Britain’s royal wedding: Recasting the monarchy in the age of identity politics

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By Paul Mitchell, wsws.org


Today, US actress Rachel Meghan Markle marries His Royal Highness Henry Charles Albert David, Prince of Wales—otherwise known as Prince Harry. In what is being billed as a breakthrough for feminism, Markle will proceed unaccompanied down the aisle of St. George’s chapel, Windsor Castle, where she will be met by Prince Charles, heir to the British throne.

No expense has been spared by the Treasury for the 600 guests, who have been issued seven pages of “critical guidance” on how to behave during the event, or the 200 close friends invited to an after-wedding party. The bill is expected to top £30 million. The guests will consume an estimated 16,000 glasses of champagne and 23,000 canapes.

No such consideration is being extended to the hundreds of members of the public, “from every corner of the United Kingdom,” who have been selected to attend and who will provide a backdrop to the proceedings. They have been told to bring a packed lunch as they stand in the full glare of the sun, as it will not be possible to buy food or drink on site. The same holds true for the hundreds of Royal Household and Crown Estate staff and local schoolchildren whose presence is meant to emphasise the “inclusive” character of proceedings.


Whether sincere or carefully planned, marrying "commoners" and now "mixed-race" has been the British royals' grand p.r. coup of the century, and possibly beyond.

Neither will the homeless of Windsor be shown consideration for their plight. While on a skiing holiday in Wyoming, the Conservative Party council leader, Simon Dudley, tweeted to Thames Valley police, urging them to take measures against “an epidemic of rough sleeping and vagrancy in Windsor” and “focus on dealing with this before the #RoyalWedding.”

As one would expect, the royal coupling has rarely been out of the national and international news since the two met in July 2016. The “fairy tale romance” ticks all the right boxes for the leader writers, royal correspondents, gossip columnists and magazine editors who flatter and fawn over all things Royal.


A procession of privilege: Guests arrive for the ceremonies to witness and celebrate the union. In the 21st century they cannot help—despite their efforts and the heavily laid pomp and circumstance—to look slightly ridiculous.

“The wedding of American actress Meghan Markle to Queen Elizabeth’s grandson, Prince Harry, marks an important moment for Britain’s black community,” Reuters enthused. “The upcoming marriage of the British prince, sixth in line to the British throne, to Markle, whose father is white and mother is African-American, has been heralded as demonstrating how Britain has become more egalitarian and racially mixed.”

The pair, we are told, represents all that is great and good about modern, multiracial, cosmopolitan Britain. They are apparently “just like us!”

The reinvention of Harry is a testament to the palace PR machine and a sycophantic press. The “rabble-rousing youth” was “reformed” by ten years in the Army. His wearing a Nazi uniform to a “colonials and natives” fancy dress party and calling one of his fellow Sandhurst cadets “our little Paki friend” are minor indiscretions. Now he is a “global charity ambassador” who champions the Invictus Games for wounded and disabled soldiers, mentors young people fallen by the wayside and devotes himself to saving the wildlife of Africa.

But it is Markle who is supposed to embody the “new monarchy.”


For those who masochistically indulge in these things, here's some video footage of the event.


Every royal wedding is orchestrated to maintain the House of Windsor’s standing at the apex of the affairs of state, reinforcing the hereditary principle and the deference the ruling elite expects from the lower orders. Such events are meant to proclaim the permanence of the British state and the British “way of life,” thereby guarding against social instability.

The reinvention of this archaic institution has become increasingly necessary under conditions of an obscene growth of social inequality.

When Diana married Charles in 1981, she was portrayed as a cross between a film star and, in Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair’s characterisation following her death in 1997, the “People’s Princess.” He cited her charity work with children, landmine victims and HIV sufferers to tell the Royals to buck up their ideas if they wanted the institution to survive in New Labour’s supposedly more “meritocratic” take on Thatcherism.

Only so much recasting was possible, with the deeply unsympathetic Charles, heir to the throne, intent on marrying his mistress Camilla. But his son, Prince William, whom the ruling elite want desperately to replace the ageing Queen Elizabeth as monarch, took the first vital step by wedding the “commoner” Kate Middleton in 2011.

Markle’s credentials are something else entirely—African-American, brought up as a Catholic, divorced from a Jewish man, but willing to be confirmed in the Church of England out of love for “her man.” She is not only a genuine celebrity, but also a self-proclaimed feminist with a record of charitable and humanitarian work for the United Nations—advocating menstrual health for poor women, opposing gender inequality and offering support to refugees.


Harry still looks suitably besotted, but as years go by and age and possibly motherhood dampen Meghan's allure, the romance may hit a far more mundane and less fairytale accommodation. Wedding at this point is a test of Harry's maturity, among other things.

Royal protocol dictates that she can’t comment on political issues, but Markle staked out her political credentials, declaring, “I think right now in the climate we are seeing so many campaigns, I mean #MeToo and Time’s Up, and there is no better time to really continue to shine a light on women feeling empowered, and people really helping to support them—men included… So, I guess we wait a couple of months and we can hit the ground running.”

Markle’s feminism and racial identity provide the basis for the ultimate post-modernist makeover of the monarchy in this new era of identity politics.

The media hail the “Meghan effect” on black Britons, wheeling out young black girls to naively proclaim that “anyone can be a princess.” But this appeal is directed above all to the privileged upper layers of the middle class, whose own obsession with identity politics is bound up with their desire for social advancement.

Gone like the morning mist are their previous declarations of republican sympathies. The Guardian’s Georgina Lawton confessed: “I usually disparage the royals, but Meghan Markle has changed that. Prince Harry’s partner is initiating real change in UK race relations. It was exciting to hear the royal family defend this mixed-race relationship.”

The Observer reported Cambridge University historian Ted Powell’s comment that “it is difficult to overstate how important it is to have a member of the royal family… who is mixed race and embracing her heritage and stating that is very much part of her… It is hugely positive for Britain, particularly in the wake of Brexit, the controversies of immigration policy and the Windrush scandal.”

The implication that Britain’s population, prior to their enlightenment by Harry’s choice of partner, has been a seething mass of racism is slanderous and condescending. Today, around one in 10 people living in Britain is married to or living with someone from outside his or her ethnic group.

If anything, the response of these same social layers across the Atlantic is more disgraceful still. Maya Rupert, for example, took to the pages of the New York Times to pen a piece titled “How a Black Feminist Became a Fan of Princesses.”

“Ten-year-old me would be horrified by how excited I am about the royal wedding,” she begins. But Rupert now realises that the elevation of “white womanhood” as the cultural standard is no more: “And as I realized that, my anti-princess feminism began to give way to something more nuanced… Maybe instead of rejecting princess culture, wholesale, I could embrace different princesses.”

Within the US ruling elite, who live lives of obscene wealth amid growing social hardship, Britain’s ruling family, which America’s founding fathers waged a revolutionary war to rid themselves of, exercises a magnetic pull. Thus the Times writes: “Though the British royalty went through a rough patch in the 1990s,” Queen Elizabeth II today “presides over a curiously sympathetic and attractive mix of archaic tradition, fairy-tale titles and very modern lives.”

Poor Meghan and Harry, with so much riding on their shoulders! Markle will need to draw on all her acting skills to carry out the multitudinous tasks now assigned the pair—modernising the monarchy, transforming British attitudes on race, sorting out the post-Brexit crisis by resuscitating the Commonwealth, and bolstering the “special relationship” between the US and the UK.

So much of this is an airy political confection. Recent surveys by polling agency YouGov show that, despite the wall-to-wall coverage, about half of the UK’s 66 million people are wholly indifferent to today’s wedding. And many more would laugh at the notion that it represents a turning point in the life of a nation so rigidly divided along class, rather than racial, lines.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The author files reports for wsws.org, a Marxian (Trotskyist) publication. 

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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Don’t fall for the post-modernist/relativist trap.
The struggle against the system requires lucidity, not narcissistic flim-flam.

Humour (unexpected)

New Tricks “Find your phone”


This is part of an Xfinity (Comcast) campaign. The huckster’s description goes: “Find your phone easily with the Xfinity Voice Remote. One more way Comcast is working to fit into your life, not the other way around.” Fine. We distrust and profoundly dislike—nay, despise— Comcast (owners of the repulsive uber disinformation/escapist medium NBC Universal, too), but, just to show you that even into such polluted realms we find sometimes something to laugh at, here’s this rather charming commercial. The actress playing the mother is a riot. Obviously no one paid us to run this here. We do it because we like this spot, and above all we are contrarians, by nature, and also despise “PC”, no matter where it’s coming from. Left or right (or center). 


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The Family of Nations Needs to Stand Up to the US  

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Most nations who have carriers have at most one; the US has 11 and counting. Still, the military and politicians constantly claim the nation faces threats everywhere, and that we're vulnerable. It should be noted that carriers are basically offensive, "force projection" platforms. Their defensive role is null. Their task is to intimidate and subdue, the essential tools of a bullying empire.

How long are the leaders of the world’s nations – and the millions of people killed and maimed by American invasions – going to put up with the bullying, the economic terrorism, and the humiliation by the US – an empire, by definition, in all but name?

