RUIN IS OUR FUTURE

Paul Craig Roberts

Americans need to understand that the only thing exceptional about the US is the ignorance of the population and the stupidity [or wanton criminality] of the government.

The Neocon plague. But it goes deeper: they are but a symptom of the advanced capitalism disease.

The Neocon plague. But it goes deeper: they are but a symptom of the advanced capitalism disease.

DATELINE January 16, 2015 

[dropcap]Neoconservatives[/dropcap] arrayed in their Washington offices are congratulating themselves on their success in using the Charlie Hebdo affair to reunite Europe with Washington’s foreign policy. No more French votes with the Palestinians against the Washington-Israeli position. No more growing European sympathy with the Palestinians. No more growing European opposition to launching new wars in the Middle East. No more calls from the French president to end the sanctions against Russia. 

Do the neoconservatives also understand that they have united Europeans with the right-wing anti-immigration political parties? The wave of support for the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists is the wave of Marine Le Pen’s National Front, Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party, and Germany’s PEGIDA sweeping over Europe. These parties are empowered by the anti-immigration fervor that was orchestrated in order to reunite Europeans with Washington and Israel.

Once again the arrogant and insolent neoconservatives have blundered. Charlie Hebdo’s empowerment of the anti-immigration parties has the potential to revolutionize European politics and destroy Washington’s empire.  (See my weekend interview with King World News for my thoughts on this potential game-changer.  http://kingworldnews.com/paul-craig-roberts-new-crisis-worse-russia-unleashing-black-swans-west/)

The reports from the UK Daily Mail and from Zero Hedge that Russia has cut off natural gas deliveries to six European countries must be incorrect. These sources are credible and well-informed, but such a cut-off would have instantly produced political and financial turmoil of which there is no sign. Therefore, unless there is a news blackout, Russia’s action has been misunderstood.

We know something real has happened. Otherwise, EU energy official Maros Sefcovic would not be expressing such consternation. Although I am without any definite information, I believe I know what the real story is. Russia, tired of Ukraine’s theft of the natural gas that passes through the country on its way to delivery to Europe, has made a decision to route the gas to Turkey, thus bypassing Ukraine.

The Russian energy minister has confirmed this decision and added that if European countries wish to avail themselves of this gas supply, they must put in place the infrastructure or pipeline to bring the gas into their countries.

In other words, there is a potential for a cutoff in the future, but no cutoff at the present.

These two events–Charlie Hebdo and the Russian decision to cease delivering gas to Europe via Ukraine–should remind us that the potential for black swans, and unintended consequences of official decisions that can produce black swans, always exist. Not even the American “superpower” is immune from black swans.

There is as much circumstantial evidence that the CIA and French Intelligence are responsible for the Charlie Hebdo shootings as there is that the shootings were carried out by the two brothers whose ID was conveniently found in the alleged get-away car. As the French made certain that the brothers were killed before they could talk, we will never know what they had to say about the plot.

The only evidence we have that the brothers are guilty is the claim by the security forces. Every time I hear government claims without real evidence, I remember Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” Assad’s “use of chemical weapons,” and Iran’s “nuclear weapons program.” If a US National Security Advisor can conjure up out of thin air “mushroom clouds over an American city,” Cherif and Said Kouachi can be turned into killers. After all, they are dead and cannot protest.

If this was, and we will never know for certain, a false flag attack, it achieved Washington’s goal of reuniting Europe under Washington and Israeli auspices. But this success has an unintended consequence. The unintended consequence is to unify Europe under the anti-immigration policy of the right-wing parties, thus empowering the leaders of those parties.

If this surmise is correct, Marie Le Pen and Nigel Farage will find their lives and/or reputations in danger as Washington will resist the rise of European governments that do not adhere to Washington’s line.

The consternation caused by Russia’s decision to relocate its gas delivery to Europe is proof that Russia holds many cards that it could play that would bring down the political and financial structures of the Western World.

China holds similar cards.

The two countries are not playing their cards, because they do not think that they need them. Instead, the two powers are withdrawing from the Western financial system that serves Western hegemony over the world. They are creating all of the economic institutions that they need in order to be completely independent of the West.

Therefore, the Russian and Chinese governments reason, “Why be provocative and slap down the Western fools. They might resort to their nuclear weapons, and the entire world would be lost. Let’s just walk away while they encourage us to depart with their provocations.”

We can be thankful that Vladimir Putin and the leaders of the Chinese government are both intelligent and humane, unlike Western leaders.

Imagine, for example, the dire consequences for the West if Putin were to become personally involved as a result of the numerous affronts to both Russia and Putin himself. Putin can destroy NATO and the entire Western financial system whenever he wants. All he has to do is to announce that as NATO has declared economic war against Russia, Russia no longer sells energy to NATO members.

The NATO alliance would dissolve as Europe cannot survive without Russian energy supplies. Washington’s empire would end.

Putin realizes that the insolent neoconservatives would have to push the nuclear button in order to save face. Unlike Putin, their egos are on the line. Thus, Putin saves the world from nuclear war by not being provocative.

Now, imagine if the Chinese government were to lose its patience with Washington. To confront the “exceptional, indispensable, unipower” with the reality of its impotence, all China needs to do is to dump its massive dollar-denominated financial assets on the market, all at once, just as the Federal Reserve’s bullion bank agents dump massive uncovered gold contracts on the futures market.

In order to avoid US financial collapse, the Federal Reserve would have to print massive amounts of new dollars with which to purchase the dumped Chinese holdings. As the Federal Reserve would protect US financial markets by purchasing the dumped Chinese holdings, the Chinese would lose nothing from the sale. It is the next step that is decisive. The Chinese government then dumps the massive holdings of dollars it has received from its selloff of dollar-dominated financial instruments.

Now what happens? The Fed can print dollars with which to purchase the dumped Chinese holdings, but the Fed cannot print foreign currencies with which to buy up the dumped dollars.

The massive supply of dollars dumped in the exchange market by China would have no takers. The dollar’s value would collapse. Washington could no longer pay its bills by printing money. Americans living in an import-dependent country, thanks to jobs offshoring, would be faced with high prices that would seriously erode their living standard. The United States would experience economic, social, and political instability.

Putting aside their brainwashing, their defensiveness and patriotic support of the regime in Washington, Americans need to ask themselves: How is it possible that the government of the United States, an alleged Superpower, is so unaware of its true vulnerabilities that Washington is capable of pushing two real powers until they have had enough and play the cards that they hold?

Americans need to understand that the only thing exceptional about the US is the ignorance of the population and the stupidity of the government.

What other country would let a handful of Wall Street crooks control its economic and foreign policy, run its central bank and Treasury, and subordinate citizens’ interests to the interests of the one percent’s pocketbook?

A population this insouciant is at the total mercy of Russia and China.

Yesterday there was a black swan event, an event that could yet unleash other black swan events. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-16/largest-retail-fx-broker-stock-crashes-90-swiss-contagion-spreads The Swiss central bank announced an end to its pegging of the Swiss franc to the euro and US dollar. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-15/its-tsunami-swiss-franc-soars-most-ever-after-snb-abandons-eurchf-floor-macro-hedge-

Three years ago flight from euros and dollars into Swiss francs pushed the exchange value of the franc so high that it threatened the existence of the Swiss export industries. Switzerland announced that any further inflows of foreign currencies into francs would be met by creating new francs to absorb the inflows so as not to drive up the exchange rate further. In other words, the Swiss pegged the franc.

Yesterday the Swiss central bank announced that the peg was off. The franc instantly rose in value. Stocks of Swiss export companies fell, and hedge funds wrongly positioned incurred major hits to their solvency.

Why did the Swiss remove the peg? It was not a costless action. It cost the central bank and Swiss export industries substantially.

The answer is that the EU attorney general ruled that it was permissible for the EU central bank to initiate Quantitative Easing–that is, the printing of new euros–in order to bail out the mistakes of the private bankers. This decision means that Switzerland expects to be confronted with massive flight from the euro and that the Swiss central bank is unwilling to print enough new Swiss francs to maintain the peg. The Swiss central bank believes that it would have to run the printing press so hard that the basis of the Swiss money supply would explode, far exceeding the GDP of Switzerland.

The money printing policy of the US, Japan, and apparently now the EU has forced other countries to inflate their own currencies in order to prevent the rise in the exchange value of their currencies that would curtail their ability to export and earn foreign currencies with which to pay for their imports. Thus Washington has forced the world into printing money.

