Aides Stunned, Panicked Wall Street Calls For "Returning" President to Indonesia
Michael K. Smith
Legalienation News Bureau
www.legalienate.blogspot.com
May 19, 2011 6:47 a.m. EDT
(LNB) -- Following emergency surgery to correct faltering mental capacities, president Barack Obama is "finally talking sense," according to a team of neurosurgeons at Johns Hopkins.
"It may be hard to believe, but he's really lucid and rational" said his chief neurosurgeon, Dr. Ding Dong, who performed the 7 1/2 hour-operation to replace the part of Obama's skull that had rotted away from years of exposure to neo-liberal ideology. "He woke up from surgery and said new nuclear plant construction didn't make sense in the midst of a Chernobyl-like meltdown in Japan."
The president told reporters that he was "very grateful" to have a working brain, which his doctors predicted would "almost certainly" help him overcome an apparently self-inflicted lobotomy that had rendered him incapable of rational thought while the nation he was entrusted to govern careened from one national disaster to another over the past two plus years.
"The brain is in good position, the president is thinking critically, and everything looks great," said Dr. Dong. "We expect the nation's business to be on a rational footing in a very short time," he added.
These remarks provoked panic on Wall Street, with major investment houses calling for the president to be "returned" to Indonesia. "The last thing we need is a president who can rationally order the nation's priorities in accordance with the Constitution's call to promote the general welfare," said Bernie Rosenthal of Neurosis Production Unlimited, a trillion dollar a year marketing firm. "The effort to bring this treasonous project to fruition is the clearest possible proof that Barack Obama is not an American citizen and therefore not really president," he added.
Aides initially attributed the president's uncharacteristic rationality to the lingering effects of a new anesthesia, but when Obama continued to exhibit incisive common sense throughout the day, they were alerted to the surgery's complete success. Over lunch the president said that Israel's policy of locking the Palestinian people in a giant outdoor prison would "hardly have won the approval of Dr. King." Later, he proclaimed it "nonsensical" to give trillions of dollars worth of aid to swindling investment firms while Main Street "languished in economic disaster."
The president ruined his original brain reading stacks of position papers written by corporate PR flacks and "Israel forever" fanatics. As he gradually lost the power to reason, he gave away the store to plundering corporations and dispatched U.S. military forces to carry out pointless slaughters in one country after another.
Like patients with gunshot wounds to the head, Obama ended up with an extreme inability to reason. Before replacing his brain, his neurosurgical team cut a hole in his head to relieve the pressure caused by the enormous buildup of stale rhetoric inside his softened skull. Dr. Dong said an internal drain, called a shunt, was inserted into Obama's cranial cavity to carry excess verbiage from the brain to the abdominal cavity, where it can now be disposed of by normal elimination processes. Dr. Dong called the procedure an "intellectual laxative."
------Michael K. Smith is the author of "Portraits of Empire" from Common Courage Press. He can be reached at proheresy@yahoo.com
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Friday, May 13, 2011
Stale Bread, Brutal Circus
With the western imperial system in grave condition its population needs constant mind game manipulation to help ruling minorities maintain control. Recent Bread and Circus spectacles have featured a marriage of royal entities from an alleged democratic nation, and a hit squad performing a mafia job and depicted as heroic for their work. This served to briefly occupy the minds of people who should be considering far more serious matters.
A marriage continuing a tradition of socially acceptable incestuous families brought some temporary escapist entertainment to souls otherwise dealing with work, rent, or unemployment. Despite the rarely mentioned contradiction of genetic royalty in a system of democratic equality, the lovely bride and less lovely groom were hailed and farewelled and will probably not be heard from again until a divorce or other scandal. But the hit job on a famously created demon will have repercussions and though useful as a propaganda tool for those in power, questions have been raised which will hopefully lead to more exposure of material reality by “ the American street" .
Without arrest, trial or even its pretense, the alleged mastermind of the 911 terror attack was, we are told, killed at a hideaway where he had evaded military un-intelligence for ten years. The ineptitude that allowed the 911 disasters to happen was further exemplified in the sloppy work of murdering the supposed arch-villain mastermind, and its breathless uncritical reportage followed by macho posturing of government officials of all races, creeds and sexes. We should not be surprised at the legal injustice since the president, a supposed constitutional expert, previously revealed his Bush-level ignorance in pronouncing Bradley Manning guilty without trial, so why not the foreign monster? Media in its dutiful role as stenographer and cheerleader for power had long depicted Osama as the archfiend who directed the 911 attacks, despite no evidence other than his publicly expressed hatred for those brutalizing his people. How could citizens exposed to constant manufactured fictional news be expected to question the killing of this villain? And yet many among them did just that, proving that Abraham Lincoln - who, like another alleged archfiend, Gaddafi, “killed his own people” - was correct: Americans may be ignorant, but we are not stupid. Of course that excludes our leaders, who are maintained in their stupidity only by our controlled ignorance.
The storied bravery of a hit squad encountering a madman using a woman as a shield and firing at will soon revealed that Osama wasn’t armed at all. The only resistance encountered was from his unarmed wife, who was bravely shot by the assaulting mob. While a performance of gruesome public joy was arranged, we learned that the corpse was buried at sea, and no photos would be revealed to the public. This will invite more skeptics to believe that Osama was already dead, had never been alive in the first place, or was a secret triple agent of the Mossad – CIA -3 Stooges conspiracy. But whatever level of informed or surreal belief is entertained by skeptics, the crime was clear to anyone able to pierce the plastic curtain of disinformation that turned a serious situation with implications of further terrorist threat into a grotesque glorification of murder and vengeance for a crime with which Osama likely had little if any direct involvement.
The Islamic fundamentalists at the core of 911 terror may be a tiny minority, but whether manipulated or not they represent a growing majority of the global population that is saying, one way or another: enough is enough, we refuse to live under your boot heels any longer and we demand control of our own lives.
The murderous assault on another media created villain in Libya was momentarily placed on the back pages while new legends, fables and outright lies were being presented as news of the world. A nation which once had the highest material quality of life on the African continent is being reduced to a bombed and bleeding victim of western aggression, while the conservative right and the liberal left in America join in bipartisan patriotic applause at this humanitarian justice. If genetic royalty is part of democracy, why cant mass murder be an expression of peace?
