The word ‘irony’ sums up much that is probably inherent in human nature and manifest at times in human history, when one considers the on-going conflict between the Palestinians and Israel.
Historical pogroms had been launched against Jews – ‘pogroms’ used in the widest sense of its meaning as violent attack, expulsion, or marginalisations – then the history is a long one. King Edward 1 in 1290 signed an edict expelling all Jews from the Kingdom of England; Pope Innocent the 111 had issued a decree against Jews, placing them in servitude for the killing of Christ; Czarist Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church pursued an exclusionary policy towards Jews; more recently there is the Holocaust; and other instances which could be cited mainly in and around Europe of anti-Jewish actions being perpetrated.
In what can be termed historical Palestine, prior to 1948 Jews, Arab Palestinians and Christians lived peacefully with the Jewish population being about a mere 6% of the total in Palestine. The road to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 might be said to have been signposted with Jewish hopes which followed certain critical stages. Following the end of the Ottoman Empire, there was a new carving out of territories for the ‘Great Powers’ and in 1917 there was the Balfour Declaration announcing an intent to create a national homeland for Jews; in 1920 there was the San Reno Conference and by 1924 the then League of Nations approved the British Mandate for Palestine. Here comes trouble. Between 1936 to 1939 the Palestinians resisted British policy in Palestine. By the Post World War 11 era the world’s conscience had been touched and galvanised in favour of a Jewish state and by 1948 Zionists saw and grasped the opportunity. The on-going conflict had emerged since the inception of the Jewish state, for reasons such as:-
The displacement and expulsion of several hundred thousand Palestinians to make space for the new Jewish arrivees.
The anti-democratic embrace of the idea that one ethnicity can reserve for itself the exclusive right to citizenship at the expense and to the disadvantage of the prior inhabitants of the land.
The need to corral the expelled Palestinians, and deny them the right of return to their homeland.
The list of causes for the conflict could be significantly expanded – but this brief commentary is about the inherent ‘irony’ existing in the state of Israel.
International Law and the mandate
1947, the United Kingdom had relied on Article 10 of the UN Charter:-
“The General Assembly may discuss any questions or any matters within the scope of the present Charter or relating to the powers and functions of any organs provided for in the present Charter, and, except as provided in Article 12, may make recommendations to the Members of the United Nations or to the Security Council or to both on any such questions or matters.”
Wherein commences a problem ( the problem?). A number of Arab States had opposed the British Mandate being brought to the floor of the General Assembly for reason that under Article 12.1of the UN Charter there is express provision that while the Security Council is exercising the functions assigned to it by the Charter in relation to any dispute or situation, the General Assembly must not adopt any recommendation regarding that dispute or situation unless requested to do so by the Security Council. The preexisting system of mandated territories under the law as applied via the League of Nations did not provide for any mandated territory to be transferred via the new UN schema of law. Here is how the problem commenced and continues to this day in point of law.
Articles 75 to 79 of the UN Charter address the UN Trusteeship system, which is the successor to that which had existed under the former League of Nations system as mandated territory. Under Article 79, the terms of trusteeship agreements were to be agreed by “…the States directly concerned, including the mandatory power in the case of territories held under mandate by a Member of the United Nations”. Additionally, the agreements had to be approved by the Security Council in the case of territorial areas deemed to be strategic areas (see: Article 83) and note the provisions of Article 85 with regards to the General Assembly’s role.
Before the UN in 1947 adopted a crucial Resolution on Palestine, the UK had made known that it wanted to withdraw from Palestine, terminate the Mandate and avoid the transfer into an international Trusteeship System.
On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted a Plan as Resolution 181 (II). That resolution recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish States with a Special International Regime being established for the city of Jerusalem.
By 1948 Jewish re-population and de-population of the Palestinian Arabs, throughout the various iterations of the conflict really does constitute – at least the Alpha – if not fully yet the Omega of the issue. A book would have to be written if I were to continue explaining the issue from its root causes. I simply want to lay an adequate historical and legal plinth to afford a credible shift leading logically to the main point of the ‘irony’ of that which was mentioned in the title at the start of this commentary.
Ironies.
Lack of sympathy and/or support for fellow oppressed people
Establishment and perpetuation of Apartheid policies in Israel
The position of the recognition of the 1967 borders under international law as constituting the boundaries for Israel, is simply ignored and greater settler colony expansion is taking place on Palestinian lands.