The Swiss have backed out of this system. Will others follow, or will the rest of the world follow the Russians and Chinese governments into new monetary arrangements and simply turn their backs on the corrupt and irredeemable West?

The level of corruption and manipulation that characterizes US economic and foreign policy today was impossible in earlier times when Washington’s ambition was constrained by the Soviet Union. The greed for hegemonic power has made Washington the most corrupt government on earth.

The consequence of this corruption is ruin.

“Leadership passes into empire. Empire begets insolence. Insolence brings ruin.”

Ruin is America’s future.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

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 JAMES PETRAS: Positive Thoughts on Dark Times

Analysis)
Is the glass half full or half empty? 

The capitalist media's Orwellian view of the world.

The capitalist media’s Orwellian view of the world cynically upends reality. It’s beginning to fray on all continents, including Western Europe itself. The Economist —a pretentious, “Atlanticist” rag for snobs—is in the head of the pack when it comes to shameless disinformation.

[dropcap]INTRODUCTION[/dropcap] There is no question that over the past decade and a half, Europe, the US and Israel have engaged in a series of bloody wars, inequalities have increased throughout the globe, economic crisis has become endemic and, more recently, right-wing military and civilian regimes have swept to power throughout Asia, North Africa, Europe and Canada.
CLICK IMAGES TO EXPAND THEM

Yet, despite this generally gloomy picture, important positive developments have emerged raising the possibility of fundamental changes to reverse the current reactionary wave. I will proceed by outlining these positive developments, taking account of the retrograde context in which they occur.

Reaction and Progress in Asia

The macro-political-economic picture in Asia could not be darker: Right-wing regimes rule in all the major countries. There is a military junta in Thailand and a military-civilian regime in Pakistan. In Japan, a right-wing Prime Minister is committed to re-arming and expanding its military power. Rightwing rulers have taken power in Australia, Indonesia, South Korea and India. In China, inequalities intensify while the number of billionaires and millionaires will soon exceed those in the US. Regimes in Afghanistan and Pakistan support US military intervention and drone attacks within their territory.

In the face of this reactionary setting, there is the rising class struggle of millions of Chinese workers, who have secured major gains in salaries and wages in the course of the last decade, averaging over 10% per year. The cumulative gains have led to the doubling of monthly wages. The main reason worker wages have increased can be found in their willingness to engage in strikes, demonstrations and other forms of militant class action.

Rising wages in China have enormous positive global consequences. Many corporations have relocated from the coastal cities to the interior, thus ‘proletarianizing’ the provinces and widening and deepening the scope for militant labor action. Meanwhile, many foreign and Chinese corporations have relocated their factories to low wage countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Laos, bringing intensified class struggle. In recent years, militant strikes and violent protests have broken out in Cambodia, Vietnam and Bangladesh.

There are indications that US capitalists may be ‘on-shoring’ their investments, i.e. re-locating factories and business back to the US, as wages and militancy rise in China and decline in the US. With the drying up of China as the world’s reserve pool of passive, cheap workers, the global labor market tightens increasing the capacity of workers to successfully struggle for better working conditions and wages.

Chinese contraction workers. The stirring may become a wave of rebellion shaking the world itself.

Chinese construction workers. Their stirring may become a wave of rebellion shaking the world itself.* (Kevin Schoenmakers/cc/flckr)

Chinese outflows of capital this year will exceed inflows, for the first time. These outflows include speculative investments in high-end real estate in the West and greater investments in extractive sectors in Africa, Latin America, Oceana, Asia, Southern Europe and Ukraine. This expansion of productive investments will expand the working class and lead to more workers struggles.

In summary, the sharp and sustained rise in Chinese wages, resulting from the class struggle, has world historical significance as it ripples through the global economy by setting in motion a chain of positive socio-political movements.

The Larger Significance of the Afghan War

The prolonged US war in Afghanistan, now in its 13th year, and Washington’s defeat and retreat in the face of an unconquered Taliban national resistance, has enormous consequences for US empire-building, as well as domestic public opinion and nationalist resistance movements worldwide.

First and foremost the war has turned the vast majority of Americans against new military interventions, especially those involving ground troops. The “Afghan Syndrome” (replacing the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ of the 1970’s and 1980’s) has become an obstacle to the launching of new military empire-building projects.

Obama’s ‘humanitarian’ intervention in Libya was confined to bombing cities and infrastructure while unable to send American ground troops to effectively occupy the country, set up a secure puppet government and seize the valuable oil fields. As a result, its flimsy puppet government in Tripoli has collapsed and Libyan oil production is minimal. Libya is a fragmented ‘failed state’ ruled by tribal armies with its once modern infrastructure in ruin.

Likewise the US is forced to wage war against the secular nationalist government in Syria via proxy jihadi mercenaries, as the “Afghan Syndrome” blocks greater and more direct US troop involvement.

Despite enormous pressure on the US President and Congress to launch a war against Iran from Israel’s fifth column, the so-called ‘Israel Lobby’, the ‘Afghan syndrome’ has limited Washington to rely on economic sanctions. The uncontrolled, violent deterioration in the Middle East caused by US overt and covert wars has forced an opening for diplomatic negotiations with Teheran – to the fury of militarists in Tel Aviv and their US agents. In other words, the defeat of the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, as well as the enormous and destructive cost of a prolonged occupation to the US economy, has weakened the capacity of the US Empire to invade, occupy and pillage resource-rich adversaries, today and in the near future.

How Middle East Wars for Israel Weaken the US Presence in Latin America and Asia

Washington has thrown away trillions of dollars of public money and suffered major casualties in pursuit of endless wars in the Middle East, which were vigorously promoted by the domestic Zionist power configuration at the behest of Israel.

Because of this influential power configuration, the US has lost significant economic, political and diplomatic influence in its traditional spheres of control in Latin America and Asia. US market shares in both regions have declined. New regional organizations, excluding the US, have proliferated throughout Latin America. China has expanded its own lucrative trade relations throughout both regions, further eroding US hegemony.

While Zionist influence over US policy is pernicious, eroding domestic sovereignty and undermining democracy within the US, the focus of US policy on the interests of Israel has clearly undermined the US presence in Latin America and Asia.

As long as the US continues to intervene in the Middle East, it will be unable to effectively intervene against popular uprisings and center-left governments in Latin America. By channeling its resources to prop up hereditary tyrants in the Gulf and Egypt’s brutal military junta, the US has not been able pursue its more traditional role in Latin America.

The US has plenty of regional allies and clients in the Middle East and North Africa, but they lack popular legitimacy and rule through terror and repression. In Turkey, mass protests have erupted against the Erdogan regime, including important sectors of the militant Turkish working class. Kurds, Islamists and leftists have gained influence inside Turkey and along its borders. Meanwhile, Turkey’s regional trading partners, such as Iraq, are in turmoil and trade has collapsed. While Prime Minister Erdogan may win elections, his legitimacy among the population is tarnished and his ambition to be a major regional leader is severely diminished.

Israel continues to extract billions of dollars in annual US aid (tribute) while dispossessing and starving the Palestinians. Nevertheless the growing international boycott and divestment movement is undermining the power of Tel Aviv’s overseas “lobbies” to direct US and EU policy. Israel has never been so isolated, feared and despised in the eyes of the world’s people. International public opinion polls have repeatedly ranked Israel’s policies as a major source of war and instability in the world today.

In the US and EU, more voices than ever are speaking out against Israel’s crimes against humanity, despite the campaigns by major Zionist organizations to blacklist, threaten and punish critical voices. Increasingly the power of the Israel lobby relies on its numerically small Zionist power elite – the millionaires and billionaires who own the mass media and who bankroll its political campaigns. The leaders of major Jewish organizations in the US are facing a significant decline in membership especially among young generations of American Jews, unwilling to commit their energies and resources to a militarist, racist Israel.

The Gulf States: Precarious Clients, Dubious Allies

The Gulf States, including Saudi Arabia, have offered “paper” support for US wars in the Middle East at a cost. Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Bahrain rule over their restive populations by coercion. Majorities are demanding democratic freedom and, in some cases, have engaged in large-scale protests despite brutal repression. US military bases in the region will be vulnerable when these pro-democracy majorities finally overthrow the family-based monarchic dictatorships.

