What Legal Sanctions Are Currently in Place Globally
Strategic Culture Foundation (RSS)

Sanctions are imposed by the United Nations Security Council to maintain or restore international peace and security under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. What is often referred to as “U.S. sanctions” are unilateral restrictive measures inconsistent with the international law. Today, there are 14 ongoing sanctions regimes which focus on supporting political settlement of conflicts, nuclear non-proliferation, and counter-terrorism. Each regime is administered by a sanctions committee chaired by a non-permanent member of the Security Council.

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 Creating the Capitalocene: Endless Accumulation
Strategic Culture Foundation (RSS)

By Patrick MAZZA

The world system we know today was born in a time roughly from the mid-14th to mid-17th centuries. We understand them as a time when the world came out of the “Dark Ages” into the Renaissance, when the light was breaking through. In truth, writes Fabian Scheidler, it was a time of unprecedented violence in Europe, of wars across the landscape culminating in the genocide of the indigenous of the Americas.

“ . . . why does the early modern period come across as the new era of progress and humanism (?) . . . The reason for cultivating this myth is obvious: it is crucial to the West’s narrative of being the bearer of progress throughout the history of mankind. But what if our present system was actually built on a nightmare, born of naked violence and sheer despair? . . . What if civilization did not make progress, but systematized barbarism instead?”

It is that system which threatens to plunge the world into final nightmares as we confront the consequences, of warfare and ecological destruction.  “  . . . we must thoroughly question the foundations of our economy, our state and much more,” Scheidler writes in his recent work, The End of the Megamachine: A Brief History of a Failing Civilization.

The central drive to accumulate capital

The system, or the Megamachine as Scheidler calls it, consolidated with the restoration of coin taxation, which under Rome and empires preceding it allowed the formation of standing armies. Mercenaries would provide kings the power to put down peasant revolts. Funded by Italian bankers, mercenary armies roamed Europe, consolidating it as a war economy during the Hundred Years War, which actually lasted from 1337-1453.

The invention of the cannon around 1450 drove the economic requirements of warfare much higher. States were driven to accumulate capital to compete. That flipped the emphasis from earlier empires such as Rome and China, the central goal of which was to consolidate state power. In Europe, instead the system became driven by the rationale of endless capital accumulation. The need for capital to build war machines drove wars to re-pay debt in an endless circle. In fact, the brutal colonization of the Americas and enslavement of populations to mine precious metals was driven by the need to pay bankers.

The infrastructure of capital accumulation was created in those centuries. The invention of double entry bookkeeping in 14th century Italy, with its sharp quantification of profit and loss, focused unlimited accumulation as a goal in itself. The authoritarian state was consolidated through draconian poor laws forcing people to work, the Inquisition and religious persecution, which actually intensified compared to the “Dark Ages.” Witch trials proliferated, notably in areas where greatest economic stress was causing peasant revolts.

Then in 1602, the first modern corporation was created, the Dutch East India Company, through which the state provided two vital guarantees. One was practical immortality. No longer would accumulation cease with the death of the individual, but be perpetuated institutionally over generations. The second was limited liability. Shareholders would only be liable for their own holdings in the corporation. The remainder of their wealth would be protected. These were revolutionary developments at the time.

Replacing the organic with the mechanical

Through these centuries, the intellectual infrastructure of the Megamachine was also created in philosophies of absolute control. The rise of...

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The Mortgage Market *JUST* COLLAPSED!


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