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The Great Delusion with Professor John Mearsheimer

Mearsheimer at The
TAMUBushSchool
Published on Oct 10, 2018

“I just want to give you a sense for what liberalism is. The United States is a thoroughly liberal country. It is a liberal democracy. Both Republicans, who we sometimes refer to as conservatives, are liberals and Democrats are liberals. I’m using the term liberal in the John Lockean sense of the term.

The Unites States was born as a liberal democracy. The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, The Bill of Rights, these are thoroughly liberal documents.”

We are a liberal people, okay? But what exactly does that mean? It’s very important that you understand it, because you have to understand what liberalism is to understand liberal hegemony and what went wrong. Then, it’s very important to understand what nationalism is.

John’s argument is very simple here.

Nationalism is the most powerful ideology on the planet.

And in a contest between liberalism and nationalism, nationalism wins every time.

And what I want to do is explain to you what liberalism is, what nationalism is, and why nationalism defeats liberalism. Then what I want to do is talk about what liberal hegemony is. What does it mean to say that The Unites States is interested in remaking the world in its own image? So, I’ll describe that. Then I want to talk about why we pursued liberal hegemony.

...of course I tipped you off by telling you that The United States is a thoroughly liberal country, but there’s more to the story.

Then I want to tell you what our track record is. I want to describe our failures ...in the Middle-East, with regard to NATO expansion, and Russia, and with regard to engagement in China. Lets talk about the evidence that we goofed.

Then I want to talk about why liberal hegemony fails, and this, again, is basically as story about nationalism and realism trumping liberalism. And then I want to make the case for restraint, what I think is a wise foreign policy, okay?

Let me start with what is liberalism…

There are two bedrock assumptions that underpin liberalism:

One is, that it is individualistic at its core.

And number two is that there are real limits to what we can do with our critical faculties.

...to reach agreements about first principles or questions about the good life.

And what exactly am I saying?

You have to decide, when you think about politics, whether you think human beings are first and foremost individuals who form social contracts or if you think that human beings are fundamentally social animals, who carve-out room for their individualism.

Right? This is very very important to think about alright?

Liberalism is all about individualism. Liberal theorists are known as social contract theorists because they believe that individuals come together and form social contracts, so the focus is on the individual.

The assumption underpinning liberalism is not that human beings are social animals from the get-go.

That’s the first point. 

The second point is that liberalism assumes that we cannot use our critical faculties - we cannot use reason to come up with truth about first principles (think about issues like abortion, affirmative action - you cannot get universal agreement on those issues, right?). And I’ll talk about this more as we go along.

But the roots of liberalism are traced-back, in my opinion, to the liberal wars of Britain between Catholics and Protestants. And the fact is that you cannot use your critical faculties to determine whether Catholicism is a superior religion to Protestantism or vice a versa, or whether atheism is superior to both of them ..or Judaism or Islam is superior to Catholicism and Protestantism, Who knows? Right? You just can’t reach agreement. You just can’t reach agreement. There are real limits to what we can do with our critical faculties, okay?

So these are the two bedrock assumptions: One, you focus on the individual, and number two, you accept the fact that you can’t reach universal agreement.

Now, central question - how should politics be arranged to deal with this potential for violence?

And you say to yourself, what does he mean, potential for violence?

The fact is that Catholics and Protestants were killing each other in huge numbers, not only in Britain, but all over Europe. People today, Shias and Sunnis, kill each other, because they can’t agree on whether Shi ism or Sunnism is the correct interpretation of Islam ..or communists versus liberals, people can’t agree on first principles. And when they can’t agree on first principles, if they feel really strongly about them, there is potential for violence.

So, when you have all these individuals running around, who, don’t agree, they may agree in some cases but don’t universally agree, there’s tremendous potential for violence.

So, liberalism is basically an ideology that’s based on conflict, and the question is, how do you solve that conflict?

There’s a three part solution:

And this should be dear to all of your hearts.

The first is, you focus on individual rights. Remember, the importance of the individual. You know The Declaration of Independence, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” - those are natural rights, those are inalienable rights.

This means that every person on the planet has a particular set of rights, sometimes defined as freedoms. This is to say, you, if you want to be a Protestant, have the right to practice that religion, and if I want to be a Catholic, I have the freedom, I have the right to be a Catholic.

The name of the game is to recognize that everybody has these freedoms to choose. This makes perfect sense when you think about Catholics killing Protestants, right? Or Jews killing Muslims or whatever group you want, atheists killing believers, communists killing whatever, right?

The point is, you want to focus on the individual and let the individual choose for him or herself what kind of life they want to lead. You want to let them lead, as much as possible, their version of the good life. And, very important, every person on the planet has that right, and let me get ahead of myself here, just put this seed in your brain.

If you focus on individualism and inalienable rights, you go almost automatically from an individualistic ideology to a universalistic ideology, right? Because again, you’re focusing on the individual, you’re saying every individual has a set of rights, every individual on the planet. And that individualistic ideology becomes a universalistic ideology. But we’re talking about the individual here.

The second is, you purvey the norm of tolerance. We talk about tolerance all the time. Universities are really big on tolerance. We’re supposed to tolerate opinions that we don’t like. You bring in speakers, or you allow speakers to come in who say things that you find reprehensible, right? Tolerance really matters.

