank not a privatized, unelected central banking system. Andrew Jackson opposed a central bank strongly. Jackson didn't want this system, because he believed that such a system would centralize too much economic power into few hands. Andrew Jackson vetoed the bill to have a Second Bank of the United States. Andrew Jackson wasn't perfect, but he was right to oppose the international bankers' agenda in the USA. Jackson made the error of not making an adequate replacement of the Central Bank. His weaker replacement and other factors influenced the recession of 1833. The elite later used the Civil War to try to control America. Abraham Lincoln before he died knew that if banking powers control wealth into a few hands, then the Republic would have a change of being destroyed. There were depression from 1837, 1857, and the Great Depression of 1873. This continued in 1893, 1907, 1919, and 1929. During these times, small businesses suffered and the working people's fortunes came to the Astors, Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Morgans, etc. During the 1873 crisis, Carnegie was capturing the steel market; Rockefeller was wiping out his competitors in oil. The recessions in these periods caused the consolidation of power into the oligarchy.
President John F. Kennedy according to Gibson's research wanted to have economic development and economic planning in the Third World with nationalism. John F. Kennedy's June 6, 1963 was when he advocated civil rights legislation. There is legitimate criticism toward JFK that he was rather lukewarm in fighting against reactionaries in the South that wanted to deprive human beings of their rights. JFK ordered U.S. Marshals to protect Freedom Riders in Alabama in 61, called in the National Guard to ensure Jim Meredith's enrollment at Old Miss in 62. By 1963, JFK began to support more radical action. JFK wanted to "split the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds." He fired Director of CIA Allen dulls, Deputy Richard Bissell and others and put them under the Joint chiefs jurisdiction. He also had bobby use the FBI to keep the Miami CIA people from running boat attacks inCuban waters. JFK was President for less than 3 years. He dealt with the steel companies when they increased the price of steel. He signed the Test Ban Treaty which saved our atmosphere. He put the civil rights bill in congress and donated all his salary to charity. No President has ever done that. President John F. Kennedy experienced a long sustained economic growth during his Presidency. Some believed that he wanted a silver backed currency independent of the private owned FED and of the banks. It is true that President Kennedy authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to issue U.S. Treasury silver certificates and he was the last President to issue freely circulating United States Notes or Greenbacks. After Kennedy's assassination, Lyndon Johnson allowed the FED to have Federal Reserve Notes without being redeemed in silver (to replace the U.S. Notes). This policy was the beginning of the end of the Greenbacks. 1971 was one year in economic history that people can't forget. From 1945 to 1971, America had most of the world's gold reserves, a large industrial base, and a surplus of dollars backed by gold. The U.S. could afford to spend moneys to Germany, Japan, etc. to allow those nations to grow economically from the 1950's to the 1960's. There was stability when the economies of Asia and Western Europe started to flourish as a counter to communism. This caused an advantage to America. Vietnam came. By the late 1960's, the Vietnam War led to a drain of U.S. gold reserves. America was spending more than it had in its gold reserves. The drain was in huge level by 1968 when stagflation became. As foreign central banks holding dollars feared the US deficits would make their dollars worthless, and preferred real gold instead. Let's be clear. The Bretton Woods Agreement form 1944 fixed all exchange rates that allowed the dollar to be anchored by gold (it didn't allow U.S. currency to have an explicit gold standard financially). The agreement wasn't perfect, but it limited speculators from creating massive bubbles in the economy. The Bretton Woods gold situation worked, because few countries converted their dollars into gold. Richard Nixon in August of 1971 broke with the Bretton Woods agreement. Nixon was inspired to take this route as early as 1968 by the economist Milton Friedman. He didn't want dollars to redeem with gold. He wanted the dollar to be fixed not on an ounce of gold, but on the printing press of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. The problem was that the dollar was based on fiat currency and fractional reserve currency. This new dollarism policy (or floating exchange rates since 1971) was worse than the Bretton Woods gold standard policy since multinational corporations can just devalue national currencies in smaller nations by selling them short on the international market. This caused financial markets to be deregulated, more controls lifted, offshore banking, and unregulated hedge funds (plus financial derivatives to exist). Washington and New York banks caused this to occur. Debt increased as well. Because all key commodities, above all, oil, were traded globally in dollars, demand for dollars would continue, even if the US created more dollars than its own economy justified. The overreliance on the dollar by some nations existed to inflate their economics. There was an economic crisis in Germany, Japan, and the world by 1973. In the years between 1945 and 1965, total supply of dollars grew a total of only some 55%. Those were the golden years of low inflation and stable growth. After Nixon's break with gold, dollars expanded by more than 2,000% between 1970 and 2001! The dollar is the mostly global reserve currency. The Euro exists now too. The dollar hegemony has caused many problems indeed that we experience today in 2011. Gold is difficult to work in a domestic standard since gold can fluctuate rapidly, there is not enough gold in the world to handle trade, and this policy can drain U.S. gold reserves.