Moreover, the Gulf regimes are playing a dangerous double game: They publicly support the US while secretly funding the Sunni Islamist terrorists opposing US proxies, (the ‘moderate’ rebels) in Syria and the puppet government in Iraq. The Gulf States financed the bloody ‘regime changes’ in Egypt and Libya, while the US may have been content (and better served) to arrange power-sharing agreements. The Saudi monarchy has joined with Israel in trying to sabotage any US negotiations with Iran. While, on paper, the US may have ‘clients and allies’ throughout the Middle East, these lack legitimacy, stability and trust . . . weak foundations from which to project US power. They are a constant drain on financial resources and have no public sympathy among the US electorate.

Europe: Crisis, Expansion and Resistance

While the European Union expands its territory with the de-facto annexation of the western Ukraine and Moldavia, and NATO stations its military facilities on the frontiers of Russia, the EU’s economy is suffering from the longest and deepest period of recession and stagnation since the Great Depression.

After six years of crisis with no end in sight, objective reality refutes any remaining notions of capitalism in Europe as a ‘self-rectifying’ system capable of sustaining growth and prosperity. On the contrary, with inequalities widening and wages, salaries and the social safety net in sharp decline, class polarization is growing. All the objective conditions for a revival of class struggle are present.

With even harsher retrograde measures (“austerity”) imposed on the populations by oligarchs in Brussels, workers and salaried employees, in both the public and private sectors, are showing uneven and sporadic signs of mass resistance. This will lay the groundwork for more general and systematic confrontations in the not too distant future.

Even as the European Union overextends itself, seizing control of the western Ukraine via a repugnant and brutal proxy putsch regime, it has ignited a partisan revolt in the industrial eastern Ukraine. Workers and employees have set up a popular democratic republic and are engaged in a war of national resistance against the EU collaborator junta in Kiev.

The EU and the US threats of harsher sanctions against Russia have provoked furious criticism from major sectors of the capitalist class in Germany, France, the US, Italy and elsewhere. The US National Association of Manufacturers and the US Chamber of Commerce have published editorials and full-page ads in all the influential financial media, arguing that new sanctions against Russia will lead to losses of billions of dollars in trade and investments and cost hundreds of thousands of US jobs.

The significance of this current break between the capitalist class and the imperial state clearly highlights the conflict between Washington based-militarists and market-based producers and investors. If and when this conflict deepens, there will be the potential for a broad-based, well-financed coalition opposed to the militarist vision of ‘globalization’

In the meantime, Russia and China have moved toward a new political, economic and military alliance in response to sanctions. Trade in rubles and renminbi (instead of dollars and euros) is expanding. The domestic economy is becoming the motor force of China’s new growth model. Local industry is replacing European imports via “import substitution” in Russia.

In sum, Washington and Brussels’ sanctions and bellicose threats against Russia and China are having a boomerang effect. They are costing Western manufacturers and exporters significant market shares in large dynamic countries and fomenting deep internal divisions within the ruling classes in the US and EU.

Rising Class and National Struggles in the EU

Class struggle from below intensifies in the EU. In Greece, the leftwing party Syriza, controls the municipal governments in Athens and throughout Attica, and currently leads in the national polls. In France, the neo-liberal, militarist, so-called “Socialist” regime of President Francois Hollande has lost credibility and hovers at 19% public support. It wallows in economic stagnation with double-digit unemployment and an unending series of scandals. The popular revolt against “austerity” and the Brussels dictatorship grows . . . So far, unfortunately, this public anger has been most effectively capitalized by the nationalist Right, but hopefully, the nationalist left will be re-energized by the crisis, intensify class contradictions in the near future and seize the opportunity to organize and lead.

In Spain, the nationalist left movements in the Basque country and Catalonia are challenging the Rightist regime in Madrid and the ‘neo-liberal nationalists’ in Barcelona and Bilbao. A state crisis looms, where the vast army of unemployed youth (50%) could play a major role in radicalizing the independence movement.

Latin America: The Center-Left, the Right and the Left

Into the second decade of the 21st century, many of the illusions of the Left and its fears about US Empire have faded. So-called ‘21st century socialism’, has not ‘socialized’ any economies while the US has not succeeded in orchestrating regime change and installing its neo-liberal clients in any major South American countries. The exception is Honduras, a nation in shambles, with tens of thousands of refugees fleeing the US-installed military-civilian junta – including thousands of Honduran children crowding US deportation camps.

What has emerged is a triangular struggle between established center-left regimes backed by electoral majorities, US-backed rightist parties and leftist-backed social movements and trade unions.

The US has secured support for its new Trans-Pacific Alliance from Colombia, Chile, Peru and Mexico. However, this has not undermined the independent regional trade and cooperation organizations, which exclude the US, such as UNASUR and ALBA. Both Chile and Peru, close US ‘allies’, depend far more on their trade with China than with the US.

Over the past decade, Washington has succeeded in orchestrating two coups – Honduras and Paraguay – both marginal and in decline. But it has so far failed in three much larger and vibrant nations: Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.

Washington maintains seven military bases in Colombia, but Bogota has signed trade, military and political agreements with Venezuela to end cross border military incursions and mutually respect their political sovereignty.

The center-left has consolidated political power in Uruguay and Bolivia, and to a lesser degree in Brazil and Ecuador. Nevertheless, the center-left’s dependence on agro-mineral exports and foreign finance capital has caused domestic economic stagnation. This has led to the growth of right-wing electoral parties and violent coup-attempts in some countries while promoting the growth of significant left-led social movements and direct action in others. In Venezuela, the right has engaged in election violence, bloody attacks by hired thugs, destructive street demonstrations with the burning of clinics and power stations, as well as an elite-orchestrated campaign to sabotage the economy. In the midst of double-digit inflation, political street violence and a crime wave, the center-left’s popular base has been eroded in Venezuela.

Washington has used its courts to attack Argentina by ruling in favor of the so-called ‘vulture’ capitalists or speculative investment funds which had purchased Argentine debt after its severe economic crisis and are now pushing the country toward defaulting on its current foreign debt or depleting its foreign reserves to reward the ‘vultures’.

President Obama continues the US half-century boycott against Cuba in splendid isolation at home and abroad, in spite of both international and domestic opinion in favor of normal relations with Havana. The growing violent right-wing opposition against the center-left in Venezuela and Argentina has polarized their political systems. As the right-wing advances and the governments give way, popular movements and mobilizations intensify and increase political volatility. While the danger of right-wing takeovers is growing, so are opportunities for the Left to gain significant support from the traditional mass base of the Center-Left.

Africa: The Historic General Strike in South Africa

While the former-nationalist rulers in South Africa, Angola, and Mozambique continue to pillage the treasury and enrich themselves in partnership with the US-EU-Chinese mining corporations, South African mine workers are creating a potentially radical alternative. For five months, the South African platinum miners have been engaged in the longest, most disciplined and most successful strike in the history of Africa. Despite the brutal massacre of 39 miners by the ruling black bourgeois regime (African National Congress), the opposition of the biggest global mining companies in Africa and the sellout leadership of the trade union confederation, the miners have held fast. Following their success, trade union militants are organizing a new trade union confederation and a new workers’ party. Their leaders have introduced a new spirit of hope and struggle among millions of poor, unemployed and marginalized black Africans.

The United States: Small Victories Can Lead to Big Movements

It is tempting to be pessimistic about progressive change in the United States with its anemic and politically irrelevant trade union federation and co-opted peace movement; the decline of independent grass-roots organizations; the co-optation of Black and Latino politicians by the Wall Street-dominated Democratic Party and the successful State crackdown on the “Occupy Movement”.

At the international level the Obama regime has increased its support for direct and proxy intervention in Syria, Iraq and the Gulf region. Washington has given over 2 billion dollars in military aid to the brutal Egyptian military junta. Obama has released another five hundred million dollars in aid to the armed mercenary forces invading Syria. Hundreds of US Special Forces and thousands of armed ‘contractors’ have been sent to Iraq and one thousand US Marines are ready ‘off-shore’…

On the other hand there are signs of hope on the horizon. Over 80% of the US public have rejected Obama’s war mongering, especially his ambitions to ‘re-enter’ Iraq.

It was US public opinion and letters to their Congressional representatives that blocked Obama’s plan to bomb Syria. His callous embrace of the Egyptian coup and dictator has alienated the vast majority of secular democrats and moderate Muslims in North Africa and the Middle East.

Obama’s spineless support of Israel’s settler land grabs and the ‘business-as-usual’ complicity of US corporations with radical Jewish colonists in the West Bank are increasingly opposed by the European Union, leading Christian churches (the US and Canadian Presbyterians, among others) and by the growing world-wide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement.