What has been romanticized as an Arab Spring may only be a seasonal hint with real democracy still on the horizon, but it is unmistakable as a trend. With growing solidarity among Palestinians and their global supporters, the western imperial response to signs that Usrael domination is nearing its end has led to feverish actions in nations where regimes which may have legitimate opposition have been transformed, especially in Libya, into bloody civil wars by euro-western manipulation and intervention. But the Arab tyrants who suck up to the west, sit on billions of dollars and rule their subjects with an iron hand, are allowed to subdue their roused populations with violence unquestioned by this “democracy” and its fellow travelers who call themselves liberals or progressives.
There may be short-term success for the military power of the empire, but in the long term its political economic contradictions will come crashing down. The profit and loss financial domination of the world by private capital, far more deadly than any royal family or individual dictatorship, is ultimately making it impossible for the continuity of the human race and its foundation: mother earth. More distractions via bread and circus spectacles should not and cannot impede the work of humanity to bring about another world, which is not only possible but absolutely necessary.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Imperial Brain Damage: The Week in Review
by Michael K. Smith
www.legalienate.blogspot.com
The political assassination of Osama Bin Laden predictably triggered an orgy of media imbecility among U.S. pundits. The hit by heavily-armed Navy SEALS in the dead of night at a Pakistani military compound in Abbottabad was routinely described as "daring," though only a lone courier appears to have fought back, which makes it difficult to see much courage at work. But trust the U.S. media to praise to the skies any U.S. military effort to kill for an allegedly greater good (always), no matter whose national sovereignty is violated, how many innocent bystanders are killed, or how little legal or moral authority for the act is presented. "Justice has been done," intoned a clueless President Obama, who has attacked six countries in just over two years in office, without a shred of convincing legal or moral justification for any of the interventions. (The six countries are: Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, and Somalia.)
The Philadelphia Inquirer waxed psychoanalytic, saying that Americans could at last overcome the sense of pessimism and failure they "felt - but rarely acknowledged - in not being able to apprehend bin Laden for so long." Our country continues to face "huge challenges" in Afghanistan and Iraq, the editors went on, but with Bin Laden dead "it's easier to envision a day not too long from now when the wars are over, the troops come home, and optimism reigns."
It's difficult to know where to start with this. No sane person could possibly anticipate that the endless series of U.S. sponsored wars dating back to the colonial era are about to come to an end. As noted, Obama has attacked six countries in barely half a term of office, a rate that, if sustained, would yield 20 or more interventions should Obama last eight years in the White House.
Incidentally, the "huge challenges" we face in Iraq and Afghanistan apparently do not include presenting a credible reason for being in those countries in the first place. The Taliban offered to turn Bin Laden over to U.S. authorities after 911, but Washington turned them down. And most of the world is very well aware by now that the Iraq war was launched without even the pretense of a justification.
As for why it would be good for "optimism" to reign over the U.S.A., where twenty-five million people are out of work, a quarter of American mortgages are under water, a third of the American people are without savings to fall back on, and where there continues to be no sign of economic recovery three years into the Great Recession, the Inquirer's editors unfortunately do not indicate. Suffice it so say that the conclusion is something less than self-evident.
Meanwhile the Kansas City Star editorialized that America's resolve to pursue our enemies to the ends of the earth sends them an important message, to wit: "If you do what bin Laden did, the United States will find you no matter where you hide, no matter how long it takes." Apparently, the Star's editors have forgotten that Muslim terrorists of the Bin Laden variety do not fear death, and actually welcome martyrdom, which makes intimidation a poor strategy. Unfortunately, the U.S. media have the attention span of a two-year old, and regularly forget what it is most important to remember.
Shannen Coffin in NationalReview.com said that Bin Laden was tracked down partly because of U.S. torture policy. When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in 2003, "he was resistant to any form of interrogation, conventional or otherwise." But waterboarding and "other enhanced measures" made him more "compliant," and interrogators were able to deduce from his responses clues about the whereabouts of Bin Laden's courier.
Oh, happy day! Torture works after all. The fact that Bin Laden's death does nothing to make anyone safer, and in fact, has U.S. authorities redoubling their efforts to prevent expected terrorist revenge attacks, is beneath our contempt to notice. We're celebrating, after all, and we want no more of "pessimism" pointing out the cost of our suicidal recklessness.
Richard Cohen of the Washington Post weighed in with the judgment that for too long Obama has displayed a "counterproductive sensitivity for the sensitivities of the Muslim world," by deferring to U.N. approval (When? Where?). But by sending in a commando team to assassinate bin Laden, "whether or not Pakistan or anyone else liked it," Obama has broken free of the wimp factor.
In point of fact Obama has shown utter contempt for Muslims in Palestine, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. His sending in an assassination squad to kill Bin Laden is simply more of the same. There is nothing "manly" in this, and U.S. punditry's cheerleading for militarist machismo is a deadly plague leading the world to incalculable destruction. Only a juvenile delinquent could see anything to be happy about here.
Louis Klarevas in NewRepublic.com at least got a point half right: "Decapitating al Qaida will not stop those who feel it is their duty to strike against the U.S. and its assets in the name of bin Laden's twisted version of Islam." Right. The issue is not Bin Laden, but the adherents of his and similar ideologies, who can be counted on to strike back for this latest attack, killing yet more innocents. ["Terrorists almost certainly will attempt to avenge him," said CIA Director Leon Panetta.] Why should more Americans die for Israel and U.S. Empire? And why should we be happy about a foreign policy that invites those deaths?
In any event, it is an open question as to how "twisted" Bin Laden's version of Islam is. Is it more "twisted" than Obama's Zionism, now laying waste to what remains of historic Palestine? Or more twisted than his Christianity (sorry for the repetition), which somehow allows his conscience to rest easy as he sets records for pilotless drone attacks, a particularly cowardly form of "warfare"? One very much doubts it. As usual, U.S. hypocrisy is boundless.
David Barno in the New York Times said that Bin Laden's killing reminds his followers that the U.S. is "a power to be reckoned with," which they were apparently unaware of when the U.S. was merely reducing one Muslim-dominant country after another to rubble. It is apparently inconceivable to the pundit class that a limitless willingness to kill does not make the U.S. respected in the world. Quite the contrary.