When the Jewish ‘nation-state law’ was passed in Israel in 2018 the Arab members of the parliament ripped it up and shouted, “Apartheid”. Indeed, reservation for a certain group based on ethnicity in these circumstances can, quite accurately, be so termed.
Expulsion of Palestinians from their homes while promoting more illegal Jewish settlements ( contrary to international law)
To say the least, is it not truly ironic, that a group of people, undeniably historically displaced and dispossessed for centuries, would embrace policies such as declaring “Jewish settlement as a national value” while mandating that the state “will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development.”?
Beyond the immediate former proclamation, is it not, within historical context – ironic in the extreme for the Zionists to tell the Palestinians to forget their expulsion as of 1948 – being a diaspora people who kept a dream of return with collective memory alive over 2,000 years – long enough to remove people who historically really never did Jews any harm?
Conclusion
International Refugee Law weighs heavily in favour of the right of return. Which version would you presently embrace Israel – the one before 2,000 years ago – or – from 1948 onwards? Change course Israel – or – continue fighting as Apartheid South Africa did over many years, being truly reflective of what you are doing now – fighting, however ironic the fight may be – to the end.
______________________________________________
Courtenay Barnett is a graduate of London University. His areas of study were economics, political science and international law. He has been a practising lawyer for almost fully forty years, has been arrested for defending his views, and has argued public interest and human rights cases.
America is not a racist country: It was back then, but then is now.
( A tribute to Tim Scott)
A joint venture poem by Courtenay Barnett and George Garwood.
1. There was actual chattel slavery in the US
when human beings at a time
were bought and sold as property –
but that was way back then, but then is now.
2. After emancipation in 1863
there were lynchings –
but that was way back then, but then is now.
3. There was the burning of ‘Black Wall Street’ in 1921
when an entire prosperous town was destroyed
and burned to the ground by a White mob
for the Blacks had committed the crime of improving their lot in life
post-emancipation, and had made themselves wealthy
and that was quite some time ago –
but that was way back then, but then is now
4. After lynchings there was still ‘Jim Crow’ (Apartheid segregation)
but segregation laws on the books actually ended around 1967
when Virginia repealed the last miscegenation statute in the US –
but that was way back then, but then is now.
In the 1950s there was Federally approved segregation
via the housing policy applied
which directly excluded Blacks from benefiting
from these Federal funds as well illustrated on Long Island
and the instance of Levittown*– and that was in the 1950s –
but that was way back then, but then is now.
5. Even in the 1960s there had to be marches to obtain civil rights
and that was some time ago in the 60s –
but that was way back then, but then is now.
6. Up to the early 1970s there was the ‘scientific experiment’ on
Black male prisoners
letting the disease of syphilis run its course
to study and document the full nature of the disease
as the bodies of these ‘human guinea pigs’ were made
knowingly to decay – and this was permitted at
the administrative and governmental level
and that was some time ago in the 1970s –
but that was way back then, but then is now.
7. Oh Timmy – now I just love this last one –
it was the day before yesterday
and home boy George Floyd got his wind-pipe squeezed
with the cop’s knee upon his neck
but that was just regular and standard policing
applied on a Black man
while on the internet we still see postings of White Americans
and some non-white Americans
seeking to justify police action – and that in 2021.
But eyes don’t lie. This wasn’t way back then –
but then is now.
8. So – please Tim Scott – do not disgrace the
struggle and/or sacrifices of Black folks in the US, for
over the centuries, as you know, your mantra is untrue
When you say, “America is not a racist country”-
or when you say: that was way back then, for then is now.
* A clause in the original Levittown covenant prevented tenants from allowing non-Caucasians to use or occupy Levitt houses…. In Levittown, Black veterans were unable to purchase homes, and the Levitts justified the clause by stating that it maintained the value of the properties, since most whites at the time preferred not to live in mixed communities.
COURTENAY BARNETT is a graduate of London University. His areas of study were economics, political science and international law. He has been a practising lawyer for over thirty-nine years, has been arrested for defending his views, and has argued public interest and human rights cases. GEORGE GARWOODis a Jamaican writer and professor of world religions. He resides in Florida, USA, but is a peripatetic observer of human affairs as he travels around trying to understand human behaviour.
