Yesterday, after releasing a joint statement with France and Canada threatening “concrete actions” if Israel did not allow aid into Gaza, the UK government suspended talks on its upgraded free trade deal, summoned the Israeli ambassador, and imposed new sanctions on settlers in the occupied West Bank. While this might appear substantial for the goal of isolating the zionist state, it amounts to little more than face-saving measures.

In his speech announcing these measures, Lammy couldn’t even bear to say these words without condemning the October 7th operation and maintaining Israel’s right to commit genocide. We can’t fall for these empty measures, even if they appear to be a positive push toward some justice. In reality, they are a distraction and feign action from a government supporting Israel accelerates its genocidal attacks. Each day, as Israel commits new massacres with American weapons, it is using the RAF Akrotiri, a British military base on Cyprus to conduct surveillance flights and facilitate weapons transfers.

The government’s suspension of negotiations on its free trade agreement is misleading. This is not the existing free trade agreement in place between Britain and Israel, but a future plan to deepen relations. Known as the 2030 Roadmap, this was initiated under the previous Conservative government in 2022, and the Labour government continued them immediately after entering government in July 2024. Stopping these negotiations is a good first step, but they must end their current free trade agreement if Lammy’s words are worth their salt.

The sanctions on a handful of people and companies in the occupied West Bank might be a generally positive step. But at a closer look, these measures are only on three people, two outposts, and two organisations. All of the 700,000 settlers occupying the West Bank in their 150 settlements and 129 outposts are illegal under international law. These very narrow sanctions then give wider justification for the illegal occupation of the West Bank, scapegoating a handful of “extreme” characters but not contending with the occupation itself. Last year, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal. Once again, Britain is ignoring international law, just as it does in refusing to hand over surveillance data on Gaza to the International Criminal Court.

Britain’s recent moves should rightly be compared with the United States, which has formed the ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’, a private company of US military veteran mercenaries to run an aid distribution operation, better described as a trojan horse to occupy Gaza. As Israel accelerates its genocide in Gaza, the US and Britain are attempting to conceal their role in the violence. We might see these as necessary measures for Israel to be committing what many are referring to as the final stage in the genocide.

Over the past few days, the Starmer government’s statements have given us the illusion of a change in course towards Israel. In five of the past six days, Britain has flown a surveillance flight over Gaza for Israel.

Britain has made no material change in its policy of arming Israel, providing surveillance information, and using its military base on Cyprus for weapons shipments. Therefore, not only are these statements hollow and vacuous, but they are a pernicious and sly attempt to divert attention from Britain’s role as it directly participates in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.

On Sunday (May 18), Britain sent an A400M Atlas plane to Israel from RAF Akrotiri, its military base on Cyprus. This aircraft can carry up to 37 tonnes of cargo, including weapons and soldiers. Two hours later, it sent a surveillance flight over Gaza. These operations have been purposefully concealed from public knowledge, but this is clearly shifting. The only reason we know about these flights is because of the work of Matt Kennard, Declassified UK, and Genocide-Free Cyprus, amongst other groups. There clearly is mounting pressure as a result of the revelations of Britain’s direct role in Israel’s genocide, and perhaps we must recognise has a role in Lammy’s face-saving attempts.

Last week, the UK government defended its continued provision of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel, pointing to the need for “national security.” In court, they claimed “no genocide has occurred or is occurring,” that Israel is not “deliberately targeting civilian women or children.” Britain is defending Israel legally, diplomatically, and militarily. No statement can change that fact.

Israel stopped all aid trucks from entering Gaza on March 2. It has taken more than 11 weeks for the government to take any action at all. Every day, the Israeli occupation commits heinous massacres. They are even bragging that “the world won’t stop us.” And so far, they’re right.

In the face of this, we cannot despair. Palestinians in Gaza remain steadfast each day, for the 18 months of this escalation in the genocide that has been ongoing for more than 77 years. Smotrich, ‘Israeli Finance Minister’, says the “world won’t stop us”. Our leaders bought by zionism will certainly not, but the people will. We must continue our demands for a full arms embargo, an end to British surveillance flights, and the total liberation of Palestine.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Nuvpreet Kalra.

Map of Cyprus by Abraham Ortelius, 1527-1598. KB National Library of the Netherlands, Amsterdam. Public Domain

Prologue

An Orphic hymn says that Kypris, Aphrodite of Cyprus, was the “scheming mother of necessity.” She controlled and gave birth to the Earth, the sea, and the Cosmos (Orphic Hymn to Aphrodite 55). Another myth says that Aphrodite was born from the white aphros, foam, of the cut genitals of Ouranos (sky). The name Aphrodite comes from that sky aphros. She has the additional name of Kythereia because she first came close to the island of Kythera.

Venus (Aphrodite) Anadyomene (Rising from the aphros of the sea) by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1848. Louvre. Public Domain

Cyprus, however, like Greece, has millennia long history. In the Bronze Age Cyprus had a thriving copper trade with Eurasia. Its name, Cyprus, may be connected to copper, also known as Cyprus.

