New Observer, “Italy: Support for Salvini Rockets as African Invasion Drops over 95%—and Trickling to Complete Halt”, 11 August 2018:

Italy’s Lega leader Matteo Salvini is now that country’s most popular politician as news emerged that his anti-invasion policies have brought the African invasion down by more than 95 percent—and seems set to halt completely within a short while.

News of Salvini’s boost in popularity—to over 30 percent of the electorate—and the success of his anti-invasion policies have been deliberately suppressed by the controlled English-speaking media, but the Italian press has reported extensively on the developments.

The Libero Quotidiano newspaper, for example, reported that when Salvini started his role in the government, his priorities were twofold: firstly to show that his work as minister of the Interior would have immediate effect, and secondly, to curb the growth of his coalition partner party, the Five Star Movement.

“In both these things, Salvini has been successful,” the Libero Quotidiano said.

To prove this, the paper continued, all that needs to be done is to compare the official data on the African invasion landings between 2017 under the previous government’s Interior Minister Marco Minniti , and those of the 70 days which Salvini has held that post.

According to these figures, 23,526 Africans invaded Italy in June 2017. A year later, the first month with Salvini at the helm, the numbers had already dropped to 3,147.

In July 2017, the figures show, 11,461 Africans invaded Italy, and a year later, the second month of Salvini’s rule, just 1,969 made it ashore.

As of the first week of August, the paper continued, to “complete the first 70 days of Minister Salvini,” there have been just 344 Africans brought ashore in Italy, as opposed to the 3,920 who invaded Italy during the same period the previous year.

“With the declining landing, support for the Lega has grown at exponential levels,” the Libero Quotidiano continued.

“In 70 days, Salvini has raised his support levels from 17.6 percent to over 31 percent, taking away half of Forza Italia’s and a quarter of Brothers of Italy party support.”

Lew Rockwell.com, “Punishing Iran Will Cost A Fortune”, 11 August 2018:

President Trump keeps vowing to create more jobs in America.  But his actions often speak differently.  The most egregious example was Trump’s cancellation of the multi-national Iran nuclear treaty that had been welcomed by the world as a major step to Mideast denuclearization.

In abrogating the international treaty signed by the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, the US humiliated its allies and rivals who were strongly in favor of the accord.  Iran had already handed 97% of its enriched uranium to Russia, shut down reactors and centrifuges, and allowed UN inspectors to run all over its nuclear facilities when Trump tore up the deal that had been under negotiation since 2015.

Iran has been under a harsh US-led trade embargo since its 1979 revolution that was designed to cripple its economy and military and drive the people to rebel against their government.  Washington used the same tactics – without success – against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

So intense is the Trump administration’s hatred for Islamic Iran that it decided to scrap the multinational nuclear deal that would have meant opening Iran to western commerce and a bonanza for US and European companies.  The key element of the deal was to have been the sale of some 210 commercial jet airliners to Iran by the US and the European Union, a deal worth some $40-50 billion, not counting future sales of spare parts.

The US embargo of Iran since 1979 has made it unable to modernize its commercial airline fleet.  Iran was denied modern aircraft, spare parts, engines and instruments, leaving it with decaying aircraft from the 1970’s.

The grim result of the US-imposed embargo has been 17 crashes of Iranian civilian aircraft with 1500 deaths.

Most of Iran’s commercial aircraft – a grab bag of old, mostly 25-year old Boeing, Airbus, Chinese and Soviet aircraft – are flying coffins.  Iran’s maintenance, training and air traffic control are substandard.  Flying over and around Iran’s lofty mountains is a challenge for the best of pilots, even for a handful of newer ATR turboprop aircraft.

Washington’s denial to Iran of Boeing Aircraft (and Airbus planes because they contain US-made parts), means the loss of tens of thousands of highly-paid jobs in the US and Europe.  Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claims he talked Trump into canceling the Iran nuclear deal and the Boeing orders.

It’s hard to validate Netanyahu’s claim but it is clear that America’s ever more powerful Israel lobby and its ally fundamentalist Christian Zionists played a key role in thwarting the Iran nuclear deal and sale of commercial aircraft.

We don’t yet know the full cost of lost American jobs and business to help keep Iran isolated.  But one could argue that part of the $20 billion lost should be counted as part of annual US aid to Israel.