In local US elections, we have seen a real, consequential socialist elected to the Seattle City Council. The Chicago teachers union is leading a massive city-wide struggle, based in the Black and Mexican-American neighborhoods, against the draconian school closures and teacher lay-offs initiated by the ex-Wall Streeter, former Obama ‘Chief of Staff’, US-Israeli dual citizen, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel. A broad trade union – community based coalition has formed to challenge Emmanuel’s corrupt money machine and austerity policies in the forthcoming mayoral elections.

Alternate media web sites, critical of politicians pandering to Wall Street and deeply opposed to new wars, now inform millions of American citizens as they seek their place in popular movements.

For the first time, the two principal business lobbies, the National Manufacturers Association (NAM) and the US Chamber of Commerce (USCC) have come out in public opposition to Washington’s sanctions against Russia. The fact that big and small, local and international businesspeople recognized that US military interventions, economic sanctions and boycotts hurt their profits, limit their access to markets and cost thousands of domestic jobs is a major political breakthrough. For over two decades, US business interests, especially Big Oil, have been bullied into silence, while Israel’s thuggish “Lobby” has successfully pushed for sanctions against Iraq and then a full-scale invasion, and then more sanctions targeting Iran, Syria and Lebanon. The recognition that this has hurt US investors, cut access to international markets, eliminated hundreds of thousands of US jobs and caused the price of fuel to soar for hundreds of millions of US consumers has finally been brought home. The current push for sanctions against Russia does not have the rabid support of the pro-Israel lobby and US businesses interests are effectively finding their courage to face the politically-isolated militarists in Washington and certain sectors of the military-industrial complex. Nevertheless, this might not bode well for the Zionist push for future wars and sanctions in the Middle East.

Our hope is not a Panglossian dream.

The institutional power of the warmongers and the Wall Street-Washington revolving door is a major entrenched force in the US. But we also should recognize that we can win and we have won elections at the local level through new community-based organizations. We constitute ‘the mainstream’ in our opposition to the new wars in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.

The enemy, “capitalism”, is powerful, but it has manifestly failed to generate new well-paying jobs needed to sustain a decent, stable standard of living for the ‘99%’. It cannot provide efficient, quality health care and educational opportunities for US citizens. It cannot fund an adequate national pension system or protect and build secure communities and jobs. No one buys into the capitalist “success stories” any more, stories that bamboozled our parents and grandparents from the 1940’s – 1990’s. The main picture of capitalism today is one of economic breakdowns, home foreclosures, Wall Street swindles, impunity for corporate criminals, rampant corruption, prolonged crisis, declining living standards, stagnation and cut backs in vital social services. (And constant war.—Eds)

Only in their splendid isolation, far from the American public, can the overpaid academic economists and financial media mouth-pieces boast of the victory of capitalism – but they are counting only the soaring profits and increasingly concentrated wealth of the top 1% [in actuality the 0.00002%] while ignoring the impoverishment of the 99%.

We are united with the majority on the economy and in opposition to the launching of more wars abroad. We share a clear understanding of the current oligarchical nature of the US political system. When we move from our shared vision to effective organizing, from protest to politics, from narrow to broad issues, from Democratic Party hacks to genuine, independent grass-roots leaders, we can join the rest of humanity fighting with dignity for a better world. We can find allies and inspiration among the hundreds of millions of Chinese workers successfully doubling their wages every seven years, among the courageous armed workers in Eastern Ukraine fighting for democracy and self-determination, among the militant miners in South Africa, among the majority of democratic socialists in Greece, among the left nationalists in the Basque and Catalan nations and the popular democrats in Egypt, Palestine, Iraq and elsewhere.

We are deeply aware of the obstacles, the human costs and the long road ahead. Nothing is inevitable or pre-determined. Progress depends on personal commitment and intervention. We are not alone, we are gaining adherents and we are advancing. Each of us has a particular national and cultural context, but we all share the universal values of freedom, social justice and solidarity. In the last analysis, it is the struggle for freedom that gives meaning to our everyday life.

*Jiegu, in Yushu, Qinghai province, was struck by a strong earthquake (6.9) on the 14th of April, 2010, with over 2000 casualties. Now, it is being rebuilt almost entirely.

 

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China’s Second ‘Cultural Revolution’

JAMES PETRAS | indispensable reads
From the author’s site
(Originally posted 12.23.2014 :: Analysis)
President Xi is attacking the triple evils of corruption, conspicuous consumption, and pillage of public wealth. 

Billboard tribute to Deng Xiao ping (Shenzhen, China on a busy Saturday afternoon, Jan. 2010)

Billboard tribute to Deng Xiao ping, Shenzhen, China on a busy Saturday afternoon, Jan. 2010. (Douglas Johnson, flickr-cc)

CLICK ON IMAGES TO EXPAND

[dropcap]Introduction[/dropcap] 

The first CR was a frontal attack on the hierarchy of power and privilege inside and outside of the Communist Party, launched from above by Mao Tse Tung, but taken up from below by Red Guards in order to bring about a more egalitarian society.

The current ‘cultural revolution’, launched by President Xi Jinping, is directed at ending widespread corruption, theft and pillage of the Chinese economy and society by high and low officials in government and the capitalist sector.

The two cultural revolutions are linked by Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader who officially put closure on the first and set in motion the policies and slogans (“Getting Rich is Good!”), necessitating a second cultural revolution three decades later.

The Socio-Economic Roots of the Cultural Revolution Today

Deng’s call to ‘get rich’ was directed at the Communist Party elite, their family, friends and overseas backers; it was an open invitation to the multi-nationals of the world to freely exploit China’s resources, infrastructure and labor – educated, nurtured and organized through the collective efforts of the preceding Communist regime. Deng ‘liberated’- or privatized – the means of production and rapidly turned public control and appropriation of earnings over to emerging private capitalists. The corollary was the elimination of all social rights, benefits and protections of labor. The dual incentives were designed to maximize private profits in order to attract long-term, large-scale investments and to achieve high growth in the shortest time possible. Deng telescoped a century of growth and exploitation into a few decades.

His strategy succeeded.

Deng Xiao Ping, Picture in Revolutionary Army Museum—185469909_b3e7bff506_o

Deng Xiao Ping, picture in the Revolutionary Army Museum. Deng was originally in trouble with Mao for his “capitalist- roader” tendencies. (Marcin Palka/cc/flickr)

Profits soared. By the late 1980’s and early 1990’s millionaires multiplied like mushrooms after a downpour. Then came the billionaires. Aided and abetted by the wholesale privatization of lucrative industries and public lands, a new class of real estate speculators and so-called ‘developers’ emerged , closely linked to corrupt local municipal, regional and national state officials. Millions of peasants were dispossessed and barely (if ever) compensated; hundreds of millions of workers were employed at starvation wages without the free housing, medical care, education, recreational benefits and lifetime employment of the past, socialist system.

China’s GNP exploded at a double-digit rate for three decades – an unprecedented performance. Most of the profits circulated among a narrow elite of party – state officials and capitalists, while a smaller share ‘trickled down’ to middle and low level functionaries. The seizure of public wealth, followed by three decades of intense exploitation of labor and the private land grabbing of farmland and homesteads, spurred the boom in real estate profits and laid the basis for all pervasive and large-scale corruption .The pillage of the public treasury led to large-scale conspicuous consumption – of imported luxury goods, multi-tiered mansions in gated communities, multiple purchases of luxury condos for offspring, mistresses and bribe-takers and givers.

By the mid 2000’s the concentration of wealth, property and privilege had reached astronomical heights: hundreds of billions accrued to the top 2%, millions to the top 10%, and hundreds of thousands to the top 15% – the self-styled ‘middle class’ who thrived on lesser but equally pervasive corruption and theft and who aped the elite and imitated their life style of luxury consumerism.

Beginning in the mid-2000s, hundreds of strikes by exploited factory workers demanded and secured higher wages; millions of households, farmers and peasants fought against municipal party officials, linked to real estate capitalists, who were attempting to ‘grab’ their land, homes and neighborhoods. Hundreds of millions of Chinese in the countryside protested exorbitant medical and educational costs, induced by the privatized health and educational system, which had bankrupted millions of households. They quickly became aware of the luxurious private medical facilities and specialized clinics for the rich -capitalists and corrupt officials. The internal migrant workers, who built the hyper-luxury condos and mansions, lived in paper shacks, far from the twelve-course banquets celebrating the ‘grand openings’ by business swindlers and ‘bought officials’. As wealth grew among the elite, so did the people’s hostility and rejection of the Party and the State, which they personified.