Cyprus is the third largest island in the Mediterranean, some 3,572 square miles in size. Nevertheless, Cyprus suffered the indignities of foreign occupation. Empires / states that occupied Cyprus include Assyria, Egypt, Persia, Greek Ptolemaic Egypt, Rome, Arab caliphates, France, Venice, Mongol Ottoman Turkey, and Britain. Cypriot Greeks revolted against the pro-Turkish British rule and won Independence in 1960. England took revenge by bringing Turkey back to Cyprus.

The pogrom of 1955

The Patriarch emerging from the ruined church of the Holy Vergin at the Belgrade Gate, Istanbul, Turkey, during Pogrom, September 6-7, 1955. From Dimitrios Kaloumenos, The Crucifixion of Christianity, 48th edition, Athens, 2001. Courtesy Leonidas Chrysanthopoulos.

The violence exploded with the 1955 vicious Turkish pogrom against 85,000 Greeks in Istanbul. The pogrom took place during the London conference on Cyprus in late August to early September 1955 between Britain, Turkey, and Greece. The collusion of Britain and Turkey in this conference was part and parcel of Turkey’s unleashing of the pogrom against the Greeks of Istanbul. The two events, the Cyprus conference and the pogrom became indistinguishable.

On the eve of the pogrom, activists marked the Greek homes and properties for destruction. They had learned a lesson from the 1572 Saint Bartholomew Day massacre in France. Once the pogrom was over, the pogromists nearly disappeared. They had succeeded in their mission beyond expectation. They provided the Turkish government a fig leaf for the utter destruction of the Greeks of Istanbul.

Speros Vryonis, UCLA professor of history, explained the pogrom as an expression of “the depth of the inherited, historical hatred of much of Turkish Islam for everything non-Muslim.” That’s why religious fanaticism was “at the core of the pogrom’s fury.” This invested the pogromists with limitless violence. Their destruction of the Greeks’ property, and household and livelihood, what the Greeks call noikokirio, was “the most extensive and intensively organized” in the 500 years since Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453. The Turks destroyed more than 4,000 to 4,500 businesses and 3,500 homes; they wrecked about 90 percent of the Greek churches, showing off their “fervid chauvinism” and “profound religious fanaticism,” desecrating icons, defecating, and urinating on altars. They mocked, beat, and circumcised clerics. They exhumed and knifed the dead in the cemeteries, behaving like savage barbarians.

Shock, outrage and fear

On the aftermath of the pogrom, Greek Turkish relations took the form of a non-shooting war. Greece kept sending Turkey one memorandum after another, reminding Menderes of his responsibility to compensate the injured Greeks of Istanbul while punishing those who destroyed the Greek community. Menderes ignored the pleas of the Greek government but kept making the life of the Greeks in Turkey unbearable. Finally, on May 27, 1960, a military coup brought down the Menderes government, putting to death Menderes and his two closest associates. But the generals continued Menderes’ policies. Their “neo-Ottoman imperialism” armed Turkey to the teeth, crashing the Kurds. In 1974, with the permission of the US and England, Turkey, guided by the military, invaded, and occupied forty percent of Cyprus where they put into practice the cleansing policies Menderes tested in 1955 against the Greeks in Istanbul.

UN administrative zone in Nicosia. Behind this zone is the Turkish occupied territory of Cyprus — since 1974. Courtesy Lobby for Cyprus.

The Turks, embolden by the tacit approval of the US, which has been funding their armaments, continue to violate Greek airspace, an aggression they have been carrying out since 1964. And yet, despite this Turkish record of enmity against Greece, a behavior bordering on perpetual war, Greece on the surface persists in being friendly to Turkey. There’s no other explanation for such incomprehensive and demeaning Greek submission to the strategic aggression of Turkey in the Aegean than the dictates of America. The dogma of Imia still stands. The US considers Turkey a more important ally than Greece. The Turkish violations of Greek air space and Greek sovereignty in the Aegean Sea show the Europeans and Americans the real genocidal face of the Islamic state of Turkey. Neither NATO not the European Union react to the hostility of Turkey against Greece, member of both NATO and EU and a country that civilized the Western world. And Greece keeps following the American and NATO dictates of bowing to Turkey’s demands. Turkey even prevents Greece from connecting Crete to Cyprus with underwater cables. Turkish warships threaten war and disrupt the Greek exploration and works in the Greek Aegean Sea.

Despite Turkish aggression, Britain and America cooked the 1967 Greek military coup in Athens and the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus.

A Greek agent?

I came to the United States to study. During 1967 to 1972, I was a graduate student. I was concerned that soldiers governed Greece. But I did not have a clue of American meddling in the hatching of the coup or plans against Cyprus. My postdoctoral studies in the history of science at Harvard did not help to clear the picture. My Harvard studies brought me to Washington, DC, where I worked for a Congressional Committee, the Office of Technology Assessment. Then I joined the staff of Congressman Clarence Long (D-Maryland). This was in 1978, four years after the Turks occupied the northern half of Cyprus. The Cypriot ambassador met with Long, and I prepared the background for the meeting. I found the argument of the ambassador compelling. He was requesting about 15 million dollars to assist the internal refugees following the brutal Turkish invasion. Privately, I explained to the Congressman that what happened to Cyprus was catastrophic. I said the US should have never allowed, much less encouraged, Turkey to embark on such an atrocity.