Russia and China’s aircraft industries will soon be able to deliver modern passenger aircraft to Iran and accept payment in oil.  China’s C919 and ARJ21 are now nearing service. Russia’s Sukhoi Superjet 100 will be ready soon.  Trump could be cutting off his nose to spite his face.

Trump and his allies are trying to push Iran into a corner and provoke it to lash out at US forces that are poised around it.  A navel clash in the Gulf is the obvious pretext for war.

While the US goes after Iran, it has opened a new anti-Muslim front against old ally Turkey by imposing heavy duties on Ankara’s exports to the US and attacking the always vulnerable Turkish lira.  This, in turn, has set off a financial crisis across Europe, notably among EU banks that have large, soft loans made to Turkey.

Trump & Co. are trying to force Turkey to bend the knee and support US-Israeli-Saudi policy goals.  Turkey and Iran remain the last significant supporters in the region of the Palestinians.  Trump and the New York City real estate developers, and the money men who surround him, are determined to show the independent-minded Iranians and Turks who is the big boss.

By Eric Margolis

Robert Stark promoting ((((John K. Press’s ‘Culturalism’, a proposition to yoke the gentiles under Abrahamic ‘culture’, i.e., Noahide law))).

Robert Stark, 3:11 AM (38 minutes ago)
 
to me (Daniel Sienkiewicz)

I just wanted to explain my position better. I am not really offended by the comments and post about my show on your blog because they bring attention to my work. You are correct to a degree that I have soften my position on ((them)) to gain more mainstream respectability and date (((blondes))). Growing up in LA I have a good understanding of the ((power dynamics))). There are still ways I can criticize the ((elites))) implicitly with out explicitly naming (((them)). What is your main critique of my soften stance on the ((issue)))?

Best Regards, Robert

Robert,

My misgivings with you began not with your having a soft stance on Jews, but with your having a soft stance on Nazis, as that contributed to a subversive agency against a platform that I was setting out - one that would reject Nazism and not seek to redeem it - a platform that I initiated with integral part to sort-out Nazi/Hitler association from White Nationalism; a motive which was, in fact, my initial motive for participating at VoR.

However, Germanophilia taken to the point of (insufficiently critical) Nazi sympathy, if not outright Nazi advocacy, was apparently part and parcel of being central to Regnery projects such as VoR; so my project was attempting to seed and take root in harsh soil and an antagonistic environment there.

The first clue as to how determined that antagonism might be came after I had started writing and talking about my theory of the buried meaning of hippies - a theory of mine which has been long in the making and has always been important to me.

Johnson’s attempt to marshal a “hippies for Hitler” cult.

Soon after I published that at VoR, you and Greg Johnson, apparently in tandem, published there what was to me an idiotic article called West Coast White Nationalism, featuring a picture of Hitler in love-beads, with your discussing some of the Germanic elements that went into hippie culture - such as Tolkien - Gothic/Germanic elements that I may have overlooked; a cultural part of it, sure, but which do not seem so important a phenomenon to emphasize in regard to hippie culture, even with retrospect.

It certainly did not warrant associating hippies with a picture of Hitler in love-beads; and to obfuscate my thesis as such.

Now, I learned that Mike Conner’s strategy was to take what he considered “main-streamers” like you and I, and direct people through us to “the radicals”, such as Carolyn Yeager and Mark Weber.

But that was not my goal and I did not appreciate having my important message about the underlying meaning of the hippies obfuscated and re-directed in that way.

Johnson’s Eco-Nazism

Next, there is another issue which is dear to me and which I have a fairly original take-on as it bears on White Nationalism - namely, ecology.

Once again, after I discussed it, Greg Johnson put up an article on ecology, “Eco-Fascism”, discussing it in a podcast with you, featuring a swastika image formed of a different coloration of trees from those adjacent.

It was/is irresponsible of Greg Johnson to act as if these these important matters are necessarily associated with Nazism, and you should not have been assisting him in doing that.

The next misgivings that I had by way of Johnson, is suspicion of his re-directing other ideas of mine to writers he publishes - may not be true, but probably is: Johnson looked at one of my most dear and long held ideas, that is the re-tooling of Maslow’s hierarchy, and encouraged Andy Nowicki to write a book on that theme.