We know the economic crisis in America and some want an alternative to our neo-liberalism situations. Others like Margaret Thatcher believe that there is no other alternative, but to accept the system as it is. This isn't so. We have wars, plunder of the Earth, the unfettered free market economy, and neoliberal globalization. Globalization is an economic system that embraces radical free trade under the guise of technological development. Usually, it can cold and unforgiving in its way. Neoliberalism has its roots from Adam Smith's invisible hand viewpoint. Neoliberalism was modernized in Chile in 1973. This was the time of the coup against the democratically elected President. This coup was supported by America and a military dictatorship came in its place. The economics of the military dictatorship was the neoliberal models of Milton Friedman (and the Chicago Boys, who are students of Friedrich von Hayek). Neoliberalism deals with trying to have specialization and replacement, ending public of state interference with market forces, and separating economics from political systems. Some are so extreme that they mock altruism and help to others as a form of responsibility. Some of them who support this idea reject the common good. They believe in the freedom of corporations on bar with individual freedoms. To get the maximum profits in the shortest time can cause speculation. Neoliberalism has spread global after WWII. Today, we have big corporations completely against each other for a win instead of just small enterprises have the freedom of the market. We have new market oligopolies and new monopolies. Today, we have the market free for the few and unfree for the many. Multinational corporations now control the market, go beyond anti-trust laws, and act as the real 'invisible hand' that determines the rules of trade, prices, and legal regulations. Some in the public sector (with usually for profit motive) is cut and some parts of the public sector are privatized to corporations. When you have no public services, you only have private services. Some private services are fine and some are not. That is why you need both public and private services to help society. Then, social services decreased. Economic growth can't secure employment if economic growth is accompanied by the mergers of business (when jobs are lost). Many women in the Third World and men go throw low poor, environmentally bad conditions, and corporate exploitation. Corporations go oversees to escape unions and labor standards. They exploit cheap labor in order to make a profit in the EPZs or the Export Processing Zones. EPZs are in colonial capitalists conditions. The technological areas aren't growing in America heavily. Neoliberalism have many flaws and is a causing a neo-colonialism of the North (or the developed nations in the Northern Hemisphere including Australia & New Zealand in economic terminology).
There is more influence about the Austrian school that few people know about. The elite used and funded the Austrian school to promote anarchy beyond just private enterprise. Many people have exposed this reality. Some have found Jesuit influence in the Mises Institute. Back months ago, I have heavily criticized for this. Yet, now, Austrian economics have been refuted so bad that my information has much more support than even a year ago. Ron Paul and his crew have brainwashed many young people into believing that cutting almost everything will grow the economy. Roman Catholic Lew Rockwell is the Chairman of the Mises Institute. He has a degree in English from Tufs University. He worked as Ron Paul's congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982. He promotes anti-Lincoln articles. Roman Catholic Thomas E. Woods is a proponent of the Confederacy. Walter Block is a member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics. He met with Ayn Rand and is a devout atheist. Murray Rothhard is another figure in that world as well. Some people have used this philosophy to promote a more fascist ideology (in breaking down nationalism and numerous Austrians hate the concept of nationalism or the nation-state). While the extremes of anarchy and communism are promoted in society, real populist solutions are pulled under the rug.
