ERIC ZUESSE—America’s billionaires take advantage of, and exploit, the American people’s equating “socialism” with “communism,” and, so, Americans fear socialization of the healthcare function, though it would actually provide vastly better-quality health care at vastly lower prices.
FRANCIS LEE—Bearing in mind Palmerston’s foreign policy realism and applying it to current conditions one cannot help but think that the old order in the West at least is coming and will continue to come under increasing strain as separate nations, and/or temporary alliances, will become increasingly detached in pursuit of their separate interests. And this must necessarily be the case since for the first time since before the industrial revolution a greater part of world production happens outside of the advanced industrial economies rather than the inside. Western Europe taken collectively was the biggest region between the mid-19 century and WW2, it fell behind the US just after WW2 and has since tracked the US’s steady decline.
PEPE ESCOBAR–During the 2000s, I came face to face with Baghdad’s Green Zone multiple times. I always stayed, and worked, in the hyper-volatile Red Zone – as you may check in my 2007 book Red Zone Blues.
We knew then that blowback would be inevitable.
But still, we could never have imagined such a graphic simulacrum: the Green Zone fully replicated in the heart of imperial D.C. – complete with walls, barbed wire, multiple checkpoints, heavily armed guards.
That is even more significant because it ends a full “new world order” geopolitical cycle: the empire started bombing – and cluster bombing – Iraq 30 years ago. Desert Storm was launched in January 17, 1991.
The Blue Zone is now “protected” by a massive 26,000 plus troop surge – way more than Afghanistan and Iraq combined. The Forever Wars – which you may now relieve through my archives – have come back full circle.
Just like an ordinary Iraqi was not allowed inside the Green Zone, no ordinary American is allowed inside the Blue Zone.
Just like the Green Zone, those inside the Blue Zone represent none other than themselves.
The convergence of naked self-interest prevalent in mainstream media and their liberal (and usually clueless) audiences’ comfortable view of corporate fascism are accelerating their drive to censor not just dissenters from the official narrative, but all “upstart” competitors (such as popular YouTubers) capable of competing with them in audience reach. This cynical process is liable to be turbocharged under Biden and the Democrats. Welcome to Orwell 2.0.
PEPE ESCOBAR—In contrast, US strategists advising the Trump administration, apart from not improving on Mahan and Spykman, completely ignored China’s economic pull all across Eurasia. They ignored the fact that scores of nations from Central to South and Southeast Asia (the ASEAN 10) would not sacrifice their trade/investment relations to the benefit of a Made in the Beltway “vision”.