A couple of months later, Congressman Long said to me, through his chief of staff, I should be looking for another job. Long himself said to me: “I never thought I hired a Greek agent.” It was useless to argue with him. He liked to be addressed as Dr. Long. He pretended he was against corruption. I convinced him to investigate the corrupt International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, both creatures of the US Treasury Department. I prepared hearings on IMF and the World Bank, only to find out Long cancelled the hearings all together – at the last moment . Lobbyists crawled all over his office.

Cypria

With this background, we turn to a richly rewarding and memorable and beautifully written book about Cyprus, the island of Aphrodite. The book has an ancient Greek title, Cypria: A Journey to the Heart of the Mediterranean (Bloomsbury Continuum, 2024). The author is a British Cypriot writer and publisher, Alex Christofi.

Cypria, a lost Cypriot epic on the origins of the Trojan War, in the hands of Christofi becomes Cyprus. This is a beautiful island in the heart of the Mediterranean. Christofi relates the history of Cyprus like a personal journey, something like another Odyssey. He has no doubt that Cyprus is the Elysian Fields of gods and men. He says that Aphrodite came out of the waters of the Cypriot city of Paphos. I fully understand Christofi. When my daughter was very young, I used to tell her I was the first cousin of Odysseus. My struggles in America and efforts to return to Greece were Odysseys. All that accumulated passion for return, Nostos, would often explode in tears during “nostimon emar,” the day of return. But for Christofi, in addition to his love for Cyprus, he speaks about the strategic place of Cyprus at the intersection of Africa, Asia and Europe in the Mediterranean. Then he cites the island’s Greek traditions. He is proud of the Cypriot Greek script and that Cypriots claimed Homer as their own poet. He is right saying “Cypriots were the first to learn the vital secret of smelting iron.” The Cypriots also had a purple dying industry in their polis of Kition before 1,000 BCE.

In the Classical Age, Christofi highlights the Stoic philosophy of Zeno of Kition who flourished in Athens in late fourth century BCE. Zeno, says Christofi, “built a stupendous fortune of 6 million drachmas by trading purple dye across the Mediterranean.” However, Zeno lost his boats in a storm while in Piraeus, the harbor of Athens. At that moment, Zeno decided to educate himself. He spent 20 years following Greek philosophers. When he started giving his own lectures in the Stoa of Athens, he proposed a way of life that attracted millions for about 800 years. Christofi sums up Zeno’s philosophy, Stoicism. “Living well,” he says, “is simple: be strict with yourself and tolerant of others; if it isn’t right, don’t do it; if it’s not true, don’t say it; the best revenge is not to be like your enemy. More than anything – and you can imagine how this went down with the other philosophers – stop arguing about what it takes to be a good person and be one.”

Starting in the fourth century of our era, 800 years after Zeno, the Greek civilization of Cyprus and Greece came under ceaseless attacks by Christianity and, in the seventh century and after, by Islam. Both antagonistic and warring religions arrived in Cyprus early. Christofi, an Eastern Orthodox Christian, likes both religions. In fact, he writes with deep respect and affection for Islam. His friendly narrative on the Ottoman Mongol Sultans becomes lyrical when he describes Sultan Suleiman.

He says that, up to mid-twentieth century, Christian and Moslem Cypriots respected each other’s religion. Yet the Mongol Turks for centuries were vicious and genocidal against the Greeks.

In 1570 -1571 the Mongol Turkish troops captured Cyprus. They slaughtered many Greek Cypriots, looted the treasures of people, and enslaved the Greek population of Cyprus. “[The large polis of Cyprus,]Nicosia,” says Christofi, was pillaged, its inhabitants variously raped, murdered and enslaved.”

The rule of Turks in Cyprus was brutal and genocidal. The Greek Revolution of 1821 unsettled the oppressors of Cyprus. Just to terrorize the Cypriots so they would not follow the paradigm of their brothers and sisters in Greece, the Turks hanged hundreds of Cypriots, including the Archbishop of Cyprus Kyprianos. The next crucial date is 1878 when Sultan Abdul Hamid II handed Cyprus to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, with the promise that England would protect the Ottoman empire from Russia.

As I mentioned, Britain treated Cyprus harshly, its primary concern was to keep Turkey powerful and Greece and the Cypriot Greeks weak. Christofi says:

“Cyprus is in the middle of the sea at the meeting point of three continents, an island that only exists in the tension between the Eurasian, Arabian and African tectonic plates… It now connects the three continents umbilically as a major hub for undersea fibre-optic cables, a nerve-centre of the modern age. It is a crossroads, its identity ambiguous, contested – the only EU member that the UN places in Asia…. Our history is kaleidoscopic: a church built on the foundation of a temple to Aphrodite; a mosque that takes the form of a French Gothic church; a museum that was a British prison, that was an Ottoman fort, that was unhewn stone, trodden by pygmy hippopotami… I am an I that shouldn’t exist, a happiness born out of suffering, standing between the fortress and the open sea.”