Juliette Kayyem in the Boston Globe commented that our government's formerly "excited" posture vis-a-vis terrorism has transformed itself into "resolute calmness" (an improvement?). The new watchword is, "Secretly kill. Publicly chill." Uncharacteristically, the Department of Homeland Security didn't even issue a new alert this week, since no new specifics about future attacks were uncovered to "warrant freaking everyone out." This is supposedly evidence that we're now better at coping with the "nature of the world we live in."
Secretly kill, publicly chill? Is this woman serious? Such comments bespeak a level of dissociation from reality that should make Ms. Kayyem certifiable. And we're better at coping with reality in the wake of killing Bin Laden? While the newspapers shriek that we "got our man" and citizen mobs besiege the White House with vulgar chants of "USA! USA! USA!"
If this is sanity, what is madness?
Source:
Quoted material from "The Week, "May 13, 2011
-----Michael K. Smith is the author of "Portraits of Empire," from Common Courage Press. He can be reached at proheresy@yahoo.com
www.legalienate.blogspot.com
The political assassination of Osama Bin Laden predictably triggered an orgy of media imbecility among U.S. pundits. The hit by heavily-armed Navy SEALS in the dead of night at a Pakistani military compound in Abbottabad was routinely described as "daring," though only a lone courier appears to have fought back, which makes it difficult to see much courage at work. But trust the U.S. media to praise to the skies any U.S. military effort to kill for an allegedly greater good (always), no matter whose national sovereignty is violated, how many innocent bystanders are killed, or how little legal or moral authority for the act is presented. "Justice has been done," intoned a clueless President Obama, who has attacked six countries in just over two years in office, without a shred of convincing legal or moral justification for any of the interventions. (The six countries are: Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, and Somalia.)
The Philadelphia Inquirer waxed psychoanalytic, saying that Americans could at last overcome the sense of pessimism and failure they "felt - but rarely acknowledged - in not being able to apprehend bin Laden for so long." Our country continues to face "huge challenges" in Afghanistan and Iraq, the editors went on, but with Bin Laden dead "it's easier to envision a day not too long from now when the wars are over, the troops come home, and optimism reigns."
It's difficult to know where to start with this. No sane person could possibly anticipate that the endless series of U.S. sponsored wars dating back to the colonial era are about to come to an end. As noted, Obama has attacked six countries in barely half a term of office, a rate that, if sustained, would yield 20 or more interventions should Obama last eight years in the White House.
Incidentally, the "huge challenges" we face in Iraq and Afghanistan apparently do not include presenting a credible reason for being in those countries in the first place. The Taliban offered to turn Bin Laden over to U.S. authorities after 911, but Washington turned them down. And most of the world is very well aware by now that the Iraq war was launched without even the pretense of a justification.
As for why it would be good for "optimism" to reign over the U.S.A., where twenty-five million people are out of work, a quarter of American mortgages are under water, a third of the American people are without savings to fall back on, and where there continues to be no sign of economic recovery three years into the Great Recession, the Inquirer's editors unfortunately do not indicate. Suffice it so say that the conclusion is something less than self-evident.
Meanwhile the Kansas City Star editorialized that America's resolve to pursue our enemies to the ends of the earth sends them an important message, to wit: "If you do what bin Laden did, the United States will find you no matter where you hide, no matter how long it takes." Apparently, the Star's editors have forgotten that Muslim terrorists of the Bin Laden variety do not fear death, and actually welcome martyrdom, which makes intimidation a poor strategy. Unfortunately, the U.S. media have the attention span of a two-year old, and regularly forget what it is most important to remember.
Shannen Coffin in NationalReview.com said that Bin Laden was tracked down partly because of U.S. torture policy. When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in 2003, "he was resistant to any form of interrogation, conventional or otherwise." But waterboarding and "other enhanced measures" made him more "compliant," and interrogators were able to deduce from his responses clues about the whereabouts of Bin Laden's courier.
Oh, happy day! Torture works after all. The fact that Bin Laden's death does nothing to make anyone safer, and in fact, has U.S. authorities redoubling their efforts to prevent expected terrorist revenge attacks, is beneath our contempt to notice. We're celebrating, after all, and we want no more of "pessimism" pointing out the cost of our suicidal recklessness.
Richard Cohen of the Washington Post weighed in with the judgment that for too long Obama has displayed a "counterproductive sensitivity for the sensitivities of the Muslim world," by deferring to U.N. approval (When? Where?). But by sending in a commando team to assassinate bin Laden, "whether or not Pakistan or anyone else liked it," Obama has broken free of the wimp factor.
In point of fact Obama has shown utter contempt for Muslims in Palestine, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. His sending in an assassination squad to kill Bin Laden is simply more of the same. There is nothing "manly" in this, and U.S. punditry's cheerleading for militarist machismo is a deadly plague leading the world to incalculable destruction. Only a juvenile delinquent could see anything to be happy about here.
Louis Klarevas in NewRepublic.com at least got a point half right: "Decapitating al Qaida will not stop those who feel it is their duty to strike against the U.S. and its assets in the name of bin Laden's twisted version of Islam." Right. The issue is not Bin Laden, but the adherents of his and similar ideologies, who can be counted on to strike back for this latest attack, killing yet more innocents. ["Terrorists almost certainly will attempt to avenge him," said CIA Director Leon Panetta.] Why should more Americans die for Israel and U.S. Empire? And why should we be happy about a foreign policy that invites those deaths?
In any event, it is an open question as to how "twisted" Bin Laden's version of Islam is. Is it more "twisted" than Obama's Zionism, now laying waste to what remains of historic Palestine? Or more twisted than his Christianity (sorry for the repetition), which somehow allows his conscience to rest easy as he sets records for pilotless drone attacks, a particularly cowardly form of "warfare"? One very much doubts it. As usual, U.S. hypocrisy is boundless.
David Barno in the New York Times said that Bin Laden's killing reminds his followers that the U.S. is "a power to be reckoned with," which they were apparently unaware of when the U.S. was merely reducing one Muslim-dominant country after another to rubble. It is apparently inconceivable to the pundit class that a limitless willingness to kill does not make the U.S. respected in the world. Quite the contrary.