But the fact is that tolerance only takes you so far. because you’re dealing with people who sometimes are so committed to their beliefs. Somebody who believes that abortion is murder is willing to murder a doctor who practices abortion, alright?

So, you need a state, that’s the third element of the equation.

You need a state that’s effectively a night watchman. That makes sure that those people over there who want to live as Protestants don’t attack those people who want to live as Catholics and vice versa.

This is the liberal solution.

This is what America is all about.

Individualism - we talk about it all the time. We talk about rights, everybody has rights. My kids, over the years, have always reminded me when I tell them that they have to do X, Y and Z that they have rights and I cannot interfere with their rights, right? It’s the way we’re educated from the get go and of course, we’re a remarkably tolerant people as societies go. Not completely, but that’s, of course, why we have a state, right?

You’ve got to have a police force, you’ve got to have a system of courts, right?

So, that’s what liberalism is all about, right? Liberalism focuses on the individual, purveys the norm of tolerance and accepts the fact that you need a nightwatchman state.

Now, let’s talk about nationalism. Different animal…

Nationalism is based on the assumption that human beings are social animals.

We are born and heavily socialized into tribes.

We are not born in the state of nature.

We are not individuals, born and left alone in the woods.

We are born into groups. We are very tribal.

So, you see in terms of starting assumptions, or bedrock assumptions, what underpins nationalism, what underpins liberalism, very very different.

And individualism takes a back seat to group loyalty, right?

Somebody around the world kills an American, ISIS kills an American, it’s fundamentally different than killing a Saudi, or killing a Brit, because you’re killing one of us. This is the tribe, right? You’re an American. Americans look out for other Americans.

We are social animals from the get-go.

And aside from the family, the most important group, remember I said that you are born into and heavily socialized into particular groups ...tutting aside the family, the most important group in today’s world, is the nation (I’ll say more about that in a second).

What’s nationalism?

Here’s my simple definition:

It’s a set of political beliefs which holds that a nation, a nation, a body of individuals with characteristics that purportedly distinguish them from other groups, should have their own state. Think of the word nation-state.

Nation-state. Nation-state embodies what nationalism is all about. It says the world is divided up into all these tribes called nations and each each one of them wants its own state.

If you think about the world today, just look at a map of the world today, it is completely covered with nation-states. Nothing but nation-states.

If you went back to 1450 and looked at a map of Europe, there isn’t even a single state on that map. Over time, the growth of the state, and then the growth of the nation-state, you move to a world that is filled with nothing but nation-states. Look at the Palestinians and Israelis. The Jews who believe in Zionism, what is Zionism all about? It’s all about having your own Jewish state. Theodore Herzel, who is the father of Zionism, his most famous book is called, The Jewish State, Jewish nation-state.

What do the Palestinians want? Two state solution? Palestinians want their own state. Palestinians as a nation, want their own state.

The planet is filled with nations, many of which have their own state, almost all of which want their own state, nation-state, right?

That’s what nationalism is all about.

Take it a step further. Nations place a enormous importance on sovereignty, or self-determination, which is why they want their own state.

The Palestinians don’t want the Israelis deciding what their politics should look like. Palestinians want their own state. Jews want their own state.

Germans want their own state.

Americans want their own state.

..because they believe in sovereignty.

[...]

Liberal hegemony is based on intolerance. It says that everybody has to be liberal…

[...]

Mearsheimer argues against trying to impose liberal democracy, as it is necessarily a failed foreign policy against staunch nationalism, but he defends “liberal democracy” as a good way of life for The US.

Nevertheless, in places, Mearsheimer makes the point, quite eloquently, that people are social, very profoundly social, from the start; thus making nationalism as it protects their sociality something they care about more deeply than liberal democracy. They will defend more ardently the security, social order and stability that provides for general fairness and just recourse against the secondary priorities, bullying ‘prerogatives’ of individual liberal choice over the security of group interests. Noting our deep social nature (including Europeans) from the start is correct, and is the point of correction that Whites need to understand and prioritize as opposed to right wing reaction (itself a species of liberalism) reaction to Jewish didacticism.

YaleUniversity
Published on Youtube, Nov 22, 2017

The rise and fall of the liberal international order - by John J. Mearsheimer

Published by CISAus on Youtube, Aug 7, 2019

Nation Revisited # 155, September 2019

Published by Bill Bailie, Saturday, 31 Aug 2019:

Digging up The Past

       

Rumour has if that veteran nationalist Eddy Morrison (pictured) is about to launch an online version of ‘‘Action”. I am unashamedly nostalgic but I think that Mosley’s journal should be left in peace.

“Action” was a newspaper that was sold at meetings and regular pitches. The proposed online version would have none of the feel, and smell of newsprint. The Internet is a priceless asset but it cannot recapture the past.