“Our” country will not admit to calling itself the American Empire – which is exactly what it is – because of the negative connotations of empires of the past and their many depredations – the British, Japanese, Russian, Napoleonic, Spanish, “Holy Roman,” Mongol, Roman, Persian, Babylonian, Assyrian…

But the “world’s only superpower” has committed, and is presently committing, just as many horrors as these classic empires of history.

As the United States steps up its malign influence supporting opposition parties in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Iran; continues its economic and military aid to oppressive regimes in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Honduras; gives accolades to autocratic countries like Uzbekistan, Turkey and the Philippines; pivots on all sides now for full-spectrum dominance, long-term, over Russia and China, with military bases ringing those nations and NATO ever encroaching; and breaks its word in planning sumits and breaking international treaties again and again – the rest of the world sighs in exasperation and continues to be bullied.

Will the European demi-powers bow to America’s wanton demand to “immediately cease” trade with Iran while continuing business as usual with the western hemisphere’s economic powerhouse, even though Germany, France and the UK are the dominant financial countries on that continent?  Will their leaders continue to kiss the diminutive hands of Tsar Trump the Terrible?

Will China, Russia, S. Korea and other nations keep accommodating the US as it lets N. Korea do all the work, while hardly dropping its belligerent attitude?  One minister from the upper, severed half of Hanguk personally expressed his “repugnance” for US National Security Adviser John “the Bomb” Bolton (if the translation from Korean isn’t even more insulting that that word).

With Trump, Bolton, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, newly transferred from the CIA (Coup Instigating Agency), backed up by such reactionary billionaires as Sheldon Adelson, Paul Singer, Bernard Marcus, and Robert and Rebekah Mercer (with Steve Bannon lurking in the shadows somewhere) at the apex of their influence and interference, the rest of the world, especially Iran at the moment, better watch out.

As award-winning investigative reported Allan Nairn attested to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, “The idea that Trump would be less militant was insane from the start.  And he’s proving that blood is the tool. Trump has increased the deployment of US troops, of CIA covert operatives. He has taken away the minimal restraints on bombing and kidnapping…torture, US killing of civilians in bombing runs, US raids on civilian homes on the thinnest of pretense.  Under Obama, the US was killing thousands of civilians, through drone attacks, etc., but there were some limits on who[m] you could target and when. Trump has essentially stripped them away. People…were essentially sold a bill of goods on the idea that Trump would be somehow less warlike…less aggressive, more, some claimed, isolationist.”

If the nations of the world – I propose – led by Russia, China, Germany, the UK, and France, along with major countries this president and his administration have given preference or commendation to, as Turkey, the Philippines, India, Japan, and Canada, and even Norway (expressed as the antithesis of “shithole”), Italy and the Vatican, and Australia, would stand together against American domination, and really stand opposed and undivided to “our” country’s continued and accelerating abominations, I think that would be powerful.  Maybe they would be joined by S. Korea, Pakistan, Spain, Portugal, Iceland, Greece, Qatar, Vietnam and others, along with figures like the 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, who says, “My religion is kindness.”

Despite claiming to be a “Christian” country, and supporting the government and military of Israel as if by the will of its Jewish citizens, America’s religion is not kindness.


Maybe We the People Can Do Something, Too

The underlying intention of “Mahatma” (“Great Soul”) Gandhi’s movement, based on an underlying activenon-violence, satyagraha (“truth force”), was to move those who commit injustice and atrocities to feel remorse and shame, and therefore relent.  The power of a popular, non-violent uprising and resistance, especially in large numbers, shows the powers that be that our complacent, busy citizens have finally decided to get up off their butts and join in protest – which has become relatively unpopular in 21st century America – rather than put up with the status quo.  And that the people are not going to accept anything less than change.

This demonstrates to our “leaders” and to the world that the people have lost trust in and have superseded the electoral, legislative, executive and judicial processes and have decided to act.  A non-violent demonstration of this kind moves the feelings and emotions of peoples all over the planet, especially in this day of instant communication. It strikes fear in the hearts of the real ruling families and “deep state” actors in power behind the observable powers – if it is large, organized and truly popular.  Even if they do not feel shame or regret, at least they do take notice.

Unfortunately, a war against Iran may be in the cards.  The mere abstention from joining the hostilities by every member of the EU – and I can’t imagine any European nation going along with this one – as well as every state except Israel and Saudi Arabia (strange bedfellows), will make a literally non-violent statement.  This will hardly be a “coalition” war this time, so the tendency to fear a US attack on the Islamic Republic may be a bit overblown – but we’ll see.

However, the fear is real as we watch the Empire’s insane casus belli in action – unflinching, knee-jerk support for continuing Israeli warplane attacks on Iranian positions in Syria.

Maybe there is one way we can fight fire with fire.  I am not a student of war, but if a “peacekeeping force”of United Nations troops of a large size and comprised of international participants including members of many major nations – which is mandated never to fight in any conflict except to engage illegal armies attacking another sovereign state; and if this force had the complete support of the family of nations, being voted for overwhelmingly by the General Assembly – then maybe it could be effective.

I am against adding more guns to supposedly protect students by arming teachers or additional guards – like the guard at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL who basically cowered and hid while Nikolas Cruz shot up the classes.  However, if the UN trulykeeps to its mission, unlike some NGO members who withheld food for sex in Africa and Asia, and is well trained and equipped, even if they are counterattacked, say, by an even superior force of the US military, those emotions of horror, shame and remorse in non-violent observers on all continents will turn world opinion, I’ll wager, against anyone standing up to the official UN peacekeepers.  These “peacekeepers” are mandated by the UN Charter, Geneva Conventions, Rome Protocol, and international treaties – signed by the United States – to prevent unprovoked aggression against sovereign states. And Iran (Persia) has not invaded another country since 1856, when it attempted regaining the city of Herat from Afghanistan. I wish I could claim the same for the American Empire.

Also, typically, professional and experienced diplomatic negotiators – impartial mediators – will be at the front of the UN fighting force to try dissuading attacks – backed by the force of world opinion.

This is only if the UN representatives behave in a way that earns universal respect, of course.  Maybe I am being naive – grasping at straws. But the newly reminted neocons in DC seem to have broken the last straw – or the back of global stability.  I fear this is leading toward chaos from the triple threat of the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia under the new, autocratic and inexperienced Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

And the Clown Prince Donald Trump is precipitous.  So abject and obvious are his prevarications and those by Binyamin Netanyahu, that they may actually serve to prevent World War III.  If the entire family of nations is so horrified by the unwarranted hostilities of those three; if public opinion, especially in the US, can escape the grip of Russophobia and all the other propaganda, such as the bogus claim that Iran is the biggest terrorist threat on Earth (until the next devil is named – remember Bush, Jr.’s axis of evil?) – then it may be US-Israel-Arabia against the rest of the world, an imbalance of power, and not a world war.

But it’s important to note what will happen if the US directly attacks Russia.  There is some chance of this – or perhaps as an escalation after US military involvement in Iran proper.  Russian Federation Pres. Vladimir Putin, in a little-noted, quiet public speech, adumbrated an outline of Russia’s classified new technologies, and the threat to the US military and mainland.  They are ready, and we should listen.

Russia, in response to America’s new cold war and announced “upgrade” of its nuclear arsenal, is taking the threat seriously.  The US has decidedly initiated a new arms race. And Russia is initiating the latest generation of super-weapons that will guarantee a prevention of the ghastly losses the Soviet Union suffered from the Nazi invasion.  And Russia must be getting tired of constant accusations of its “aggression,” not to mention interference in elections and poisoning double agents.

Russia is ready.  Just a hint of what they have:  the fastest ICBMs ever, hypersonic, that make all our ABM (anti-ballistic missile) systems ineffective; cruise missiles not only with nuclear warheads, but with nuclear engines, based on small reactors, that can go practically forever without refueling and make tiny course adjustments and evasive maneuvers quickly; and a new class of nuclear powered, deep-level submarines.  I didn’t quite understand the explanation, but apparently three of these off the coasts of North America can together create a complex of tsunamis, devastating the US with inland waves far higher and penetrating more deeply and destructively than even the ones that affected the entire Indian and Pacific areas in 2004 and 2011.

Putin emphasized that Russia’s new generation of nuclear warfare is “beyond what you think we have,” and that the US $1 trillion + upgrade of its nuclear weapons systems will be anticipated by Russia, and therefore Russia will be ahead of the US again when “we” think we are capable of defending ourselves from retaliation; but we will not be able to do so, he warned.

So now the powers that be and their crass media are amping up the hysteria and the multifarious, daily distractions, for chaos and more destabilization – a sure sign of the decline and imminent fall of a once mighty empire, trying to retain its hegemony.

But the US is asking for it.

It is important to consider international trade, too.  Pres. Trump, along with his Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and other neoliberal destructos, extend a hand and a promise of fair trade to giant and upcoming economies like China; then initiate trade wars.  The European nations – though they are still hedging on trade with Iran – and others, need to band together against America’s economic ping-pong and terrorism.