Nowicki, I gather, was instrumental to the Regnery circus because he had, in his own words, “a fascination with Nazi Germany” and was fairly sympathetic to their perspective - thus, he formed the normie bridge they were looking for, whereas I was always repulsed by the Nazis and Hitler, not very sympathetic.

Thus, to appeal (pander) to their demographic market, they encouraged Nowicki and others, yourself included, to take a subversive angle on my efforts, to play “opposite day” even - particularly against my concept of the White Left. You have been among this entourage, including Kieth Preston and a litany of Jews, Paul Gottfried first and foremost, who want to garner White right wing alliance against left organization and activism as it has finally intersected and turns attention against elitist Jewish interests - thus, they are constantly trying to divert from, eschew and redirect attention from this platform of mine - e.g., your starting-in with Robert Lindsey’s bullshit, that Alt-Left bullshit, which is largely just Jewy liberalism.

I also suspect that Greg Johnson directed some of my long considered thoughts on the comparison of black hyper-masculinity to White male pattern sublimation to be used by James O’Meara in his book “The Homo and the Negro.”

People like this, Nowicki, Colin Liddell, Matt Forney, Keith Preston, Richard Spencer, even Greg Johnson, are more or less talented writers and career girls, whose motivation has at least as much to do with the niche market that White advocacy lends (or, in Johnson’s case, an ensconcement of his snooty, elitist dainties) as a natural, overriding and organic concern, that would gird a solid basis for White group interests. Their snobbery, calculation and inorganic motivation makes way rather for Jewish entryism and subversion of White interests.

In seeing you allied with them and then going more and more full-fledged Jew friendly than even them, I was experiencing in you, Robert, not someone who was principally concerned with what was right and what was necessary to defend peoples of European extraction, but just another one who was directed by what it took to be popular and commercially viable as such.

Kissing Jewish ass and going along with their program, definitions and framing of events is certainly a tried and true method (just ask Donald Trump).

It can work as a career move, but it isn’t right and I don’t respect it.

I’m not saying that I don’t understand the attraction to Jews - respecting academia and intellectualism as they do, you can learn a lot from them (they often understand the conservative arguments better than Whites do); with that, as interlocutors they are most articulate and even sympathetic - up to a point, which will be apparent to those caring and responsible to White/European peoples.

As business partners and allies they can obviously be enormously helpful.

They are certainly not all bad people and can be much more decent and ethical in many instances than “the goyim” .... provided, ultimately, that you are liberal and sowing the seeds for your people’s destruction.

You ask: “What is your main critique of my soften stance on the ((issue)))?”

This is where I take most pointed issue with you now - in your “concession” that “some of (((their))) elites cause problems.” It is beyond that. Not only do their elites have hegemony in the key power niches, but their biological pattern is destructive to Whites. Separatism from them as an entire group is warranted as such.

Nevertheless, I understand your attraction to their women - many of them, physically, anyway. I’ve never had a Jewish girlfriend but admit to finding some of them very sexy. Perhaps I did not have the kind of talent they were looking for as you have, or as Tanstaafl has, that caused them to successfully lure you in. I would encourage you, however, to observe, as I have found, that while you can talk to them often with more satisfaction than other women - at first - eventually, before long, their politics invariably come to liberal dissolution of White peoples, dissolution of the capacity for White people to maintain ourselves as a distinct people.

And now (as of 2008 and their consolidation of elite power) their strategy is turning right wing, to where they want to intermarry in a right wing alliance and eventual merge with elite gentiles, to Jewify them (again, look at Trump).

What’s wrong with that? Well, first and foremost that is the alliance that has made for such vast destruction to ours and other human and general ecology.

Now they dare to propose themselves and their co-opting of our genetics to their aims, to their convenient friend/enemy distinctions, as the solution.

DanielS

Diversity Mactht Frei, “Freed Tommy is rolling in Jewish cash”, 8 August 2018:

Here is some more about Tommy’s Jewish backers.

Tommy Robinson, the far-right leader, was bankrolled until recently by a US tech billionaire whose company’s British clients include the supermarket giant Asda.

