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By Tyler Durden

Via GEFIRA,

The rule of law is often invoked by as a Western value that “populist” movements want to destroy, yet the establishment’s own governments have long suspended that very same rule of law when it comes to immigration. The most evident example of this is the immigration policy started by the Italian Letta government in 2013 and continued since then under the Renzi government.

In October 2013, the Letta government, facing waves of refugees escaping the chaos of Western backed-Arab Spring in Libya, which later transpired as nothing more than insurgencies of Islamic radical groups, launched the operation “Mare Nostrum” or “Our Sea”, which consisted in the use of the Italian navy near Libyan waters to rescue asylum seekers from the African coast.

As noble as its motivation may be, a side effect of the operation was to encourage even more people to undertake sea travel because now they are certain that the Italian navy will rescue them. The result was a 224% increase in the number of boats leaving Libya, which translates into an average of almost 10 million euro a month for the Italian government.

In November 2014 Mare Nostrum was replaced with the EU-coordinated and funded Triton, covering a smaller part of the Mediterranean at the cost of 3 million euro a month. The official reason for the Triton operation is to control borders, however once we look at facts the goal of the operation is simply to bring in as many people as possible, regardless of whether they are refugees, economic migrants, legals or illegals. Since then, smuggling channels instead of being stopped have multiplied.
An established practice since the “Mare Nostrum” operation, continued under Triton, was for smugglers to launch a rescue signal to the patrolling navy and request assistance. In the meanwhile, NGOs pursuing the “open borders” have joined forces with them, assisting anyone, legal, illegal, refugee, who wants to reach Europe.

The European Commission that is responsible for Frontex, and what follows border controls, has a clear opinion on the matter. Commissioner for Home Affairs, Migration and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos said: “Another important element that emerged strongly from the discussions on countering smuggling is that NGOs – and local and regional authorities – which provide assistance to smuggled migrants shall not be criminalised. I fully agree with this, of course, as I also agree on the need to protect the fundamental rights of those who are being smuggled. Those who we need to punish are the smugglers!”

Punishing the smugglers, unless they are part of NGOs, meaning the problem can’t and won’t be solved, because NGOs will always be free to smuggle migrants. This continues a well established tradition; during the Monti government in 2011-12 a Ministry for Immigration was created and given to Andrea Riccardi of the “Comunità of Sant’Egidio”, the prominent Italian open borders NGO. “Comunità of Sant’Egidio” runs projects such as “Humanitarian corridors”. The project funds an alternative route to bring people into Italy. Andrea Riccardi told the French media that he is convinced …read more

Source: Why The Italian Government Can’t Stop Refugee-Smuggling Boats? Because It Doesn’t Want To

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By Tyler Durden

At its peak, the Roman Empire held up to 130 million people over a span of 1.5 million square miles. Rome had conquered much of the known world. The Empire built 50,000 miles of roads, as well as many aqueducts, amphitheatres, and other works that are still in use today. Our alphabet, calendar, languages, literature, and architecture borrow much from the Romans. Even concepts of Roman justice still stand tall, such as being “innocent until proven guilty”. And so, as Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins asks (and answers): How could such a powerful empire collapse?

The Roman Economy

Trade was vital to Rome. It was trade that allowed a wide variety of goods to be imported into its borders: beef, grains, glassware, iron, lead, leather, marble, olive oil, perfumes, purple dye, silk, silver, spices, timber, tin and wine.

Trade generated vast wealth for the citizens of Rome. However, the city of Rome itself had only 1 million people, and costs kept rising as the empire became larger.

Administrative, logistical, and military costs kept adding up, and the Empire found creative new ways to pay for things.

Along with other factors, this led to hyperinflation, a fractured economy, localization of trade, heavy taxes, and a financial crisis that crippled Rome.

Roman Debasement

The major silver coin used during the first 220 years of the empire was the denarius.