The destruction of the planetary environment, with or without more war, is another motivator, for sure.

And, as previously stated, I exhort my fellow Americans to organize for strikes and more strikes leading up to general strike; and for every organization representing people’s rights, from civil rights legal groups to consumer protection agencies to what unions are left to the Poor People’s March, to announce a unified policy of non-payment of taxes to the government if any more nations are attacked – especially ones like Iran or N. Korea – that would cause perilous destabilization of the world.

But a cornered animal is dangerous.  And we do not know to what lengths this current configuration of government – including the unseen powers who may be pulling the strings – would be willing to go.  Therefore we the people and the family of nations must do all we can now to resist division based on any differences, and finally stand up to this dangerous, clawed and fanged animal, the United States.

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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Don’t fall for the post-modernist/relativist trap.
The struggle against the system requires lucidity, not narcissistic flim-flam.

 

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The Europe That Can Say No?

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Federica Mogherini: a rare voice of reason and even hope in a continent now accustomed to vassalage.


EU president and Polish politician Donald Tusk says the U.S. acts with “capricious assertiveness.”  With friends like this who needs enemies?” he asked the other day, adding, “If you need a helping hand you will find one at the end of your arm.”

EU vice-president Federica Mogherini met with European and Iranian representatives after the U.S. decision to leave the Iran nuclear agreement. She committed Europe to the following:

The protection of European Union economic operators and ensuring legal certainty:

And last but not least, the further development of a transparent, rules-based business environment in Iran.”

Meanwhile U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton asks rhetorically on ABC: “Why would any business, why would the shareholders of any business, want to do business with the world’s central banker of international terrorism?” He threatens secondary sanctions on nations that, adhering to the agreement, expand trade with Iran.

Some including RT commentators predict Europe will buckle to U.S. pressure and cancel contracts. But maybe not this time. Maybe Europe will become the Europe That Can Say No.

“We are working on finding a practical solution … in a short delay of time,” Mogherini says. “We are talking about solutions to keep the deal alive. We have a quite clear list of issues to address. We are operating in a very difficult context … I cannot talk about legal or economic guarantees but I can talk about serious, determined, immediate work from the European side.”

Immediate work to diminish the damage done to world peace and stability by Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement.


Some including RT commentators predict Europe will buckle to U.S. pressure and cancel contracts. But maybe not this time. Maybe Europe will become the Europe That Can Say No.

According to EU Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulus, the EU is preparing legislation to block U.S. sanctions targeting Iran. Its members know that if Iran reaps no sanctions relief from the agreement it will also withdraw, charging betrayal. France’s Total S.A. and Germany’s Siemens have indicated they may back out of contracts with Iran due to fears of U.S. secondary sanctions. The U.S. strives to use access to its marketplace to shape others’ investment options, in this case options that can lead to war. No matter that this violates the sacred bourgeois principle of Free Trade.

There are all kinds of good reasons for Iran and the rest of the world to expand trade ties. (French cooks would like access to Iranian pistachios—the world’s best—and saffron.) And there’s no reason for other governments to embrace Bolton’s view that the Iranian government is the central banker of international terrorism. (Surely that is Saudi Arabia, the world’s leading supporter of Salafist Sunni Islamism, which supports the Syrian Liberation Front, the Army of Conquest, and Ahrar al-Sham. The Saudi monarchy, presiding over a society far more oppressive than Iranian or Syrian society—but spared media outrage—pursues its unholy alliance with Israel to bring down the regime in Tehran, preparing for the coming confrontation by invading Bahrain,  isolating Qatar, pulverizing Yemen and bombing Syria at U.S. behest and kidnapped the Lebanese prime minister in order to influence Lebanese politics and diminish the role of Hizbollah.)

And there are all kinds of reasons for Europe to stand up to the U.S. and say, “Your sanctions are not our sanctions.” And maybe add: Your intentions for further regime change in the Middle East are not popular in Europe, which fears more waves of refugees. And also add: The sanctions you’ve demanded we impose on Russia following the February 2014 coup in Ukraine and consequent Russian reassertion of sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula are hurting Europe and should be lifted.

There should be a multilateral world. It already exists, actually, but the U.S. ruling class, wedded as it is to “full-spectrum dominance” and notions of U.S. “exceptionalism” resists acknowledging it. Bolton’s remarks are telling.


A suckup-kickdown bully, and dual nationality Neocon (Israel/US), JohnBolton is surely one of the most odious figures in modern history.

“I think the Europeans will see that’s in their interest ultimately to go along with this,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper over the weekend. Asked if the U.S. would apply sanctions to European firms, he said vaguely, “It’s possible. It depends on the conduct of other governments.” He notes legal devices available to the U.S. such as the denial of licenses. He threatens to pull out all the stops to impede the world’s effort to conciliate Iran. He wants to coordinate Saudi, Israeli, U.S. and MEK efforts to effect regime change in Tehran; as he told an MEK audience in July 2017, he expects this by 2019!

This is the U.S. National Security Advisor, serving an unusually unbalanced, ignorant U.S. president. (The British demanded his withdrawal from the Libya talks in 2004 because he was overbearing, indeed acting like a madman.)  He is saying, confidently, Europe will go along “when they see it’s in their interest.” Maybe he and Trump miscalculate. The EU even without Britain rivals the U.S. in population and GDP. If it once needed to obey, it might not need to (or want to) now. The U.S. these days does not smell of freedom, democracy, liberal values, calm reason, tolerated dissent. It reeks of white nationalism, racist exclusion, institutional police violence and murder, and seemingly irrevocable tendency towards the concentration of wealth in the .01%. It is a fundamentally unfair, unjust, unadmirable society that tortures its youth by offering them low-paying jobs and endless student debt if they were lucky enough to go to college. It denies its people the normal standard of public health care and charges them twice the Canadian fees.

It is a basically a fucked-up country. After its (ongoing) disasters in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Lebanon and elsewhere, it has no moral leg to stand on in lecturing Europe to maintain sanctions on Iran. After siding 100% with Israel, on everything imaginable, it has lost any credibility as an honest broker in international relations. [Never had much, if any, credibility with any intelligent person.—Ed]

The EU comprises various imperialist countries who of course exploit workers throughout the world, competing in the process with the U.S. They are not morally different from the U.S. But their governments increasingly chafe under U.S. hegemony, and this particular nut-case hegemon, Donald Trump.

Angela Merkel said last week that Europe can no longer count on the United States to protect it. “It is no longer such that the United States simply protects us,” she declared, “but Europe must take its destiny in its own hands. That’s the task of the future,” she said during a speech honoring French President Emmanuel Macron, who said European nations should not allow “other major powers, including allies” to “put themselves in a situation to decide our diplomacy [and] security for us.” Trump was all over this guy in his last visit but the bromance ends here. You do not order proud France to cease trade ties with Iran just because you’re looking for another war. Europeans are tired of that. Tired of being taken for granted as slavish allies when the U.S. decides to attack somebody. The Truman Doctrine is dead, the Cold War over, Europe despite Brexit increasingly united in its ability to collectively respond to U.S. pressure.

Let there be an intensification of inter-imperialist contradictions! Let Germany say, yes, brothers and sisters, let us make Mercedez-Benz in Tehran! Let us sell you Airbus passenger airliners! Let us buy your walnuts and pomegranates and carpets. And let us tell the Americans the “American century” is not gonna happen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, (AK Press). He can be reached at: gleupp@tufts.edu 

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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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Iran story

horiz-long grey

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. WE MUST BREAK THE IMPERIAL DISINFORMATION MACHINE.

The following is an excerpt from the closing chapter of the book Lily Pad Roll, by contributing editor Gaither Stewart. Written as a novel, and published by Trepper & Katz (a Punto Press imprint) in 2012, the book received uniform praise by critics and ordinary readers. It is currently available on Amazon and other leading global booksellers. The blurb accompanying the launching of this book attests to its enduring relevance:

With this new 'spy novel', Lily Pad Roll-a sequel to The Trojan Spy-Gaither Stewart reinforces his claim to join the distinguished ranks of authors like Graham Greene and John le Carré who are not only great storytellers, but whose stories burn with a passion for truth and justice. The 'political' thriller plays an important role in today's world, filling a gap left by the near-total demise of investigative journalism. Stewart "tells it like it is"-and not yesterday's news, but the here and now: in this case, the surreptitious spread of Western neo-imperialism across the planet, and in particular its agenda of encirclement and attempted emasculation of the "old enemy", Russia.

Stewart marshals his sometimes unruly cast of engaging characters with consummate skill. In that manner, Lily Pad Roll offers a fresh perspective on world events, unraveling layer after layer the deceit concealed in the imposition of "democracy" on a recalcitrant world. Georgia, Syria, Serbia and Iran may not seem to have much in common, but all four are influenced by the same forces. When a young journalist travels through Eastern Europe to investigate America's new military presence among post-communist countries torn between fragile democracy and a shifting geopolitical situation, he himself falls into the murderous sights of US secret services. The author's deep understanding of the region enables him to present the story behind the story, from the perspective of local people, without ever losing sight of breaking events and the reality that the US continues its century-old containment of Russia by any means necessary, even at the risk of a true cataclysmic global war.