Robert Shillman, founder and chairman of the Nasdaq-listed multinational Cognex, helped to pay Robinson’s high-five-figure salary, in the latest example of American cash flowing into the British hard right. The disclosure comes as Robinson’s former assistant, also paid by a Shillman-funded group, told The Sunday Times that the anti-Islam activist practised a form of “panto journalism” that was “leading people down a dark path”.

In the first interview by any insider, Lucy Brown, who worked closely alongside Robinson until three months ago, said: “I thought genuinely that I was joining the side that told the truth and I’ve come to realise that it’s not. It’s just about getting [YouTube] views and retweets. This is a business and your outrage, valid as it is, will be monetised as such.”

Brown, who was fired after an argument about a Muslim booked to speak at one of Robinson’s rallies, was part of an often warring inner circle that included a middle-class gay couple, international leaders of the far right, a former underwear model and Celebrity Big Brother contestant, and rougher-hewn figures from Robinson’s time as leader of the English Defence League (EDL).

She said Robinson “used to be kind of fun, but he got a bit of a diva attitude after a while and was letting more EDL figures cloud his judgment. I’ve just reread Peter Pan and there’s so many similarities. You can be around as long as you still worship him, but when you grow up, then you’re out.” Brown added that she was taking legal action over unpaid wages that she says she is owed.

Life with “Team Tommy” was chaotic, Brown said: “It was like being like a firefighter — always waiting for the next Facebook message and we’d be off to Manchester or Poland straight away, sometimes before a real plan had been drawn up. We’d be sleeping in the car and eating in service stations.”

Several of the supposed scandals that Robinson sought to expose fall down on closer examination. “I used to think, foolishly, that when he went home he was doing his research and putting case files together,” Brown said. “He doesn’t, he just goes home and eats crisps and looks himself up on Twitter.”

Emotive YouTube and social media content bring in donations. In one recent video Robinson suggested that the deaths of three teenage boys hit by a drunk driver in Hayes, w. London, in January was a terror attack “covered up” by the police and media — apparently based on the fact that the driver, who has a Hindu name, was Asian.

In a video recorded in a Muslim area of Manchester after last year’s bombing, Robinson said: “In these houses are enemy combatants who want to kill you, maim you and destroy you.”

He was freed on appeal last week after being jailed for filming people at a trial of alleged sex offenders and broadcasting the footage on a Facebook live stream. His supporters claim he was a “political prisoner” silenced by the authorities for trying to reveal the truth about Muslim sex offending.

Brown said this narrative was “whipping people up into a frenzy and I worry that some are on the cusp of acting out their frustrations against Muslims as a result. I’ve never seen this before, not in the way it’s playing out now. People are at breaking point — we must not push them further for the sake of money or fame.”

She was one of a handful of people closest to Robinson, name-checked in his videos and who saw him most days along with two other paid British staff, Caolan Robertson and George Llewelyn-John. Robertson and Llewelyn-John, who are open about their gay relationship, shared a flat in an expensive block in Chelsea, west London, before moving to Bedfordshire to be closer to Robinson.

All four, including Robinson himself, were employees of The Rebel Media, a Toronto-based far-right website, extensively funded by Shillman, which has employed a number of Britons, including the writer and former Apprentice contestant Katie Hopkins, who once described migrants as “cockroaches”.

Robinson was “Shillman fellow” which the Rebel’s chief executive, Ezra Levant, said meant the tech billionaire provided “support” for Robinson’s salary. Robinson was initially paid between £5,000 and £6,000 by The Rebel, rising to £8,000 a month, equivalent to nearly £100,000 a year, Brown said.

The three assistants were paid up to £2,500 a month each. Levant refused to confirm or deny the figures last night, saying it would not be “appropriate for me to disclose what we paid former employees”.

Shillman, 72, uses his salary and shareholding in Cognex, which he founded in 1981, to finance right-wing causes. He is on the board of the David Horowitz Freedom Centre, based in California, a “school for political warfare” against the “fifth column” and “enemy within”.

The organisation, described as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, based in Alabama, also employs Robert Spencer, an anti-Muslim polemicist banned from the UK. Cognex, which makes advanced scanners and sensors, has a substantial operation in Britain. UK users of its technology include Asda, Nissan and the drug giant AstraZeneca.

Shillman and Cognex did not respond to requests for comment.