Seth Tyrssen, the American assistant editor of Eddy’s blog “White Voice,” produces “The New Thunderbolt” in homage to the old National States’ Rights Party. There’s not much difference in ideology between “The New Thunderbolt” and the old “Thunderbolt.” But a new “Action” produced by Eddy Morrison would be a contradiction. Oswald Mosley supported Imperialism pre-war and ‘Europe a Nation’ post-war, but he was never a parochial nationalist.
  . 
Jeffrey Wallder, also known as Gordon Beckwell, is revising the Friends of Mosley 18 B detainees list as more information becomes available. But most of his fellow “Action” writers are dead; Oswald Mosley, Jeffrey Hamm, Robert Rowe, and John Warburton have all passed away, and I don’t feel too good myself.

I pinched that line from the entertainer Vic Oliver, Winston Churchill’s son-in-law, who said: “all the great musicians are dead; Mozart’s dead, Beethoven’s dead, and I don’t feel too good myself.” He once asked Winston Churchill who was the greatest war leader. Churchill replied: “Mussolini, because he had the courage to have his son-in-law shot.”

Many of Union Movement’s policies have been overtaken by history. We wanted to send home immigrants with their fares paid, That would gave been possible in those days but today there are far too many of them. We also supported white rule in South Africa and Rhodesia but both countries have been taken over by the blacks.

And then there us the matter of copyright. “Action” and all other Union Movement and Action Society titles are the property of Sanctuary Press.

What is to be Done - Eddy Morrison.

In 1978 when I was a National Front organiser I firmly believed that we would have our first members of parliament by 1980. We didn’t and the period known as the ‘horrible 80s’ was upon us. Split after split with eventually a by-election where one schism of the National Front stood a candidate at the same time as another schism of that splintered wreck of a once mighty movement.

The 1990s got a bit more interesting and we achieved the election of a BNP candidate in London. Things were slow in the BNP but it was, under John Tyndall, going in the right direction. As BNP Yorkshire Organiser I was gladdened to see many old comrades returning to the BNP. Then in 1999 the British National equivalent of the Twin Towers occurred - Nick Griffin became the leader of the BNP.

He spent the next ten years building it up. BNP councillors were everywhere and two MEPs were elected. Then came the second calamity! Griffin’s appearance on a major national TV show. Griffin acted like a buffoon. He even sidled up to the Black ‘celebrity’ who was sat next to him. Be bungled his way through a barrage of outrageous Lefty opposition and made no attempt to either push himself into prominence in a public forum watched live by millions nor to say anything cohesive. He acted like the local village idiot. Was it an Act?

Now we find ourselves in the 2010s. A large number of nationalist grouplets vying for members from an ever dwindling pool of recruits. With the break up of the EDL and the BNP, one would have expected a huge rush to join an existing nationalist party. It never happened. The British Democratic Party seems to be totally static and the National Front is a shadow of its former self. The less said about ‘Britain First’ and the lunatic New British Union, the better!

Unity talks abound. Unity with who and why unity at all? It’s like putting all the hospital patients with transmittable diseases in a ward of basically healthy people. Unity serves one purpose - it gives a platform for people who like to talk about nationalist unity who can go on home and do little more than look forward to the next unity meeting ad infinitum.

It’s never going to happen folks - believe me! We need, as we did in the 1960s, a fresh start. We need a White Nationalist movement that is no holds barred. We need one that rejects the inevitable compromises that come with unity. We need a movement that rejects both internal and external democracy and runs on the meritocratic principle.

You join, you work hard and you get the benefits. You join, you gripe about provocative tactics and you should for the good of all rush off and join Ukip (if it’s still there of course).

A new movement (I can feel the shuddering from here) it must be. And for the first few years of its life it should avoid elections like the plague. It shouldn’t even be registered with the ZOG control apparatus called ‘The Electoral Commission.” Give them your membership numbers; state of finances; sign forms that bind you to a Liberal Stalinist state and for what? To get seven votes in a council election (Nick Walsh - Hull 2016).

A new movement must be uncompromising in its White Nationalist principles and uncompromising in its drive for power. What we need comrades is a movement of disciplined fanatics!

International Finance

I am a 59 year old Englishman who understands the racket that is our money creation system. Fiat money heralds the destruction of any country that is silly enough to allow it in.

The US Federal Reserve is not federal and holds no reserves. President Wilson himself said he felt he had sold his country to International Finance. What did they have on him for him to sell his country out?

I have friends who have spent 9 years in studying for professional banking examinations and still don’t understand fiat money; so cleverly is the course designed.

I believe that if the people were actually educated as to how it works their outrage would be deafening. Naturally, as the same people who own the banks own the media, reaching the people to educate them will be difficult. Remember, any mention of who these people might be may bring you up on antisemitism charges. They really have the bases covered.

Education is the way forward but it will be an uphill struggle.

Nation Revisited replies to A.L.

You appear to believe in the Jewish conspiracy theory. This was endorsed by AK Chesterton in his 1965 book “The New Unhappy Lords.” Unfortunately, he offers no evidence. In his foreword he explains:

“The strength and the weakness of this book is that it is not annotated. The weakness is that the author, having checked his facts to the best of his ability, does not cite his authorities, partly because some of the information has come to him under confidential cover from highly placed persons in different parts of the world who would face ruin if their identities were divulged, and partly because, the facts have not been filed and listed. Its strength, on the other hand, is that the reader is presented with a continuous narrative which enables him to follow the workings of the conspiracy without having his attention distracted by the abundance of foot-notes which otherwise would have been necessary.”

