It is a common misconception that the power and might of the US is waning because of such ‘set-backs’ as the agreement forced upon it by the Russians on Syria’s chemical weaponry. On the contrary, the US fully employs the constant threat of the might of its military and does not even need to go to actual wars to press its demands. It will get what it wants with the destruction of Syria’s threat to Israel as demonstrated by the fact that Kerry went directly to Israel after the agreement was signed to assure Israel’s government about his achievement of a much diminished pressure from Syria on Israel.

Israel is after all the heavily fortified outpost of US power controlling the sea lane of the Suez Canal much like the Rock of Gibraltar fulfills a function for the British government for control of the narrows of the sea lane entrance into the Mediterranean. Yemen may well be the next project to be tackled because it is at the narrow entrance to the Red sea (as the US is already proving by its drone actions on that country). Securing the tactically important access into the Mediterranean has been a project for a long time and Turkey has to be controlled carefully not to evoke too much pressure from Russia about its own access though the Dardanelles.

America’s strength grows exponentially with its financial banking power which rests on the fact that the dollar remains the world’s reserve currency used for all transactions in basic energy resources. Threats to its financial hegemony by such as Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi to transfer payments for their raw energy products into the European Euro have been effectively and quickly resolved by their overthrow and elimination. Neither Russia nor China forms much of a threat to the US commercial and military enterprise because both large nations have huge problems with their own building up of prosperity for their populations. We live in a uni-polar world entirely regulated by US demands and requirements.

In fact it is highly probable that the 2008 financial crash was very carefully engineered to considerably weaken the world economy in order for the US to strengthen its control which was cemented by heavily investing its public funds into the Wall street banks that in fact form the core of its power. There is therefore no separation of government and the financial institutions as there was no difference between the government and industry in the years between 1940 and 1970. The common purpose is and has been to form a strong block of undivided totalitarian-like interests to control the Western hemisphere. That this is no longer very easy does not detract from the fact that the power of the US is not at all diminishing but is remaining vital, despite heavy competition from the increased world production of goods. The US acts and the world reacts.

Every political executive is carefully vetted before installation so that every president represents the US power block whether he/she was elected from either branch of the ruling Democrat / Republican Party. The debate about the vote and its restrictions has only propagandistic value, as in the end it does not matter who is elected because the power block is being served in whatever shape or flavor the president and congress come. In the mean time of course the nation is entertained by the jockeying for position of the basically identical candidates on television and in the newspapers. Indeed the engineering of the public mind is so strong that the myth of such as the belief in ephemeral American values is still pressed as a fine promise of happiness that the whole world should follow. Individual freedom is praised despite the fact that opinion is carefully being shaped from kindergarten onward and great care is being taken that homogeneity of support is never broken for what are still called the democratic principles of the Republic.

The clearest example of public opinion engineering is the recent Kerry/Lavrov agreement on Syria’s chemical weapons. The US may never even have intended to attack Syria and Kerry’s ‘mistake’ of uttering the word “inspection” really meant “dismantling”, after his absurd war-like performances before the senate and representatives committees. Real strength lies in hypocritical meekness and the sanctimonious expressions of relief by the president. Which fall neatly in line with the foreign policies that allow an even stronger US after the 2008 events, and to exert pressure without military force (the threat alone will do ). In fact Andrew Cockburn recently outlined that old but very effective cruel foreign policy to isolate resistant nations by economic blockade in his article “A Perfect Instrument”. War is redundant in this policy; we can starve nations into submission. And should that create some extremist movements, then quick military action will take care of the problem.