Robinson and the others left The Rebel last year amid a row over money, with Robertson accusing Levant of profiteering by getting contributors to raise “money [The Rebel] didn’t need”.

Levant in turn accused Robertson and Llewelyn-John of “blackmail”. Both sides deny each other’s claims. Robinson’s departure from The Rebel did not much affect his income, according to Brown, with huge sums flooding in from his own crowdfunding website and the three staff employed directly by Robinson from the proceeds.

“George and Caolan would off- handedly say, oh, we’ve got £100,000 in donations now,” Brown said. “I think he’s doing OK.”

Raheem Kassam, a Robinson ally, also confirmed the figure. Joe Mulhall, of the anti-racist group Hope not Hate, believes that even £100,000 may be a substantial underestimate.

Such material has brought Robinson an affluent lifestyle, living with his wife, Jenna, and their three young children in a £500,000 house in a Bedfordshire village. The family is currently on a two-week holiday in Tenerife, the second holiday they have spent on the Canary island in the past four months.

Source

After the publication of this article, Brown did a radio interview with Mike Graham. It was billed as a big exposé, but in fact she said almost nothing of consequence. Still, if you want to listen to it, here it is.

There were some interesting details about Robinson’s spell in prison in this Paul Weston video. Apparently, because Muslims were preparing the prison meals, he had to avoid them for fear of being poisoned. This meant he could only eat one tin of tuna a day.

In a stagnant economy, a universal basic income can create the demand needed to clear the shelves of unsold products and drive new productivity. (Photo: Pixabay)

Truthout.org, “How to Fund a Universal Basic Income Without Increasing Taxes or Inflation”, Ellen Brown, The Web of Debt Blog

The policy of guaranteeing every citizen a universal basic income is gaining support around the world, as automation increasingly makes jobs obsolete. But can it be funded without raising taxes or triggering hyperinflation? In a panel I was on at the NexusEarth cryptocurrency conference in Aspen September 21-23rd, most participants said no. This is my rebuttal.

In May 2017, a team of researchers at the University of Oxford published the results of a survey of the world’s best artificial intelligence experts, who predicted that there was a 50 percent chance of AI outperforming humans in all tasks within 45 years. All human jobs were expected to be automated in 120 years, with Asian respondents expecting these dates much sooner than North Americans. In theory, that means we could all retire and enjoy the promised age of universal leisure. But the immediate concern for most people is that they will be losing their jobs to machines.

That helps explain the recent interest in a universal basic income (UBI) — a sum of money distributed equally to everyone. A UBI has been proposed in Switzerland, trials are beginning in Finland, and there is a successful pilot ongoing in Brazil. The cities of Ontario in Canada, Oakland in California, and Utrecht in the Netherlands are planning trials; two local authorities in Scotland have announced such plans; and politicians across Europe, including UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, have spoken in favor of the concept. Advocates in the US range from Robert Reich to Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Luther King, Thomas Paine, Charles Murray, Elon Musk, Dan Savage, Keith Ellison and Paul Samuelson. A new economic study found that a UBI of $1000/month to all adults would add $2.5 trillion to the US economy in eight years.

Welfare can encourage laziness, because benefits go down as earned income goes up. But studies have shown that a UBI distributed equally regardless of income does not have that result. In 1968, President Richard Nixon initiated a successful trial showing that the money had little impact on the recipients’ working hours. People who did reduce the time they worked engaged in other socially valuable pursuits, and young people who were not working spent more time getting an education. Analysis of a similar Canadian trial found that employment rates among young adults did not change, high-school completion rates increased, and hospitalization rates dropped by 8.5 percent. Larger experiments in India have reached similar results.

Studies have also shown that it would actually be cheaper to distribute funds to the entire population than to run the welfare services governments engage in now. It has been calculated that if the UK’s welfare budget were split among the country’s 50 million adults, each of them would get £5,160 a year.

But that is not enough to cover basic survival needs in a modern economy. Taxes would need to be raised, additional debt incurred, or other programs slashed; and these are solutions on which governments are generally unwilling to embark. The other option is “qualitative easing,” a form of central bank quantitative easing in which the money flows directly into the real economy rather than simply into banks. In Europe, politicians are taking another look at this once-derided “helicopter money.” A UBI is being proposed as monetary policy that would stimulate productivity without increasing taxes. As Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, former senior vice president of the World Bank, explains:

. . . [W]hen the government spends more and invests in the economy, that money circulates, and recirculates again and again. So not only does it create jobs once: the investment creates jobs multiple times.