Jews dominate the media and they are over-represented in financial circles but they are not all powerful. There are no Jews on the boards of the Bank of China or the Bank of Japan. And they were not able to save Lehman Brothers or Northern Rock. Why didn’t they just create some more money?

An Uncertain Future

We are due to leave the European Union on October 31st - with or without a trade agreement. The Brexiteers are predicting a rosy future but most economists are pessimistic. The massive disruption to our economy resulting from Brexit coincides with America’s trade war with China and a global decline in car sales. It seems that a recession is inevitable.

To manage this chaos we have a broken party system serving a divided and discontented population. Boris Johnson (pictured), our larger-than-life prime minister, leads a right- wing Tory Party propped up by the sectarian Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland.  He is spending money like a drunken sailor; two billion here, two billion there, 20,000 more policemen, and 10,000 new prison places. After years of penny-pinching the Tories are being forced to spend our money on public services.

One of the main factors in the Brexit debate was immigration. Boris Johnson frightened the electorate with predictions of millions of Turks coming to the UK if we stayed in Europe. But he called for an amnesty for 500.000 undocumented migrants when he was Mayor of London, and he has promised to make immigration easier to attract the skilled workers that we need.

During the referendum campaign we heard much from the Brexiteers about ‘sovereignty’ but Boris Johnson has now made himself a dictator by suspending Parliament.

The Old Gang have left us short of doctors, nurses, policemen, scientists and engineers.. All of these workers can be recruited but they will have to be trained and provided with affordable housing. The police will also need somewhere to work as they have sold off so many police stations.

A start has been made on building affordable houses but young couples cannot get mortgages. We need social housing and New York style housing courts to control rents and prevent exploitation.

The tit-for-tat tanker war with Iran has shown that we. We don’t have enough destroyers and frigates to defend British-flagged ships in the Persian Gulf. We could send HMS Queen Elizabeth, our gigantic aircraft carrier, but “Big Lizzie” with her 14 operational F35B aircraft is hardly suitable to counter Iranian inflatables, it would be like using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut.
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We are also short of soldiers but that doesn’t stop our government from warning the Chinese over Hong Kong. Our 81,500 regulars are ready to take on the People’s Liberation Army of two million men. But don’t worry, we always punch above our weight, and the Chinese don’t like it up ‘em.

We urgently need a Government of National Unity, not just to sort out Brexit but to realistically appraise our situation and put country before party. In the meantime we face an uncertain future.

Violent Crime

Stabbings and shootings have reached epidemic proportions in our major cities. The victims are young men, mostly black, that are involved drug running. The police are calling for drugs to be legalised but, fortunately, our laws are made by Parliament, not by the police. It would make their job easier but that is not what law and order is all about.

Boris Johnson is electioneering by promising more policemen, longer prison sentences, and extra prison places. These measures would certainly help but the real answer is better parenting and education. Many of these kids have never experienced discipline and they do not recognise authority. The liberal experiment in education has failed and we will not see an improvement in juvenile behavior until we return to traditional teaching methods.

Tony Blair made a monumental mistake when he sent British troops to invade Iraq. But he was right when he said “education, education, education.” It really is the answer to most of our problems.

Fortunately, we still have some dedicated teachers who can exert authority. Schools have been throwing out disruptive pupils rather thn deal with them but exclusion is not the answer. The art of raising children to be productive citizens has not been lost, but teachers need the backing of parents and their employers.

When I was working at the Shell building in Waterloo, some years ago,  parties of schoolboys used the company’s swimming pool. Some of them were rowdy but one particular school was very well behaved. It was a private school and the pupils were all black. It’s all a matter leadership. Kids from all backgrounds can succeed in life if they are given the chance. Letting them ‘do their own thing’ is not the answer.

Theresa May’s ban on ‘stop and search’ when she was Home Secretary was misguided. She was frightened of upsetting race relations but the police need all the help they can get. They have been undermined by manpower cuts and the privatisation of the probation service.  Drug-related crimes are committed by young men of all races but the majority are black. When the police stop and search them they are not being racist, they are protecting the public

We have tried ignoring the problem but it won’t go away Parents must be held responsible for their children, and teachers, magistrates, judges, social workers, probation officers, and policemen must enforce the law.

Over-sensitive concerns about race-relations should not be allowed to confuse the issue. The majority of Black people would welcome a return to law and order.

Nation Revisited

This blog seeks reform by legal means. All articles are by Bill Baillie unless otherwise stated. The opinions of guest writers are entirely their own. We are protected by the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19: “We all have the right to make up our own minds, to think what we like, to say what we think, and to share ideas with other people.”

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Our flag was designed by John Bean in 1957 for his National Labour Party. It is used by Nation Revisited with his blessing.The cross represents our nation and the radiant star represents Socialism

When this tweet speaks of “the socialist party” it is speaking of a party that would not delimit social accountability to native interests first and foremost.

The sane management of pervasive ecology has been dealt yet another serious blow as a central element, the management of human ecology through the accountability that ethnonationalism provides, has been pushed aside - at least temporarily - by liberal internationalist interests.