This coin, between the size of a modern nickel and dime, was worth approximately a day’s wages for a skilled laborer or craftsman. During the first days of the Empire, these coins were of high purity, holding about 4.5 grams of pure silver.

However, with a finite supply of silver and gold entering the empire, Roman spending was limited by the amount of denarii that could be minted.

This made financing the pet-projects of emperors challenging. How was the newest war, thermae, palace, or circus to be paid for?

Roman officials found a way to work around this. By decreasing the purity of their coinage, they were able to make more “silver” coins with the same face value. With more coins in circulation, the government could spend more. And so, the content of silver dropped over the years.

By the time of Marcus Aurelius, the denarius was only about 75% silver. Caracalla tried a different method of debasement. He introduced the “double denarius”, which was worth 2x the denarius in face value. However, it had only the weight of 1.5 denarii. By the time of Gallienus, the coins had barely 5% silver. Each coin was a bronze core with a thin coating of silver. The shine quickly wore off to reveal the poor quality underneath.

The Consequences

The real effects of debasement took time to materialize.

Adding more coins of poorer quality into circulation did not help increase prosperity – it just transferred wealth away from the people, and it meant that more coins were needed to pay for goods and services.

At times, there was runaway inflation in the empire. For example, soldiers demanded far higher wages as the quality of …read more

Source: Currency & The Collapse Of The Roman Empire

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By Tyler Durden

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

There is absolutely no upside to any conflict with Russia when it comes to 99.9% of us. The fact so many pundits, anonymous intelligence officials and Hillary Clinton cultists are encouraging such an outcome based on zero publicly available evidence that Russia hacked the DNC/John Podesta and provided it to Wikileaks for the purpose of electing Trump, should be seen as the gigantic red flag that it is. So what’s actually going on? As is so often the case, it is all about money and power.

The best and most concise article I have read thus far explaining the driving influences behind all the anti-Russia/Putin hysteria was written a couple of weeks ago by Robert Parry of Consortium News. The post is titled, Making Russia ‘The Enemy’, and here are some key excerpts:

The rising hysteria about Russia is best understood as fulfilling two needs for Official Washington: the Military Industrial Complex’s transitioning from the “war on terror” to a more lucrative “new cold war” – and blunting the threat that a President Trump poses to the neoconservative/liberal-interventionist foreign-policy establishment.

Indeed, this is primarily about a failed establishment trying to maintain power in the face of repeated public catastrophes and pervasive corruption.

By hyping the Russian “threat,” the neocons and their liberal-hawk sidekicks, who include much of the mainstream U.S. news media, can guarantee bigger military budgets from Congress. The hype also sets in motion a blocking maneuver to impinge on any significant change in direction for U.S. foreign policy under Trump…

All of this maneuvering also is delaying the Democratic Party’s self-examination into why it lost so many white working-class voters in normally Democratic strongholds, such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Rather than national party leaders taking the blame for pre-selecting a very flawed candidate and ignoring all the warning signs about the public’s resistance to this establishment choice, Democrats have pointed fingers at almost everyone else – from FBI Director James Comey for briefly reviving Clinton’s email investigation, to third-party candidates who siphoned off votes, to the archaic Electoral College which negates the fact that Clinton did win the national popular vote – and now to the Russians.

Democrats now are excitedly joining the bash-Russia movement, making it harder to envision how the party can transition back into its more recent role as the “peace party” (at least relative to the extremely hawkish Republicans).

The potential trading places of the two parties in that regard – with Trump favoring geopolitical détente and the Democrats beating the drums for more military confrontations – augurs poorly for the Democrats regaining their political footing anytime soon.

If Democratic leaders press ahead, in alliance with neoconservative Republicans, on demands for escalating the New Cold War with Russia, they could precipitate a party split between Democratic hawks and doves, a schism that likely would have occurred if Clinton had been elected but now may happen anyway, albeit without the benefit of the party holding the White House.

…read more

Source: Who Benefits From War With Russia?

    

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