The result of that is that the economy grows by a multiple of the initial spending, and public finances turn out to be stronger: as the economy grows, fiscal revenues increase, and demands for the government to pay unemployment benefits, or fund social programmes to help the poor and needy, go down. As tax revenues go up as a result of growth, and as these expenditures decrease, the government’s fiscal position strengthens.

Why “QE for the People” Need Not Be Inflationary

The objection to any sort of quantitative easing in which new money gets into the real economy is that when the money supply grows too large and consumer prices shoot up, the process cannot be reversed. If the money is spent on a national dividend, infrastructure, or the government’s budget, it will be out circulating in the economy and will not be retrievable by the central bank.

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Ewa Faryaszewska (1920-1944) - Museum of Warsaw, Public Domain

Generally speaking, I don’t like to go into World War II, because I view it as a nasty history for Europeans, about which few people alive had anything to do - therefore, I prefer to uncouple the ethnonationalist cause from it - and especially from Nazism - for the sake of Germans perhaps especially. However, because a needless and counterproductive tendency to try to fully exonerate and redeem Hitler and the Nazis persists - e.g., Mark Collette and “ComfyTangent” recommending that people attend to the schlock revisionism of “The Greatest Story Never Told”; David Duke persisting in blaming anyone but Hitler for WWII - there is yet need to address the issue enough to put it to rest for anyone reasonable - not something to expect from the Stormfront crowd, e.g; and many have not yet gotten Dr. Lindtner’s message regarding the disingenuousness of Faurisson and other revisionists. We will be engaging podcasts on the matter with a Swedish colleague, et al. in days to come to straighten-out the record on WWII - why White Nationalism need not and should no be burdened with Hitler/Nazi association, denial, let alone its idealization and idolatry.

In the meantime, while you will hear a great deal from American White Nationalists about the terrible fire-bombing of Dresden, you can expect them to remain irresponsibly silent (or make revolting excuses) regarding events like the quelling of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.

If anyone has better information to add, they are welcome, but again, because I don’t like going into WWII history, at this point I’ll merely set forth a textual sketch of the event from Wikipedia and this video:

Nation Revisited # 142 August 2018:

Enoch Powell

Fifty years after Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, immigrants are still coming to the UK. The latest ONS figures show that last year there were 101,000 migrants from the EU and 227,000 from outside the EU.

Enoch Powell was opposed to the EU and immigration but he was not anti-European and he refused an invitation to stand for the National Front in 1974. At a speech which he delivered in French in Lyon in 1971 he stated:

“From boyhood, I have been devoted to the study of that Greek and Roman inheritance, which in varying measure is common to all that is Europe, and not only ‘Europe’ of the six or eight or ten but Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals – and beyond. I also claim that reverent enthusiasm for the history of my own country which commands an equal reverence for the past that has formed everything else which is European. The truest European, in my opinion, is the man who is most humbly conscious of the vast demands which comprehension of, even a little part of this Europe imposes upon those who seek it; for the deeper we penetrate, the more the marvellous differentiation of human society within this single continent evokes our wonder. The very use of the word ‘Europe’ in expressions like ‘European unity’, ‘going into Europe’, ‘Europe’s role in the world’ is a solecism which grates upon the ear of all true Europeans: only Americans can be excused for using it.”

Uber-nationalist parties are wrong to claim Enoch Powell as one of their own. They want to spend more on defence and the National Health Service but he resigned from Harold Macmillan’s government in 1958 over plans to increase public spending. They are nostalgic about the British Empire but he was in favour of Indian independence and critical of our mistreatment of Kenyan detainees during the Mau Mau Emergency. They despise foreigners but he was a classical scholar who spoke several languages.

The working men who marched in support of Enoch Powell lost interest when ‘The Sun’ and ‘The Daily Mail’ turned against him. But the influx of refugees from Africa and the Middle East is finally challenging the liberal consensus. Populist parties are now in government in Italy, Austria and Hungary, and powerful in France, Germany, Sweden and Poland.