THE EARTHIAN, Number Twenty-Three, Effective Learning Publications, https://effectivelearning.net/effective-learning-publications/ 32 East Main Street, Statesboro, Georgia, USA, May 8, 2021, Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA, Writer, Editor & Publisher
THE EARTHIAN is a digest of articles containing facts, perspectives, theories, models, analyses, and recommendations concerned about existential states of affairs affecting all species of fauna and flora around Spaceship Earth. Recent articles written and published by intelligent hard-hitting truth-seeking writers in Internet journals about psychological, social, economic, political, military, religious, and ecological states of affairs around Spaceship Earth are posted and linked below as recommended sources of relevant reading to help Earthian humans comprehend larger and larger systems to develop consensual answers for dealing with existential problems.
To comment about this issue of The Earthian in general or any article included please scroll to the top of this page and click on the prompt for ELR Editor’s Daily Shares. Write your comment either at the top of the editor’s Facebook page that will pop up or at the bottom of the specific article you are thinking about that was previously shared on the ELR Editor’s Facebook page that popped up.
“ASK LESS WHAT YOUR NATION CAN DO FOR YOU–ASK MORE WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR SPACESHIP EARTH”
That object under my left hand in the picture above is a Classroom De-Gamer™. It has a spinner attached and there are concentric circles of numbers around its circumference to accommodate different numbers of students in classes. Each student got a number and whoever’s number got selected when the spinner was spun got to be the leader of the moment leading a discussion of assigned reading, mostly long factual cases in my courses. I have published some refereed professional journal articles and book chapters attached as references to this issue of The Earthian explaining how learning De-Gamers de-Game psychological Games in learning situations, including an article I published in 1978 in the Transactional Analysis Journal titled “The Classroom De-Gamer” in which I first explained how and why my invention worked. Learning De-Gamers can work in any situation in which there is teaching and learning going on, involving parents and children in homes, teachers and students in schools, bosses and employees in businesses, preachers and Sunday school teachers and members in churches, and leaders and members in groups and organizations of all kinds.
Learning De-Gamers cathect (activate) all Ego States in all participants. I used a Classroom De-Gamer™ in my classes thirty-five years producing management learning with university students, and I used one with a large manufacturing corporation, dealing with current problems in a plant with several hundred employees from all functions and levels of the plant, lecturing three hours on transactional analysis concepts and techniques to thirty or so plant employees per group in classes at a university setting and spasmodically applying TA to interrelated plant problems over a five year period on-site on an as needed basis with small mixed groups of ten or so members, with each member of a small group having an equal shot at being selected the leader of the group. Whoever got selected by the plant De-Gamer became the leader of the moment to start a discussion about whatever he or she thought was the most significant problem facing the plant. I wrote about this experience in my ebook Recommendations for Waking Up From the USian Nightmare, at https://www.amazon.com/Recommendations-American-Nightmare-Business-Voyages-ebook/dp/B009TOJVPI .
Learning De-Gamers facilitate a democratic way of teaching and learning involving sortition wherein everyone involved is OK with an equal shot at being the leader of the moment, a process ancient Greeks used to create democratic government during one of the more OK periods of Earthian human history. I think Learning De-Gamers based on sortition should be used around Spaceship Earth today in as many teaching and learning situations as possible, including governmental legislative groups, such as the USian House and Senate.
Learning De-Gamers cause more and better learning to happen by causing Adult Ego States to be cathected (activated) in participants and by preventing the learning process from being corrupted by Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims playing psychological Games. When the Leader of the Moment is randomly selected psychological power struggles do not happen at the start of discussions and participants cooperate from then on.
Following are some transactional analysis terms and concepts that might help Earthian humans think and talk more clearly about psychological, social, economic, religious, and political processes that might help develop consensual answers to bring about salutary feeling, thinking, and doing processes around Spaceship Earth for dealing with existential threats such as global warming, climate change, and nuclear war.
Ego states are states of being including thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, feelings, gestures, body language, and other signals determining how people come across with others in communication episodes that are parent-like, adult-like, or child-like. People switch ego states depending on who they are communicating with and what sort of circumstances they are in, whether they are parenting, working, socializing, teaching, having fun, or playing Games. They transmit messages from three ego states in themselves to three ego states in others in pair vectors, Parent-Parent, Adult-Adult, Child-Child, Parent-Child, Child-Adult, Adult-Parent, or whatever possibility. These transmissions or transactions are especially meaningful in situations in which there is some sort of authoritarian system involved, such as parents parenting children in homes, teachers teaching students in schools, or bosses bossing subordinates in a business, political, religious, or military organization, which normally entail primarily Parent-Child transactions. In most cases the more Adult-Adult transactions there are the better things go in families, schools, businesses, churches, military units, political organizations, and governments.