Matteo Salvini’s crucially necessary nativist, ethnonationalist anti-immigration platform has been sidelined by a coalition of the 5-Star Party, which is in cahoots with foreign interests and the corporate internationalist sell-out, Giuseppe Conte, reinstalling him as Prime Minister; allowing him to continue his border liberalization policies which are destroying Italy, Italians and European peoples broadly.

Italy’s corrupt Five-Star Movement announced Wednesday that it had made a deal with the Liberal Party to form a coalition government — keeping Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte in place while avoiding elections and ousting the ethnonationalist League led by Matteo Salvini.

Conte’s position was strengthened this week when President Trump, who pretends to share a similar vision on immigration to Salvini, tweeted his support of Conte – calling him a “very talented man who will hopefully remain Prime Minister!”

Showing his true colors form the start, Trump shunned a meeting with Salvini, who was prepared to endorse him as Trump campaigned for the Presidency.

While Salvini was able to gain popular support by broadening his party’s platform from Lega Nord, to one that represents all of Italy, he sought to gain elite support along with the 5-Stars and Conte’s party by joining the ass-kissing of the Kremlin, the Knesset and the Trumpstein agenda.

Salvini might have added Trumpstein, Putin and Netanyahu to the list of people not to trust with native European interests.

And with friends like that, highly practiced in the art of treachery, the message is: lay down with dogs and wake up with fleas.

Rather, wake up sidelined by the truly corrupt - corrupt enough to push aside your crucially necessary anti-immigration, nativist position and sell out your people and their ancient birthright.

Dr. Jörg D. Valentin@drjdvalentin

#RT
@EchoPRN: RT
@BasedPoland: It’s official.

The #FiveStarMovement & the [liberal] party have reached an agreement to form government

Ibid: #Salvini will be out of government until 2023 (unless snap elections at some point).

Italians can prepare for a new …

Ergo, maybe you can ‘weenie the Salvini’...

Euractiv File photo. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro attends the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Leaders’ meeting on the sidelines of G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, 28 June 2019. [Kremlin pool/EPA/EFE]

G7 agrees on €18 million plan for forest fires but Brazil refuses aid

Euractiv 27 Aug 2019:

On Monday (26 August), the second day of the G7 meeting in Biarritz, France, climate protection was on the agenda. Even though states agreed on a plan to tackle forest fires in the Amazon rainforest, Brazil rejected foreign aid. EURACTIV Germany reports

During the G7 summit, heads of state and government agreed on an emergency programme with almost €18 million to tackle the forest fires in the Amazon region. French President Emmanuel Macron had put the topic on the meeting’s agenda at short notice.

However, only a few hours later, Brazil’s cabinet chief Onyx Lorenzoni rejected the programme. He told a news portal that Brazil was not prepared to take the money and urged Europe to reforest ‘its own backyard’. The Brazilian press office of the presidency confirmed the rejection to AFP.

The Amazon rainforest, which is about twice the area of France (1.2 million km2), has been seeing many forest fires. For Macron, this is “a drama that concerns all of humanity”. That is why states want to provide Brazil with immediate financial and technical help.

The UK has been the largest donor, as it has proposed to deploy €11 million for the emergency fund. The UK also pledged to double its contribution to the international climate fund. Since 2014, the fund has provided $100 billion each year for regions afffected by climate change. The UK will therefore contribute almost €1.6 billion over the next four years.

Green Climate Fund
@GCF_News
The UK announces a doubling of their contribution to the #GreenClimateFund! Cheers for your leadership in turning #ClimateAmbition into #ClimateAction. #G7 #G7Biarritz @DFID_UK https://g.cf/2Nz89vB

10:29 - 26 Aug 2019

Macron also stated that a comprehensive reforestation programme for the Amazon region should be agreed at the climate summit in New York in September. Nine countries affected by the forest fires – Brazil, French Guyana, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname, Bolivia, Ecuador and Guyana – should benefit from the programme.

In these areas, forest fires have increased dramatically in recent weeks. Many of the fires are not natural as they result from fire clearances that create free space for animal breeding, for example.

According to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, 60% more rainforest was subject to slash-and-burn practices in June compared to the same month last year.

G7 weekend sum-up: Trump deepens divisions by pushing for Russia’s readmission
The readmission of Russia in the Group of Seven most industrialised countries became a bone of contention between Donald Trump and his partners during a summit held in Biarritz (France), as the Europeans and Canada insisted on maintaining the group as a “club of liberal democracies”.

Forest fires for financial interests

Brazil rejecting aid is not that surprising. The country’s right-wing populist president Jair Bolsonaro said such foreign aid had a “colonialist mentality” behind it.

It was not until France and Ireland threatened to block the long-planned trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur states that Brazil started to act. The president deployed 43,000 army troops and two military aircraft to deal with the forest fires over the weekend. Observers accuse Bolsonaro of at least tolerating the fires in his own country and of expecting economic benefits from the clearance.

France and Ireland threaten to vote against EU-Mercosur deal
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has threatened to vote against a trade deal between the EU and South American trade bloc Mercosur unless Brazil, where wildfires continue to devastate the Amazon rainforest, takes its environmental obligations more seriously.