Juliette Kayyem in the Boston Globe commented that our government's formerly "excited" posture vis-a-vis terrorism has transformed itself into "resolute calmness" (an improvement?). The new watchword is, "Secretly kill. Publicly chill." Uncharacteristically, the Department of Homeland Security didn't even issue a new alert this week, since no new specifics about future attacks were uncovered to "warrant freaking everyone out." This is supposedly evidence that we're now better at coping with the "nature of the world we live in."
Secretly kill, publicly chill? Is this woman serious? Such comments bespeak a level of dissociation from reality that should make Ms. Kayyem certifiable. And we're better at coping with reality in the wake of killing Bin Laden? While the newspapers shriek that we "got our man" and citizen mobs besiege the White House with vulgar chants of "USA! USA! USA!"
If this is sanity, what is madness?
Source:
Quoted material from "The Week, "May 13, 2011
-----Michael K. Smith is the author of "Portraits of Empire," from Common Courage Press. He can be reached at proheresy@yahoo.com
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Drones of Disaster
Having sent one of it’s most lethal drone weapons to Libya in the person of Senator McCain, the U.S. more firmly established its murderous bias in a civil war it has promoted and possibly helped organize. The frequency of propaganda reports telling of Kaddafi personally slaughtering great masses of “his own people” – as though anyone but Libyans would be suffering in a civil war - may indicate what passes for debate in ruling power circles:
Should we kill even more Libyans, or slightly fewer Libyans?
But the slaughter continues, with the mental state of the American people almost as great a victim as the future state of the Libyans. In truth, the struggle being waged concerns continued western financial domination of the world and not simply the localized murders at the behest of private international capital.
After the initial assault on consciousness, alternative sources of information helped slightly tone down the worst excesses of western mind management. But it continues to distort, misinform and lie about a situation bloodier because of western interference. When hostilities were apparent between the government and its opponents, instead of the United Nations operating in a peace keeping capacity and separating combatants, the puppet institution went in with guns blazing. The lie of atrocities prevented by western military intervention has become the truth of atrocities caused by western military intervention. A death toll previously alleged but with no evidence of its reality has become the reality of a death toll hardly reported at all, unless victims can be blamed on the personal identification that westerners have become habituated to: a demonic monster who is single handedly killing his people, and doing this while under assault from western powers and barely avoiding assassination. So far.
Left unreported by most media are murders of black Africans by the rebels, conveniently rationalized as the killing of mercenaries hired by the evil dictator to kill his own people. The fact of Kaddafi’s popularity among many black Africans not totally owned or controlled by western colonial powers is avoided and the racial hatreds of some Libyans for blacks isn’t mentioned at all. Of course, the half white American chief executive with an African father should not be expected to do anything but represent his system, and certainly not express critical thought let alone compassion for what some might call his paternal ancestors. His job is to maintain the domain of private capital, not change it, and this latest calamity may help more people to understand that fact and end their religious faith in his representing any form of change beyond the cosmetic.
While criticism of the Libyan attack is growing on the edges of society, the center seems totally disposed to kill more people and cover the atrocity with stories of ending another in a series of dictatorships, all with some things in common even if they took different paths to arrive at the same point. That being a desire to have a measure of public rather than exclusively private control of national wealth, whether that wealth was based on what comes out of the earth or, more important, what comes out of a bank.
While spreading stories of their pending slaughter, the rebels of Libya were somehow able to form a private bank, with the aid of their European puppeteers, as well as their own oil company. It must have been very difficult for them to accomplish this task while experiencing genocide and other media created assaults from the wicked dictator who had resisted such financial changes and in fact led his country in the opposite direction. Hmmmm.
Meanwhile, the free world president of change we can believe in - assuming we believe in tooth fairies and the Easter bunny – asserted his leadership in making war in Libya in order to “maintain the flow of commerce”, said flow assuming the current of an economic tsunami in most of the world and resisted by growing numbers of earth inhabitants though hardly by their rulers. The president has let it be known that he will need billions to run for reelection and his owners are already at work collecting that sum and selecting suitably imbecilic opponents that even he can beat. Already, a particularly dumb billionaire has entered the race in order to make Sarah Palin seem intellectual by comparison and we can expect far more members of the opposition flat earth society to enter the race for superintendent of the collapsing structure. They have nothing to lose, but we face further calamity the longer this mob is allowed to stake out a future of more profits for them, with greater loss for mother earth and us.
Kaddafi’s shortcomings as a leader are or may be a problem for some Libyans, but they are none of the business of the western powers that are trying to destroy an independent attempt on the part of a nation once a member of the European slave and colonial class. The supposedly evil dictator’s popularity among many back Africans has to do with his attempts at unifying Africa and moving towards its independence from and equality with the fading great powers. That fading is a fact of life, but the faders are not going gracefully. They continue to endanger any notion of democracy and social justice as they behave like bloody maniacs, all the while claiming to support humanity, freedom and the dignity of the common people. We may be lucky that a judgmental and righteous old testament god does not rule or we might all be consumed in an enormous earthquake and holocaust that would leave nothing as evidence we’d ever been here. Luckily, that is not the case and we have the capacity to transform our world before it is destroyed by out of control forces. In order to do that, we have to stop believing myths about an alleged dictator in Libya, and most especially about an alleged liberator in the USA.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Is The World Too Big To Fail?
The democracy uprising in the Arab world has been a spectacular display of courage, dedication, and commitment by popular forces -- coinciding, fortuitously, with a remarkable uprising of tens of thousands in support of working people and democracy in Madison, Wisconsin, and other U.S. cities. If the trajectories of revolt in Cairo and Madison intersected, however, they were headed in opposite directions: in Cairo toward gaining elementary rights denied by the dictatorship, in Madison towards defending rights that had been won in long and hard struggles and are now under severe attack.
Each is a microcosm of tendencies in global society, following varied courses. There are sure to be far-reaching consequences of what is taking place both in the decaying industrial heartland of the richest and most powerful country in human history, and in what President Dwight Eisenhower called "the most strategically important area in the world" -- "a stupendous source of strategic power" and "probably the richest economic prize in the world in the field of foreign investment," in the words of the State Department in the 1940s, a prize that the U.S. intended to keep for itself and its allies in the unfolding New World Order of that day.
