Comments by "Xyz Same" (@xyzsame4081) on "BBC News"
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@davidsnyder8503 Although I used the word "conservative" myself, most people that self identify as such are right wing, or are center right, in the U.S Republicans or in the U.K. Tories. Incl. Anderw Neil, he is a Tory voter, and the BBC has several open Tories in hig positions, so I do not get how other commenters see the BBC as "left".
The BBC goes along nicely with the neoliberal and NATO agenda (too scared to lose funding, and in the U.K. the government CAN fire people, Thathcer and Blair did, even though it is citizen funded public non-profit TV).
Neil was pro Iraq war, that is not exactely a small government, save taxpayer money position.
Shapiro is against abortion (well that fits the backwards stance = keeping things as they were in the past, but it is not small government.
Nor is the support for Israel. A 10 million people country that gets a lot of subsidies by the U.S. And I am almost sure he is against drug decriminalization.
As for free speech, (an issue where he poses as staunch defender against the liberal snowflakes and Marxian tyrants, etc. etc. ) he was oddly silent when the anti BDS legislation was passed. Should be struck down by the Supreme court if the first Amendment is still something worth - but that takes time.
he does not want to answer to the hearbeat bill question. Is he for it or against it ? (no aboration after 6 or 8 weeks). It is legal in Republican states to destroy fertilized eggs (fertility clinics). Now those treatments are expensive and many of the couples are also R voters. So that is O.K. The 6 - 8 weeks ban is arbitrary , a beating heart does not make a human, the fetus is not viable at 5 weeks, the fertilized egg could not develop outside the womb, and the fetus is not viable after 9 weeks, either. Can't feel pain, no nervous system.
The 3 months time limit for abortions w/o giving a reason is somewhat justified, plausible and quite universal.
Women CAN know at that time, they have time to make up their mind, the fetus is still unable to feel pain, has no brain, and 3 months is also a treshold in pregnancies. Until then a lot of pregnancies end by themselves, the chances that the pregnancy can be carried to term and that the egg / embryo, fetus is not damaged are much better if the fetus can hold on after week 12. Nature eliminates many attempts till week 12.
Shapiro is not a conservative when he supports the arbitraty time limit of 6 / 8 weeks.
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and then they would need to ban fertility clinics from destroying fertilized eggs, the mother would have to be forced to carry them to term if you follow that logic. That means more children than they want - at best - Or implanting eggs that are known to not be perfect. So either the pregnancy will end prematurely or the infant would be born with a defect. Fording the mother to carry to term or as long as the pregnancyx to last - what U.S. Republicans want to force on LOW INCOME women.
Or long enough that the mother has a chance to know she is pegnant
6 / 8 weeks is as arbitrary as week 2 or week 15 - but it is a very practical obstacle. a 3 - 4 month limit meets practical criteria and is somewhat plausible / imitates nature - that is why the 12 - 14 week limit is used in so many countries.
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+ Imperial America Recent surveys: if people had to come up with 600 or 1000 USD within a month for an emergency - would they be able to do so ? The numbers of people saying they could not come up with the money were 50 % and upwards - depends on the amount (Look it up).
Tell me again how the U.S. has the highest standard of living.
Having a smarthphone (or a few other modern devices) does shit for you when the prices for rent, healthcare and education rise way more than the "inflation rate". All these expenditures are a major chunk in the budget of a low income person.
if you take GDP of the country divided by the number of people than it looks like the U.S. is the richest country on the planet.
Of course the GDP is now heavily "improved" with the ESTIMATED "contribution" of the financial "industry".
Prof. Richard Werner, UK economist: the contribution of finance is mostly fiction, they are not productive (since the deregulation of the 80s they are mostly dealing in speculation.)
The economists calculating the GDP have to estimate a fictional !! number for the "contribution" of finance to the GDP. They do not need to torture the numbers for the productive part of the economy, there the defintion of GDP quite organically leads to the calculation of the contribution based on the collected data
It seems the status quo is so hell bent to enable / defend the casino on the stock exchanges and the financial "markets" (that is HIGHLY PROFITABLE for a limited number of people) that they will bend the rules that apply to the definition and therefore calculation of GDP (a meaningful GDP).
GDP is thrown around a lot in the news about the economy. So the ruling class has an interest in it being a high number. And it should be higher than the GDP of last year (that is "growth").