A life script diagram shows three stacked circles metaphorically representing Parent, Adult, and Child ego states depicting transactions between real parents and children. The solid lines in the diagram denote overt spoken social messages on vectors from ego states in the parent to ego states in the child, and dotted line vectors denote covert psychological unspoken ulterior messages transmitted from the Child ego state of the parent to the Child ego state of the child. Social messages are verbalized overt auditory messages; psychological messages are covert non-spoken ulterior messages transmitted by body language, emotional states, and after the fact positive or negative stroking as people react to situations and feel and do things.
Strokes are units of recognition.
Scripts in families are created automatically when parents transmit various messages to their children from various ego states socially and psychologically, in and out of awareness. Scripts are life plans are generally decided before the age of eight by offspring based on script messages transmitted to them by their parents and others. Since parents by and large transmit the same script messages that were transmitted to them before they were eight years old script messages in families can remain intact for many generations. According to transactional analysts script decisions made before the age of eight have lasting effects determining three general life outcomes: winner, loser, and non-winner. These decisions can be redecided and updated later in life but it’s not easy for most people.
Psychological Child-Child ego state script injunctions are what cause the most trouble for people in their lives. These script injunctions forbid appropriate behavior in the here and now. Script injunctions are caused by emotional and behavioral requirements created by families through time as they adapted to and coped with problems and environmental forces that may have been appropriate in past environments, but which are inappropriate and ineffective in different here and now environments.
Opposing script messages transmitted by parents can put a child in a Not-OK bind in childhood and throughout adolescence, assuming a divorce has not already occurred, causing considerable trouble within a family, since the child cannot please both parents in the presence of both parents, which can put parents in worse Not-OK positions if the child makes a decision about which parent is right, increasing Not-OKness in the family system as a whole.
What many people need is psychological permission to violate and ignore their psychological outdated obsolete family Child ego state script message Injunctions, not only to increase their own OKness but the OKness of all living members of the family system, and the OKness of Earthian humans in general.
Two common family script Injunctions in most cultures are Don’t Think seriously about the true nature and causes of states of affairs and Don’t Feel certain feelings, such as mad, glad, sad, and scared, when certain things happen in certain environments.
Joe Biden at least socially comes across projecting an I’m OK–You’re OK life position. Donald Trump on the other hand comes across socially and psychologically projecting an I’m OK, my buddy is OK, nothing else is OK, and we are going to make the world pay life position.
Here is some writing of mine based on the teachings of Martin Groder, MD, a founder of transactional analysis and one of my TA mentors, published in my book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, 2011, pp. 148-150:
“The Human Spectrum
“Humans generally give little thought to what kind of human they are and where they fit in the spectrum of various types of humans. Innumerable philosophers, psychiatrists, social scientists, preachers, priests, writers in various fields, and other types have described and categorized humans in various ways. Following is a schema developed by Martin Groder, MD, a psychiatrist, organizational development consultant, and entrepreneur, who also had an undergraduate degree in physics (Groder, 1977). Groder developed this schema while working with maximum security inmates of the federal prison system at Marion, Illinois in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. He was involved in a process of changing hard-core criminals into law-abiding citizens. Such a process would challenge the abilities of the most skillful and powerful of change agents.
“According to Groder, humans vary on two fundamental spatial dimensions. One dimension is Okness, which he estimates on the horizontal axis of Figure 1; the other dimension is the energy level of the individual estimated on the vertical axis of the space.