Read Cypria. It’s an incisive and inspiring and timely story of Cyprus, especially the bloodletting of the twentieth century. Turkey is entrenched in northern Cyprus for 50 years. It threatens Greece and Greek Democratic Cyprus. And of the great powers, America, Russia, China, India and the European Union, no one dares to order Turkey off Cyprus. So the struggle for freedom and union of Cyprus with Greece must continue. Christofi’s Cypria is a superb introduction to the history of Cyprus, why it is our moral duty to free northern Cyprus from the genocidal impulse of Islamic Turkey.

The post Cypria: The Struggle of Cyprus for Freedom and Union with Greece appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Evaggelos Vallianatos.

Even more impressive, however, is the infrastructure China has built, including 26,000 miles of high speed rail, the world’s largest hydroelectric power station, the longest sea-crossing bridge in the world, 100,000 miles of expressway, the world’s first commercial magnetic levitation train, the world’s largest urban metro network, seven of the world’s 10 busiest ports, and solar and wind power generation accounting for over 35% of global renewable energy capacity. Topping the list is the Belt and Road Initiative, an infrastructure development program involving 140 countries, through which China has invested in ports, railways, highways and energy projects worldwide.

All that takes money. Where did it come from? Numerous funding sources are named in mainstream references, but the one explored here is a rarely mentioned form of quantitative easing — the central bank just “prints the money.” (That’s the term often used, though printing presses aren’t necessarily involved.)

From 1996 to 2024, the Chinese national money supply increased by a factor of more than 53 or 5300% — from 5.84 billion to 314 billion Chinese yuan (CNY) [see charts below]. How did that happen? Exporters brought the foreign currencies (largely U.S. dollars) they received for their goods to their local banks and traded them for the CNY needed to pay their workers and suppliers. The central bank —the Public Bank of China or PBOC — printed CNY and traded them for the foreign currencies, then kept the foreign currencies as reserves, effectively doubling the national export revenue.

Investopedia confirms that policy, stating:

One major task of the Chinese central bank, the PBOC, is to absorb the large inflows of foreign capital from China’s trade surplus. The PBOC purchases foreign currency from exporters and issues that currency in local yuan. The PBOC is free to publish any amount of local currency and have it exchanged for forex. … The PBOC can print yuan as needed …. [Emphasis added.]

Interestingly, that huge 5300% explosion in local CNY did not trigger runaway inflation. In fact China’s consumer inflation rate, which was as high as 24% in 1994, leveled out after that and averaged 2.5% per year from 1996 to 2023.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHN/china/inflation-rate-cpi?form=MG0AV3

How was that achieved? As in the U.S., the central bank engages in “open market operations” (selling federal securities into the open market, withdrawing excess cash). It also imposes price controls on certain essential commodities. According to a report by Nasdaq, China has implemented price controls on iron ore, copper, corn, grain, meat, eggs and vegetables as part of its 14th five-year plan (2021-2025), to ensure food security for the population. Particularly important in maintaining price stability, however, is that the money has gone into manufacturing, production and infrastructure. GDP (supply) has gone up with demand (money), keeping prices stable. [See charts below.]

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m2Gross Domestic Product for China (MKTGDPCNA646NWDB) | FRED | St. Louis Fed

Gross Domestic Product for China (MKTGDPCNA646NWDB) | FRED | St. Louis Fed

The U.S., too, has serious funding problems today, and we have engaged in quantitative easing (QE) before. Could our central bank also issue the dollars we need without triggering the dreaded scourge of hyperinflation? This article will argue that we can. But first some Chinese economic history.

From Rags to Riches in Four Decades

China’s rise from poverty began in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping introduced market-oriented reforms. Farmers were allowed to sell their surplus produce in the market, doors were opened to foreign investors and private businesses and foreign companies were encouraged to grow. By the 1990s, China had become a major exporter of low-cost manufactured goods. Key factors included cheap labor, infrastructure development and World Trade Organization membership in 2001.

Chinese labor is cheaper than in the U.S. largely because the government funds or subsidizes social needs, reducing the operational costs of Chinese companies and improving workforce productivity. The government invests heavily in public transportation infrastructure, including metros, buses and high-speed rail, making them affordable for workers and reducing the costs of getting manufacturers’ products to market.

The government funds education and vocational training programs, ensuring a steady supply of skilled workers, with government-funded technical schools and universities producing millions of graduates annually. Affordable housing programs are provided for workers, particularly in urban areas.

China’s public health care system, while not free, is heavily subsidized by the government. And a public pension system reduces the need for companies to offer private retirement plans. The Chinese government also provides direct subsidies and incentives to key industries, such as technology, renewable energy and manufacturing.

After it joined the WTO, China’s exports grew rapidly, generating large trade surpluses and an influx of foreign currency, allowing the country to accumulate massive foreign exchange reserves. In 2010, China surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest exporter. In the following decade, it shifted its focus to high-tech industries, and in 2013 the Belt and Road Initiative was launched. The government directed funds through state-owned banks and enterprises, with an emphasis on infrastructure and industrial development.