The ever-cautious klepto-capitalists and public pillagers, fearing for their illicit fortunes, smuggled out enormous wealth. Big swindlers, with big fortunes engaged in massive money laundering while publicly demanding the ‘de-regulation” of the financial sector (i.e. to make it easier to launder and hide their fortunes in overseas accounts). Between 2005-2011 China hemorrhaged over $2.83 trillion in illegal overseas financial outflows.

Part II: The Consequences of Corruption, Pillage and Exploitation

The illicit flow of Chinese wealth overseas resulted from the elite’s savage and illegal exploitation of labor (failure to meet minimum official standards concerning pay, work safety, child labor, excessive hours) . Wealth from bribes, kickbacks on government contracts, speculation on illicit seizures of land, and making false invoices overpricing imports and underpricing exports, flowed upward and outward. While China was profiting from double-digit growth the regime could ‘tolerate’ corruption and illicit outflows. However, by the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, when China’s economy de-accelerated to about 7 – 7.5%, the regime became less tolerant of wholesale corruption accompanied by capital flight.

Moreover, the new billionaires, millionaires and affluent middle class indulged in what Thorsten Veblen described as “conspicuous consumption”, the purchase and ostentatious display of superfluous luxury products as status symbols of “success”. According to a Special Report on “Luxury” in the Economist (12/13/14, p.8 -10) “nearly one-third of all personal luxury goods sold worldwide are bought by Chinese consumers.” Since the global crises of 2009, 70 – 80% of global growth in the (luxury) sector has come from China.

cc:china-kevinLim-308103649_b107bd7679_o

Photo: Kevin Lim/cc-flikr.

 

China’s emerging private-public ruling class has advanced from concentrating wealth, to consolidating political power to seeking prestige and social status – recognition from their domestic and foreign peers. Ideologically, they are decidedly neo-liberal and pro-Western – as evidenced by the billions they spend in the top-end real estate markets of North America, Europe and Australia as well as the millions they spend on their pampered offspring for ‘elite’ private education. Theirchildren live in half-million dollar condos in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Oxford and Cambridge (England), Toronto and Vancouver (Canada), Sydney and Melbourne Australia. The Chinese oligarchs “make the market” for six-figure Swiss watches, five figure handbags and four digit French cognac.

Corruption, conspicuous consumption and class polarization has delegitimized the ruling Communist Party elite in the eyes of the great mass of the Chinese working class, as well as the professionals and salaried employees who make-up the lower middle class.

The ‘political rot’- the privileged social networks derived from kinship ties—is leading to a relative-closed ruling class – excluding the mass of urban workers and rural peasants, with potentially explosive social consequences.

Already thousands of local protests, strikes and other forms of direct action occur every year, even as they are repressed or resolved.

In addition to the social and political dangers resulting from the massive illegal, ‘squandering and theft of wealth’, the illicit outflow of wealth is undermining domestic investment and productive overseas investments, and corruption is preparing the way for stagnation and financial crisis.

The stars are lining up for a ‘perfect political storm’ – which has unfolded in the form of President Xi Jingping’s launch of China’s second cultural revolution (CR).

Xi Jingping’s Cultural Revolution

From the start of the 2nd CR in 2012 to mid-2014, the Chinese Communist Party’s internal corruption body has prosecuted and punished 270,000 cadres. That figure includes both the “tigers” (high officials) and the “flies” (low level functionaries). “Over three dozen officials with ranks of ministers or above, including former security Tsar and Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang”, have been arrested and jailed (Financial Times 12/4/14, p. 4). Earlier, the former Railways Minister was arrested and sentenced to death for rigging contracts worth about $26 billion dollars over his seven-year tenure. Hundreds of thousands of private business people, paying bribes, have been arrested and sentenced.

President Xi’s campaign has attacked bribes, ‘gift giving’, frequent ostentatious banquets serving expensive delicacies, and high Party officials’ lodging in five star hotels for weeks on end, ostensibly “tending to business”, but more frequently ‘cavorting with their mistresses’.

Made in China—Consumed all over the world—at high cost to the people and environment of China.

Made in China—Consumed all over the world—at high cost to the people and environment of China. (cc/Flickr)

To be precise, President Xi is attacking the triple evils of corruption, conspicuous consumption, and pillage of public wealth. The new austerity agenda and the public revelations of ill-gained wealth are focused on exposing public officials and private business people in order to regain public legitimacy. And it is succeeding,…. as far as it goes. Public indignation at the revelations is matched by high approval for the Xi leadership’s anti –corruption campaign.

What makes this far more than just a “power struggle among privileged elites” as the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times have routinely claimed, are: 1. the duration of the campaign of over 2 years, 2. the scope of the campaign, covering top officials and Chinese business equivalents of Wall Street moguls, 3. The nature of the punishment including long prison terms and even death sentences (rather than the mere ‘slap on the wrists and paltry fines’ that US regulators have given to Wall Street’s billion-dollar swindlers), and 4. the ongoing nature of the process. The sweep and magnitude of Xi’s campaign has all the makings of a ‘cultural revolution’ – not the episodic ‘blowing off steam’ or ‘scapegoating of rivals’ described in the Western press.

The Nature of Xi’s Cultural Revolution

Xi’s ‘cultural revolution’ is directed and driven from above – established legal authorities are in charge – the masses are excluded, and preemptory justice is eschewed: regular court proceedings decide guilt and sentencing.

Fortune Global Forum 2013

A sliver of the population has grown accustomed to consumerism. (Photo: Flickr/cc)

Secondly, Xi’s ‘cultural revolution’ does not, in any way or place, call into question capitalist property relations, foreign investors, or large-scale inflows and outflows of investment or legally registered speculative capital. Nor has Xi called into question existing capital-labor relations.

Xi’s ‘cultural revolution’ is an attempt to sanitize existing capitalist relations, and to infuse a newcapitalist ethic. He wants to ‘revise’ Deng’s famous precept “Getting Rich is Good” to read “Get Rich Lawfully . . . or Face Jail”. China is rated number 100 out of 175, on a corruption scale published by Transparency in 2014 (Financial Times 12/4/14, p. 4). Xi’s war on corruption is based on the premise that corruption undermines China’s status as a global power – it ranks with Algeria and Surinam. Secondly, Xi hopes that he can ‘reform’ the public sector in order to privatize it and he wants the sale to go to the highest bidder, not the biggest bribe giver.

His campaign attacks privileged elites, who accumulate and dispose of wealth illegally but he has never sought to diminish the class system, the hierarchy and inequalities which concentrate political power and forms the basis of corrupt bribe giving and taking.

Xi’s ‘cultural revolution’ is continuing and corruption may lessen. Ostentatious public spending is declining. But this layer of ‘new morality’ is spread thinly over a system of power that can easily revert to the ‘old system’ once the ‘revolution’ ends.

Xi’s noteworthy ‘cultural revolution’, the moralization of public administration and private capitalism, can only succeed if it is accompanied by a social transformation: ethics at the service of social justice and equality and by a democratization of the economic decision-making process. The problem is that Xi, by family, social ties and political allegiances is deeply embedded in a milieu which absolutely rejects any such ‘deepening’ of Xi’s ‘cultural revolution’.

His cultural revolution is strictly guided by a singular objective: to force ‘morality’ on the ‘captains of capital’ in order to facilitate the smooth transition to fully liberalizing China’s economy. President Xi, along with his anti-corruption campaign, is steadily loosening state control over foreign financial investments in Chinese stocks and financial sector; he is moving strongly to expand China’s overseas investments; he is accelerating the privatization of public enterprises and increasingly opening financial services to Wall Street and the City of London. He is also internationalizing the use of the yuan-the Chinese currency- in global transactions, displacing the dollar.

In other words, his cultural revolution is a bridge to a new stage of Chinese capitalist expansion; it will lessen the crude open plunder of the public treasury, but it will not lessen the exploitation of labor nor slow the increasing concentration of wealth and privilege. That will require a different kind of ‘cultural’ revolution- one led from below by workers, peasants and salaried employees. A real ‘cultural revolution’ that realizes the ethical ideals of ‘good government’ through a transformation of class relations.