The circle of containment is complete. The US has determined what the parameters are for its sphere of influence. Interest in South America has waned and it is considered more or less a lost cause after its populist movements of the last years. The Pacific remains a vital area for restricting Chinese influence, but a compliant Japan is in the way and the distances are such that a direct threat remains remote. But Africa and the Middle East appear to fascinate by the abundance of available raw materials and strategic importance. There is where one sees the constant signs of US involvement and its competition with Russia and China. And because direct conquest is geared towards full destruction of the countries attacked, it is clear that pacification for business purposes is not sought. Rather it appears that control over the supplies of oil and raw materials is secondary, but that it is clearly a struggle for the control of access to those materials by competitors like Russia and China.
[pullquote] Every political executive is carefully vetted before installation so that every president represents the US power block whether he/she was elected from either branch of the ruling Democrat / Republican Party. The debate about the vote and its restrictions has only propagandistic value, as in the end it does not matter who is elected because the power block is being served in whatever shape or flavor the president and congress come. [/pullquote]

The US sees itself as self sufficient to a large degree and able to regulate the supplies of materials that it needs from other parts of the globe. The financial primacy and power of its banking system guarantees and protects the base of its power. The stasis of this system is remarkable but because of its financial greed, it will over time hollow out the power of the US from within. It is a self devouring system which excludes too large a part of the US population. Exhortations of exceptionalism and free enterprise will not sustain very long the obvious status differences that emerge to the surface of a gleaming and steely propaganda class structure that gets shriller every day. The more the public is faced by poverty and disorder in the large cities and their own nearness to it in essence and reality in full contrast to the opulence of the favored classes, the more justifiably resentment will grow. Power breeds contempt and with it blindness to the effects of its own misuse. That is where empires fail and though the days of its decline still seem to be far off, the day will surely come that the public will rise up and put paid to the betrayals of government. The increasing gun violence and the lateral hostility in the poorer districts are already a clear telltale of intense frustration with the status quo.

Though nature may well intervene beforehand and create a fitting end to all human endeavor.

Gui Rochat is an art dealer and consultant, specializing in in seventeenth and eighteenth century French paintings and drawings. He lives in New York.

Many US media commentators were fairly accurate in labeling some of the language used by Russian President Vladimir Putin in his recent New York Times article as ‘hypocritical’. But mainstream US media should be the last to point out anyone’s hypocrisy as it has brazenly endorsed every military intervention unleashed by their country since World War II. Putin’s statement “we must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement,” merits serious scrutiny.

Considering that violence has been a readily available option in Russia’s own wars from Afghanistan, to Chechnya and Georgia, the language of dialogue and civilized political settlements have been rarely exercised. But, independent from that context, Putin was surely correct in his assessment of US behavior. It was indeed difficult to point out any palpable inaccuracy in Putin’s NYT’s article published on the 12th anniversary of September 11.

“It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States,” Putin wrote. “Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan ‘you’re either with us or against us.” (Interestingly, this was the same conclusion reached by the China Daily in its editorial the next day.)

Putin’s statement was not just true, but precise, highlighting the very essence that has defined US foreign policy since the end of the US-Soviet Cold War, and the US-led military campaign against Iraq in 1990-91. The model of ‘cobbling coalitions together’ was used then as the US emerged as the lone superpower. This allowed it the space to reconfigure the world’s geopolitical scene in any way it deemed necessary and suitable to its own, but also Israeli interests. It had done so repeatedly and with little hesitation. Its invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the pinnacle of that model. Millions of people were left dead and maimed while millions more were forced to franticly run for their lives.

The US-invited horror was hardly mentioned when western‘liberal’ commentators cleverly called attention to all of Putin’s and Russia’s perceived failures. Simon Tisdall tried to take Putin to task on his piece in the British Guardian on Sep 12 by offering readers selected ‘translations’ of the Russian president’s text. Using an intellectually demeaning approach of ‘translating’ what could be obviously understood by any average reader of world affairs, Tisdall even contended with Putin’s statement that “it is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation … We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”

“Translation: this passage takes the biscuit for sheer chutzpah,” Tisdall wrote. But what is Tisdall’s view on the very ‘sheer chutzpah’ of invoking American exceptionalism at every turn by the US’ own leaders – from warmongers like George W. Bush to Nobel Peace Prize winners like Barack Obama. Hasn’t American exceptionalism cost the world so dearly? A lethal assortment of shocks and awes and unmanned drone warfare is all being sold in the name of human rights, democracy, and of course, in the name of God.