“People vary in terms of how OK they see, feel about, and experience, (1) themselves, (2) the other individual, (3) their group, (4) other groups, and (5) the world. In Groder’s terms, they are OK or not-OK with respect to I, You, We, They, and It (the world). Groder estimates how OK they are on each of these five existential dimensions on a scale of -1 to +1, -1 being as not-OK as possible and +1 being as OK as possible. Thus people with extremely high self-esteem would exist at the +1 level regarding themselves; someone with extremely low self-esteem would exist at the -1 level regarding themselves. People could exist at any level in between, at -.5, 0, +.25, etc. The same would be true of the positions of specific individuals with respect to buddies on a one-to-one basis, groups with which one belongs, other groups with which your group cooperates or competes, and the world in general. Summing the 5 existential OKness positions for an individual (I, You, We, They, and It), the highest possible OKness rating would be +5 and the lowest possible would be -5. A +5 person would have the highest possible feelings of Okness regarding his or her OKness, the OKness of buddies, the OKness of his group, the OKness of other groups, and the OKness of the world. Such an individual would have very positive feelings and thoughts for self and others. Groder called such people myth-makers. On the other end of the spectrum, a -5 person would have the lowest possible feelings and thoughts for self and others. Very negative people tend to end up in prison. Very positive people tend to end up cultural heroes. Probably the most profitable attitude for an entrepreneur in a capitalistic economic system would be I’m OK, my employees are OK, my company is OK, the world is OK, but my competitors aren’t worth a damn, since this position would motivate his or her sales employees to steal business from competitors to increase the profit of the company.
“Entrepreneurs have higher energy levels than middle managers and normal people. It takes less energy to be a normal person than anything else. Entrepreneurs in Groder’s schema have approximately the same energy level on the vertical axis of Figure 1 as Monsters, the -3 OKness level convict leaders of other convicts. Monsters have the attitude “I’m OK, my buddy is OK, but everything else is not OK, and I am going to make the world pay.” According to Groder, it’s more difficult to change the energy level of a human than the OKness position. In rehabilitation work, Groder attempted to arc people across the gap of Figure 1, and make +3 OKness level entrepreneurs out of -3 monsters, +2 OKness middle managers out of -2 OKness creeps, slobs, lunch buckets, etc. Sometimes people arc across the gap the other way. Honest entrepreneurs can turn criminal. Entrepreneurs are winner-survivors; Monsters are loser-survivors.”
The trick to it all is setting appropriate goals and objectives, doing what you really want to do, can do, and should do given your natural abilities, scripting, and education, and the requirements and options of your environment that will produce satisfaction for you. How much money you get your hands on in the process beyond a certain level necessary to satisfy needs for food, clothing, shelter, belonging, and good health is irrelevant, if you aren’t addicted to playing psychological Games caused by poor scripting. Most really rich people are playing a psychological Game called BALANCE SHEET, a Parent ego state Game in which the winner thinks s/he wins by piling up more money on a balance sheet than others.
I became a certified transactional analyst in education and organizations, a CTA, after passing written, oral, and experiential comprehensive exams administered by the International Transactional Analysis Association in 1978, after undergoing three years of once-a-month training, all day Saturday and half of Sunday, at the Southeast Institute at Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
I have covered ego states, scripts, Games, and OKness in my books Business VoyagesandBorn to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning, listing common Parent ego state script messages and Child ego state injunctions. All parents do not transmit the same script messages creating considerable variety among family scripts and outcomes. Certain life scripts conveniently fit certain roles, jobs, professions, careers, and what have you more than others, providing fresh recruits already scripted for job openings, slots, roles, and positions in an economy, which is fine so long as the economy does not change very much. In recent years in the United States the offshoring of high wage blue collar jobs to foreign low wage countries and the use of more and more automation has rendered many family scripts obsolete.
A bitter pill for some people to swallow postulated in my books Business Voyages and Born to Learn is that everything that happens is either predetermined or accidental and therefore no one is to blame or praise. Believing and acting otherwise will perpetuate the same sorry I’m OK–You’re Not OK life position that has bedeviled humankind since time immemorial.
Read my article “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc,” https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-evolution-of-spaceship-earth-inc/ for some management science ideas on how human Earthians might eventually co-construct an economic system that is viable and satisfying for everyone aboard Spaceship Earth, making it possible for all Earthian humans to develop an I’m OK–You’re OK life position.
This entails Earthians peacefully reducing through natural attrition the human population aboard Spaceship Earth, never doing work that machines can do better, and delegating the day-to-day management of systems for scheduling, producing, and distributing the necessities of life to artificial intelligence programs and supercomputers.