Also many other numbers are compared to the GDP (like debt vs. GDP). The EU elites adopted the straitjacket of austerity and limited themselves to a Debt limit. That is government debt vs. GDP. So naturally they came up with some new definition of how to calculate the GDP (they include now R&D, and they estimate now an number for prostitution, or for the informal - tax-avoiding labour market. Not sure if they also include numbers for drug sales or low level criminal activities. I am sure about prostitution and the black market for labour. So the GDP number will now be higher than w/o those creative adjusments. So the ratio between GDP and debt will look better. ).
Of course all of that is wrapped into a theory, after all these are intelleigent people, so the double think needs to be somewhat sophisticated. And economists that will not go along with it, will hardly make it into the reputable academic positions, nor will they ever end up in positions where it is their task to calculate the GDP. The system weeds out the independent thinkers long before that.
According to Prof. Werner finance does not contribute to the productive economy, on the contrary it subtracts from it. To paper over that fact the economists doing the calculations of the GDP have to estimate the contribution of finance to the GDP.
The amount of speculation is INSANE. Something like 700 trillion (TRILLION) USD in outstanding !! value of derivatives (Bets) vs. the GDP of the U.S. of a few trillion USD per year for instance in 2011. It has gone down in the years after, but I think they are on the rise again. (zerohedge has an article on it).
The real economy suffers from stagnant disposable income - so the investors cannot make their money by investing in more plants. So - as always under such circumstances - they resort to real estate (bubbles) and speculation to increase their fortunes. The occasional bail out does help - in the 90s the bail outs were smaller (Mexico) or the IMF helped in more suble forms so that the speculators could finalize their looting, secure their gains - and then the country was dropped like a hot potatoe (Russia, Asia in the 90s, Brazil was more of a collateral damage).
And of course all these bets (or buying shares, stock "buyback" programs = jacking up the share prices of your own company, or some frenzy over a merger of 2 giants) trigger the payment of fees for those who adminstrate the operations
In the case of the highly leveraged bets / derivatives it is a tiny fee (less than for trading shares).
But it adds up if the volume is serveral hundred trillions. And the number I quoted for 2011 was the volume of the OPEN bets at the end of a half year period (not the volume of all bets that were made during those 6 month-period)
Those fees are seen as revenue - well they are.
There are also revenues for the boring traditional safe banking activities: bank accounts, ATMs, loans to a productive company or a consumer buying something
Those "services" however represent revenue from activities that supports the real, the productive economy.
The revenue form handling, adminstrating the bets does nothing for the economy - and eventually the bets and speculative bubbles (which generate that type of speculation related revenue) become a danger for the real economy. See 1929 or 2007/2008.
I read that 40 % of the PROFITS made in the U.S. are made in finance. And you bet most of that profit does not stem from activities that support the productive economy.
So the GDP might look high - but a good chunk of that number stands for a fake economy. Which explains why the "piggy bank" of so many citizens in the - allegedly - richest country on earth does not even contain 600 or 1000 USD.
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And when you are done with considering the damage Thatcher has done to Northern communities (they still have not recovered ! ) you can go on to consider the worldwide damage the banksters, the speculators and the money shufflers have done to the economy in the Great Financial Crisis.And the City of London as one of the most important financial spots stands for everything that is wrong with the global Casino. And British Banks were in the middle of the scam (among many other large banks of many nations).
People are still pissed off that the unions - allegedly - took liberties in the 70s.
Whatever damage the striking workers did - it was nothing compared to the looting that is going on right now by the financial "industry" and the damage tax avoiding Multinationals do to the economy. They take over more and more of the economy, buy up or eliminate smaller corporations - and unlike in former days they do not pay taxes anymore. Not even the much lower nominal tax rate.
I heard about the strike of the garbage workers (in London, if I remember correctly) and how that enraged the citizens. Well, today regular citizens are priced out of the housing market - by orderly, well educated, excellently dressed folks - (plus rich foreigners). So what does REALLY do more harm in the long run ??
And the miners hanging on for dear life. They were right to fight with everything they had - Thatcher DID destroy their communities, she was no stateswomen, knowing these were Labour and union strongholds was enough for her to attack the REAL, PRODUCTIVE sectors of the economy.
She promoted deindustrialization and "financialization" (read unproductive speculation).
She successfully used "divide and conquer". The people that had no connection to the mining communities saw no further than the "cheaper" coal and those "uppity" workers. Some workers (dirty folks) were not subservient. How dared they ?
The slightly higher price for coal was too much to pay for. It had to be the cheaepr Polish or the Columbian "blood" coal.
That "cheap" coal was very expensive for the U.K.