Putin is not exactly a peacenik, but his country has indeed succeeded in breaking, at least for now, a predictable pattern of American military interventions in the Middle East which are mostly aimed at ensuring Israel’s military and political supremacy and suppressing its foes or potential enemies. This is in addition to safeguarding US energy supplies and keeping economic contenders at bay.

For this reason it was of little surprise that the first country that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry planned to visit following his talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Geneva on Sep 14, was Israel. Kerry and Lavrov met to discuss, and later agreed to the details of the dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, which was understood as the only viable way to avert a US military strike. The proposal was fully Russian, thus Putin’s public relations campaign, and his NYT article. The US, alienated after years of warmongering, had to accept the Russian proposal. Any other option would have had unpredictable, but likely catastrophic outcomes. Tellingly, Kerry opted for a meeting to debrief Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before conversing with his EU allies. Of course, Israel will now try to influence the pursuit of Syria’s chemical arsenal the same way the US and its western allies manipulated the UN inspectors’ work to dismantle Iraq’s non-existent nuclear weapons program.

It must have been a major disappointment for Israel’s neoconservative friends and lobbies in the US that neither war nor ‘surgical strikes’ are in the offing. It goes without saying that the lives of 100,000 Syrians or the plight of six million refugees are not a factor in their discontent. Middle East expert and author Jeremy Salt had a lot to say about the “carefully crafted (and) deceitful campaign,” unleashed by the Israeli lobby.

In “Israel’s Lobbyists Pushing Hard for another War in the Middle East,” and after a careful examination of their public statements, Salt explains the new approach used by the Israel lobby, which carefully avoided any reference to Israeli interests. The major point of the campaign is that this war is “not about Israel (but) about America’s national interest (and) about punishing a government which has used chemical weapons on its own people…”

Israel has killed too many Arabs to worry about the death of some more, and the brutality of the Syrian government or its opposition has never been a concern to Israel and its lobby. For them, another American war is yet another opportunity to knock down an old adversary, engender further chaos and bask in the glory of being ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ among a sea of tumultuous, unruly neighbors. However, lack of appetite for intervention has thwarted the plan for now, leaving the US and Israel searching for new options to maintain their relevance in a region of quickly shifting balances.

The anger directed at Putin’s article has a lot less to do with Putin’s own legacy as a leader, and much more to do with the frustration that new players in the Middle East are now successfully involved in a ‘game’ that has for decades been dominated by if not reserved for western powers and their allies.

Ramzy Baroud is editor of PalestineChronicle.com. He is the author of The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle  and  “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London).

In 2003, after the National Book Foundation presented Stephen King with a distinguished career award, a big hue and cry went up from all the snobbish critics and authors who regarded him in much the same way that Dumbo was viewed by the other elephants. King’s acceptance speech was an eloquent testimony to his belief in a people’s art:

Now, there are lots of people who will tell you that anyone who writes genre fiction or any kind of fiction that tells a story is in it for the money and nothing else. It’s a lie. The idea that all storytellers are in it for the money is untrue but it is still hurtful, it’s infuriating and it’s demeaning. I never in my life wrote a single word for money. As badly as we needed money, I never wrote for money. From those early days to this gala black tie night, I never once sat down at my desk thinking today I’m going to make a hundred grand. Or this story will make a great movie. If I had tried to write with those things in mind, I believe I would have sold my birthright for a plot of message, as the old pun has it. Either way, Tabby and I would still be living in a trailer or an equivalent, a boat. My wife knows the importance of this award isn’t the recognition of being a great writer or even a good writer but the recognition of being an honest writer.