Funding Exponential Growth

In the early stages of reform, foreign investment was a key source of capital. Export earnings then generated significant foreign exchange reserves. China’s high savings rate provided a pool of liquidity for investment, and domestic consumption grew. Decentralizing the banking system was also key. According to a lecture by U.K. Prof. Richard Werner:

Deng Xiaoping started with one mono bank. He realized quickly, scrap that; we’re going to have a lot of banks. He created small banks, community banks, savings banks, credit unions, regional banks, provincial banks. Now China has 4,500 banks. That’s the secret to success. That’s what we have to aim for. Then we can have prosperity for the whole world. Developing countries don’t need foreign money. They just need community banks supporting [local business] to have the money to get the latest technology.

China managed to avoid the worst impacts of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. It did not devalue its currency; it maintained strict control over capital flows and the PBOC acted as a lender of last resort, providing liquidity to state-controlled banks when needed.

In the 1990s, however, its four major state banks did suffer massive losses, with non-performing loans totaling more than 20% of their assets. Technically, the banks were bankrupt, but the government did not let them go bust. The non-performing loans were moved on to the balance sheets of four major asset management companies (“bad banks”), and the PBOC injected new capital into the “good banks.”

In a January 2024 article titled “The Chinese Economy Is Due a Round of Quantitative Easing,” Prof. Li Wei, Director of the China Economy and Sustainable Development Center, wrote of this policy, “The central bank directly intervened in the economy by creating money. Seen this way, unconventional financing is nothing less than Chinese-style quantitative easing.”

In an August 2024 article titled “China’s 100-billion-yuan Question: Does Rare Government Bond Purchase Alter Policy Course?,” Sylvia Ma wrote of China’s forays into QE:

Purchasing government bonds in the secondary market is allowed under Chinese law, but the central bank is forbidden to subscribe to bonds directly issued by the finance ministry. [Note that this is also true of the U.S. Fed.] Such purchases from traders were tried on a small scale 20 years ago.

However, the monetary authority resorted more to printing money equivalent to soaring foreign exchange reserves from 2001, as the country saw a robust increase in trade surplus following its accession to the World Trade Organization. [Emphasis added.]

This is the covert policy of printing CNY and trading this national currency for the foreign currencies (mostly U.S. dollars) received from exporters.

What does the PBOC do with the dollars? It holds a significant portion as foreign exchange reserves, to stabilize the CNY and manage currency fluctuations; it invests in U.S. Treasury bonds and other dollar-denominated assets to earn a return; and it uses U.S. dollars to facilitate international trade deals, many of which are conducted in dollars.

The PBOC also periodically injects capital into the three “policy banks” through which the federal government implements its five-year plans. These are China Development Bank, the Export-Import Bank of China, and the Agricultural Development Bank of China, which provide loans and financing for domestic infrastructure and services as well as for the Belt and Road Initiative. A January 2024 Bloomberg article titled “China Injects $50 Billion Into Policy Banks in Financing Push” notes that the policy banks “are driven by government priorities more than profits,” and that some economists have called the PBOC funding injections “helicopter money” or “Chinese-style quantitative easing.”

Prof. Li argues that with the current insolvency of major real estate developers and the rise in local government debt, China should engage in this overt form of QE today. Other commentators agree, and the government appears to be moving in that direction. Prof. Li writes:

As long as it does not trigger inflation, quantitative easing can quickly and without limit generate sufficient liquidity to resolve debt issues and pump confidence into the market.…

Quantitative easing should be the core of China’s macroeconomic policy, with more than 80% of funds coming from QE…

As the central bank is the only institution in China with the power to create money, it has the ability to create a stable environment for economic growth. [Emphasis added.]

Eighty-percent funding just from money-printing sounds pretty radical, but China’s macroeconomic policy is determined by five-year plans designed to serve the public and the economy, and the policy banks funding the plans are publicly-owned. That means profits are returned to the public purse, avoiding the sort of private financialization and speculative exploitation resulting when the U.S. Fed engaged in QE to bail out the banks after the 2007-08 banking crisis.

The U.S. Too Could Use Another Round of QE — and Some Public Policy Banks

There is no law against governments or their central banks just printing the national currency without borrowing it first. The U.S. Federal Reserve has done it, Abraham Lincoln’s Treasury did it, and it is probably the only way out of our current federal debt crisis. As Prof. Li observes, we can do it “without limit” so long as it does not trigger inflation.

Financial commentator Alex Krainer observes that the total U.S. debt, public and private, comes to more than $101 trillion (citing the St. Louis Fed’s graph titled “All Sectors; Debt Securities and Loans”). But the monetary base — the reserves available to pay that debt — is only $5.6 trillion. That means the debt is 18 times the monetary base. The U.S. economy holds far fewer dollars than we need for economic stability.