The trade agreement between the EU and the Mercosur states has thus become a driver of forest fires, criticised Martin Häusling, a spokesman for agricultural policy for the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament.

“Brazil is creating space for grazing land and soy plantations – because Europe is to be supplied with the meat of 600,000 cattle and countless chickens. And that needs space,” Häusling said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was satisfied with the talks on climate protection. Yesterday morning, Merkel held talks with UN Secretary-General António Guterres. It had been agreed that in the run-up to the COP25, the “commitment of as many countries as possible to climate neutrality by 2050 was of utmost importance”.

Trump’s chair remained empty

Further details on the G7 climate session are not yet known.

In addition to fires in the Amazon rainforest, the states at the G7 summit had also debated the protection of the oceans. In July, the EU and Canada launched a joint ocean programme.

Why the ocean should be on the G7 agenda
Surfrider Europe, a French organisation fighting for clean oceans,  is organising an event ahead of the G7 summit in France. The aim is to call for incorporating ocean protection into international negotiations, particularly those concerning climate change. EURACTIV’s partner la Tribune reports.

US President Donald Trump did not take part in the working session on environment issues.

When journalists asked him whether he had been present after the working session, he replied that “the meeting will take place soon” and did not respond to the objection that it had already taken place.

According to media reports, US government representatives had snubbed Macron’s agenda for including “niche issues” such as biodiversity rather than economic issues.

According to Macron, there should be a final summit statement, albeit a minimalist one. At the previous summit, Trump withdrew his support from the joint statement At the last G7 summit, Trump decided not to sign the final summit statement.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]

Amazon rainforest fires and deforestation approaching disastrous irreversible tipping point, scientists warn

Related: indigenous tribes of Amazon suited to preserve the forest as they are evolved in harmony.

Loss of biodiversity through lack of action to tackle destruction is ‘like book burning on a very grand scale’ expert says

The Independent, 24 Aug 2019:

As fires ravage massive areas of the Amazon, the vital rainforest is nearing a “tipping point” in which a third of its ecosystem could be irreversibly decimated, experts have warned.

The loss of such huge areas of the forest would result in the eradication of species, many of which are yet to be studied, but would also unleash vast amounts of stored carbon.

Such devastation could spell catastrophe for the planet due to the implications for climate change.

Thousands of fires are racing through the Amazon, with Brazil recording more than 75,000 individual forest fires in the first eight months of the year.

In July, the rate of deforestation equated to roughly an area the size of Manhattan every day, or the size of Greater London every three weeks.

Professor Thomas Lovejoy of George Mason University, who has studied the Amazon since 1965, told The Independent there are signs it is on course for further extensive deforestation which will soon stretch beyond human control.

The previous research of his colleague Carlos Nobre indicates further razing could break the Amazon’s hydrological cycle, whereby it generates half its own rainfall. If a critical amount of trees are felled, the ecosystem will degrade to the point of being unable to support the rainforest.

But speaking to The Independent on Friday, Professor Lovejoy said things have since become much worse.

“When we were first worried about it, the amount of deforestation was small,” he said. “But then these other things started to interact – the impact of deforestation and the effects of climate change became apparent, and the extent of the use of fire [for clearing land] became apparent.

“The reason we believe the tipping point is so close is because we’re seeing historic droughts in 2005, 2010, and 2016. And satellite images in the north central Amazon also show forests remote from everything are beginning to convert into grassland. That’s yet another symptom.

“These are not little droughts – boats cannot get up some of the river’s tributaries, because they’re so dry.”

Professor Lovejoy said such a conversion from rainforest to savannah and scrubland would be the wider effect if a tipping point is reached.

“You’d have extensive parts of the southern and eastern Amazon and parts of the central converting to savannah, and maybe to even drier conditions.”

As well as the catastrophic loss of the rainforest as a massive carbon sink, Professor Lovejoy said losing swathes of the Amazon would result in a huge loss in the planet’s biodiversity.

“People don’t really grasp that the biodiversity in one part of the Amazon is very different to that in other parts,” he said.

A [right winger] is burning the Amazon – but Macron is complicit too

PM’s minister ‘cosying up’ to far-right Brazilian government.

Macron says France will block trade deal with Brazil over Amazon fires

Meat eaters are helping to fuel the Amazon forest fires

“So if you have regional loss, you’ve having actual total loss of that biodiversity. It’s the largest terrestrial repository of biodiversity on the planet, so all that will impact the future of Brazil, the economy, for the future of the world, vanishes.

“We tend to live in the delusion we don’t depend on the biology of the planet, but we do. Agriculture, forestry, medicine, all of that has a major biological base. Scientists are revealing new potential all the time. But you can’t do that if the species isn’t there to study. It’s like book burning on a very grand scale.”

He added: “The standing forest is absorbing carbon on an annual basis, but its even greater importance is in the total amount of carbon stored in the forest itself. Tropical rainforests store more carbon per unit area than basically any other kind of habitat. So it’s folly in the end.”

Asked if he thought Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was a threat to the future of life on our planet, Professor Lovejoy said: “He certainly is, and he’s also a threat to Brazilian agriculture.”

But he said judging by the amount of public concern in Brazil, he believes things can change, despite Mr Bolsonaro’s policies.