Frank Norris, the author of McTeague, said something like this: “What should I care if they, i.e., the critics, single me out for sneers and laughter? I never truckled, I never lied. I told the truth.” And that’s always been the bottom line for me. The story and the people in it may be make believe but I need to ask myself over and over if I’ve told the truth about the way real people would behave in a similar situation.

Most people are aware that King writes horror stories but the reference to the muckraking Frank Norris hints at a side of the author that many of his fans never considered. King is also an outspoken liberal who takes on social and political issues but without the sterile didacticism so pervasive in leftist fiction.

When I discovered that CBS had adapted “Under the Dome” as a 13 episode series, whose finale aired last Monday night, I was eager to watch it not only as a long-time King fan but as an ecosocialist anxious to see how what some regarded as a parable on the environmental crisis would play out. Although I had not read the novel, I assumed that with King serving as executive producer it would ensure that the TV series would remain faithful to the novel. But only after watching the finale, a dreary conclusion to an altogether dreary series, did I begin to consider the possibility that King’s intentions would be subverted by another big-name executive producer: Stephen Spielberg as well as the show’s major creative force, one Brian K. Vaughan.

Before dealing with the novel and its original agenda, some thoughts on what was likely the worst adaptation of the author’s work ever made. Since King is on record as hating Stanley Kubrick’s masterful “The Shining”, I would love to get him alone for five minutes to find out why he did not leave this TV show on the cutting room floor in its entirety.

“Under the Dome” sticks to the premise of the novel, namely that a mysterious transparent dome lands on a town called Chester’s Mill cutting it off from the outside world. Nobody can get in and nobody can get out. If you were unfortunate enough to be on the perimeter of the dome at the moment it landed, you would be sliced in two. Each week the show begins with the shot of a cow being cut right down the middle and a small plane bursting into flames as it crashed into the dome. It does downhill from there.

If this plot rings a bell, it might be because you have seen or are aware of the Simpsons movie in which the EPA puts a dome over Springfield because of the town’s repeated violations of environmental regulations, most of which can be traced to the town’s nuclear reactor or Homer’s reckless behavior—including the dumping of pig feces into a local lake. Ironically, the Simpsons movie has much more in common with King’s novel than the CBS adaptation.

The purpose of the dome remains a mystery throughout, approximating in some ways the monolith in “2001”. (Perhaps some critics have thatfigured out, but it always remained a mystery to me.) What was it doing there? Who was responsible? Inquiring minds are dying to know.

The TV adaptation also retains the morality play that is essential to all of King’s works that are not the place to go for postmodernist irony. Like Dickens and all other masters of pulp fiction, King sets up clearly recognizable good guys and bad guys. The bad guy is James “Big Jim” Rennie, a politician and used car dealer who runs drugs as well. Dean Norris, Walter White’s brother-in-law and DEA agent on “Breaking Bad”, plays Big Jim. One surmises that Norris was cast in the role to play off the vibes of the memorable AMC series soon to conclude. Chester’s Mill is every bit as murderous and corrupt as White’s Albuquerque, all the more so after the dome cuts it off from the broader forces of law and order. It is an embodiment of Hobbes’s Leviathan.

The good guy, relatively speaking anyway, is Dale “Barbie” Barbara, a former Green Beret who despite coming to town as an enforcer for a loan shark can be relied upon to defend the innocent against the depraved.

The innocent turns out to be four teenagers who discover that they have powers to communicate with the dome. When they place their hands on it, they receive communications from some higher intelligence but without sufficient clarity to know where the dome came from or why it is there. Eventually they discover a mini-dome in the nearby woods that evoke the mini-me character in Austin Powers. At least with mini-me, you know what he was about. With the mini-dome, it is mostly a guessing game about its purpose. Even more mysteriously (or confusingly, to be more accurate), there is a black egg under the mini-dome that has some sort of awesomeness about it that manifests itself in unpredictable ways like making a room and its furniture go nuts like Linda Blair’s bedroom in “The Exorcist” but without the classic movie’s menace. In fact the main purpose of the mini-dome and the big daddy dome is to make the viewer scratch their head and ask what the hell is going on.