Introduction
By Gaither Stewart
In view of a threatening US/NATO - led war against Iran, the concluding chapter of my 2012 novel, Lily Pad Roll, in which I invent a US boots-on-the ground invasion of Iran, is a curious read today six  years since I wrote this part of the novel. Since Iran is a country I know pretty well, especially geographically, I show a likely scenario of such an invasion arriving there from East, West and South, the attacking forces converging toward the capital Tehran and the alleged ballistic nuclear centers in the South of the country while the Iranian strategy is to pull back into its impenetrable mountains marking the geography of the entire country.

People often ask me, "Why did you call this novel Lily Pad Roll?" The answer is simple and should be known by most Americans, but unfortunately isn't. This colossal and largely manufactured ignorance weighs heavily on the course of history today, and, in fact, endangers us all. For as the US seeks total strategic supremacy around the world, and its military deepens and broadens its hold upon scores of nations, especially as it maneuvers to contain Russia, the old foe (and China, too) the chances of a global, terminal conflagration increase exponentially. In this scheme lily pads play a nefarious role.

A lily pad is a floating leaf of the white water lily family. A bullfrog sits on a lily pad in a pond. The lily pad does not sink under its weight. The giant water lily, victoria amazonica, has the world's biggest lily pad, up to four feet, which can support the weight of several people at once. The lily pad is quiet. It lies tranquilly on the surface of the pond water, offering refuge and camouflage for the frog, protecting it from predators. The lily pad fits in with its natural surroundings, as does the frog.

Human beings are the only creatures which do not fit in with the rest of nature. Nature is simple. But mankind rejects simple living. The American military has adopted the lily pad concept. In military jargon, a lily pad means an outpost, an advance camp, a foreign base, or a staging area, only one in a series. It means a scaled down military facility with theoretically little permanent personnel, often used as a staging ground for Special Forces and Intelligence operations. Soldiers may then leapfrog from one lily pad to another. The outpost aspect of the military lily pads follows the model of the multiplying lily pads. Especially the giant water lily leaf. They not only multiply but also grow in size and in time tend to become permanent military bases now encircling the world. For example, Afghanistan is a gigantic lily pad; permanent, also a place to move out from, a place from which soldiers go out to 'conduct operations' against other people around that part of the world.

In American military thinking, the huge city-like bases for 100,000 troops in Germany are no longer necessary. So America is "reconfiguring its footprint"--that is, reviewing its global deployment of troops in order to be able to apply military force anywhere rather than be tied to a small number of bases. That is the lily pad concept, the analogy of frogs hopping around a growing number of foreign bases. Frogs equal battle-ready troops. Saudi Arabian restrictions on the use of U.S. bases there resulted in the construction of the Qatar lily pad. The air war against Serbia and the theft of its historic territory of Kosovo made possible the creation of the giant lily pad-state in the Balkans. Lily pads now dot Bulgaria, Romania and the Czech Republic, northwards to the Baltic States, across the Black Sea to Georgia, another lily pad-state, to lily pad-state Iraq, and on to Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan and to Singapore. The only limit today is the surface of planet Earth, but the moon and Mars are not excluded from military "Strangelove" ambitions and dreams. At the last count--no one can be precise since the U.S. maintains secret bases and Intelligence installations all over the world--the United States of America had 737 bases and more than 600,000 soldiers manning garrisons or involved in countless operations in some 200 nations, spanning the globe from Europe to Iraq and Afghanistan, to the Far East, the Pacific, Africa and Latin America. To this figure one must add hundreds of thousands of "private contractors", aka mercenaries--their exact number is also secret--serving the interests of the global American empire. Like the lily pads. It is safe to assume that their number is growing.


As the cartoon suggests, war on Iran, under any pretext, has been concocted and promoted by every administration since the fall of the Shah —their favorite linchpin for the region—in 1979. Prior to that the Anglo-Americans had meddled in Iranian politics for over a century. As the author notes, made-to-order ignorance propagated by the servile media and political class prevent most Americans from realising the enormity of the crimes proposed by the empire against a nation that poses no real threat to American security.

We were following the TV news in the communications room when a flash interrupted the BBC morning news: the International News Agency reported that early that morning three Iranian torpedo boats appeared on the radar screens of the USS Abraham Lincoln anchored near Iran’s Persian Gulf island of Kharg. The boats headed straight for the supercarrier.

Quoting the ship’s commanding officer, a BBC journalist on board reported that “the torpedo boats emerged from the Gulf mist and sped in a provocative and threatening manner toward the carrier.” According to the Admiral, the carrier at first undertook no special defensive measures. At that hour, activity on the decks of the massive vessel-fortress was minimal.

Another journalist on board testified that when the torpedo boats were about one kilometer away, they began firing at the carrier.

After repeated Iranian provocations, the Admiral’s office reiterated, the carrier finally responded with cannon shots, destroying one of the attack PTs. The other two withdrew. The U.S. Navy reported that one carrier crewman had been shot dead.

“So it has finally happened!” Elmer exclaimed. “The provocation they were waiting for.”

“And who knows who really shot that crewman?” I answered, now automatically thinking conspiratorially as old Nikitin had drilled into my head.

“At Novo Selo everyone felt it in the air,” Elmer said. “So now it’s reality.”

“Those troops in East Georgia Alvin told me about were a clear sign.”

“Karl Heinz, America will retaliate. And it’ll be a nightmare. The war in Iraq will seem like maneuvers.”

Zapping over various channels I stopped on a press briefing underway at the top of a skyscraper overlooking the Danube in Vienna. U.S. Intelligence officers had unveiled the contents of an allegedly stolen Iranian laptop computer to leaders of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a restricted group of journalists. They disclosed selections from over a thousand pages of what were labeled Iranian computer simulations. Accounts of Iranian military experiments flashed across a screen to demonstrate Iran’s efforts to develop a nuclear warhead to fit atop its Shahab-3 missile. According to unconfirmed Israeli reports a Shahab-6 exists with a range of up to 5000 kilometers, about 3,500 miles.

“The Shahab can reach Israel and other countries of the Middle East,” the spokesman said. The word Shahab, he explained, means shooting star, luminous, or king of the world.

The excerpts from the stolen laptop, another U.S. official stated, “disprove once and for all Iran’s claims that its nuclear program is peaceful.”

“Iran also obtained missiles from North Korea,” the spokesman added. “Those missiles are capable of striking capitals in Western Europe and Moscow. Some of them may be nuclear-tipped. These disclosures prove conclusively that Iran has developed intercontinental ballistic missiles, posing an immediate threat to global security.”

Silence fell in the conference room until a young journalist at the back stood up and without being recognized asked pointblank: “But why should Iran nuke European cities?”

The spokesman stared, apparently astonished at the naïve question, raised his arms in dismissal and muttered: “I believe the reasons are obvious to any sensible person.”

“So Iran is declaring war on all of Europe!” the journalist said matter-of-factly.

 

“Good God!” Elmer gasped. “Well, it’s time to put to good use all this radio equipment you installed. I’ll contact our old Bulgarian pal, Alvin. God knows where he has lily-padded to by now. I believe I can communicate with him safely.”

“How do you mean? You’ve taught me that anything that can be transmitted can also be intercepted.”

“Yes, but there are a few tricks. Too complicated to explain. Let’s see, it’s close to noon in Georgia. I hope we can reach Alvin.”

“And it’s noontime south of Georgia too,” I said, watching Elmer work. Fast, smooth, silent.

Suddenly he whispered: “Got him on the line. Put on your earphones and listen.”

There was Alvin’s voice. Faint but clear, wary but curious.

“Old friends here,” Elmer said. “Wanted to say hello. We just heard the news.”

“All grim. I’m there. Floods of us are pouring in. Exactly where I told you. Many more behind us. Don’t know where they all come from … Germany, I suppose. At this moment, everything seems quiet.”

A click and the line fell silent.

In the afternoon, we listened to confirmation from NATO European Headquarters that Operation Persian Paradigm was underway. U.S. and NATO troops had crossed the Iranian border from Azerbaijan and Armenia into the northeastern corner of the country. NATO troops marched into Tabriz, Iran’s fourth largest city with 1.4 million people. A center of heavy industry, Tabriz is located only 260 miles south of Tbilisi, the capital of America’s ally, former Soviet Georgia. Embedded journalists alternated describing the situation as tranquil.

“Things are deathly quiet in this corner of Iran,” commented the French correspondent of a Paris weekly magazine in a TV interview on France 2, adding that U.S. soldiers spoke of intentions of moving on Iran’s capital of Tehran, 328 miles away but separated by the rugged Elburz Mountains. The journalist reported U.S military claims that the Azeris, the major nationality of multinational Tabriz, hailed the arrival of NATO troops with garlands of flowers for the liberators.

Unconfirmed reports mentioned sounds of small arms fire. A freelance Dutch journalist, speaking on the streets of Tabriz, said he had heard reports that two U.S. soldiers had died of gunshot wounds. Roaming foreign journalists reported many civilian victims.