Despite all the changes since, there is every reason to suppose that today's policy-makers basically adhere to the judgment of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s influential advisor A.A. Berle that control of the incomparable energy reserves of the Middle East would yield "substantial control of the world." And correspondingly, that loss of control would threaten the project of global dominance that was clearly articulated during World War II, and that has been sustained in the face of major changes in world order since that day.
From the outset of the war in 1939, Washington anticipated that it would end with the U.S. in a position of overwhelming power. High-level State Department officials and foreign policy specialists met through the wartime years to lay out plans for the postwar world. They delineated a "Grand Area" that the U.S. was to dominate, including the Western hemisphere, the Far East, and the former British empire, with its Middle East energy resources. As Russia began to grind down Nazi armies after Stalingrad, Grand Area goals extended to as much of Eurasia as possible, at least its economic core in Western Europe. Within the Grand Area, the U.S. would maintain "unquestioned power," with "military and economic supremacy," while ensuring the "limitation of any exercise of sovereignty" by states that might interfere with its global designs. The careful wartime plans were soon implemented.
It was always recognized that Europe might choose to follow an independent course. NATO was partially intended to counter this threat. As soon as the official pretext for NATO dissolved in 1989, NATO was expanded to the East in violation of verbal pledges to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It has since become a U.S.-run intervention force, with far-ranging scope, spelled out by NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who informed a NATO conference that "NATO troops have to guard pipelines that transport oil and gas that is directed for the West," and more generally to protect sea routes used by tankers and other "crucial infrastructure" of the energy system.
Grand Area doctrines clearly license military intervention at will. That conclusion was articulated clearly by the Clinton administration, which declared that the U.S. has the right to use military force to ensure "uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources," and must maintain huge military forces "forward deployed" in Europe and Asia "in order to shape people's opinions about us" and "to shape events that will affect our livelihood and our security."
The same principles governed the invasion of Iraq. As the U.S. failure to impose its will in Iraq was becoming unmistakable, the actual goals of the invasion could no longer be concealed behind pretty rhetoric. In November 2007, the White House issued a Declaration of Principles demanding that U.S. forces must remain indefinitely in Iraq and committing Iraq to privilege American investors. Two months later, President Bush informed Congress that he would reject legislation that might limit the permanent stationing of U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq or "United States control of the oil resources of Iraq" -- demands that the U.S. had to abandon shortly after in the face of Iraqi resistance.
In Tunisia and Egypt, the recent popular uprisings have won impressive victories, but as the Carnegie Endowment reported, while names have changed, the regimes remain: "A change in ruling elites and system of governance is still a distant goal." The report discusses internal barriers to democracy, but ignores the external ones, which as always are significant.
The U.S. and its Western allies are sure to do whatever they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world. To understand why, it is only necessary to look at the studies of Arab opinion conducted by U.S. polling agencies. Though barely reported, they are certainly known to planners. They reveal that by overwhelming majorities, Arabs regard the U.S. and Israel as the major threats they face: the U.S. is so regarded by 90% of Egyptians, in the region generally by over 75%. Some Arabs regard Iran as a threat: 10%. Opposition to U.S. policy is so strong that a majority believes that security would be improved if Iran had nuclear weapons -- in Egypt, 80%. Other figures are similar. If public opinion were to influence policy, the U.S. not only would not control the region, but would be expelled from it, along with its allies, undermining fundamental principles of global dominance.
The Invisible Hand of Power
Support for democracy is the province of ideologists and propagandists. In the real world, elite dislike of democracy is the norm. The evidence is overwhelming that democracy is supported insofar as it contributes to social and economic objectives, a conclusion reluctantly conceded by the more serious scholarship.
Elite contempt for democracy was revealed dramatically in the reaction to the WikiLeaks exposures. Those that received most attention, with euphoric commentary, were cables reporting that Arabs support the U.S. stand on Iran. The reference was to the ruling dictators. The attitudes of the public were unmentioned. The guiding principle was articulated clearly by Carnegie Endowment Middle East specialist Marwan Muasher, formerly a high official of the Jordanian government: "There is nothing wrong, everything is under control." In short, if the dictators support us, what else could matter?
The Muasher doctrine is rational and venerable. To mention just one case that is highly relevant today, in internal discussion in 1958, president Eisenhower expressed concern about "the campaign of hatred" against us in the Arab world, not by governments, but by the people. The National Security Council (NSC) explained that there is a perception in the Arab world that the U.S. supports dictatorships and blocks democracy and development so as to ensure control over the resources of the region. Furthermore, the perception is basically accurate, the NSC concluded, and that is what we should be doing, relying on the Muasher doctrine. Pentagon studies conducted after 9/11 confirmed that the same holds today.
It is normal for the victors to consign history to the trash can, and for victims to take it seriously. Perhaps a few brief observations on this important matter may be useful. Today is not the first occasion when Egypt and the U.S. are facing similar problems, and moving in opposite directions. That was also true in the early nineteenth century.
Economic historians have argued that Egypt was well-placed to undertake rapid economic development at the same time that the U.S. was. Both had rich agriculture, including cotton, the fuel of the early industrial revolution -- though unlike Egypt, the U.S. had to develop cotton production and a work force by conquest, extermination, and slavery, with consequences that are evident right now in the reservations for the survivors and the prisons that have rapidly expanded since the Reagan years to house the superfluous population left by deindustrialization.
One fundamental difference was that the U.S. had gained independence and was therefore free to ignore the prescriptions of economic theory, delivered at the time by Adam Smith in terms rather like those preached to developing societies today. Smith urged the liberated colonies to produce primary products for export and to import superior British manufactures, and certainly not to attempt to monopolize crucial goods, particularly cotton. Any other path, Smith warned, "would retard instead of accelerating the further increase in the value of their annual produce, and would obstruct instead of promoting the progress of their country towards real wealth and greatness."