The dollar shortfall can be filled debt- and interest-free by the U.S. Treasury, just by printing dollars as Lincoln’s Treasury did (or by issuing them digitally). It can also be done by the Fed, which “monetizes” federal securities by buying them with reserves it issues on its books, then returns the interest to the Treasury and after deducting its costs. If the newly-issued dollars are used for productive purposes, supply will go up with demand, and prices should remain stable.

Note that even social services, which don’t directly produce revenue, can be considered “productive” in that they support the “human capital” necessary for production. Workers need to be healthy and well educated in order to build competitively and well, and the government needs to supplement the social costs borne by companies if they are to compete with China’s subsidized businesses.

Parameters would obviously need to be imposed to circumscribe Congress’s ability to spend “without limit,” backed by a compliant Treasury or Fed. An immediate need is for full transparency in budgeted expenditures. The Pentagon, for example, spends nearly $1 trillion of our taxpayer money annually and has never passed a clean audit, as required by law.

We Sorely Need an Infrastructure Bank

The U.S. is one of the few developed countries without an infrastructure bank. Ironically, it was Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Treasury secretary, who developed the model. Winning freedom from Great Britain left the young country with what appeared to be an unpayable debt. Hamilton traded the debt and a percentage of gold for non-voting shares in the First U.S. Bank, paying a 6% dividend. This capital was then leveraged many times over into credit to be used specifically for infrastructure and development. Based on the same model, the Second U.S. Bank funded the vibrant economic activity of the first decades of the United States.

In the 1930s, Roosevelt’s government pulled the country out of the Great Depression by repurposing a federal agency called the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) into a lending machine for development on the Hamiltonian model. Formed under the Hoover administration, the RFC was not actually an infrastructure bank but it acted like one. Like China Development Bank, it obtained its liquidity by issuing bonds.

The primary purchaser of RFC bonds was the federal government, driving up the federal debt; but the debt to GDP ratio evened out over the next four decades, due to the dramatic increase in productivity generated by the RFC’s funding of the New Deal and World War II. That was also true of the federal debt after the American Revolution and the Civil War.

One chart that tells the story of US debt from 1790 to 2011

A pending bill for an infrastructure bank on the Hamiltonian model is HR 4052, The National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2023, which ended 2024 with 48 sponsors and was endorsed by dozens of legislatures, local councils, and organizations. Like the First and Second U.S. Banks, it is intended to be a depository bank capitalized with existing federal securities held by the private sector, for which the bank will pay an additional 2% over the interest paid by the government. The bank will then leverage this capital into roughly 10 times its value in loans, as all depository banks are entitled to do. The bill proposes to fund $5 trillion in infrastructure capitalized over a 10-year period with $500 billion in federal securities exchanged for preferred (non-voting) stock in the bank. Like the RFC, the bank will be a source of off-budget financing, adding no new costs to the federal budget. (For more information, see https://www.nibcoalition.com/.)

Growing Our Way Out of Debt

Rather than trying to kneecap our competitors with sanctions and tariffs, we can grow our way to prosperity by turning on the engines of production. Far more can be achieved through cooperation than through economic warfare. DeepSeek set the tone with its free, open source model. Rather than a heavily guarded secret, its source code is freely available to be shared and built upon by entrepreneurs around the world.

We can pull off our own economic miracle, funded with newly issued dollars backed by the full faith and credit of the government and the people. Contrary to popular belief, “full faith and credit” is valuable collateral, something even Bitcoin and gold do not have. It means the currency will be accepted everywhere – not just at the bank or the coin dealer’s but at the grocer’s and the gas station. If the government directs newly created dollars into new goods and services, supply will grow along with demand and the currency should retain its value. The government can print, pay for workers and materials, and produce its way into an economic renaissance.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ellen Brown.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

It’s the third rooftop installation of a solar-powered water heating system that Petros Mihali and his assistant, Soteris, have made in the Cypriot capital since their working day began at 7am.

The process is perfectly choreographed and almost always the same: in the searing midday sun, the crane bolted on to the truck hoists the boiler up first, then the black-paned solar panels, then the galvanized steel mount on which the entire system will stand. Within two hours of the thermal technology being set up, the household, say the Thriamvos company employees, will have “gone solar.”

“We do around four installations a day across Cyprus,” says Mihali. “And each takes little more than two hours at most because, like the system itself, it’s all so easy.”

Cyprus has outstripped all other EU member states in embracing hot-water solar systems, with an estimated 93.5 percent of households exploiting the alternative energy form for domestic needs.

EU figures show the eastern Mediterranean island exceeding renewable energy targets set in the heating and cooling of buildings thanks to the widespread use of the solar thermal technology.

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“There are many areas where Cyprus has not achieved greenhouse gas emission goals,” says Charalampos Theopemptou, the island’s first environment commissioner. “But in terms of renewable energy resources being used for the sustainable heating and cooling of buildings, we’ve met the target easily, precisely because of such extensive utilization of solar water heaters for so many years.”

Theopemptou, a Green Party MP who heads the Cypriot parliament’s environment committee, can still vividly recall seeing the first solar water heating system installed on the rooftop of his wife’s family home almost 60 years ago.