It was obviously an outrage that they dared to fight for the mines or dared to ask their fellow citizens to pay more for energy. That COULD have been a driver for domestic energy saving technology and construction (keeping up the skills in the population, a business opportunity for medium sized companies).
Germany, Austria, and Japan always have had high(er) energy prices - it is not like it kept them from being successful.
Temperatures in Germany are lower than in the U.K, so. they need more for heating in that climate. Also compact houses - like in densely populated U.K. - make for more efficient use of energy for heating.
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2/2 This does NOTHING to address the WESTERN INSANE overconsumption in meat and dairy products (and China is joining the party as they develop SOME middle class). Meat is the product that needs the most resources - for dairy you do not have to kill the animal, so you get more out of "burdening" the planet with that additional animal.
What a tiny ! farmer in KENYA ! does will not solve the impact of BIG AG in the RICH NATIONS. And in those rich countries a lot of meat and dairy products are produced with SOY (not gras !) for which they cut down the rainforests in Latin America (Honduras, Brazil, ...) or change the landscape of Argentine and New Zealand. The very forests we cannot afford to lose at all - think bio diversity, future research in pharma etc., regional climate, washing out of soil, and last but not least Carbon is stored for some time in these forests.
The Amazonian rainforests are about 50 millions years old - they shrinked and expanded (the Ice ages were a dry time so then rainforests shrinked - but they were always there. Leave it to the modern enlightened rich nations and their citizens to destroy them).
In Europe even in the years of the economic miracle - 1950 to 1970s/early 1980s - meat or chicken was a Sunday treat. They usually ate dishes with some meat or sausage added on some days of the week, and vegetarian (sweet or salty/savoury) on others.
Not so much cold meat, or sausages, or cheese for the evening meal either - likely the - stay at home - housewife would serve 2 warm meals a day. Or warm up leftovers from lunch. So it was a tasty but modest cuisine with reduced meat and cheese consumption (but making good use of milk and cheaper dairy products).
Meat is expenisve if you feed the cattle with grass, or feed the chickens or pigs with a more natural diet (grown in your own country).
Now, we eat much more food seved in cantines, in restaurants, snacks or Fast Food and cold lunches.
In cantines cooking for a lot of people is easier with meat or with dishes containing meat. Try to make pancakes for hundreds of people.
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Poison gas attack of August 2013 (blamed on the Syrian gov.), that may have been a MOUSETRAP for Obama to drag the U.S. into the war - see a video with former CIA officier Ray McGovern (he briefed presidents): The inside scoop into the Middle East and Israel.
As for the alleged 2017 attack (it could have been an acident chemicals released by a bombing) Seymour Hersh has an interesting article on the attack as well (the rebels and their access to Sarin gas). Theodor Postol (MIT) disputes very much that it is clear that the gas could only have been shot from government held area (even though the New York Times later brought an arcticle claiming that to be proven by a reconstructed flight curve).
Back to the the Ray McGovern Video The inside scoop ....Despite the title it is about: How PUTIN HELPED OBAMA OUT of the MOUSE TRAP set up to drag the US into Syria with boots on the ground (necessary to impose a no-fly zone).
Obama had foolishly or intentionally given the Syrian rebels (or Turkey ?) a cue how they could "secure" the direct military help of U.S./NATO, when he "drew the red line" at the use of chemical weapons in August 2012 during a press conference.
One year later in summer 2013 the jihadists were losing and they obviously thought they could use more direct help (apart from weapons supply, funding and training and letting them deal with oil without restriction).
UK intelligence, (chemical analysis) * showed that the chemical attack could have been done by the rebels to frame the Syrian government.
* it did not match the military grade stuff of the Syrian army (the components might have been supplied by Turkey to the rebels - a Turkish MPs testified in parliement to that effect).
General Dempsey (Chairman or Speaker of Joint Chiefs of Staff) warned President Obama that it was not clear WHO was to blame - and warned him to get involved in Syria.
There are also allegations that children were kidnapped, and used as props in staged vids that were uploaded on the web as "proof" for goverment attacks (different locations different times - so they would have died several times). If these children were lucky they were drugged to remain still for the shot - or their dead bodies were arranged at different sets. Sounds extreme I know - search for Sister Agnes Mariam on globalresearch.ca
After the attack of August 2013 the blame was put immediately on Assad by the media - not sure if the White House immedieatley assigned blame as well. In order to save face (after the warning of the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon through Gen. Dempsey), Obama said he would ask Congress for permission ("We are prepared to strike at any time, but it is the right thing to do").