It's a part of Wall Street propaganda to blame Social Security for our deficit. In reality, Social Security has not contributed one dime to our current fiscal woes, because that money was contributed by America's workers over decades. The President's Fiscal Commission is holding its 2nd public meeting today and when commission members say everything is on the table, they are talking about Social Security and Medicare. The commission was made by an Executive Order from President Barack Obama in February of 2010. A commission with broader powers failed in the Senate. Dean Baker (the co-director of the CEPR or the Center for Economic and Policy Research) said that establishment conservative groups and Wall Street insiders have spent more than 1 billion dollars to try to cut Social Security and Medicare (in the lie that this is the only way to protect our children and grandchildren from poverty). Deficit is the new buzz words neo cons use in promoting austerity. Deficits and debts are words similar to terrorism in that they words are utilized by the neo cons in promoting paranoia. The truth is that Social Security now has a massive surplus that can rise from 2.5 trillion dollars now to 4.3 trillion dollars by 2023. This vast wealth was collected over many years from workers under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) to pay in advance for baby boom retirements. The money will cover all benefits until the 2040s–unless Congress double-crosses workers by changing the rules. The non partisan Congressional Budget Office said that most of the deficit over the next 10 years will come from the Bush administration's tax cuts for the rich, the wars in Afghanistan plus Iraq, the economy, and rising costs (that some believe will be rein it by the health care reform law). The deficit crisis is largely a symptom of the jobs crisis. Barbara Kennelly. President of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM), says if the "commission's goal is to get our nation's fiscal house in order then its attention should be on programs which contribute to our debt and the revenue reforms necessary to improve the federal balance sheet." Deficit alarmists have existed throughout human history. We should not follow their lead into austerity, but use rational approaches in solving our real economic problems. Many of the richest American corporations paid no income tax in 2009 like G.E. and Exxon. U.S. revenues from corporate taxes as percentage of GDP are among the lowest in the world. When Reagan cut corporate taxes in 1986 it did not improve the economy for middle class Americans. The economy was already in high gear under a top marginal tax rate of 50%. The lowest unemployment rate ever recorded, 2.5%, was in May-June of 1953 when the top marginal tax rate was 91%. The period of the lowest tax rates of the last 97 years was from 1925-1929 when the top rate started at 28% & by 1929 was down to 24%. That brief period of record low taxes was followed by the Great Depression.
A recap of exposing Ayn Rand is in order. Rand was a fictional writer in the 20th century. Her real name was Alice Rosenbaum. She was born in 1905 in St. Petersburg, Urssia. She left to America in 1926 to escape communist persecution. He wrote Atlas Shrugged in 1957. She died in 1982 and promoted Objectivism. This philosophy wants to view each individual as its own god individual. It places the interests of the individual above responsibilities to help others. Her extreme libertarian views made her loved by many conservatives worldwide. She didn't like any social welfare whatsoever. She doesn't even believe that the government should help the poor and less fortunate of society being a social Darwinist (allowing the so-called strong survive when many of them surviving aren't really strong at all morally). Ayn Rand was paranoid in thinking that government's only role was to oppress people. A U.S postage stamp support her when she promoted the evil virtue of selfishness instead of selflessness. She wanted greed to be virtuous and hated charity. She was an atheist and viewed the concept of God as degrading to a man when there has been conclusive evidence that God doesn't exist at all. Ironically, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Tom Delay, Ronald Reagan, Alan Greenspan, and other have praised Ayn Rand. They love tax cuts for the wealthy and some of this ilk want to eliminate the minimum wage. There should be self reliance, but also sacrifice, charity, love for the neighbor, and fighting against poverty.
By Timothy
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