At present, there is no solidarity on the issue. There’s no point in Germany sending Africans back to Italy or Greece because they landed there, or sharing them out amongst the nations of Europe. We need a common European migration and asylum policy and a combined Naval force to patrol the Mediterranean. Not long ago such a policy would have been unthinkable but since Angela Merkel took in a million refugees attitudes have hardened and deportation is firmly on the agenda.

The supporters of multi-culturalism got away with their mischief because global capitalism made most of us richer. We were too busy earning a living to worry about immigration, but its social consequences have had a profound effect on public opinion. Rising crime and terrorism are forcing Europe to get its act together; just as the UK is preparing to leave.

Plutocracy

Our system of government dates back to the days of stage coaches, three-cornered hats, and universal ignorance. Only the upper classes had the vote and bribery was the norm. Today, everybody can vote and they have all got smartphones in their pockets to inform them on any topic. It shouldn’t be so easy for charlatans to get elected but they still manage it.

We now have the technology to consult the electorate without calling a general election. Online referendums could be used to inform the government. This would make Parliament obsolete together with 650 MPs and over 800 members of The House of Lords. Those parliamentarians over retiring age could be pensioned off and the younger ones redeployed as traffic wardens.

Of course, no such reforms will be introduced. We will keep our ancient institutions with their obsolete rituals and carry on wasting millions of pounds. Our MPs will continue to shuffle into lobbies to be counted like sheep and our noble Lords will still frustrate their knavish tricks.

The big businessmen who really run this country are not impressed by public opinion and they see no reason to interfere with tradition. Somebody said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. But that’s exactly what we do at every general election when we chose a government from the same assortment of nonentities as before.

The alternative to this madness is not a dictatorship but representative government. We should replace Parliament with a secure computerised system that couldn’t be got at by plutocrats.

The top ten British companies are amongst the most powerful in the world. They are; Royal Dutch Shell, HSBC Holdings, British American Tobacco, BP, Glaxo Smith Kline, Diageo, Astra Zeneca, Vodaphone, Unilever, and Glencoe. British businesses paid £43 billion in corporation tax in 2014-15 and contributed an unknown amount in ‘donations’ to political parties. We are not governed by elected MPs but by the appointed executives of major corporations who put profits before people.

It’s the duty of big business to make money for their shareholders but it’s the duty of government to protect workers’ rights and provide decent health care and social security. There are some excellent firms that look after their workers but most of them are only interested in making money. Karl Marx predicted that global capitalism would eventually turn into socialism but we haven’t got there yet. 

Fashions in Thinking

Without even realising it we all follow fashion to some extent. Short hair is currently in fashion for men but not so long ago long hair was the norm. We may not keep up with the latest styles but we find ourselves slowly adapting to them. Have a look at some old photographs of your friends and family and you will notice collar-length hairstyles, flared trousers, and floral shirts that you would not wear today.

Conformity starts in the playground and continues into old age. Women of a certain age try to be fashionable by wearing short skirts that would look better on a teenager. And it’s the same with social attitudes. Years ago black dogs and cats were often called ‘Nigger’, and black people usually appeared in films as servants. The original housekeeper in the Tom & Jerry cartoons was a black mammy but she eventually became Irish.

When John Tyndall launched ‘Spearhead’ magazine n 1964 he used his front page to described Africans as ‘sub-human’, but a year later the Race Relations Act was passed and AK Chesterton warned:

“The man who thinks that this war can be won by mouthing slogans about ‘dirty Jews and filthy niggers’ is a maniac whose place should not be in the National Front but in a mental hospital.”

Whatever our thoughts were in the Sixties, it’s likely that we have changed our minds. Not many people want to go back to the days when the glamorous model Ruth Ellis (pictured) was hanged for shooting dead her brutal lover, or when the brilliant codebreaker Alan Turing was hounded to his death by the authorities. Times have changed and most of us have changed with them.

This is often blamed on the Frankfurt School, a group of Marxist scholars who set out to change public attitudes. But most of these reforms can be traced to the French Revolution, or even further back to the Sermon on The Mount. The Marxists did not invent social justice they just adopted it as a strategy.

Of course, people are influenced by propaganda. Smoking and drinking and driving are two positive examples of ‘social engineering’. The latest campaign pairs black and white couples in almost every TV commercial. This is not a government initiative but the latest fashion in thinking. Keen young account executives are persuading their clients that diversity sells products. The message to women seems to be, if you want a comfortable bed or a new kitchen, marry a black man.