Having gained their independence, the colonies were free to ignore his advice and to follow England's course of independent state-guided development, with high tariffs to protect industry from British exports, first textiles, later steel and others, and to adopt numerous other devices to accelerate industrial development. The independent Republic also sought to gain a monopoly of cotton so as to "place all other nations at our feet," particularly the British enemy, as the Jacksonian presidents announced when conquering Texas and half of Mexico.
For Egypt, a comparable course was barred by British power. Lord Palmerston declared that "no ideas of fairness [toward Egypt] ought to stand in the way of such great and paramount interests" of Britain as preserving its economic and political hegemony, expressing his "hate" for the "ignorant barbarian" Muhammed Ali who dared to seek an independent course, and deploying Britain's fleet and financial power to terminate Egypt's quest for independence and economic development.
After World War II, when the U.S. displaced Britain as global hegemon, Washington adopted the same stand, making it clear that the U.S. would provide no aid to Egypt unless it adhered to the standard rules for the weak -- which the U.S. continued to violate, imposing high tariffs to bar Egyptian cotton and causing a debilitating dollar shortage. The usual interpretation of market principles.
It is small wonder that the "campaign of hatred" against the U.S. that concerned Eisenhower was based on the recognition that the U.S. supports dictators and blocks democracy and development, as do its allies.
In Adam Smith's defense, it should be added that he recognized what would happen if Britain followed the rules of sound economics, now called "neoliberalism." He warned that if British manufacturers, merchants, and investors turned abroad, they might profit but England would suffer. But he felt that they would be guided by a home bias, so as if by an invisible hand England would be spared the ravages of economic rationality.
The passage is hard to miss. It is the one occurrence of the famous phrase "invisible hand" in The Wealth of Nations. The other leading founder of classical economics, David Ricardo, drew similar conclusions, hoping that home bias would lead men of property to "be satisfied with the low rate of profits in their own country, rather than seek a more advantageous employment for their wealth in foreign nations," feelings that, he added, "I should be sorry to see weakened." Their predictions aside, the instincts of the classical economists were sound.
The Iranian and Chinese “Threats”
The democracy uprising in the Arab world is sometimes compared to Eastern Europe in 1989, but on dubious grounds. In 1989, the democracy uprising was tolerated by the Russians, and supported by western power in accord with standard doctrine: it plainly conformed to economic and strategic objectives, and was therefore a noble achievement, greatly honored, unlike the struggles at the same time "to defend the people's fundamental human rights" in Central America, in the words of the assassinated Archbishop of El Salvador, one of the hundreds of thousands of victims of the military forces armed and trained by Washington. There was no Gorbachev in the West throughout these horrendous years, and there is none today. And Western power remains hostile to democracy in the Arab world for good reasons.
Grand Area doctrines continue to apply to contemporary crises and confrontations. In Western policy-making circles and political commentary the Iranian threat is considered to pose the greatest danger to world order and hence must be the primary focus of U.S. foreign policy, with Europe trailing along politely.
What exactly is the Iranian threat? An authoritative answer is provided by the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence. Reporting on global security last year, they make it clear that the threat is not military. Iran's military spending is "relatively low compared to the rest of the region," they conclude. Its military doctrine is strictly "defensive, designed to slow an invasion and force a diplomatic solution to hostilities." Iran has only "a limited capability to project force beyond its borders." With regard to the nuclear option, "Iran's nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy." All quotes.
The brutal clerical regime is doubtless a threat to its own people, though it hardly outranks U.S. allies in that regard. But the threat lies elsewhere, and is ominous indeed. One element is Iran's potential deterrent capacity, an illegitimate exercise of sovereignty that might interfere with U.S. freedom of action in the region. It is glaringly obvious why Iran would seek a deterrent capacity; a look at the military bases and nuclear forces in the region suffices to explain.
Seven years ago, Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld wrote that "The world has witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy," particularly when they are under constant threat of attack in violation of the UN Charter. Whether they are doing so remains an open question, but perhaps so.
But Iran's threat goes beyond deterrence. It is also seeking to expand its influence in neighboring countries, the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence emphasize, and in this way to "destabilize" the region (in the technical terms of foreign policy discourse). The U.S. invasion and military occupation of Iran's neighbors is "stabilization." Iran's efforts to extend its influence to them are "destabilization," hence plainly illegitimate.
Such usage is routine. Thus the prominent foreign policy analyst James Chace was properly using the term "stability" in its technical sense when he explained that in order to achieve "stability" in Chile it was necessary to "destabilize" the country (by overthrowing the elected government of Salvador Allende and installing the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet). Other concerns about Iran are equally interesting to explore, but perhaps this is enough to reveal the guiding principles and their status in imperial culture. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s planners emphasized at the dawn of the contemporary world system, the U.S. cannot tolerate "any exercise of sovereignty" that interferes with its global designs.
The U.S. and Europe are united in punishing Iran for its threat to stability, but it is useful to recall how isolated they are. The nonaligned countries have vigorously supported Iran's right to enrich uranium. In the region, Arab public opinion even strongly favors Iranian nuclear weapons. The major regional power, Turkey, voted against the latest U.S.-initiated sanctions motion in the Security Council, along with Brazil, the most admired country of the South. Their disobedience led to sharp censure, not for the first time: Turkey had been bitterly condemned in 2003 when the government followed the will of 95% of the population and refused to participate in the invasion of Iraq, thus demonstrating its weak grasp of democracy, western-style.
After its Security Council misdeed last year, Turkey was warned by Obama's top diplomat on European affairs, Philip Gordon, that it must "demonstrate its commitment to partnership with the West." A scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations asked, "How do we keep the Turks in their lane?" -- following orders like good democrats. Brazil's Lula was admonished in a New York Times headline that his effort with Turkey to provide a solution to the uranium enrichment issue outside of the framework of U.S. power was a "Spot on Brazilian Leader's Legacy." In brief, do what we say, or else.
An interesting sidelight, effectively suppressed, is that the Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal was approved in advance by Obama, presumably on the assumption that it would fail, providing an ideological weapon against Iran. When it succeeded, the approval turned to censure, and Washington rammed through a Security Council resolution so weak that China readily signed -- and is now chastised for living up to the letter of the resolution but not Washington's unilateral directives -- in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, for example.