NATO spokesmen in East Georgia announced laconically that no further penetrations into Iran were contemplated at this time. Simultaneously, however, the BBC confirmed reports of thousands of Allied troops crossing the border from Iraq in the southwest.

Elmer and I sat in our “communications room” waiting for the next episode. An endless interlude at that hour. While pacing the room, drinking coffee and chatting about disconnected issues we discovered we shared a love of chess. The new American war in mind, I recalled I’d read somewhere that chess helps keep mad people sane.

“Yeah,” Elmer said, “but Bobby Fischer said to remember that chess is not psychology, but just good moves.”

I laughed.

“And what about this? Mirko, my political teacher in Belgrade, told me the story of a Serbian chess master, Maria Manakova, who fell in love with the Yugoslav Grandmaster. In a game with the great chess master she made a series of rash moves with her king as if in surrender—probably intentional moves—and then surrendered her body to him as well. The Grandmaster liked that and married her. Psychology or good moves? Crazy, eh?”

Around midnight we began a game. Elmer seemed elsewhere in his thoughts. Off-handedly, one eye on the TV screen, Elmer checkmated me in a series of lightning moves in less than ten minutes.

Silence reigned in the apartment in Berlin-Mitte. Lala and Antonia slept. Berlin slept. I took a double dose of lamotrigina. At about three a.m. a military communiqué flashed across our screen: just before dawn U.S. troops had crossed the border into Iran from Afghanistan. By late morning, we heard, they had taken up positions around the holy city of Mashhad, a city of 2.5 million people, capital of the Khorasan province, one hundred miles from the Afghan border and five hundred and forty miles northeast of Tehran.

European correspondents inside the country reported that the Iranian military strategy was to avoid head-on encounters. Tehran’s troops had headed for the mountains, they reported: the Elburz range running across north Iran between the Caspian Sea and Tehran and merging with the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan; the rugged Zagros Mountains spread from northwestern Iran to the Persian Gulf and joining with the minor range running south from Mashhad; and Mount Damavand hanging over Tehran, at 18,000 feet the highest point in the Middle East.

An Italian geologist recalled that the face of Iran is its mountains. A major nation, not the artificial land of the Fertile Crescent of Iraq.

Iran specialists in Germany agreed that the invaders were misinformed or mad to consider conquering Iran militarily.

“What kind of strategy is this?” I wondered aloud. “Cat and mouse? It was supposed to be a Blitzkrieg. And Iranians? What are they up to? Scorched earth policies? Only their mountains? Or are they readying their missiles? But against whom? Europe? And why Europe?”

“Mirko has always stressed that the U.S. invasion of Iran was inevitable.” Elmer said. “I learned from my interceptions that the conquest of Iran is an old dream. It’s the American military’s urge to control the three linked countries of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.”

“Persian Paradigm,” I snickered. “I would bet the generals themselves don’t understand the meaning … if it has any meaning.”

Three hours later came the news of the fourth wave: this time from the Persian Gulf. Following bombardment from U.S. warships and aircraft from different lily pads in the region, U.S. troops from Qatar, from the Emirates, from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and tens of thousands more pouring out of the bellies of the supercarriers as from multiple Trojan horses swept ashore from the Gulf. The spearhead pointed at the Iranian nuclear development center of Bushehr, on the Gulf Coast, one thousand miles south of Tehran.

Embedded journalists emphasized again and again the “Russian-constructed nuclear center of Bushehr as the target.”

Bushehr is part of Russia’s stake in Iran.

Bushehr is indicative of Russia’s push toward the Persian Gulf.

Bushehr was a down payment on Russia’s investment in the control of Iran’s petroleum.

Confused tactics. Confused objectives. Confused reactions. U.S. generals demanding to march straight to Tehran and to the seat of evil in Qom. Bedlam in the diplomatic world. French, German, Dutch and Danish foreign ministries demanding a ceasefire and NATO withdrawal from Iran. Socialist France again threatening to withdraw from NATO. China backing the elimination of Iran’s nuclear missile potential but condemning the invasion. Russia calling for both ceasefire and the total occupation of Iran while America is “perplexed” at Russia’s plotting and aiming at restoration of its empire: Russian troops on red alert north of Georgia and displacement of its missiles to Transdnestr south of Odessa.

Silently, during the night, Iran’s specialists had mined the straights of Hormuz near Bandar Abbas, sealing the Persian Gulf.

I opened my Times Atlas of the World to plate 27: Indo-Arabia. “My Bible,” I explain to a curious Elmer. The extended American empire lay before us: the geopolitical unity of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, together with Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in the northwest and Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in the north, the Emirates and adjacent territories in the south, spaced and controlled by the lily pad chain, the center of the world, forming the geopolitical heart of the New American empire.

“Just look at this plate, Elmer. Clear as the light of day. Right here for all to see in the Times Atlas of the World.”

 

While Elmer continued studying the atlas, I went for a morning run along the River Spree just to try to think. From my new vantage point, the whole region of Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the heartland of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and farther eastwards, had never seemed so near.

Yet when I looked around me at the peaceful scene along the Berlin river, the late winter mists typical of Brandenburg, dim yellow lights behind curtained windows, a face in a window, a small Bateau Mouche slowing for a curve or for the passage under an arched bridge, that East seemed at the same time far away. Time and space seemed unreal.

 

I believe that in the mind of many Europeans and in the minds of most Americans, Iran is an abstraction, a theory, a mirage from a meaningless past of Ali Baba and Aladdin’s lamp, not a real, vibrant, modern society, simply wrapped in a veneer of antiquity. I have the sudden thought that for most Western Europeans, Iran, so close in distance, is on another planet, under another sun.

My atlases are right. Space is distorted, time bizarre and out of joint. Maybe it has always been that way. And, as usual, Western political power stubbornly steeped in vague academic ideas of Orientalism, still has no idea of the real reality of the East.

So now it has happened anyway. A great misunderstanding. A return to the past. War between West and East. The great war for civilization between civilizations. A huge, black, swollen, thick-skinned bellic bubble floats eastwards. America’s endless war machine moves inexorably from West to East. In this moment bombs are falling on Tehran and Isfahan.

“Good-bye, blue skies!” I pull my woolen running scarf tight and sing over and over the haunting jazz piece. “Good-bye, good-bye, blue skies, good-bye. Good-bye, blue skies. Good-bye.”

 

In silence, Elmer and I follow reactions from across the Atlantic. Cries for vengeance for Iranian chicanery echo over hysterical news channels and in the words of growing numbers of cynical neocon spokesmen speaking from the pages of the mainline press.

“Nuke the heathens,” cry the fundamentalist sects and cynical neocon spokesmen.

“Nuke’em,” America’s enraged rednecks scream. “Persian pear-a-dig’em. Nuke those Eyeranian basterds, fucking Mohammedan Islamist fanaticists,” cry agitated fundamentalists.

“Nuke ’em real good! Pear-a-dig ’em, real real good.”

Cliff was right. War is addictive. Once you shoot the drug into your veins, Cliff said, you can’t live without it. You can’t think straight. Once you set out down the war-drug path, turning back is as difficult as going cold turkey for a heroin addict. In the haze generals live in, unpleasant realities become bunk, Cliff had repeated.

The generals and the strategists do not know that Iran is a land of ancient traditions and a powerful nationalism that has resisted foreign invaders forever. The Pax Americana is meaningless for ancient Persia.

For the generals war against Iran is a strategic opportunity for U.S. control of all of Central Asia and thus of Russia. But the new war will soon be seen as an act of strategic desperation, though, the high passes and the delusions will remain with the war addict, strung out with nothing but more war to rely on.

Meanwhile, other good people of America gather in their churches and pray. Good Christians in the great cities and across the fruited plains of America pray for things greater than themselves. For victory over the sinful Iranians. For peace. For our boys over there bearing the American message of democracy and the true faith. They pray to their Lord God that He protect “our way of life and the future of our children.”

They pray that anti-American pacifists and traitors will see the light, repent their ways and face like men their just punishment.

They pray for pacification in that mysterious far away land.

But they neglect to lift a prayer for the redemption of a nation gone haywire. They still believe they are free.

“They still believe they are the chosen ones,” Elmer mutters. “The exceptional ones, because their material life was once so good. They preach that killing is wrong and yet annihilate entire nations. They claim to know God but are hated by all.”

“Maybe America was a lost cause from the start,” I add. “Maybe its Creator was evil … the Creator of an evil human stain. In which case, Americans must think, what does one war more or less matter?”

The End


About the Author
GAITHER STEWART Senior Editor, European Correspondent }  Gaither Stewart serves as The Greanville Post  European correspondent, Special Editor for Eastern European developments, and general literary and cultural affairs correspondent. A retired journalist, his latest book is the essay asnthology BABYLON FALLING (Punto Press, 2017). He’s also the author of several other books, including the celebrated Europe Trilogy (The Trojan Spy, Lily Pad Roll and Time of Exile), all of which have also been published by Punto Press. These are thrillers that have been compared to the best of John le Carré, focusing on the work of Western intelligence services, the stealthy strategy of tension, and the gradual encirclement of Russia, a topic of compelling relevance in our time. He makes his home in Rome, with wife Milena. Gaither can be contacted at gaithers@greanvillepost.com. His latest assignment is as Counseling Editor with the Russia Desk. His articles on TGP can be found here.


