Being There,
Tulsi Gabbard, Democratic Congresswoman from Hawaii, National Guard Major, and 2 tour service veteran of Iraq, spoke near Standing Rock last night, and at Standing Rock today. She was part of a wave of 2000 - 3000 US veterans "called to duty" by conscience, to uphold Constitutional Rights, and Native American Treaty Rights.
It worked, for now.
The Army Corps of Engineers has announced that the permit to cross the river will not be given, that environmental impact studies are being done to look at other crossing sites. (NIMBY applies, because a leak is inevitable. Political opposition from citizens of Bismark is why the crossing was moved to tribal territory in the first place.)
Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi: "Trust me!"
Italian voters: "NO!"
"My government ends here." resigning PM, Matteo Renzi
39,000 Africans were observed to be smuggled into Italy from Libya in 2 months by this watch group. This was coordinated between human traffickers, NGOs, Italian and EU authorities. Purely humanitarian, or something else?
Human traffickers contact the Italian coast guard in advance to receive support and to pick up their dubious cargo. NGO ships are directed to the “rescue spot” even as those to be rescued are still in Libya. The 15 ships that we observed are owned or leased by NGOs have regularly been seen to leave their Italian ports, head south, stop short of reaching the Libyan coast, pick up their human cargo, and take course back 260 miles to Italy even though the port of Zarzis in Tunis is just 60 mile away from the rescue spot.
Will 2017 see the end of the "Empire of Chaos"? (Empire of Chaos: the Neocon strategy of denying access to any opponent by turning places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria into hell.)
Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov responds to (another) seemingly realistic overture by Secretary of State Kerry:
Moscow is ready to immediately send our military experts and diplomats to Geneva to work out joint actions with our US colleagues in line with the [new] American proposals, which would ensure the withdrawal of all militants without exception from eastern Aleppo, and would provide unimpeded humanitarian supplies to the city’s residents and ensure the establishment of normal life in eastern Aleppo.
In reality – as Lavrov almost certainly knows – Kerry’s latest proposals probably are a last desperate bid to get the Russians to agree to a ceasefire in Aleppo so that what is left of the Jihadi pocket can be preserved intact until after Obama’s final departure in January.
Paul Craig Roberts looks at Donald Trump's cabinet appointments, and recalls the Reagan Cabinet appointments, and the politics involved. Bush insiders won. Reagan outsiders lost. Only insiders can be appointed. Which insiders? That's the very difficult question.
Donald Trump's Unhappy Fate is to Oversee a Financial Crisis Far Greater Than the Last (just as I suspected...)
Steve Keen interviews Michael Hudson on the religion of Debt to the High Priests, which approaches a violent end, again, as always happens, for 6,000 years. That must never be taught. Hudson got his PhD "union card" in this historical analysis, as a culmination of the middle phase of his career. On Wall Street, where he made good analytic predictions that made money for David Rockefeller, his heretical views were fine, as long as the papers stayed out of the "wrong hands", as they did. Current debt is unpayable, and now unserviceable, too.
The Path to Global Recovery:
I’m going to finish –ask one question if I can, which I think is important. What’s your method for debt abolition? How would you go about reducing the debt? You’d have to do it on a case-by-case. In Greece’s case, I would have simply called the – Greece’s problem was foreign debt – official government debt. I would have said, this is odious debt. We’re not going to pay it. You, the IMF, knew that we couldn’t pay. However, the debt is about $50 billion. The Lagarde list of kleptocrats holding accounts in Switzerland just happened to be what we owe. Take that money, folks. But you’re not going to get it from us, because this was simply theft. For domestic debt, it would depend on a situation. I know you have a plan, and your plan is mathematically logical. The question is how to get it politically, and you almost have to play it by ear when the political situation comes up. But you realize that if you cancel the debts, they’re going to be – the counter to that, is oh, gee, you’re going to give some people a free lunch. And what about all of the poor people that have saved. And you see quite rightly that you have to give some compensation to people who’ve saved up to a middle class degree. But not an exorbitant degree. http://michael-hudson.com/2016/11/keen-hudson-unpick-historical-path-to-global-recovery/
Historical Realist
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