“It was in the late 1960s that the water heaters were introduced to Cyprus, and I can still remember the very first system here because it happened to be erected on the roof of that building in Nicosia,” he recalls. “The Israelis were the ones to introduce the technology to us and it quickly took off because it’s so simple. All you need are solar panels, a tank and copper pipes. Ever since, it’s been a wonderful solution to the hot water needs of households here.”

The solar thermal systems not only collected solar energy as heat – usually generated through electricity and the burning of fossil fuels – they were extremely cost-effective and had helped spawn an entire industry, he explains.

“It’s been great for low-income families and then there’s the jobs: so many have been generated,” the MP says. “There are the local manufacturers who produce the parts and then all the people who are trained to install them. It’s big business.”

In his role as environment commissioner, Theopemptou pushed hard to make the solar systems obligatory on all newly constructed residential and commercial buildings – a move instituted by Israel back in the 1970s.

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“In my role as commissioner it was a priority,” he says. “Architects now have to make sure that rooftops not only have enough space for the installations but that they can also carry the weight.”

The popularity of the water heaters is such that a union of local solar thermal industrialists was established in 1977. Since then, more than 962,564 square cubic meters of “solar [panel] collectors” have been installed, the union says.

Increasingly, the country’s vibrant tourist industry has also resorted to the green solution with solar-powered hot water systems deployed in, they say, close to 100 percent of hotels.

Electricity was slow to reach households across Cyprus. It wasn’t until 1903 that electricity was introduced by the British colonial government to the island. In 1952, eight years before the country won independence, its Electricity Authority was eventually established. In fact, in remote areas the solar systems were often put on to village rooftops before the arrival of the power grid.

With most of the network still running on mazut fuel oil or diesel, Cyprus is among the cohort of EU countries forced to buy emission quotas from other member states to meet legal objectives – an obligation that accounts for up to a third of the monthly cost of electricity bills, much to the ire of Cypriot households. That has also played a role in homeowners installing solar water heating systems.

For Demetra Asprou, a retired engineer, it’s obvious that a region blessed with more than 300 days of sunshine a year should embrace solar energy. “It reduces electricity costs, increases the efficiency with which hot water is provided and is kind to the environment,” she says. “Why would anyone use other, more traditional means to heat up water when only a few hours of sunlight, between 11am and 2pm, is enough for a 200-liter [44-gallon] tank to be filled with warm water that will last 48 hours? On days when there is no sunlight, which is rare, you always have electricity as a backup if necessary.”

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Now in her 70s, Asprou, who lives in a Finnish-style log house in the foothills of the Troodos Mountains, a 30-minute drive from Nicosia, was a convert to the thermal system nearly 40 years ago.

“Installation costs may be three times higher today, but there are EU-funded grants that the government hands out and within a year it’s all paid off,” she says. “After that, you basically have free hot water and see your electricity bills greatly reduced. In a country like Cyprus, it’s a no-brainer.”

Theopemptou accepts that the solar systems have one drawback: they’re not good for the skyline. “There’s no way about it, they’re ugly on a rooftop,” he laments. “If I have one regret its that we didn’t manage to introduce regulations to improve the aesthetics of the installations. That said, I still believe they should be mandated on all buildings across the region, given the great number of days we have sunshine in the Mediterranean.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘You basically have free hot water’: how Cyprus became a world leader in solar heating on Sep 28, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Helena Smith, The Guardian.

Düzgün told CPJ via messaging app on November 21 that he had been stopped at customs at the Sabiha Gökçen Airport in Istanbul by the passport police, who told him that he was not allowed into Turkey. When he asked why, the journalist was told he had an “N82”code near his name on the records and asked to return to Cyprus, which he did. He had been traveling to Istanbul for a meeting with a Turkish news agency, the journalist added.

N82 is a restriction code used to block certain foreigners’ entry to Turkey for security reasons, Havadis reported.

Düzgün is a citizen of the Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus, which declared independence in 1976, three years after Turkey’s partial invasion of the island, but is not recognized by any other country besides Turkey.

“I was denied entry because I have been criticizing the works of the [Turkey’s ruling] Justice and Development Party in Cyprus,” Düzgün told CPJ, when asked why he thinks he was banned from entry. The journalist argued that Turkey’s government has been intervening in the domestic policies of Northern Cyprus, and his critical reporting on these matters led to his ban.

Düzgün said he tried to get information from the Turkish embassy in Northern Cyprus via his lawyer but did not receive any reply.

CPJ emailed Turkey’s Interior Ministry for comment but did not receive any reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Jennifer Dunham.

What is certain, however, is that the Middle East is already in the throes of a major geostrategic war, which has the potential of becoming an actual military confrontation.

Unsurprisingly, Israel is at the heart of this growing conflict.

“Last week, we started to stream gas to Egypt. We turned Israel into an energy superpower,” Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, bragged during a cabinet meeting on January 19.

Netanyahu’s self-congratulating remarks came on the heels of some exciting financial news for the embattled Prime Minister, as both Jordan and Egypt are now Tel Aviv’s clients, receiving billions of cubic meters of Israeli gas.