While the U.S. can tolerate Turkish disobedience, though with dismay, China is harder to ignore. The press warns that "China's investors and traders are now filling a vacuum in Iran as businesses from many other nations, especially in Europe, pull out," and in particular, is expanding its dominant role in Iran's energy industries. Washington is reacting with a touch of desperation. The State Department warned China that if it wants to be accepted in the international community -- a technical term referring to the U.S. and whoever happens to agree with it -- then it must not "skirt and evade international responsibilities, [which] are clear": namely, follow U.S. orders. China is unlikely to be impressed.
There is also much concern about the growing Chinese military threat. A recent Pentagon study warned that China's military budget is approaching "one-fifth of what the Pentagon spent to operate and carry out the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," a fraction of the U.S. military budget, of course. China's expansion of military forces might "deny the ability of American warships to operate in international waters off its coast," the New York Times added.
Off the coast of China, that is; it has yet to be proposed that the U.S. should eliminate military forces that deny the Caribbean to Chinese warships. China's lack of understanding of rules of international civility is illustrated further by its objections to plans for the advanced nuclear-powered aircraft carrier George Washington to join naval exercises a few miles off China's coast, with alleged capacity to strike Beijing.
In contrast, the West understands that such U.S. operations are all undertaken to defend stability and its own security. The liberal New Republic expresses its concern that "China sent ten warships through international waters just off the Japanese island of Okinawa." That is indeed a provocation -- unlike the fact, unmentioned, that Washington has converted the island into a major military base in defiance of vehement protests by the people of Okinawa. That is not a provocation, on the standard principle that we own the world.
Deep-seated imperial doctrine aside, there is good reason for China's neighbors to be concerned about its growing military and commercial power. And though Arab opinion supports an Iranian nuclear weapons program, we certainly should not do so. The foreign policy literature is full of proposals as to how to counter the threat. One obvious way is rarely discussed: work to establish a nuclear-weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in the region. The issue arose (again) at the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference at United Nations headquarters last May. Egypt, as chair of the 118 nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, called for negotiations on a Middle East NWFZ, as had been agreed by the West, including the U.S., at the 1995 review conference on the NPT.
International support is so overwhelming that Obama formally agreed. It is a fine idea, Washington informed the conference, but not now. Furthermore, the U.S. made clear that Israel must be exempted: no proposal can call for Israel's nuclear program to be placed under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency or for the release of information about "Israeli nuclear facilities and activities." So much for this method of dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat.
Privatizing the Planet
While Grand Area doctrine still prevails, the capacity to implement it has declined. The peak of U.S. power was after World War II, when it had literally half the world's wealth. But that naturally declined, as other industrial economies recovered from the devastation of the war and decolonization took its agonizing course. By the early 1970s, the U.S. share of global wealth had declined to about 25%, and the industrial world had become tripolar: North America, Europe, and East Asia (then Japan-based).
There was also a sharp change in the U.S. economy in the 1970s, towards financialization and export of production. A variety of factors converged to create a vicious cycle of radical concentration of wealth, primarily in the top fraction of 1% of the population -- mostly CEOs, hedge-fund managers, and the like. That leads to the concentration of political power, hence state policies to increase economic concentration: fiscal policies, rules of corporate governance, deregulation, and much more. Meanwhile the costs of electoral campaigns skyrocketed, driving the parties into the pockets of concentrated capital, increasingly financial: the Republicans reflexively, the Democrats -- by now what used to be moderate Republicans -- not far behind.
Elections have become a charade, run by the public relations industry. After his 2008 victory, Obama won an award from the industry for the best marketing campaign of the year. Executives were euphoric. In the business press they explained that they had been marketing candidates like other commodities since Ronald Reagan, but 2008 was their greatest achievement and would change the style in corporate boardrooms. The 2012 election is expected to cost $2 billion, mostly in corporate funding. Small wonder that Obama is selecting business leaders for top positions. The public is angry and frustrated, but as long as the Muasher principle prevails, that doesn't matter.
While wealth and power have narrowly concentrated, for most of the population real incomes have stagnated and people have been getting by with increased work hours, debt, and asset inflation, regularly destroyed by the financial crises that began as the regulatory apparatus was dismantled starting in the 1980s.
None of this is problematic for the very wealthy, who benefit from a government insurance policy called "too big to fail." The banks and investment firms can make risky transactions, with rich rewards, and when the system inevitably crashes, they can run to the nanny state for a taxpayer bailout, clutching their copies of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.
That has been the regular process since the Reagan years, each crisis more extreme than the last -- for the public population, that is. Right now, real unemployment is at Depression levels for much of the population, while Goldman Sachs, one of the main architects of the current crisis, is richer than ever. It has just quietly announced $17.5 billion in compensation for last year, with CEO Lloyd Blankfein receiving a $12.6 million bonus while his base salary more than triples.
It wouldn't do to focus attention on such facts as these. Accordingly, propaganda must seek to blame others, in the past few months, public sector workers, their fat salaries, exorbitant pensions, and so on: all fantasy, on the model of Reaganite imagery of black mothers being driven in their limousines to pick up welfare checks -- and other models that need not be mentioned. We all must tighten our belts; almost all, that is.
Teachers are a particularly good target, as part of the deliberate effort to destroy the public education system from kindergarten through the universities by privatization -- again, good for the wealthy, but a disaster for the population, as well as the long-term health of the economy, but that is one of the externalities that is put to the side insofar as market principles prevail.
Another fine target, always, is immigrants. That has been true throughout U.S. history, even more so at times of economic crisis, exacerbated now by a sense that our country is being taken away from us: the white population will soon become a minority. One can understand the anger of aggrieved individuals, but the cruelty of the policy is shocking.
Who are the immigrants targeted? In Eastern Massachusetts, where I live, many are Mayans fleeing genocide in the Guatemalan highlands carried out by Reagan's favorite killers. Others are Mexican victims of Clinton's NAFTA, one of those rare government agreements that managed to harm working people in all three of the participating countries. As NAFTA was rammed through Congress over popular objection in 1994, Clinton also initiated the militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border, previously fairly open. It was understood that Mexican campesinos cannot compete with highly subsidized U.S. agribusiness, and that Mexican businesses would not survive competition with U.S. multinationals, which must be granted "national treatment" under the mislabeled free trade agreements, a privilege granted only to corporate persons, not those of flesh and blood. Not surprisingly, these measures led to a flood of desperate refugees, and to rising anti-immigrant hysteria by the victims of state-corporate policies at home.