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“Slavery by debt has continued to this day, and it is particularly evident in the plight of students.” (Photo: Michael Fleshman/cc)

Common Dreams:

“Student Debt Slavery: Bankrolling Financiers On The Backs Of The Young”, by Ellen Brown

Higher education has been financialized, transformed from a public service into a lucrative cash cow for private investors.

The advantages of slavery by debt over “chattel” slavery – ownership of humans as a property right – were set out in an infamous document called the Hazard Circular, reportedly circulated by British banking interests among their American banking counterparts during the American Civil War. It read in part:

Slavery is likely to be abolished by the war power and chattel slavery destroyed. This, I and my European friends are glad of, for slavery is but the owning of labor and carries with it the care of the laborers, while the European plan, led by England, is that capital shall control labor by controlling wages.

Slaves had to be housed, fed and cared for. “Free” men housed and fed themselves. For the more dangerous jobs, such as mining, Irish immigrants were used rather than black slaves, because the Irish were expendable. Free men could be kept enslaved by debt, by paying them wages that were insufficient to meet their costs of living. On how to control wages, the Hazard Circular went on:

This can be done by controlling the money. The great debt that capitalists will see to it is made out of the war, must be used as a means to control the volume of money. . . . It will not do to allow the greenback, as it is called, to circulate as money any length of time, as we cannot control that.

The government, too, had to be enslaved by debt. It could not be allowed to simply issue the money it needed to meet its budget, as Lincoln’s government did with its greenbacks (government-issued US Notes). The greenback program was terminated after the war, forcing the government to borrow from banks – banks that created the money themselves, just as the government had been doing. Only about 10% of the “banknotes” then issued by banks were actually backed by gold. The rest were effectively counterfeit. The difference between government-created and bank-created money was that the government issued it and spent it on the federal budget, creating demand and stimulating the economy. Banks issued money and lent it, at interest. More had to be paid back than was lent, keeping the supply of money tight and keeping both workers and the government in debt.

Student Debt Peonage

Slavery by debt has continued to this day, and it is particularly evident in the plight of students. Graduates leave college with a diploma and a massive debt on their backs, averaging over $37,000 in 2016. The government’s student loan portfolio now totals $1.37 trillion, making it the second highest consumer debt category behind only mortgage debt. Student debt has risen nearly 164% in 25 years, while median wages have increased only 1.6%.

Unlike mortgage debt, student debt must be paid. Students cannot just turn in their diplomas and walk away, as homeowners can with their keys. Wages, unemployment benefits, tax refunds and even Social Security checks can be tapped to ensure repayment. In 1998, Sallie Mae (the Student Loan Marketing Association) was privatized, and Congress removed the dischargeabilility of federal student debt in bankruptcy, absent exceptional circumstances. In 2005, this lender protection was extended to private student loans. Because lenders know that their debts cannot be discharged, they have little incentive to consider a student borrower’s ability to repay. Most students are granted a nearly unlimited line of credit. This, in turn, has led to skyrocketing tuition rates, since universities know the money is available to pay them; and that has created the need for students to borrow even more.

Students take on a huge debt load with the promise that their degrees will be the doorway to jobs allowing them to pay it back, but for many the jobs are not there or not sufficient to meet expenses. Today nearly one-third of borrowers have made no headway in paying down their loans five years after leaving school, although many of these borrowers are not in default. They make payments month after month consisting only of interest, while they continue to owe the full amount they borrowed. This can mean a lifetime of tribute to the lenders, while the loan is never paid off, a classic form of debt peonage to the lender class.

All of this has made student debt a very attractive asset for investors. Student loans are pooled and repackaged into student loan asset-backed securities (SLABS), similar to the notorious mortgage-backed securities through which home buyers were caught in a massive debt trap in 2008-09. The nameless, faceless investors want their payments when due, and the strict terms of the loans make it more profitable to force a default than to negotiate terms the borrower can actually meet. About 80% of SLABS are backed by government-insured loans, guaranteeing that the investors will get paid even if the borrower defaults. The onerous federal bankruptcy laws also make SLABS particularly safe and desirable investments.

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