A new book by Roberto Saviano:
The realisation that cocaine capitalism is central to our economic universe made Escobar the Copernicus of organised crime, argues Saviano, adding: “No business in the world is so dynamic, so restlessly innovative, so loyal to the pure free-market spirit as the global cocaine business.” It sounds simple, but it isn’t – it is revolutionary and, says Saviano, it explains the world. …
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Foreign arms sales by the United States jumped by almost $10 billion in 2014, about 35 percent, even as the global weapons market remained flat and competition among suppliers increased, a new congressional study has found.
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It’s an idea whose adherents over the centuries have ranged from socialists to libertarians to far-right mavericks. It was first proposed by Thomas Paine in his 1797 pamphlet, Agrarian Justice, as a system in which at the “age of majority” everyone would receive an equal capital grant, a “basic income” handed over by the state to each and all, no questions asked, to do with what they wanted. …
Utrecht, one of the largest cities in the Netherlands, and 19 other Dutch municipalities, a tentative step towards realising the dream of many a marginal and disappointed political theorist is being made. …
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When the bubble burst housing construction fell back not just to its normal levels, but to its lowest share of GDP on record. The reason is that the construction from the bubble led to enormous overbuilding, which meant record high vacancy rates. The loss of $8 trillion in housing wealth led to an end of the bubble driven consumption boom. Taken together, the falloff in residential construction and the drop in consumption implied a loss in annual demand of more than 6 percentage points of GDP (@ $1.1 trillion in today’s economy).
There was no easy way to replace this loss in demand. Investment was not about to jump by 50 percent. Net exports could and did increase, but this is a slow process. In short, when the bubble burst we were destined to have a serious recession with or without the financial crisis.
The reason lies with the incentives that U.S. military aid creates.
Limitless and beyond the view of the public, U.S. military aid is a tap foreign governments don’t want to turn off. The longer they’re “fighting terrorists,” the more “security assistance” they get. There’s no reason for them to actually defeat terrorists, because if they did, the cash would go away. Instead, foreign security partners are incentivized to maintain a form everlasting instability, wherein nobody wins and everybody loses.
The $1.15 trillion spending package would fund the government in Fiscal 2016 if passed by both chambers of Congress. It includes $572.7 billion for defence, of which $111 billion procures new hardware and $69.8 funds research and development.
If passed, the spending deal would bless the F-35 programme with $1.33 billion in additional procurement money for an extra three F-35As, six F-35Bs and two F-35Cs, just as production ramps up in Fort Worth, Texas.
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I would add, before commenting, that Sir Amyas Morse was previously a senior partner at PWC.
Maybe that is what informs his view. I cannot, of course, be sure, but what is offered here is quite extraordinary. First there is surprise that:
Running a deficit seems to be becoming normal practice for acute trusts.
Of course it is! Why on earth would an NHS trust want to underspend the money it has been given? When its job is to provide health services why would it decide not to do that? These are not private sector activities run for gain. They are public sector services run to meet need. In that case of course deficits are what they should expect. That Sir Amyas does not comprehend that leads to doubt as to his fitness for the task given to him.
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The first development which has to be pointed out is the fact that the total sales of the world’s top 100 arms producing companies are quite stable. They have gone down a bit over the past two years, but not that much. We are also seeing a more regional, or more national development – and one of them is very clear: Russian companies have seen a very steep increase in their total sales. So, the companies in the top 100 based in Russia have increased their revenues from 2013 to 2014 by almost 50 percent. That is a very significant change. By contrast, there was a fall in revenues of companies in the US and western Europe.
Some NHS hospitals are so cash-strapped that they are having to take out emergency loans to pay doctors, nurses and other staff salaries every month, HuffPost UK can reveal.
A string of NHS trusts are taking out multi-million pound loans – and having to pay interest on them to the Government – simply to ensure wages are met at the end of each month.
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This includes companies based in tax havens such as Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands, all of which were recently placed on an EU tax haven blacklist for being “non-cooperative” with efforts to combat tax avoidance.
45% of Cuadrilla is held by Riverstone Holdings through a Cayman Islands-based investment fund, while another 45% is held by Australian company AJ Lucas, which is 50% owned and substantially bankrolled by Kerogen Capital, registered in the Caymans.
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Banned and dangerous weapons, many of them disguised as everyday items, are being routinely and illegally sold to online shoppers on Amazon.co.uk, a Guardian investigation has found.
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The United States Air Force may have to reduce the amount of F-35s it buys over the next 10 years as aircraft research and procurement threatens to overwhelm an already tight military budget, according to a Congressional research report released earlier this week. The Air Force is looking at the possibility of cutting back on the 60 F-35 purchases a year that are currently proposed over the next decade.
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Switzerland has turned its back on a basic income scheme, in which the federal government would have given every resident a monthly payment – expected to be around 2500 Swiss Francs ($2,500) – “regardless of their income and assets”.
Although voters rejected the move in a referendum at the weekend, Switzerland isn’t the only country weighing up a basic-income experiment. Around 10,000 people in Finland could soon be paid €550 each month if the government goes ahead with a universal basic income pilot project.
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For the British Parliament and much of the media, the problem is mainly the vast amounts of money spent to keep it going. According to the U.K. Ministry of Defense, the program’s total cost is £15-20 billion. Anti-nuclear campaigners give a figure of around £100 billion, give or take. At least, that’s how much it should rack up in costs over its 40 year lifespan.
However, what is less talked about is how both the submarines and the bases that maintain them have suffered from a series of glaring safety mishaps. …
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Two decades later, Perry has written a new book, “My Journey at the Nuclear Brink,” in which he offers a dire warning: “Far from continuing the nuclear disarmament that has been underway for the last two decades, we are starting a new nuclear arms race.” …
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War and imperialism, on one side, and the growing reach of jihadist terrorism, on the other, are said to be locked together in a mutually reinforcing embrace of violence and destruction. “Imperialist cruelty and Islamist cruelty feed each other,” the French Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) argued shortly after the Paris attacks. In order to break this nihilistic death grip, we need to oppose foreign intervention, put an end to imperialist violence, and halt the ongoing plunder of wealth from countries in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere.
The basic logic of this argument is undoubtedly sound. But in terms of explanatory value, this kind of analysis does not go far enough. It suffers from too much generality and abstractness — telling us little about the specificity of this particular moment, or the nature of ISIS as a movement. By attributing a kind of automaticity or natural mirror between ISIS and imperialism, we can miss the all-important context and history that has shaped the remarkably rapid rise of the organization.
On capital, debt and the future of capitalism.
Dystopian preparations by the state are reflected in the corporate arena. Where we see a future climate crisis, many companies see only opportunity: oil firms looking forward to melting ice caps delivering new accessible fossil fuels; security firms touting the latest technologies to secure borders from ‘climate refugees’; or investment fund managers speculating on weather-related food prices – to name but a few. In 2012, Raytheon, one of the world’s largest defence contractors, announced “expanded business opportunities” arising from “security concerns and their possible consequences,” due to the “effects of climate change” in the form of “storms, droughts, and floods”. The rest of the defence sector has been quick to follow. Continue reading
The review promises nine new maritime patrol aircraft for surveillance, two new Army strike brigades, an additional F-35 Lightning II squadron, and extending the service of Typhoon jets by 10 years through to 2040. …
The MOD will spend £178 billion on equipment over the next decade, an increase of £12 billion on previous plans. The Defence budget will increase by 0.5% above inflation for the rest of this Parliament allowing investment in people, equipment and the MOD estate.
Tipping Point North South 