“When there’s so much smoke in Sao Paolo, the street lamps come on at three in the afternoon, it’s clear there’s a problem.

“The world doesn’t expect Brazil to manage this all completely on its own, the world would like to help. And we hope we will be welcomed into some kind of partnership.”

Virginia Roberts was working at Mar-a-Lago when she was recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell to be a masseuse to Palm Beach hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein. She says she was groomed for sex with him and his associates, attorney Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew

Miami Herald
Published on Nov 30, 2018

A teenage Virginia Roberts and Ghislaine Maxwell

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, where Roberts was introduced to Epstein and Maxwell

Later it was revealed Maxwell Sr was a Mossad asset who used his vast network of connections…

La Danse Mossad: Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein

Authored by Jennifer Matsui via Counterpunch,org., 16 Aug 2019:

Media tycoon and former Labour MP Robert Maxwell (father of Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s partner in crime) was given a state funeral in Jerusalem after *accidentally* falling off his yacht – the unluckily named “Lady Ghislaine”.

Later it was revealed Maxwell Sr was a Mossad asset who used his vast network of connections and publishing platforms to run editorial interference over his purchased assets to influence enemies and friends alike, ensuring their fealty to the foreign government that had enlisted him for its espionage work.

His tabloid empire was the piss-colored propaganda organ of the interests he served, overseeing its rapid growth and tentacled reach across the globe. More ominously, he was behind the spy agency’s successful attempt to install a trapdoor in software intended for government use, allowing the Israelis a direct pipeline into a vast network of computers installed with undectable malware.

At the time of his death, the disgraced magnate was under investigation for raiding his companies’ pension funds to cover the losses incurred from his multiple and reckless takeovers, and finance a luxury lifestyle he enjoyed sharing with high profile pals like Henry Kissinger and Barbara Walters. Curiously, many of these fossilized specimens from Robert Maxwell’s roster of friends from the Reagan era would circle around Epstein, most notably Donald Trump whose Mar-a-Lago resort would later become a recruiting center for employer Epstein’s underage “massage therapists”.

Fast forward a couple of decades since the days a casino mogul was gobbling down canapés with the old guard denizens of the ‘swamp’. Notice a similar, if not identical MO in both Maxwell and Epstein’s role in procuring technology for the Israelis, who in turn sold it with undisclosed add-ons, providing an open window into its users’ databases.

Like his predecessor, Epstein had a financial stake in a startup (headed by former Israeli Defense Minister and later Prime Minister Ehud Barak) connected to Israel’s defense industry that provides infrastructure for emergency services as a call handling platform. Considering the company’s connection to military intelligence, it wouldn’t be a stretch to speculate on some of this software’s other ‘special’ features. A variation of the early technology that Maxwell was able to procure for his Israeli bosses was later sold to the Saudis, who leveraged its sophisticated tracking features to assassinate Jamal Khashoggi.

Epstein, like Maxwell, was laying the groundwork for Israeli espionage activities through his interests in companies with a political agenda concealed in products intended for international export. If true, the playboy philanthropist feted and flattered his high profile friends to ensnare them as complicit partners in what amounts to the legal definition of treason. Epstein’s covert activities have undiminished real world consequences for anyone on Israel’s international radar, especially those challenging the status quo policies in place that prioritize “The Jewish State’s” political and financial objectives over actual justice and global stability.

If you’ve ever asked yourself why Israel’s war crimes and settlement expansion go unchallenged by US lawmakers, consider the career-destroying consequences contained within those dossiers compiled by the braintrust behind Epstein’s ’suicide’.

“We’ll trade you one US Embassy in Jerusalem for 10 minutes of hidden camera footage of you . . . let’s say ‘enjoying’ a rolled up Forbes magazine”.

Were the surveillance apparatuses installed throughout Epstein’s properties merely a voyeur’s tools, or did he use them to leverage the moral failings of his former friends for purposes that might have risked exposure of more than the nether regions of wealthy pedo-punters? Considering his connections to Israeli defense industries and his own Achilles penis that required, by his own admission, “three orgasms a day”, the answer points to an unslakable addiction that dovetailed conveniently with his state-sponsored sex crimes.

Did Epstein make the same mistake of Maxwell (who had asked for nearly half a billion dollar in “loans” from his Israeli backers to relieve him of his mounting debts) believing the dirt he had in his possession would prove radioactive if released? By this time, the corpulent tycoon was nicknamed the ‘Bouncing Czech’ a reference in most part to his worsening money woes. The implication of this request, if turned down, was the exposure of Israel’s state secrets. Epstein could have also attempted to collateralize the cache of damning evidence still in his possession to secure his freedom with the same fatal consequences.

Both Maxwell and Epstein somehow evaded the electronics that linked them to the outside world at the time of their deaths, even though the latter had reportedly made an attempt on his own life while in custody. Both men, facing ruination and serious prison time gave their executioners an alibi: They had nothing to left to live for. The establishment media is already trotting out ancient, ding-a-ling conspiracy theories from obscure right wing sources (attributed to Russia, of course) to highlight the absurdity and futility of questioning the official story of Epstein’s death. Verdict: Nothing to see here.