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Parting shot—a word from the editors

The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report 




Do you prefer the 1% or The Party? (Or: Why China wins)

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.


Pres. Xi reviewing honor guard. A highly qualified statesman for our troubled times.

The Chinese communists kicked out the the Japanese, then the Europeans, held off the American neo-imperialists at Korea and then Vietnam, provided spectacular economic growth during all that time, ended rampant drug abuse, forbid ethnic quarrelling, and is the economic envy of the world in 2018.

Maybe you don’t want to live there, but you certainly wish your country was doing as well for itself as China is.

Every Third-Worlder would agree with that in a nanosecond, and only a French-style superiority/inferiority complex could cause a Westerner to deny it (or perhaps total ignorance of modern politics).

How did we get here? Divine intervention? Cultural superiority? The dumb luck of an electron’s random path?

Somebody is running political-economic policy on this earth, and the West European (bourgeois) system and socialist-inspired Chinese system answer that question quite clearly in their parts of the world. This is the 7th part in an 8-part series which essentially compares the two systems via comparing two leading English-language literary lights of either one.

And if you’ve read this far you know all that already, so I’ll spare you the preambles and get right down to the nitty gritty.

So who’s your Daddy?

Everybody's got a vanguard party. Democracy is not perfect (only God is), but this does not mean there are not varying degrees of perfection which we can analyse and attain.

In the West, your modern-era vanguard – after decades of money-grubbing, back-stabbing, standing on daddy’s rich shoulders, and exploiting those who work for them – is the economic 1%.

To add journalistic balance: they also got to be the vanguard via the admirable, ethical business practices of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, the genius of people like Warren Buffett to support the growth of private, abusive monopolies, and the incredible skills of being phony in public by actors like Ronald Reagan…these are whom have been chosen in the West – via both informal and formal democratic consensus – as their vanguard party.

According to the author of the top English-language university textbook on China, John King Fairbank and his China: A New History, China has always been culturally predisposed towards rejecting that type of a vanguard.

“Once the literati who set the tone of ruling class opinion became convinced that the dynasty had lost its moral claim to the throne, little could save it. This is a factor in Chinese politics today.”

If I said that Chinese literati ran China I’d be called “romantic”, but that’s the view from a pair of Western eyes, which can usually only imagine the army, money, or an only-negative, reactionary clergy to be the the deciding factor in politics.

However, we can say that there certainly was a literati in charge in Revolutionary War-era America – it was bourgeois and slave-owning, but they often talked the right anti-imperialist talk and walked it, too. But nobody can say that about America’s leadership today: I don’t know what the 9th century Chinese theatre equivalent of Bedtime for Bonzo was, but I don’t think the lead actor got very high on their political ladder.

In France, every politician must write at least one book, but…c’mon – they are imperialists, cultural chauvinists and fake-leftists, or somehow all three at the same time quite often. However, at least France is not American, eh?

China may or may not have a “literati” in charge today…but you certainly cannot possibly rise in the Communist Party without being literate in modern political and economic theory. You can call me “Confucian”, but the best way to lead is by example – so what example does their current vanguard party give us?

Just how good is China’s economic planning? There’s a reason we aren’t told.

At 7 parts I’m starting to feel bad for my readers, even though you have paid me nothing, and 98% of you not even paid me a comment compliment!

Regardless of your shameless taking advantage of my labor, I’m going to put the juicier section – China’s economic planning – ahead of the “as painless as possible” very quick recap of the Chinese political structures which permit such a juicy economic policy.

The reality is that people are right to fear rule by the Party – it’s radically new. In human history it has been the 1%, 99% of the time. Even in aboriginal societies, how often were women and the disabled allowed to make major decisions? Therefore, we have almost no data to rely on regarding what happens when an 99%-inspired Party rules.

Common sense tells us that public opinion can’t rule 100% of the time….but just once every 4 years? The scientific method tells us that data and testing are important – we should use them in politics and not just the chemistry lab, no?


[dropcap]A [/dropcap]great thing about Jeff J. Brown’s China is Communist, Dammit!, just released last year, is that he gives us plenty of evidence which leaves no doubt that China’s system uses data on what the People think: it is a People’s democratic dictatorship, after all, and they absolutely cannot have democracy without compiling data on what the people say they need, want and generally opine on important subjects.

The reality is that China compiles and actually draws from this “Peoples’ data” hugely impressively. It is also a reality that Western parliaments care very little about public opinion on seemingly all policy making, and certainly Western executive branches are not constrained by it either, nor is the European Union or Eurogroup (which runs the Eurozone).

The disparity between China’s reality and image is startling: a “5 year plan” is portrayed as pure dictatorship, but here’s how it’s actually compiled:

“These five-year plans are not done in a vacuum. A vast hierarchy of information speeds up from village committees to county, district, provincial and then national levels. These statistics are based on surveys and polls of the masses. The Communist Party of China is one of the largest polling organizations in the world, obsessively interested in what citizens think about, the good, the bad and the ugly, from garbage services, to medical care, to the ability to buy food or a car.

Computers have made a huge improvement in collecting and analyzing all this information but still thousands of statisticians, actuaries, database experts and technicians who studied at university in urban, rural, agricultural, environmental and economic planning, hundreds of thousands of collective work hours to interpret and analyze this soon army of data statistics and information….Needless to say, for a continent-sized country with over 1 billion citizens, it takes hundreds of thousands of people involved to develop each five-year plan.”

It is not “needless to say”, however, because such facts about China’s governmental and economic process are never uttered in the West. They must fear that we would be contaminated by such democratic common sense. “China is an unfeeling totalitarian system…and they’re capitalist, too. End of story!!!”

This is where new China scholarship by Brown should revolutionise the conceptions of China for those who are honest; Brown has lived there for nearly two decades and is involved in normal, everyday life as an active immigrant-citizen, as his book repeatedly demonstrates. He relates how he knows that polls of all types, and of all demographics, are taking place because he sees constant flyers for them in his regular-class neighborhood. Fairbank will always be “Harvard’s first China scholar”, but he can never outclass Brown on “new”, living China scholarship, though he probably does outclass Brown on old, outdated, scholarship of dead Chinese.

In the West public opinion is polled just one time: during election time, and then is totally ignored. French President Emmanuel Macron and others pride themselves on not listening to public opinion once reaching office, and he is steadfastly implementing whatever the hell he wants; during election campaigns candidates like Hillary bend anyway the latest poll is blowing. Among the People of the West there is abundant proof of support for leftism, and certainly majority support for many socialist-inspired policies, but they are totally ignored because they are unable to play a role in their money-centered, 1%-created and supported, bourgeois, individualistic political process.

Not so socialist China….

“Compared to Western countries, what is amazing is the lack of serious influence that China’s private sector has on the process of developing each five-year plan and budget. The idea of having thousands of lobby and special interest groups, let’s be honest, with hundreds of millions of dollars and euros in hand to essentially buy legislation for their direct benefit, is alien to Chinese governance.

Do various, aforementioned government entities contact the offices of Jack Ma (Alibaba), Robin Li (Baidu), Wang Jianlin (Dalian Wanda Group), and others among China’s elite business world? Of course. But the idea that any of these CEOs or their companies go to the state planning commission or National People’s Congress, with checkbook in hand, to write and buy their own laws, which is standard practice in Eurangloland (European Union, NATO plus Australia, New Zealand and Israel), is unthinkable in Communist China. Their wishes and suggestions are surely known by everyone concerned, but they are trumped by Baba Beijing’s overriding priority of maintaining social stability, called wending in Chinese, and keeping the Heavenly Mandate for the long term. And these Chinese movers and shakers in the business world are in total agreement. No wending is very bad for business, unless you sell arms and weapons, and almost all of these in China are state-owned.”

Brown clearly does not have red-colored glasses about the increased access of China’s 1%, but he demonstrates that the real project of modern socialism is to not to destroy capitalism 100% but to limit it and harness it for the benefit of the 99%.

“Suppose Baba Beijing declared a serious funding issue or the masses began to turn on their superrich 1% class, which is now looked upon with a certain amount of national pride? The National People’s Congress might feel compelled to pass a law requiring all fortunes over $1 billion dollars to pay a 10% or 25% wealth tax to the state treasury. China’s 1% may grumble and complain, but the checkbooks would necessarily be whipped out. They know the only reason they have accumulated the wealth they possess is due to the Communist Party of China’s strategic, long-term, five-, and now essentially 10-year economic plans, and all the well-thought out strategies, subsidies, targeted tax cuts, etc., that were bestowed upon them. There is no sense of thankfulness on the part of Western capitalists for what their governments do for them, because they now they own the process in the first place. How can you be thankful for something which you already consider yours by right?”