Xi’s anti-corruption campaign confirms what many workers already knew – but it also unmasks the systemic decay and forges an elementary class consciousness: counter-posing honest, hardworking workers to corrupt privileged oligarchs. Xi is aware of the danger that his campaign could ignite a popular fire: That is why he has kept a tight hold on the process. He is trying to navigate the liberal capitalist transition around the shoals of existing capitalist rot without arousing mass unrest.

 

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China challenges US economic war against Russia

By Alex Lantier

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

[dropcap]Directly[/dropcap] challenging the NATO powers’ policy of cutting off credit to Russia to undermine the ruble and bankrupt the Russian economy, China is pledging to extend financial aid to Moscow.

On Saturday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed the need for mutual aid between China and Russia in remarks on the ruble crisis, which has seen a drastic 45 percent fall in its value against the dollar this year. “Russia has the capability and the wisdom to overcome the existing hardship in the economic situation,” Wang said. “If the Russian side needs it, we will provide necessary assistance within our capacity.”

On Sunday, Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng told Hong Kong’s Phoenix TV that Beijing would strengthen ties with Moscow in energy and manufacturing, predicting that Chinese-Russian trade would hit its target of $100 billion this year despite the ruble crisis. As the ruble’s value in dollars or euros swings wildly, Gao proposed moving away from the dollar in financing Chinese-Russian trade and instead using the Chinese currency, the yuan or renminbi.

Gao said China would focus on “fundamental factors such as how the two economies complement each other,” Reuters reported. “Capital investors may be more interested in a volatile stock or foreign exchange market. But in terms of concrete cooperation between the two nations, we shall have a balanced mentality and push forward those cooperations,” Gao said.

Yesterday, China Daily cited Li Jianmin of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences saying that aid to Russia could pass through channels like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) or the BRICS forum. Significantly, both the SCO (an alliance of China, Russia, and Central Asian states) and the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) exclude the United States and Europe.

Li noted that already last month, when Chinese and Russian premiers Li Keqiang and Dmitry Medvedev met in Kazakhstan, they signed extensive deals on railways, infrastructure and development in Russia’s Far East region, north of China. “Loans, cooperation in major projects, and participation in domestic infrastructure investment in Russia are options on the table,” he added. In one such deal last month, China signed a $400-billion, 30-year deal to buy Russian gas.

These offers of assistance cut across the economic war on Russia launched by US and European imperialism to punish Moscow for opposing their neo-colonial restructuring of Eurasia.

In retaliation for Russian support for President Bashar al-Assad against NATO’s proxy war in Syria and Russian opposition to the NATO-backed Ukrainian regime in Kiev, the NATO powers sought to financially strangle Russia. As Russian oil revenues fell in line with the fall in world oil prices and the ruble collapsed, they worked to cut off credit to Russia and demanded that Russia acquiesce to the Kiev regime. (See: Imperialism and the ruble crisis)

The basic financial mechanism of this strategy was laid out in London’s Financial Times by Anders Aslund of the Petersen Institute for International Economics. “Russia has received no significant international financing—not even from Chinese state banks—because everybody is afraid of US financial regulators,” he wrote. With a yearly capital outflow of $125 billion, liquid foreign currency reserves of only $200 billion, and total foreign debts of $600 billion, Russia would run out of dollars and be bankrupted in as little as two years, Aslund calculated.

Now, however, Beijing appears to be accepting the risk of a showdown with the United States and publicly preparing to throw a financial lifeline to Russia. Chinese currency reserves of $3.89 trillion are the world’s largest and, on paper at least, allow Beijing to easily repay Russia’s debts.

Angela Merkel: Even Germany is having second thoughts about the strategy pursued by Washington.

Angela Merkel: Even Germany is having second thoughts about the strategy pursued by Washington. (Flickr=DonkeyHotey)

Significantly, the calls of Wang and Gao to aid Russia came a day after a divided European Union (EU) summit on Russia last week. Though the EU supported US sanctions against Russia, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, French President François Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi all publicly opposed calls for more sanctions. Leading European newspapers also warned of the risk of a collapse of the Russian state.

As it weighs its response to the ruble crisis, the Chinese regime, facing a cooling economy and rising social protests in the working class and peasant masses, doubtless also fears the consequences of an outright economic and political implosion of its northern neighbor.

The economic conflicts erupting between the major powers over the oil crisis and the imperialist war drive in Eurasia testifies to the advanced state of the crisis of world capitalism, and the rising risk of world war.

Chinese aid to Russia, should it materialize, will exacerbate US conflict with China. Washington has tried to militarily encircle it through the “pivot to Asia,” allying with Japan, Australia, and India. Plans for war with China, both economic and military, are doubtless being pored over on Wall Street and in the Pentagon.

A year ago, in an article titled “China must not copy the Kaiser’s errors,” Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf warned China against any action that could be construed as a challenge to US global hegemony. He indicated that a Chinese policy replicating the German Kaiser’s challenge to British hegemony before the outbreak of World War I in 1914 would lead to a similar outcome: all-out conflict.

“If open conflict arrived, the US could cut off the world’s trade with China. It could also sequester a good part of China’s liquid foreign assets,” Wolf wrote, recalling that China’s “foreign currency reserves, equal to 40 percent of GDP are, by definition, held abroad.” Such naked theft of trillions of dollars that China has earned from trade with the United States and Europe would directly raise the prospect of a collapse of global trade and preparation for war between nuclear-armed powers.

With its ever more reckless and violent policies, US imperialism is vastly overplaying its hand, discrediting itself at home and fueling opposition from rival states. By driving Russia and China together, in particular, Washington is undoing what was long seen as a major achievement of US imperialist statecraft: the 1972 rapprochement between US President Richard Nixon and Chinese leader Mao Zedong, which turned China into a US ally against the former Soviet Union.

“Many Chinese people still view Russia as the big brother, and the two countries are strategically important to each other,” Renmin University Associate Dean Jin Canrong said, referring to Soviet backing for China as it fought the United States in the Korean War, shortly after the Stalinist Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power in 1949. “For the sake of national interests, China should deepen cooperation with Russia when such cooperation is in need.”

“Russia is an irreplaceable partner on the international stage,” the CCP-linked Global Times wrote in an editorial yesterday. “China must take a proactive attitude in helping Russia walk out of the current crisis.”

The author is a senior analyst with wsws, information arm of the Social Equality Party. 

 

And now a word from the Editors of The Greanville Post

FRIENDS AND FELLOW ACTIVISTS—

AS YOU KNOW, THERE’S A COLOSSAL INFORMATION WAR GOING ON, AND THE FATE OF THE WORLD LITERALLY HANGS ON THE OUTCOME.

THEIR LIES.
THEIR CONSTANT PROPAGANDA.

OUR TRUTH.

HUGE ISSUES ARE BEING DECIDED: Nuclear war, whether we’ll live in democracy or tyranny, dignity or destitution, planetary salvation or doom…It’s a battle of communications we can’t afford to lose. 

So, we request that you do something.
Reading is not enough. Action of some sort is needed.

Start with something simple: Share our posts.
If you don’t, how can we ever neutralize the power of the corporate media?

And if you took the time to read this article, and found it worth SHARING, then why not sign up with our special bulletin to be included in our future distributions? And please tell others about The Greanville Post. 

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The Empire is Crumbling, That is Why it Needs War

A POETIC CALL TO ACTION AND TRUTH BY OUR SPECIAL ROAMING CORRESPONDENT
2015 Will See Decisive Battles 
Opening Plenary of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2009: Vladimir PutinPutin in Davos, 2009, still very much enmeshed in Western claptrap. The pivot toward the East should have commenced earlier.  The triumph of multipolarity depends on the Russia-China alliance, both nations in the crosshairs of the Empire. (Flickr/WEF)

[dropcap]in Beijing, I sat in a historic Szechuan restaurant with a friend who happens to be a Chinese diplomat. We exchanged some stories, ordered food, and then, suddenly, my throat felt dry and my eyes got misty.

I bowed and thanked her for the heartfelt offer China made to rescue Russia.

Just before leaving my hotel, I read the news on the RT:

“China’s foreign minister has pledged support to Russia as it faces an economic downturn due to sanctions and a drop in oil prices. Boosting trade in Yuan is a solution proposed by Beijing’s commerce minister.

‘Russia has the capability and the wisdom to overcome the existing hardship in the economic situation,’ Foreign Minister Wang Yi told journalists. China Daily reported Monday: ‘If the Russian side needs it, we will provide necessary assistance within our capacity.’”