This is possible based on the general algorithmic matrix algebra form
Flying aboard an airliner about to land at night moving at four hundred miles an hour at thirty thousand feet with cloudy and rainy weather below, which would you rather have landing the plane, the plane’s radar and computer system or the pilot and co-pilot, seeing nothing out their windows but clouds and lightning?
The main reason however for turning over the scheduling, production, and distribution of the necessities of life to AI robots and magnum computers is that they do not get greedy and power hungry or play psychological Games. Thus far in human history sooner or later corrupt Not-OK leaders atop large organizations such as countries, large corporations, and big banks got control acting out their life scripts playing psychological Games, hogging all the power and money they could get their hands on for themselves and their cronies, ruining everything for everyone. AI robots and computers are not egotistical.
I am indebted to Buckminster Fuller for teaching me in his book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth the airplane-landing metaphor in the above paragraph and for planting seeds for other ideas in my essay “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.,” such as computers being the best hope for mankind and humans not doing work machines can do better, being paid to think instead with what Fuller called mind grants. Fuller said unemployment all around Spaceship Earth could be eliminated overnight with mind grants. To my knowledge Fuller was the inventor of the appellations Earthian and Spaceship Earth.
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Born to Learn has not been a best seller but it has had some impact as this review in the Texas Tribune shows at https://www.texastribune.org/2016/10/26/bookshelf-oct-26-2016/?fbclid=IwAR3ctGFk_zCH5QOyvLjqUiulkAcEPUQ4deUq1-tZIS6OuwaYhI-bmrM4Ebw . A German orthopedic surgeon discounted Born to Learn with a customer review at Amazon.com, causing the book to be algorithmically lowered from a five star to a three star Amazon rating. The orthopedic doctor said I did not “come across” like a real transactional analyst, the book title promised more than it delivered, and he could understand why some students did not like my teaching. Seems to me the Kirkus review in the Texas Tribune is fair and accurate. Both reviews comment on admittedly a debatable issue with Born to Learn: Is the book useful only for teachers and students in schools or is it useful for all teachers and learners, including parents and children in homes, bosses and employees in businesses, preachers and Sunday school teachers and members in churches? Is it useful for leaders and members learning in all kinds of groups and organizations, boy and girl clubs, civic clubs, chambers of commerce, street gangs, political parties, military units, and governments? I say it can be useful in all organizations and groups and can help increase human OKness.
Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning by Richard John Stapleton was featured in “20 Great Indie Books Worth Your Time,” in Kirkus Reviews, VOL. LXXXV, NO 21, 1 November 2017, Page 130:
“Illuminating if quirky at times; insightful eye-opening observations about the interplay of teachers and students in the classroom. A refresher course in Transactional Analysis emphasizes its application in the classroom.”
Give a shout out to the French Revolution of 1789, but cringe about its aftermath. Let us all grieve together that Spaceship Earth today should not evolve and degenerate similarly. Let us grieve that Biden does not become another Napoleon Bonaparte. Seems to me Earthian humans need no more republic democracies. They need real democracies. This article is by far the best summary explanation of French Revolution stadia I have read.
Grundlach–”Between the stimulus checks, which were supposed to be temporary, and all the expansions of unemployment and other benefits, the percent of personal income comprised of government payments soared, something we also saw in recent spending data when we observed that 34% of household spending last month came from the government.
“A lot of weird things happened once the pandemic hit….it was a steady march to dependency on the government by a larger and larger fraction of the US population went absolutely vertical what this chart represents is what percent of personal income which is a government statistic what percentage of government of of personal income is made up of government giveaways which we call transfer payments back in the 60s it was down near five percent.
“The trillions in Congressionally-approved payments caused the deficit, already blown out under President Trump, to widen further.”
Now here is an interesting read for you. A major irony is that a dictatorial lawgiver is required to install democracy, such as Rout Logger in my serial Internet novel in progress, “Rout Logger’s Group: A Novel Approach for Increasing Human OKness.
Here’s more than you probably wanted to know about what the USian senate is up to regarding China. Read the whole senate bill for yourself.
Pepe Escobar–
“The concomitant wishful thinking envisages a world economy that will “move closer to a cleaner capitalist model”. One of its features is a delightfully benign Council for Inclusive Capitalism in partnership with the Catholic Church.