The key is that, when it comes to economic planning, socialist-inspired countries have huge leverage to force their economic direction in a way which guarantees – guarantees – to be pointed in a way which is at least primarily intended to help the 99%. Nobody can guarantee economic growth, perhaps, but central planning is a far, far more secure system than trickle-down economics and the boom-bust cycle of capitalist democracies.

In the West public opinion is polled just one time: during election time, and then is totally ignored. French President Emmanuel Macron and others pride themselves on not listening to public opinion once reaching office, and he is steadfastly implementing whatever the hell he wants; during election campaigns candidates like Hillary bend anyway the latest poll is blowing. Among the People of the West there is abundant proof of support for leftism, and certainly majority support for many socialist-inspired policies, but they are totally ignored because they are unable to play a role in their money-centered, 1%-created and supported, bourgeois, individualistic political process.

Undoubtedly, what the above quote demonstrates is how China is able to end to “individually planned” economies – like Macron’s France or the Eurogroup for the Eurozone – which are a clear betrayal of the ideals of Western democracy and certainly socialist democracy, which insists on some equality instead of unrestrained individualist rights.

“In the West, the politicians and policymakers owe their allegiance and existence to the one percent, with their vast sums of money. In China, it’s one percent owes its allegiance, existence and vast sums of money to the Communist Party of China, its politicians and policymakers.” 

That is socialism – it is the opposite of individualism; greatly undermining rampant individualism – not all individualism – is the only way to socialism.

It would be nice to reach the ideal of no private property and total equality among citizens – that is communism – but, to paraphrase Fidel: we must change today that which can be changed.

But that is what the experience of the Chinese Communist Party has done: to insist on the unity and brotherhood of all peoples by cutting off at the knees the false idea of the self-made man. Truly, anywhere, everywhere and at all times in history people have made fortunes thanks to help – subsidies, protectionist policies, corruption, favourable loans, favourably-frothing electrons, etc. We are all connected, whether mighty yang CEOs or soft housewife yins.

This acknowledgement – inherent in socialism – is why the Chinese are winning, economically.

Even though I have quoted him liberally, Brown goes into these vital insights in far greater detail, making his book a tremendously valuable read. Governments DO change – all systems are NOT alike – China’s system and practices are stunningly effective, obviously, and stunningly modern as well.

Document and Parliament – Both are shinier, newer and more reflective

But to get so stunningly stunning, there must be a legal foundation to promote and protect such stunningness.

There is a hugely important mistake many people commonly make about life: People in the past were younger (and thus stupider) – those of who are living today are actually older, and thus the repositories of more experiences, maturity and human intelligence.

So why on earth would anyone think a country with a constitution 200 years younger (the US, written 1787) than China’s (written 1982) is somehow “more modern”? The world was so much younger and stupider then?


China Rising remains a fundamental text for those wishing to understand China in a comparative framework with the West.

Part of the problem is the use of the phrase “the people’s dictatorship” – whoever sired it, dictatorship is always undesirable to modern ears. However only the Western media uses this two-word phrase! It is truly foreign to Chinese ears – the preamble of the Chinese constitution uses a very different term: “the people’s democraticdictatorship”. This is not a small nuance at all.

China is not really totally ruled by the Party: You never hear this in the West, but there are eight other political parties known as the “Democratic Front”. As their name implies (democracy currently being more associated with personal freedom than equality, for some reason) they are more capitalist and personal freedom-oriented. Far from being a token, they account for some 30% of seats in the largest national legislative body or parliament – the National People’s Congress.

Just as I always say Iran’s PressTV is more diverse and open than Western media – because even though our editorial line is clear we have rabid pro-Zionist analysts all the time, whereas the West doesn’t even have Arab analysts when they are talking about Palestine, (much less Palestinian analysts, LOL) – China’s top legislature has far more ideological balance than the English-speaking world does. The 30% is not in charge – by law – but they are there, and they do make a difference.

There is no such ideological political tolerance in the English-language world, where Hillary passes for a leftist; Corbyn is a very new phenomenon; Canada and Australia have totally lost their sense of self and are US-apers, and I would not have written that 30 years ago.

Continental Europe does not merit being lumped in with them..but not by much, as their non-mainstream / true leftist parties have dwindled greatly.

My overall point is: There IS ideological balance in China’s top legislative body, but it is not a perfect balance NOR should it be. The West has 50-50 balance between left and right regularly…and it produces total gridlock. Probably because it’s a balance of “bad” and “worse”, ideologically!

China also outdoes socialist Cuba in this area: In Cuba’s brand-new parliament – just the 2nd female-majority parliament globally, and with 40% Black or Mestizo members – only 10% of members are not members of the Communist Party. I’m sure that’s never reported either….

But, socialist fanatic that I am repeatedly imagined to be, both China and Cuba (and Iran and Vietnam) have succeeded because they allow more ideological balance at the top then is given credit for. We socialist fanatics like to remember that those horrid souls called “the opposition” do have some valid ideas to implement.

Lobbies are not really democratic – China puts those pigs in a pen

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hy should you have more influence just because you are rich and well-connected? You should not be able to “pay” for more free speech just because you have the money to do so. If this is considered a lamentable inevitability, then structures are needed to limit it, or simply eliminate it entirely.

That’s why China has another national body which is designed to formally harness an uncontrollable force in the West: special interest groups. Indeed, if you find any nonsensical legislation in the West – the root cause is always a lobby.

Thus, parallel to their parliament, China has the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which contains all the different types of lobbies – private industry, farmers, youth, pensioners, etc. This body meets at the same time as China’s Congress (Parliament), so they are democratically present at the key time and can do their best to influence opinion.

And I think I have been able to explain – quickly and without boring you – China’s top legislative bodies and how they work. Clearly it is superior in conception, composition and practice to West European (bourgeois) democracy…and if you can just hang in there a tiny bit longer I can sum up China’s modern advantages in the other two branches of government.

China had enough of warlords, but the West loves ‘liberal warlord judge’ Macron

China also differs in the executive branch: in the West it is personified by Emmanuel Macron, the new “liberal (free market / non-racist) strongman”. Macron rules by decree even though his Party has an absolute majority in Parliament! That’s because the open debate of his far-right economic policies would inspire a lot of bad press. Truly, an emperor in the old Chinese mould…minus the conscience-pricking Heavenly Mandate, of course.

China’s system, instead, spreads out the power of the executive branch in order to safeguard the control of the vanguard party – the Communist Party – which has been democratically installed by their 1949 popular revolution. This decentralisation of individual power to preserve the power of an entire Party is what socialism is all about: no more strongmen (and certainly not during non-wartime).

Thus the 300-member Central Committee (of the Communist Party) is the first step above the Congress, but the members are voted for by Congress. That is indirect election, and the US has this (electoral college), as does France (500 mayors are required to sign your petition to run for president). Cuba just elected Canel-Diaz and their Central Committee via the same system. You can call it “not democratic”, and the socialists can call the capitalist system “not democratic”, and that will allow me to move on with this analysis….

The Central Committee elects the members of the Politburo, Military Commission (Party control over army) and General Secretary (leader of Politburo and the top post in China). The Politburo is often described as an “executive cabinet” but it’s much more powerful: of course, in Western cabinets they all serve the will and at the consent of the king. Macron’s cabinet has absolutely no real individual power; Hollande had four prime ministers in 5 years.

There is no public debate within a cabinet and there is no public debate with the Politburo, but the latter’s members are undoubtedly known to wield much more power than Western cabinet members. France’s Prime Minister actually was known for having significant power in shaping domestic policy, historically, but Macron has changed that drastically.

Within the Politburo is the Politburo Standing Committee, which is chosen by Politburo members, and which is best described as similar to a West cabinet, as it includes the president, premier and the nation’s top 5 to 9 advisors. And that’s it.

To sum up: The people vote for Congress, and then you have these committed Party members winnowing themselves down democratically via three smaller rings.

The key is: there is tremendous democratic discussion within these rings, though it is not public. This is something which Western media either cannot or will not understand. But this is why most of the decisions are unanimous – consensus is agreed upon before a vote via discussion. Why on earth should public policy be a “winner take all” situation – China’s solution is clearly more democratic because it actually produces more compromise.

Brown goes into Chinese “face saving” as a reason for not publicly filibustering like a blowhard, and it makes sense, but Cuba’s negotiations are private as well because, again, it actually produces compromise. Yes, odd gadflies cannot pore over every word, but the proof is in the pudding of China and Cuba’s long-term success amid decades of Western blockades.

Back down at the local level, China has the inhabitants of one million villages vote by secret ballot for mayors and city councils. This is the exact same in the West. It differs above this in that China switches from direct to indirect representation after the municipal level: those directly elected at the municipal level vote for township, in turn for county, in turn for province, and then province votes for national assembly.

So we see the same principles of direct and indirect democracy are undoubtedly at play – as they are in Cuba, Iran, etc. – and are at play at different levels. But both principles are used and accepted in both the capitalist and socialist democratic systems.

The major difference is that decades of freedom-fighting and leadership caused the Chinese people to insist on a single vanguard party to oversee the country in order to preserve democracy, and not to hand it to one liberal strongman warlord.

