Headlines:

• Apartheid Nations
• The Return of Global Blocs?
• Capitalism is ‘Under Serious Threat’

Apartheid Nations

The Prime Minister of the Jewish entity Benjamin Netanyahu in a social media tweet said Israel is “not a state of all its citizens.” Netanyahu referred to a law passed last year declaring the Zionist entity the nation-state of the Jewish people. “Israel is not a state of all its citizens,” he wrote in response to criticism from an actor. “According to the basic nationality law we passed, ‘Israel’ is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it.” The law, passed last summer, downgraded the Arabic language from an official language to a language with “special status”, making Hebrew the only official language, and stipulated that “Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it.” If there was ever any doubt the Zionist entity is an apartheid state, that discriminates against its own Jews, it is the source of instability in the region.

The Return of Global Blocs?

The Financial Times has described tensions between China and the US as the new blocs taking shape re-creating a geopolitical dividing line. With countries increasingly expected to make clear whether they stand with Washington or Beijing. The latest example of this came last week, with the news that Italy is close to becoming the first G7 country to sign a memorandum of understanding endorsing China’s giant infrastructure project, known as the Belt and Road Initiative. Within hours, a White House spokesman had criticised the BRI as “made by China, for China”, and suggested that it would bring no benefits to Italy. This Sino-American struggle is also increasingly overt. The Trump administration’s decision to launch a trade war on China ended the era when both sides could insist that trade and investment were neutral territory that could be kept separate from strategic rivalry. At the same time, the sheer ambition of the BRI has stoked fears in Washington that China is entering a new phase in its rise to great power status.

Capitalism is ‘Under Serious Threat’

In a BBC interview Former Indian Central Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan has warned capitalism is “under serious threat” as it has stopped providing for the masses. “I think capitalism is under serious threat because it’s stopped providing for the many, and when that happens, the many revolt against capitalism.” Mr Rajan believes that capitalism is breaking down because it is not providing equal opportunities. “It’s not providing equal opportunity and in fact the people who are falling off are in a much worse situation,” he said. He said authoritarian regimes arise “when you socialise all the means of production”. “A balance is needed, you can’t pick and choose – what you need to do is improve opportunity.” In discussing the state of the global economy Mr Rajan, now a professor at the University of Chicago, also pointed to the challenges of putting limits on the trade of goods. “If you put up those barriers, then down the line they’ll put up barriers to our goods. How are you going to keep the goods flowing across those borders when we need to send them?”