STEVE GOWANS—The US economic elite has for years expressed its grievances over China’s state owned enterprises. It complains that it is “denied lucrative government business, which goes instead to the state champions.” US business people grouse that “In the past few years, China has significantly increased the government’s role in the economy, pumping up the state sector and crowding out private and foreign businesses.”
VIRTUALUNIV
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Steve Gowans On Venezuela Coup—US efforts to topple Maduro spurred by business interests, not democracy
20 minutes readSTEPHEN GOWANS—The agendas of US and Canadian political leaders are set by the economic elites and organized business interests on which they depend for campaign contributions, policy recommendations, and lucrative post political career job opportunities, and with which they’re tightly integrated personally and professionally. Accordingly, they care about the profits of US and Canadian investors, not about the welfare, freedoms or democracy of ordinary Venezuelans. Indeed, they secretly harbor contempt for the bulk of their own citizens and wouldn’t, for a moment, tolerate the flowering of an authentic, robust, democracy in their own countries. The idea that they care about the residents of a distant South American land is a fantasy for political innocents and the astonishingly naïve.
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NBC’s Jawdropping McCarthyite Smear of Tulsi Gabbard
7 minutes readJIMMY DORE AND CREW expose the latest offals issuing frm the imperial thught control machine: NBC’s Jawdropping McCarthyite Smear of Tulsi Gabbard. With special bonus feature.
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HOWARD LISNOFF—A comment on The Real News Network piece observed that the disarray in the peace movement reached its apex during the Obama administration when people were sucked in by the empty rhetoric of hope and change and promptly left the streets and ignored Obama’s expansion of the war in Afghanistan.
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The US aggression against Venezuela as a diagnostic tool
33 minutes readTHE SAKER—Next comes terrain. Yes, much of Venezuela is difficult to access, but not for jungle-experienced forces which both the US military and the Colombians have. Furthermore, there is absolutely no need to invade the entire country to topple the legitimate government. For that all you need is to control a few key facilities in a few key locations and you are done. For example, I don’t see the USAF or USN wasting any time in air-to-air combat against the (few) Venezuelan Sukhois – they will simply destroy them in their hangars along with their runways and air combat management radars and command posts. So the terrain will not prevent the Empire from suppressing Venezuelan air defenses and as soon as this is done, you can expect the usual mix of bomb and missile strikes which will create chaos, wreck command and control capabilities and, basically, disorganize much of the military. Finally, US forces in Colombia and USN ships off the Venezuelan coast will enjoy a safe harbor from which to launch as many strikes as they want.