CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM

JOHN KAMINSKI—Once upon a time, Americans used to preach the cause of freedom and justice for all. It’s actually written in their Pledge of Allegiance. But they don’t adhere to that anymore. After all, Americans have canceled their Bill of Rights, which once made them famous – made them loved! – all over the world. Now they are feared all over the world. Reviled. When Americans launched their worldwide war on terror – based on a treasonous event in which they killed large numbers of their own people – they betrayed the whole world. They betrayed every dream of freedom anybody ever had anywhere.
 
The people who did it did it for a few billion dollars. Can you blame them? It’s easy money blowing up countries and blaming it on somebody else. Even you might do it if you had the chance. Americans support such an idea. It’s capitalism at its best, controlling the market, make money on the destruction by selling the weapons, make money on the reconstruction by involving your friends in the contracts, no public bids, of course. So you lose a few dark-skinned lives. The world is overpopulated anyway. Look at it as population control (although that it another, much larger topic).

Khrushchev’s rise to power, and the revisionism he instituted, was built on many lies and the demonisation of Stalin. His actions effectively destroyed the global communist movement, invigorated the enemies of revolution everywhere, generated a great ideological split with China, and paved the road for America’s ascendancy to sole superpower status after the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991.

STEPHEN GOWANS—”People who spend their careers working with or for pharmaceutical interests, and have financial stakes in pharmaceutical firms, can be expected to share the pharmaceutical industry’s point of view. This is the point of view of capitalist industry–that profits are the summum bonum. No one occupies a significant position in a capitalist state without an unswerving commitment to capitalist values…”

ERIC SCHECHTER—People justify the “fairness” of the system by referring to “property rights.” But where do those come from? According to our laws, if you buy stolen property, it does not thereby become yours. Rather, it still belongs to the people from whom it was stolen, or to their descendants. That is true no matter how many times the property is bought and sold — but if it goes through enough sales, the history becomes untraceable, returning the property to its “rightful owners” becomes unfeasible, and the rights of the original owners fade away. That’s called money laundering. For instance, at this point it would be difficult to give North America back to the descendants of the Native Americans. Soon the last Palestinians will be exterminated, and giving Palestine back to them will be impossible.

ERIC ZUESSE—So, in France, politicians who are unfavorable toward NATO and other weapons-marketing organizations will probably need to rely more on regular, run-of-the-mill donors, than on billionaires or their generally war-profiteering corporations. In other words, any such candidate will need to have considerable left-wing populist appeal, in order to compete effectively against the better-financed contenders, who are more military-contractor-backed.

In any case, the main path to corruption in France seems to be through military procurement. That could turn out to be a major reason why one of France’s perennial Presidential candidates, Marine Le Pen, whose policies would be a threat to military contractors, will again lose.