Iran is the same way: our vanguard party, which provided decades of freedom-fighting and leadership – which is the only way such a party can possibly have the credibility and influence needed to mobilise the masses – was the clergy.

To sum up this recap of the structure of Chinese socialist democracy – a quick note about the judicial branch:

China’s judicial history is longer than anyone’s, and is pretty interestingly rendered by Brown. It had explicit civil and penal codes predating not just the Magna Carta but Jesus Christ; has an informal/communal justice system which is the same as the one being hailed as groundbreaking in Northern Syria; and has notes of French and German civil law.

Undoubtedly there are Muslim influences as well, given that many Khans were Muslim and were favoured by the Ming dynasty. This is an area which merits further scholarship, as it is certainly a mine which will produce. It would also provide counter-illumination for self-understanding in many Muslim countries, because countries like Iran were controlled by the Mongols for quite a long era and thus have many “Chinese”-origin policies, thought they may not know it.

The main difference between China and West in the judicial branch is quite simply: the judicial branch is explicitly under the leadership of the Communist Party – a group is the ultimate judge.

In places like the US and France: The ultimate judge is the president. State of emergency or not, they routinely subvert justice simply by claiming “terrorism”. This is not new: before that it was by claiming “communism”. Before that it was by claiming “White superiority”.

So, from Chinese eyes, someone like Macron has made himself into a “liberal warlord judge” even more than previous French warlords.

There is another vital difference: In the West, the inhabitants are encouraged to believe a fiction that their judiciary is completely unaffected by politics, wealth, religion or ethnicity. The West also believes in Santa Claus, but that’s mainly their children.

The same policy of: “A claim of objectivity is laughably unmodern, and also cannot be more important than our overall Party principles” applies to China’s fourth estate – the press. The West also believes their press achieves objectivity, but that is not only among their children.

What have you done for me lately, or let me do?

[dropcap]G[/dropcap]erman, French and English leaders have spent the last 150 years leading horrifically bloody battles against each other. Therefore, is it any wonder that the current European leadership – exemplified by the corrupt, undemocratic Eurogroup – is so reactionary, and so unable to provide the standard of living their people deserve: Europe is perhaps only at the tail end, or perhaps even still in the midst, of a major era of warlordism?

This is probably why there are so many protests in the age of austerity in France. China thinks that’s great, and surely encourages France’s very cute, very comparatively petite efforts at modern democracy.

Protests are good because they let a government know about urgent problems which need to be resolved. These are problems which have not been headed off beforehand, say, by…I don’t know…public polling?

Protests are important to the Chinese Communist Party because they care about corruption, to the point of execution (like Iran), and protests let the public and the Party know which officials are corrupt / inept, and which companies are not following labor laws.

Thus the Communist Party actually encourages pubic protests, which is how China has an average of 3-500 daily protests. That’s a mind-blowing statistic, and I’ve used it before, but this is how new scholarship blows apart previous paradigms, thankfully. France has 10, and they are considered the most protest-happy Western country – proportionally, France has half as many protests as China. I also doubt Chinese protests feature as much alcohol and scatalogical protest signs.

The US has essentially no protests, and the ones I have seen on Youtube have been thwarted by two cops on bicycles, LOL.

Protests in Iran are far, far more common than Westerners think. There is no way for Western media to cover every Iranian protest with the breathless anticipation of the fall of the Iranian Revolution like last January. Protests need permits, just like in France, and I’m not sure what if the US requires a permit or not before some 130-kilo once-a-month National Guard member gets to don $100,000 of equipment before stepping into his assault vehicle. Iran is not China, nor is it France, but it is also not Cuba.

Cuba, does not have any protests other than the Ladies in White. Cuba, being so close to the United States, simply can’t afford to mess around – not with protests, not with the media, not with drugs, not with crime, not with corruption, not with focusing your meager tourist dollars on anything but food, housing, education and medical care (and that’s for the medicines which are not part of the embargo). They have no oil, have a pack of rabidly capitalist Scarfaces glaring at them from Miami, and yet are a helluva lot more successful societally than any non-socialist inspired government.

France, which is assumed to be so very, very socially successful, keeps putting tear gas in my eye. I am not crying tears of liberation, and I have narrowly avoided worse. They also have a delusion that one day of protest does anything to an uncaring government, although maybe that is changing in France’s currently ongoing: “May ’68, 50 years later”.

I just found this protest stuff interesting, and I’m down to just one more part – I’ll wrap this up.

The excellent news is that the 1% has no chance against the Party…any Party

Jeff Brown: Certainly NOT reviewed by the New York Times, which proves his worth to independent minds.

Brown reads off the tale of the tape simply and perfectly:

“Xi commandeers a centrally-planned state-owned economy being guided by the Communist Party of China, all of whom are planning years and decades into the future, with a clear vision and solemn mission statement. Meanwhile, Obama has packs of rabid hyenas circling him, the spydom pack, the military pack, corporate pack, bankster pack, not to mention the Zionist pack. Then he has to deal with a huge flock of vulture legislators on Capitol Hill, venal, fatted and corrupt to the core.”

That is the 1% in a nation of any colour or of any religion which is capitalist and multi-party.

And if you believe THAT is superior to an enlightened vanguard Party working to enforce the People’s will, then…your problem is structural; your blindness is cultural; your individualism is grating to me.

The idea that what Brown has failed to report is that: in China there is a 1% and Deep State-guided industrial-military-banking-media Complex on the exact same model of the West is…absurd. But I can see why the West would think that: humans often project their own experiences onto others, as it is far easier than seeing others as individuals.

Beyond not having this Complex burden, another reality is that the West’s 1% is not burdened by any mandate of good governance or equality, either cultural or found int the structures of their 200-year old founding documents.

Furthermore, the idea that in the modern era of capitalism known as neoliberalism, the West’s 1% has any solidarity with even their own government runs directly contrary to their vision of globalisation.

These last three points are all rather enormous issues, no?

Not the Party’s problem….

It is lazy stereotyping to say that China has this superior leadership because of the Confucian focus on correct, virtuous conduct of the ruler, of which there is nothing like in the West. Islamic Socialist Iran certainly has this ideal omnipresent in their government. However, this idea denies Westerners the chance to see that China’s socialism is both modern and open to all for adoption – it is not culturally predicated, but is a political choice.

Trump just pulled out of the JCPOA on Iran’s nuclear energy program, but all he will do is cause short-term economic pain: Iran, like China, has a modern government which has 5-year plans and can actually act in the long term. I hope Iranian officials are reading Brown’s book and adopting certain Chinese strategies, of course, but Iran has a People’s Democratic Dictatorship Under God, and I am truly comfortable with our long-term success (Inshallah). Anybody who loves socialism, Islamic or not, and the right of People to choose, should be pleased to hear that I and many Iranians actually feel secure in our future despite Trump’s decision, which is quite in keeping with the aggressive policies of Obama, the Bushes, Clinton and Reagan.

In the short-term…well, the US making problems and killing people with blockades -there is nothing new about this, nor does this make Iran special, sadly.

All the West can do is threaten to invade – to repeat their warlordism – but I am not worried at all for places like China and Iran. They can never invade (much less hold) either of these two – they haven’t even been able to invade far, far, far poorer Cuba!

And also: for all the reasons so superbly enumerated by Brown, socialism’s victory is deserved and assured, if not expected right today.

The success of the Chinese Communist Party – and the socialist vanguard parties in places like Cuba, Iran, Vietnam, etc. – are an acknowledgment of their People’s modern refusal to reject the self-aggrandizing nonsense of bourgeois West European political thought. That will bring success, as much as humans can determine it for themselves.

The inherent truths of this statement is clear to any observer, and is the reason why Western media is so against any victory of socialism anywhere in the world, and why they have no choice but to try and falsely claim the credit for China’s success despite have two economic plans which have tremendously few parallel structures.

Brown has some pretty fascinating passages when it comes to the interplay between China’s government and its economics, and I really must stress that I have only given a sample. His debunking of the Western propaganda theme of “ghost cities” makes such propaganda pretty laughable.

Or rather, I’m laughing…and then I’m left rather envious!

You should be too. Certainly, any thinking person starts responding to the question posed by this article’s headline with: “Well I sure don’t want the 1%….”

***********************************

This is the 7th article in an 8-part series which compares old versus new Western scholarship on China.

Here is the list of articles slated to be published, and I hope you will find them useful in your leftist struggle!

Old vs. new scholarship on the continent of China an 8-part series

Daring to go beyond Western propaganda on the Great Leap Forwards famine

When Chinese Trash saved the world: Western lies about the Cultural Revolution

Maos legacy defended, and famous swim decoded, for clueless academics

The Cultural Revolutions solving of the urban-rural divide

Once China got off drugs: The ideological path from opium to liberal strongmanMacron

Prefer the 1% or the Party? Or: Why China wins

China’s only danger: A ‘Generation X’ who thinks they aren’t communist

About the author
 RAMIN MAZAHERI, Senior Correspondent & Contributing Editor, Dispatch from Paris •  Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television.


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