I waded through all 12 episodes with a mixture of boredom and frustration just to finally find out what the hell was going on. In the final five minutes Barbie’s love interest, who turns out to be the “monarch” who will either save or destroy Chester’s Mill, throws the black egg into the local lake and produces what amounts to a fireworks display that reaches the top of the dome. Finally, the secrets will be revealed. But no, the only thing that happens at that point is the closing credits. It only becomes clear to me at this point that this was not the typical Stephen King adaptation like “It” or “Tommyknockers” that ends with a satisfying apocalyptic bang. No, it ends with a total whimper, leaving you mystified as to the meaning of the dome. CBS wants you to tune in next season to remain mystified and to continue watching commercials, the primary justification for watching this nonsense.

“Under the Dome” was developed by someone named Brian K. Vaughan. As I began writing this paragraph, I bet myself a quarter that this guy was responsible for “Lost”, another CBS series that left you either bored and befuddled, or enthralled. I count myself in the former group. “Lost” was defiantly nonsensical. Based on the premise that survivors of a plane crash figure out a way to survive on a desert island, it made frequent and outrageous assaults on logic. If you enjoyed “Lost”, you will probably enjoy “Under the Dome”—god have pity on your soul.

This brings me to another alien influence on “Under the Dome”, the one-and-only Stephen Spielberg (thank god). To put it succinctly, Spielberg must have convinced the creative team working on “Under the Dome” to absorb the philosophical and esthetic heart of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. Instead of stentorian notes blasting forth from the mother ship at the end of the film, the CBS adaptation has pink shooting stars streaming toward the top of the dome. For what purpose who knows.

I would refer you to have a look at an altogether amusing review of the final episode by Tim Surrette who wrote:

For once, after 12 episodes of defying medical science by functioning without a working brain, Officer Linda actually made some sense. It all started at the very beginning of the episode when the kids were gathered around the mini-dome spouting their craziness about domes and monarchs that they believed based on absolutely nothing. It was the usual dull regurgitation. The kids thought the egg was the power source of the dome. The kids thought the dome was talking to them. The kids thought there was a monarch that needed some crownin’. And Linda said, God bless her, “What is that supposed to mean?” It’s a question we all asked ourselves over the course of Season 1 as we watched these mentally challenged children make illogical leaps and accept where they landed as fact. It’s also a question that would never be answered anytime during this episode. “I know how it all sounds, but I believe them,” Carolyn actually said. Carolyn, shut your damn mouth, you’re only encouraging them.

Not long after the finale ended, I took a quick look at some of the original reviews to remind me of what struck me at the time the novel appeared in 2009. The November 18^th Christian Science Monitor nailed the environmental angle perfectly: “In a matter of days, the environmental reality sets in, too. Fall in Maine means crisp temperatures, but under the dome it feels like an endless Indian summer. Forget famed foliage in Chester’s Mill. Instead, the leaves go limp and brown. Streams dry up, animals turn suicidal, and pollution clings to the dome, giving the sky and stars an eerie hue that leaves everyone unsettled.”

In all the years that I have been writing about environmental issues, I have found myself frequently debating with Marxists about issues of “carrying capacity”, something they view as a concession to Malthusianism. I always replied that the planet earth was more like a fish tank than Marx could have anticipated in 1850. Put too many fish in a ten gallon tank and they begin attacking each other and dying from inadequate living conditions. That is likely what King was addressing, using the dome rather than the fish tank as metaphor. If that interests you (as well as King’s superlative prose), I urge you to read the novel as I plan to do the first chance I get. If flights of illogic and Spielbergian fantasia are your cup of tea, stay tuned to CBS

Louis Proyect blogs at http://louisproyect.com and is the moderator of the Marxism mailing list. In his spare time, he reviews films for CounterPunch.