Month: July 2023

Cantillon Effects: Why Inflation Helps Some and Hurts Others

We now turn our attention to what happens with an increase in the money supply, rather than an increase in savings. This is critically important. The mercantilist idea that increasing the money supply increases prosperity was exposed as an error centuries ago by Richard Cantillon.1 However, modern mainstream economists, including the monetarists, Keynesians of various sorts, and the now-fashionable market monetarists, fully embrace the idea that printing money is necessary for prosperity.

UN expert decries practice of taking boys from their mothers at camps in Syria

A U.N.-backed human rights advocate says hundreds of boys — some as young as 11 — held in detention camps run by U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led forces in northeastern Syria have been wrongly separated from their mothers on the “unproven” belief that they pose a security risk.

Fionnuala Ni Aolain, an independent U.N. rapporteur on the protection of rights while countering terrorism, aired concerns Friday about lingering “mass arbitrary detention” in the infamous al-Hol camp and others like it that she saw during her trip to the region this week — billed as the first visit of its kind by an independent human rights expert, Associated Press reported.

Histoires françafricaines

Retour sur les histoires françafricaines occultées de la mémoire collective par le magistère intellectuel, médiatique et politique français. Peu abordée par les médias, par les universitaires, par les historiens, par les politiques cette histoire de prédation (néo)coloniale se poursuit dans l’ombre pour mieux se répéter.

Montenegro: Spajić’s Dual Citizenship A Serious Problem For NATO? – Analysis

Landslide victory of anti-Đukanović block

Early parliamentary elections in Montenegro were held on 11 June 2023. However, the official election results were publicized only on 14 July 2023.

The parties that won the largest number of votes from the voters for the Parliament of Montenegro, which has 81 representatives, include the Europe Now Movement /Pokret Evropa sad/ which won 25.53% of votes (24 representatives), the Together Coalition /Zajedno/ (DPS, SD, LP, DUA) 23.22% (21 representatives), the For the Future of Montenegro coalition /Za budućnost Crne Gore/ (NSD, DNP, RP) 14.74% (13 representatives), the Bravery Counts coalition /Hrabro se broji/ (Democrats and URA) 12.48% (11 representatives), Bosniak Party 7.08% (6 representatives), Albanian Forum 1.91% (2 representatives), the For You coalition /Za tebe/ (SNP and Demos) 3.13% (2 representatives), the Croat minority list On the Right Side of the World /Na pravoj strani svijeta –HGI/ 0.74% (1 representative) and the Albanian minority Albanian Alliance coalition /Albanska alijansa/ 1.49% (1 representative).

Brzezinski’s Warning – OpEd

The Vilnius Summit Communique is a crude attempt to NATO-ize Washington’s list of enemies in order to enlist broader support for the impending global conflict. The intended targets of this campaign are Russia and China, the main opponents of the so-called “rules-based order”.

Erdoğan’s Most Eminent Men: Turkey’s New Spymasters

Turkey’s two key appointments are new foreign minister and former intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan; and the newly-appointed intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalın, also an Erdoğan confidant.

Both men have interesting and impressive careers. How both of them have become the only two people who make policy and share power with Erdoğan is illuminating, especially where their careers intersected under the president.

Mass Murder at Sea: Greek coastguard tried to tow hundreds of migrants to Italy, capsized the vessel

On June 14, a fishing vessel carrying hundreds of refugees, the Adriana, sank off the Greek port city of Pylos. Roughly 600 people, including children, drowned. An investigation by German regional broadcaster NDR, the Guardian, the research agency Forensis and the Greek organization Solomon has now come to the clear conclusion that the Adriana was towed by the Greek coast guard towards Italian waters and then, when this was unsuccessful, capsized.

Global Sanctions Dashboard: Sanctions alone won’t stop the Wagner Group

Despite sanctions and efforts to curtail the Wagner Group’s illicit activity, the group has successfully evaded financial sanctions through a series of facilitators and front companies around the world.

$5 billion: That’s how much the Wagner Group has made since 2017 mainly from mining, illicit gold trade, and forestry business in Africa, as well as funding from the Russian state.

The key vulnerability in enforcing sanctions against Russia is the gap in beneficial ownership information, including in the case of the oil price cap.

Europe Should Refuse To Be Pushed By US To Confront Russia – OpEd

That bar, the Red Star, on the far side of eastern Europe was closed—until the Ukraine war started. So why did the White Moon bar on this side of the street decide to stay open, even extending its drinking hours?

Once the Warsaw Pact closed shop there was no good or honest reason for keeping NATO going. The threat that NATO was created to deter disappeared when the Soviet Union collapsed. Many Europeans thought that. The Americans didn’t.