“As much as the pandemic – the “opportunity” for the Reset – was somewhat rehearsed by Event 201 in October 2019, additional strategies are already in place for the next steps, such as Cyber Polygon, which warns against the “key risks of digitalization”. Don’t miss their “technical exercise” on July 9th, when “participants will hone their practical skills in mitigating a targeted supply chain attack on a corporate ecosystem in real time.”
“A New Concert of Powers?
“Sovereignty is a lethal threat to the ongoing cultural revolution. That concerns the role of the European Union institutions – especially the European Commission – going no holds barred to dissolve the national interests of nation states. And that largely explains the weaponizing, in varying degrees, of Russophobia, Sinophobia and Iranophobia.
“The anchoring essay in Raging Twenties analyzes the stakes in Eurasia exactly in terms of the Hegemon pitted against the Three Sovereigns – which are Russia, China and Iran.
“It’s under this framework, for instance, that a massive, 270-plus page bill, the Strategic Competition Act , has been recently passed at the US Senate. That goes way beyond geopolitical competition, charting a road map to fight China across the full spectrum. It’s bound to become law, as Sinophobia is a bipartisan sport in D.C.”
If most repugs are unethical enough or gullible enough to believe Trump’s ‘big lie’ that the election was stolen from him then they can believe any lie McConnell tells them.
A paean to serious hard manual work, which a smaller percentage of humans do anymore, because there is less hard human manual work per capita to do anymore, AI robots having taken over more and more hard labor lately.
Sounds too good to be true, but if true, would it be worth it, counting the total cost of the fuel necessary to produce the laser beams, including environmental degradation costs caused by the fuel feedstock production process?
In this well-conducted U-Tube round table discussion some big brains two years ago at Davos discuss what they knew about what’s going to happen. Not much has changed since then economically or politically besides deposing Trump.
During the last five years common sense and good conservative judgment did not pay off in the USian economy. A few unethical reckless fools were the big winners.
Truth is dangerous. That’s why it’s so hard to find in political states of affairs. Better to believe and espouse pleasant falsehoods than to wind up a dead or abandoned hero. Necessary lies they are sometimes called.
Here’s a U-Tube discussion with two of the best storytellers around Spaceship Earth discussing free speech and democracy worldwide. Well worth a look and listen.
The FBI finally admitted it was investigating this case all along, a fact withheld till now. Most likely Hillary is again railing against a vast right wing conspiracy persecuting her and Bill.
“Comply or die: The only truly compliant person in a police state is a dead one,” by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, INTREPID REPORT, http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/32288.
April 21
Sounds like Dr Strangelove stuff to me. Now we have to worry about what mere “adversaries” might dream up to do to us, so we should give the Pentagon all the money they want to protect us.
This was news to me last night. According to O’Donnell the Minneapolis police department told the public Floyd had died of heart problems while being transported to a hospital in an ambulance before learning of the existence of the video recording showing what really happened.
Won’t be the end of real america. American history should start with native history, including not only the natives of the USian part of North America but also including the natives of the rest of North America and the natives of Central and South America. Hubristic limited European-USians are so mistaught in families, schools, churches, newspapers, and in Internet memes they believe they are the only “americans” aboard Spaceship Earth. All three of the above continents were delineated after Amerigo Vespucci landed in what is now known as Central America in 1497, discovering what he called a “New World,” after sailing west from Europe to reach the east, specifically India, European humans by 1497 having mustered the courage to test the theory Earth was a globe by sailing on and on in wooden ships farther than the eye could see across the Atlantic Ocean, causing the extermination in the next few centuries of most of the millions of native inhabitants of the “new” world, who had been there for over a thousand years.
There never was an “America”. What the author refers to here as “America” is a part of the North American continent now known as the United States of America, maybe one fourth of the land mass discovered by Amerigo Vespucci. However, assuming the author of this post is right, it is sad the USian part of North America is ending. In any event it seems to me it’s about time USian schools, parents, teachers, professors, writers, newspapers, etc. started teaching the truth about the matter of what america is by giving natives that had been in North, Central, and South America more credit and consolation for what they did and what happened to them before and after the Europeans arrived. They also need to stop calling USian History American History. Surely the inhabitants of non-USian territory in the Americas also contributed something to real American History on three continents. Most USians, alas, seem to hubristically think they are the only Americans aboard Spaceship Earth that count.
Another cogent relevant article by Michael Hudson, one of the greatest economists alive. But even he does not seem to know what america is in his title for his article.
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