By no means was I representing the Russian Federation here, in Beijing, nor was my friend representing China that night, at the dining table. It was an informal meeting attended by just a few friends, nothing more.

Not to mention that I am not really, ‘technically’ a Russian. Yes, I was born in Leningrad but almost my entire life I spent elsewhere… all over the world, to be precise. And in my veins, not that it really matters; it is also all confused… there circulates an explosive mixture of Russian, Chinese and European blood.

But lately, to be Russian, to me and to many others, is much more than just about blood. ‘I am a rebel; therefore I am Russian’, to paraphrase Albert Camus. Or: ‘I am Russian because I refuse to abandon the struggle.’

‘Ya Russkii!’ or ‘Cubano soy!’ It simply feels good, and makes one proud, and stronger.

***

The world is in turmoil. Like in the early 1940’s, something tremendous is gaining shape, something irreversible.

Almost all of us who have been analyzing the Empire fighting against the propaganda and nihilism it spreads, and its venomous tentacles extending to every corner of the globe, know that ‘appeasing’ Western imperialism is clearly impossible, as it is impractical, and even immoral.

Just as George W. Bush (clearly borrowing from fundamentalist Christian rhetoric), liked to say: “You are either with us or against us”. Countries are now evidently put on the spot: ‘they either accept the Western neo-colonialist doctrine’, or they get destroyed, one after another, as were Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.

No logic can help, no negotiations, no international mediation from the United Nations. The willingness to compromise is mocked. Appeals for simple human compassion do not move the rulers of the Empire even an inch.

It is clear that the Empire is preparing for the final assault. It will not back down. It will attack, destroy and annihilate. No idea when, but it will. And it will happen sooner rather than later, and with tremendous force.

Some would ask, why now? Why is there suddenly such a rush to fight the final battle for the total control over the planet?

The answer is very clear: for the first time disgust with the Empire is widespread, and worldwide. Many people are getting cured from blindness.

The mask of benevolence and rationality has been torn off by powerful media outlets based in the countries of Latin America, in Russia, China, Iran, but also in North America where the independent media is playing an increasingly important role. It is not even a matter of some elaborate ‘objectivity’, anymore. To get things right, it is enough to call fascism by its real name, as it is sufficient to identify mass murder perpetrated by the Empire on all continents!

The mask has fallen and what is now exposed is horrifying: the face of a monster, with blood and pus, a greedy grin and merciless fangs. It is a monster that is still in love with itself, unable to see its dreadfulness. It remains proud of its fundamental religious dogma, which it often doesn’t even see as ‘religious’. It dwells on self-righteousness, and at the same time, on its twisted market-fundamentalist faith that everything and everybody are for sale. It is a monster full of complexes – both those of superiority and inferiority.

russiaDesklogo1-350x81

It is not a happy monster and the people it produces are mostly miserable, lonely and scared. But it cannot change, it cannot back-up, it cannot let go. It would rather destroy its children and the world, than to admit that it went totally wrong, for years, decades and centuries.

Now many people have had enough, and some have even forgotten how to be scared! And the monster knows it, and it is actually scared itself, of those who are not scared of it.

The voices of the voiceless are now resonating louder and louder – we make sure that they are!

Except in the countries where the intellectuals and ‘elites’ have totally sold out, like in Indonesia or Malaysia, the horrendous deeds of the colonialism and neo-colonialism of Europe and North America, are finally being discussed, analyzed, and understood.

And the monster, the Empire, knows that it is the beginning of the end.

It cannot live as an equal. Therefore, it will fight its final battle. It will try to win. Or, it will try to destroy the world. Because life is not worth living for it, if it is not in full control; if its God is not in control, if it is not perceived as the enforcer of the divine manifesto.

***

When I visit a barbershop in Beirut or Amman, and am asked ‘where are you from?’ (It used to be a painfully confusing and complex question to answer, just a few years ago), I now simply reply: “Russia,” and people come and hug me and say, “Thank you.”

“Appeals for simple human compassion do not move the rulers of the Empire even an inch.”

It is not because Russia is perfect. It is not perfect – as no country on Earth could or should be. But it is because it is standing once more against the Empire, and the Empire has brought so many horrors, so much humiliation, to so many people; to billions of people around the world… and to them, to so many of them, anyone who is standing against the Empire, is a hero. This I heard recently, first hand, from people in Eritrea, China, Russia, Palestine, Ecuador, Cuba, Venezuela, and South Africa, to name just a few places.

Alexander Nevsky-filmStill (1937)wiki
Alexander Nevsky: The hero refuses the mongol ambassador’s invitation to join the Golden Horde. [From Eisenstein’s classic, Alexander Nevsky (1933)]. ]The Russian nation has a long history of resistance —and triumph—against would-be conquerors.

And that is why the Empire is now ‘in such a hurry’, unwilling to wait any longer, trying to provoke Russia, to bring it, metaphorically speaking, into yet another open epic battle, like the one that was fought in ancient times, on the thick ice, by Alexander Nevski.

The Empire is in too much of a rush, it is too scared to think, to understand, to remember, what every invader had to learn the hard way: Russia can be attacked and the Russian people can be murdered by millions. There can be devastation and fire; there can be ruins, tears and graves, graves, graves… Mothers burying their sons, and sons returning back home, to only encounter ashes. But Russia cannot be defeated. When the survival of the world is at stake, Russia stands up, enormous, powerful and frightening. And it fights as no other nation can; it fights for humanity, not only for itself. And it wins.

When such a moment comes, there is only one possible way how to defeat Russia: it is to destroy the entire world.

Are you ready for that, Mr. Obama? Are you ready for it, corporate America and Europe? Are you ready for it, Pentecostal Christians, Televangelists and other morally defunct beings?

Still from Alexander Nevsky: The Teutonic knights prepare to hang a rebel. (Wikipedia)

Still from Alexander Nevsky: The Teutonic knights prepare to hang a Russian rebel. (Wikipedia)

Think twice. One more step, and you will find yourself facing two enormous nations, and dozens of smaller ones, ready to fight for the survival of  mankind.

Your only strength is in your weapons of mass destruction, and therefore in spreading fear. And most of your arguments have no foundations in truth, only in deception and lies.

This year, I witnessed your deeds in Iraq, in Eritrea, China, Ukraine, all over Africa and the Middle East.

This year, somehow, it appears that you went too far, that the proverbial drop has fallen on Earth.

Stop! And stop torturing this Earth. Do not provoke, do not trigger yet another world war!

Stop, or there will be a fight. And you will lose, or we will all lose, but you will lose no matter what, because this time, Russia and China, Venezuela and Cuba, and others and many others, will not back down, anymore, while others will join.

***

Despite all of its terror, propaganda and brainwashing called ‘education’—or news, or entertainment—the Empire is well aware that it is losing its grip on global power. And it is horrified, because it does not know how else to live, except with a whip in its hand. Planet Earth realizes that the ruler is sinister, ruthless and degenerate – some people realize it clearly using logic, others just sense it, intuitively. If there was really a global democracy, the people of our planet would throw the existing power structure straight to the dogs. But there isn’t, there still isn’t! Just look at the toothless, constantly humiliated United Nations. Almost everywhere, voting has become nothing more than an act of sticking a piece of paper into a box, and not much more.

***

The year 2015 is approaching. During that year, it will become clear who is fighting for the survival of our human race, and who is on the side of oppression, of imperialism, and of the Empire.

Next year, more and more countries will get destabilized or attacked. Perhaps millions of people will get killed, as they get killed every year, but most likely, this time, many more will. The ‘opposition movements’ manufactured by the West, as well as various Christian groups and other right-wing religious factions, will continue standing firmly on the side of imperialist oppression and market fundamentalism. The conservative petite bourgeoisie in the West and in almost all ‘client states’ will be battling to uphold their privileges. Fascist family structures and cultures will continue intimidating children and young people, preventing them from thinking, from rebelling and from living.

The Empire has many allies, all over the world, but most of them are of an extremely sinister nature. But their closest allies are always ignorance, servility and fear.

While our revolutions, the true ones, as well as the resistance and battles for a better world, are always based on knowledge, and in summary are nothing else other than an act of love.

***

The fight ahead of us will be extremely tough; it will be an epic struggle, involving great nation states, as well as groups and movements.