Congress of course was on holiday then (end of August). - So he won time, the escalation could be avoided.
Russia negotiated that the Syrian government would hand over their poison gas stocks to the US, the poison gas stocks were destroyed on an US ship with special equipment for that job.
The neocons (with Israeli ties) were furious - they almost - ALMOST ! had their war. (Israel considers Syria an arch enemy - well I guess the feeling is mutual).
I recommend anyhting Ray McGovern and that video is well worth watching (even though it is around 30 minutes long).
And also Col. Larry Wilkerson former Chief of Staff of Colin Powell - he was not at all convinced of the guilt of the Syrian gov. in April 2017, have not yet heard his opinion of April 2018 and the strike (I am almost sure he is HIGHLY CRITICAL of it).
Also ex CIA officier Michael Scheuer is very informative. He borders on cynicism (or his straight talk sounds like it) and he seems a little bit on the right wing side (Trump fan - at least in the past). But when it comes to the Middle East he knows his stuff and tells it like it is. (see his CNN and other interviews about the Arab Spring, especially Libya in 2011 and 2012 - if only someone had listened to him).
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+Udontdme111 In what alternate universe do Democrats "fully support" marijuana legalization (or at least to decriminalize it ? Or even for medical use ? - Chelsea Clinton on the stage during the 2016 campaign, "we have to be cautious, need more research, ..." Right - the beauty is: there is no research possible - but the donors of big pharma and alcohol would not like it anyway, right Chelsea ?
The Dems cannot help progress, because the grassroots keep pushing. At the state level some Dems might be supportive, but not at the federal level.
Mr. Hope and Change smoked weed (the photo), so did Bill Clinton (but he did not inhale).
Since the Nixon admin weed and heroin are the only "schedule 1" drugs - extremely dangerous, no medical usefulness. Research is almost impossible in the U.S. because of that.
Under Nixon weed was defined as that - since it was the drug of choice for the hippies. And crack was used by the black community. (Crack which is artificial cocain results in much higher punishments than cocain use. Funny that).
Neither Bill Clinton nor Obama could be bothered to change that stupid classification - that ALSO "justifies" harsh penalties for weed use, possession. Or civil forfeiture.
The Supreme Court - not the Dems - "corrected" the extreme discrepancy for the punishement for crack use /possession / trade vs. cocain (it was 100 : 1, that extreme dispartiy was corrected to something like 10 :1 - it defied medicine and science so the Supreme Court did away with the most outrageous injustice - which of course had ravaged the BLACK COMMUNITIES.
There was no rational reason why the law came down like a ton of bricks on the crack users, even small amounts of the substance, while it was quite generous with the chemical equivalent cocain.
They both KNEW from experience that weed was not THAT dangerous. And a little bit interest (of the prez or staff) could have helped with the crack/cocain issue.
Fact is: both had no intention to spend political capital on an issue that only damaged poor people. And botth could not be bothered to use their platform to CHANGE attitudes (like Sanders did with healthcare).
And I cannot imagine that the sellout Dems NOW support weed on the federal level. But I would be pleasantly surprised to be wrong.
Sanders supported legalization of marijuana in his campaign - heard him say it too after the elections (not his main talking point, but it comes up).
Meanwhile it is no political risk for a Democrat or Independent to be pro weed, it is reasonable AND Sanders does not need to make concession to Big Donors.
So it was easy for him to have the right position, the position of a major part of the population.
P.S: there are Democrats that take money from the for-profit prison companies.
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+ Varshava - I live in a wealthy European country, the public non-profit healthcare is good (like in all of those nations) and much, much more cost efficient than in the U.S. Now, I do not know the situation in the poor(er) European countries (read those who had the bad fortune to be exposed directly to the "free market" and neoliberalism in the 1990s and did not have the chance to develop under the somewhat sheltered conditions after WW2, only somewhat free markets lots of regulation, quotas, tariffs, etc. This is when the successful, major European export industry developed, Germany, Austria, the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland ....Note that the Japanese export industry did not develop under "free market" conditions either, lots of protectionism, and government intervention going on)
You cannot live in a wealthy ! = comparable to the United States - European country - or you would not use the term abyssmal in the same sentence as European healthcare.
Switzerland is the only country in Europe tha relies mainly on a "private market". And their healthcare is even more expensive than that of the U.S. (At least they pay their staff well, they have a high wage level to begin with, and everyone has insurance).
The NHS in UK is defunded, but if they had only HALF of the U.S. per capita spending for healthcare the NHS could work like a charm. - * see next comment
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