For Netanyahu, pumping Israeli gas to two neighboring Arab countries constitutes more than just economic and political advantages – it is a huge personal boost. The Israeli leader is trying to convince the public to vote for him in yet another general election in March, while pleading to Israel’s political elite to give him immunity so that he can stay out of prison for various corruption charges.

For years, Israel has been exploiting the discovery of massive deposits of natural gas from the Leviathan and Tamar fields – located nearly 125 km and 80 km west of Haifa respectively – to reconstruct regional alliances and to redefine its geopolitical centrality to Europe.

The Israeli strategy, however, has already created potentials for conflict in an already unstable region, expanding the power play to include Cyprus, Greece, France, Italy, and Libya, as well as Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, and Russia.

On January 2, Netanyahu was in Athens signing a gas pipeline deal, alongside Greek Prime Minister, Kyriako Mitotakis, and Cyprus President, Nicos Anastasiades.

The EastMed pipeline is projected to travel from Israel to Cyprus, to Greece and, ultimately, to Italy, thus transporting eastern Mediterranean gas directly to the heart of Europe.

A few years ago, this scenario seemed unthinkable, as Israel has, in fact, imported much of its natural gas from neighboring Egypt.

Israel’s Tamar field partly rectified Israel’s reliance on imported gas when it began production in 2003. Shortly after, Israel struck gas again, this time with far greater potential, in the massive Leviathan field. On December 31, 2019, Leviathan began pumping gas for the first time.

Leviathan is located in the Mediterranean Sea’s Levantine Basin, a region that is rich with hydrocarbons.

“Leviathan is estimated to hold over 21 trillion cubic feet of natural gas—enough to fill Israeli power-generation needs for the next 40 years, while still leaving an ample supply for export,” wrote Frank Musmar in the BESA Center for Strategic Studies.

Egypt’s share of Israeli gas – 85 billion cubic meters (bcm), with an estimated cost of $19.5 billion – is acquired through the private Egyptian entity Dolphinus Holdings. The Jordanian deal was signed between the country’s national electricity company NEPCO, and American firm, Noble Energy, which owns a 45% stake in the Israeli project.

Jordanians have been protesting Israel’s gas deal en-masse, as they view economic cooperation between their country and Israel as an act of normalization, especially as Tel Aviv continues to occupy and oppress Palestinians.

The echoes of the popular protests have reached the Jordanian parliament which, on January 19, unanimously voted in favor of a law to ban gas imports from Israel.

Israel is diversifying beyond exerting regional economic dominance to becoming a big player on the international geopolitical stage as well. The EastMed pipeline project, estimated at €6bn, is expected to cover 10% of Europe’s overall need for natural gas. This is where things get even more interesting.

Turkey believes that the deal, which involves its own regional rivals, Cyprus and Greece, is designed specifically to marginalize it economically by excluding it from the Mediterranean’s hydrocarbon boom.

Ankara is already a massive energy hub, being the host of TurkStream, which feeds Europe, with approximately 40% of its needs of natural gas coming from Russia. This fact has provided both Moscow and Ankara not only with more than economic advantages but geostrategic leverage as well. If the EastMed pipeline becomes a reality, Turkey and Russia will stand to lose the most.

In a series of successive, and surprising moves, Turkey retaliated by signing a maritime border deal with Libya’s internationally-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), and by committing to send military support to help Tripoli in its fight against forces loyal to General Khalifa Haftar.

“Turkey will not permit any activity that is against its own interests in the region,” Fuat Oktay, Turkey’s Vice-President, told Anadolu News Agency, adding that “any plan that disregards Turkey has absolutely no chance of success.”

Although European countries were quick to condemn Ankara, the latter has succeeded in changing the rules of the game by staking a claim to vast areas that are also claimed by Greece and Cyprus as part of their so-called exclusive economic zones (EEZ).

Not only will Turkey be drilling in Libya’s territorial waters for natural gas, but in disputed water near Cyprus as well. Ankara is accusing Cyprus of violating “the equal claim to discoveries”, an arrangement that followed the military conflict between both countries in 1974.

If the issue is not resolved, the EastMed pipeline project could potentially turn into a pipedream. What seemed like a lucrative deal, with immense geopolitical significance from an Israeli point of view, now appears to be another extension of the wider Middle Eastern conflict.

While the EU is eager to loosen Russia’s strategic control over the natural gas market, the EastMed pipeline increasingly appears unfeasible from every possible angle.

However, considering the massive deposits of natural gas that are ready to fuel struggling European markets, it is almost certain that the Mediterranean natural gas will eventually become a major source of political disputes, if not a war.

            <p class="postmeta">This article was posted on Tuesday, January 28th, 2020 at 5:14pm and is filed under <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/europe/cyprus/" rel="category tag">Cyprus</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/europe/greece/" rel="category tag">Greece</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/middle-east/israel/" rel="category tag">Israel</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/middle-east/turkey/president-recep-tayyip-erdogan/" rel="category tag">President Recep Tayyip Erdogan</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/middle-east/turkey/" rel="category tag">Turkey</a>.