As the grungy Russian bear is being battered and provoked into a military conflict, great Chinese dragons are determined to form a protective circle, and this time, are declaring indirectly but clearly that they will come to the rescue of weaker nations attacked by the West. As even The New York Times reported:

“Mr. Xi did not mention the United States by name but took an unmistakable jab at Washington, saying, ‘The growing trend toward a multi-polar world will not change’, a reference to the Chinese view that America’s post-Cold War role as the sole superpower is drawing to a close.”

The goal is to never allow Western imperialism and colonialism to take control over the planet again, as it mercilessly did at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th, at the cost of tens of millions of human lives.

After centuries of plunder, rape and occupations, the West has no mandate to govern the world.

“Peace can only be based on justice, on social justice especially; otherwise it is not peace.”

After constantly justifying and glorifying its terrible deeds, brainwashing our planet into believing that it actually brings progress and rationality to the savages (the rest of the planet), it cannot be trusted with ‘informing’ and ‘educating’ the people.

That is why we now have independent media, as well as powerful state-controlled media outlets based in the countries that are not willing to succumb to European and North American propaganda and indoctrination.

These media and education institutions should and will redraw the entire historical and contemporary narrative.

Some examples?

Instead of glorifying the wisdom of Founding Fathers of the United States, we should recall that North America was created on the unimaginable suffering of the indigenous people, on Christian bigotry and forced conversions, on genocide, and on theft of the land. And that it was not done by some new and extraterrestrial breed or race called ‘Americans’, but by the same European puritans and religious hordes that had already murdered for centuries, all over Asia, Africa and the Middle East—not to mention each other.

‘New America’, both North and South, was predictably created on fear, violence, glorified superstition, and  theft.

We should recall the slaves who were brought in shackles from Africa. Most of them died when traversing the Ocean, women raped and humiliated, children raped and marked forever, men with their dignity taken away from them.

Women and young girls were then chained in the fields, becoming sexual toys for those ‘puritan’ white farmers. Men and children, at least those who survived, were made to work days and nights, until falling dead from exhaustion.

All this done under the shadow of the cross, progress, and ‘democracy’!

This is how America was built. This is the true story, the true narrative, of those ‘great beginnings of the land of the free’!

And those theatres of Europe, cathedrals and churches, palaces and parks –far too many created from loot and genocides, colonialism and the Crusades, ‘military adventures’.

This is how the regime, how the Western establishment always functioned. Rape is love. Indoctrination is education and information. Fear is belief. Slavery is freedom!

Do we want this kind of world for several more decades, even centuries?

I am not asking Parisians, Londoners or New Yorkers. I am not asking corrupt businessmen in Jakarta or deranged preachers in Kinshasa, top military brass in Kigali or the murderous feudal lords in Guatemala.

No humanist, no compassionate human being wants this sort of shit!

And for the first time, people are not afraid to say it, or at least to hear it, or read it!

I am not afraid to write this. Are you scared to read it? I don’t think so.

***

The ‘peace’, we were told about again and again, is something that has to be achieved and upheld by all means.

But what kind of peace are we aiming at, and peace for whom?

The Empire wants a ‘peace’ arrangement, in which countries like Cuba and Russia, Venezuela and China, just back down, give up, and surrender. That is not peace!

We are asked, ordered, to live peacefully in a world ruled by European and North American masters, as some slaves crawling in filth.

Are we expected to succumb to the one and only religious dogma on which this entire racist, imperialist and capitalist system is built?

What a prospect, what a peace!

To them, to the imperialist West, peace means only one thing: unopposed rule over the planet.

If one fights for his people, he is a terrorist, a bandit. Then, it is a war!

The Nazis called resistance fighters in Ukraine or France, ‘terrorists’.

The Israeli military calls Palestinian resistance by the same name.

The West calls any legitimate rebellion, ‘terrorist’. Even MRTA in Peru was a ‘terrorist group’; MIR resistance against Pinochet was ‘terrorist’. The mainly social movement in Lebanon – Hezbollah – is defined as ‘terrorist’, and so is the entire proud Eritrean state.

Shia Muslims are ‘terrorists’, because the West is supporting Sunni monsters in the Gulf.

Che Guevara was a terrorist, and so were Fidel and sub-commandant Marcos. So was Lumumba.

To the West, to its lackey regimes and NGOs, true peace will come only if all natural resources were offered to the multi-national companies. All left-wing, Communist and socialist movements would be butchered, if Russia were to return to that humiliated and shapeless shit it was converted into, for a short time, under the sneaky and brutal alcoholic Boris Yeltsin, if China turned back to the Deng Xiaoping days of only providing cheap products, labor and almost no global fight against imperialism! If Venezuela was to supply crude and fuck its own people, as it used to, before the heroic revolution of Hugo Chavez, if Cuba sold its women and booze and cigars for a pittance, before its most dignified revolution took place!

‘Peace’ would be, if billions of miserably poor people were quietly and un-confrontationally dying in their slums, while the capitalists, preachers and landowners several neighborhoods further were enjoying their private clinics and private schools!

But such peace will never again be accepted!

To fight for a better world, and for the oppressed, is like writing a poem.

War is when you plunder and rape, when you murder in order to oppress, and to control others!

Peace can only be based on justice, on social justice especially; otherwise it is not peace.

***

Russia and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics fought for its survival on many occasions. Germans attacked it, then after the Revolution in 1917, the West Europeans and North Americans attacked, and then the Germans again. Tens of millions vanished defending the Motherland. Not one apology ever came from Washington or London!

China was forced open, humiliated, ransacked, including its capital city Beijing. Those who did it, the Brits and French, are now lecturing China about ‘human rights’ and ‘freedom’. It is truly grotesque!

Look at the other nations that are now standing up against Western imperialism!

Iran, colonized, destroyed when it took a socialist path, and then infected by a Suharto-style maniac, the Shah, later attacked by Iraq, after the West had armed Baghdad.

Latin America – was ruined by colonial and neo-colonial expeditions, for centuries, reduced to nothing by the ‘Monroe Doctrine’, with death squads trained in the US; trained how to kidnap and torture, and how to rape children in front of their parents.

Should we go on? Korea: tens of thousands of civilians were burned alive by US troops in tunnels. It was one of the most brutal wars in the history of mankind, aptly described by the most brilliant investigative journalist of the 20th century – Wilfred Burchett.

Indochina – 7 million were killed, bombed to death, or burned alive. Will we ever know how many? Vietnam is now an ally!

South Africa, Zimbabwe, Eritrea…

Yes, this is our alliance. Some 2 billion people who are living in the countries that were terrorized, brutalized, reduced to ashes, but that stood again and decided to fight, rather to live like slaves.

These are all imperfect countries, but countries peaceful to the core, countries that exist mainly in order to improve the lives of their men, women and children… and those all over the world.

And look at the other nations that are resisting Western attacks against their sovereignty– Cuba, North Korea, Eritrea – ostracized, surviving countless terrorist attacks, subversions, propaganda, and destabilizing campaigns. And then, when they mobilize, ready to protect themselves, they are designated, and defined as ‘hermit states’ or ‘beastly dictatorships’!

Who forced them into a corner?

It is all twisted. Never again! Enough!

***

Do you hear that silence, after the US decided to ‘normalize’ its relationship with Cuba? We all know why there is such a terrible silence, don’t we? Because we realize that, based on the centuries of US involvement in Latin America, this will be part of a new destructive tactic, a new attack: that Cuba may now actually be facing the greatest danger in decades! We don’t know exactly what will happen, but we are somehow certain, that something very terrible will.

Is the West going to manufacture a ‘Cigar Opposition Movement’ in Cuba? Or is it going to be yet another color?

2015 will see many battles.

But the most important first step has just been made.

China made a great symbolic gesture: calmly, respectfully, but decisively. The message is clear: “You shall not be allowed to destroy others!” Not anymore.

The Empire is decomposing; it is sick, unsustainable.

But it is also toxic, and its illness is contagious. Its propaganda is mighty and its dogmas are violent.

Let us make sure that it goes away, crumbles, step by step, without destroying the world, without dragging it into WWIII.

Let us unite, individuals and nations, movements and parties. At least until the most dangerous period passes.

ANDRE VLTCHEK54674Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. The result is his latest book: “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. ‘Pluto’ published his discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. His critically acclaimed political novel Point of No Return is re-edited and available. Oceania is his book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about post-Suharto Indonesia and the market-fundamentalist model is called “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. His feature documentary, “Rwanda Gambit” is about Rwandan history and the plunder of DR Congo. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

 

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