By now, it’s a given that the parasitic and preferred daughter of the deceased tycoon, made the fateful introduction between her new boyfriend and the Israeli operatives seeking an entry level plutocrat to carry out their blackmail operations after the untimely death of his predecessor. An impoverished socialite has to survive in pricey Manhattan somehow, and that somehow was re-establishing the shady connections to the espionage underworld that had recruited Maxwell Sr.

Ghislaine’s later role as Epstein’s Chief Procurement Officer (or pimp for short) gives more credence to the rumors that she is more than just a debased, barnacle-like appendage to a billionaire, desperate to please her platonic partner by “organizing his social life”, but a fully cognizant co-conspirator in an operation aimed at strengthening Israel’s hand in all matters pertaining to its national security interests, or more accurately, its overseas criminal enterprises.

The recent raid on Epstein’s Manhattan apartment was not the result of a so-called Justice Department righting the egregious wrong it committed by letting Epstein off with a slap on the wrist after his initial conviction that allowed him to serve his sentence largely outside the minimum-security facility with an open door policy for its billionaire guest. More likely, the reversal of Epstein’s “sweetheart” deal was a joint operation between the oligarch cabal informally known as the Mega-Group, and the state security apparatuses that do their bidding.

It seems likely that this sudden pivot towards justice from a Justice Department initially spooked into inaction by the spook in his custody, was motivated by the need to remove the most damning bits among Epstein’s vast trove of physical evidence against the pervy punters who visited his island getaway for unintended photo ops with underage girls.

Perhaps his own abuse of these minors was a perk he felt entitled to, and one that would be overlooked in the service of “national security”. It’s hard for most people to differentiate between the government he actually worked for and the ruling establishment on his home turf.

It’s possible that Epstein felt his serial transgressions were merely par for the plutocracy and justified in the service of a higher calling.

The ‘Israel First’ philanthropist shared an unyielding ideological justification for his own criminality as Robert Maxwell, whom the British Home Office had considered recruiting for its own intelligence gathering in the mid 1960’s. Having determined that the well-connected, multilingual, rising star politician was strictly “Zionist”, the spy agency withdrew his candidacy.

Epstein’s real crimes had little to do with raping children, despite the overturned plea deal that came about when a federal judge ruled that prosecutors had violated the victims rights by concealing the agreement from them. The one time teflon-coated “member of intelligence” who was “above the pay grade” of a powerful District Attorney (now scandal-tainted former Labor Secretary) was ultimately (and lethally) penalized for not destroying the contents of his secret-laden safes, leaving his handlers still vulnerable to their explosive contents.

Had the doomed financier divested himself of the toxic assets still in his possession, he might still be roaming the earth today, scouring it for new specimens to populate his underage petting zoo. As a result of the Justice Department’s decision to reverse the non-prosecution deal meant to bury the most incendiary facts of the case, lower-rung punters like former governor Bill Richardson and Senator George Mitchell are being publicly named for their part in the sordid scandal. Someone has to take the fall. (Rule number one of PR crisis management: Crucify the insignificant and let them hang out to dry until the public tires of watching the slow motion spectacle of their undoing.) Meanwhile, documented and/or photographic evidence against more powerful players like Bill Clinton and Donald Trump will have already been destroyed in the pursuit of selective justice.

The fallout of Epstein’s spectacular downfall predictably miss the mark as scandals involving the rich and powerful tend to do. Much of the controversy will dissolve into a Cheetoh dust maelstrom of disinformation, disseminated on Reddit and 4Chan by incel info-warriors before shooting up a shopping mall or playground.

Subsequent reporting of the case will overlook decades of the elite-driven state craft that elevated corrupt and ruthless entities like Epstein and Trump, both ring-kissing acolytes in their youth of influential mob fixer/politcal power broker Roy Cohn – himself a serial sexual predator who similarly caught the fancy of fellow deviants Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover. Follow the money trail from Tel Aviv and you’ll discover an ancestral link between the corpse of Epstein and his ghostly godfathers waiting with his rewards in hell.

Along with the other disgraced and expendable patsies left in the wake of this ongoing scandal is Alan Dershowitz, Epstein’s octogenarian chief legal counsel and ‘wing man’ aboard the Lolita Express. The now unemployable cable news pundit will live out the remainder of his pointless life under a cloud of suspicion. Despite all the damning testimony against him, the statutory rape allegations never quite stick, but follow him around like a sneaky fart, forcing a distance between himself and the rest of humanity that will last until he is engulfed by the sulfurous fumes of his own making.

The former Harvard law professor’s lifelong service to Israel will go unrewarded – not as a result of victim testimony placing him at multiple crime scenes, but in consideration of his own inept self-defense strategy: ”I’m a scurvy rat aboard a sinking ship eating its own tail to stay alive. Pity me”! Dershowitz at this point will be lucky if he can achieve the same pay grade and social status of Lindsay Lohan. Ditto for Prince Andrew who can at least be relied on to expire slowly of gout in his time-out corner at Windsor Castle.

The moral of this story could be “Lie down with dogs and never wake up again with a prison-issued sheet around your neck”. A variation of the old “Lie down with dogs and and wake up as fish food”.