Much the same appears to be happening in Europe, where racism is probably more rampant than in the U.S. One can only watch with wonder as Italy complains about the flow of refugees from Libya, the scene of the first post-World War I genocide, in the now-liberated East, at the hands of Italy's Fascist government. Or when France, still today the main protector of the brutal dictatorships in its former colonies, manages to overlook its hideous atrocities in Africa, while French President Nicolas Sarkozy warns grimly of the "flood of immigrants" and Marine Le Pen objects that he is doing nothing to prevent it. I need not mention Belgium, which may win the prize for what Adam Smith called "the savage injustice of the Europeans."
The rise of neo-fascist parties in much of Europe would be a frightening phenomenon even if we were not to recall what happened on the continent in the recent past. Just imagine the reaction if Jews were being expelled from France to misery and oppression, and then witness the non-reaction when that is happening to Roma, also victims of the Holocaust and Europe's most brutalized population.
In Hungary, the neo-fascist party Jobbik gained 17% of the vote in national elections, perhaps unsurprising when three-quarters of the population feels that they are worse off than under Communist rule. We might be relieved that in Austria the ultra-right Jörg Haider won only 10% of the vote in 2008 -- were it not for the fact that the new Freedom Party, outflanking him from the far right, won more than 17%. It is chilling to recall that, in 1928, the Nazis won less than 3% of the vote in Germany.
In England the British National Party and the English Defence League, on the ultra-racist right, are major forces. (What is happening in Holland you know all too well.) In Germany, Thilo Sarrazin's lament that immigrants are destroying the country was a runaway best-seller, while Chancellor Angela Merkel, though condemning the book, declared that multiculturalism had "utterly failed": the Turks imported to do the dirty work in Germany are failing to become blond and blue-eyed, true Aryans.
Those with a sense of irony may recall that Benjamin Franklin, one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment, warned that the newly liberated colonies should be wary of allowing Germans to immigrate, because they were too swarthy; Swedes as well. Into the twentieth century, ludicrous myths of Anglo-Saxon purity were common in the U.S., including among presidents and other leading figures. Racism in the literary culture has been a rank obscenity; far worse in practice, needless to say. It is much easier to eradicate polio than this horrifying plague, which regularly becomes more virulent in times of economic distress.
I do not want to end without mentioning another externality that is dismissed in market systems: the fate of the species. Systemic risk in the financial system can be remedied by the taxpayer, but no one will come to the rescue if the environment is destroyed. That it must be destroyed is close to an institutional imperative. Business leaders who are conducting propaganda campaigns to convince the population that anthropogenic global warming is a liberal hoax understand full well how grave is the threat, but they must maximize short-term profit and market share. If they don't, someone else will.
This vicious cycle could well turn out to be lethal. To see how grave the danger is, simply have a look at the new Congress in the U.S., propelled into power by business funding and propaganda. Almost all are climate deniers. They have already begun to cut funding for measures that might mitigate environmental catastrophe. Worse, some are true believers; for example, the new head of a subcommittee on the environment who explained that global warming cannot be a problem because God promised Noah that there will not be another flood.
If such things were happening in some small and remote country, we might laugh. Not when they are happening in the richest and most powerful country in the world. And before we laugh, we might also bear in mind that the current economic crisis is traceable in no small measure to the fanatic faith in such dogmas as the efficient market hypothesis, and in general to what Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, 15 years ago, called the "religion" that markets know best -- which prevented the central bank and the economics profession from taking notice of an $8 trillion housing bubble that had no basis at all in economic fundamentals, and that devastated the economy when it burst.
All of this, and much more, can proceed as long as the Muashar doctrine prevails. As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.
This piece is adapted from a talk given in Amsterdam in March.
Each is a microcosm of tendencies in global society, following varied courses. There are sure to be far-reaching consequences of what is taking place both in the decaying industrial heartland of the richest and most powerful country in human history, and in what President Dwight Eisenhower called "the most strategically important area in the world" -- "a stupendous source of strategic power" and "probably the richest economic prize in the world in the field of foreign investment," in the words of the State Department in the 1940s, a prize that the U.S. intended to keep for itself and its allies in the unfolding New World Order of that day.
Despite all the changes since, there is every reason to suppose that today's policy-makers basically adhere to the judgment of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s influential advisor A.A. Berle that control of the incomparable energy reserves of the Middle East would yield "substantial control of the world." And correspondingly, that loss of control would threaten the project of global dominance that was clearly articulated during World War II, and that has been sustained in the face of major changes in world order since that day.
From the outset of the war in 1939, Washington anticipated that it would end with the U.S. in a position of overwhelming power. High-level State Department officials and foreign policy specialists met through the wartime years to lay out plans for the postwar world. They delineated a "Grand Area" that the U.S. was to dominate, including the Western hemisphere, the Far East, and the former British empire, with its Middle East energy resources. As Russia began to grind down Nazi armies after Stalingrad, Grand Area goals extended to as much of Eurasia as possible, at least its economic core in Western Europe. Within the Grand Area, the U.S. would maintain "unquestioned power," with "military and economic supremacy," while ensuring the "limitation of any exercise of sovereignty" by states that might interfere with its global designs. The careful wartime plans were soon implemented.
It was always recognized that Europe might choose to follow an independent course. NATO was partially intended to counter this threat. As soon as the official pretext for NATO dissolved in 1989, NATO was expanded to the East in violation of verbal pledges to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It has since become a U.S.-run intervention force, with far-ranging scope, spelled out by NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who informed a NATO conference that "NATO troops have to guard pipelines that transport oil and gas that is directed for the West," and more generally to protect sea routes used by tankers and other "crucial infrastructure" of the energy system.
Grand Area doctrines clearly license military intervention at will. That conclusion was articulated clearly by the Clinton administration, which declared that the U.S. has the right to use military force to ensure "uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources," and must maintain huge military forces "forward deployed" in Europe and Asia "in order to shape people's opinions about us" and "to shape events that will affect our livelihood and our security."
The same principles governed the invasion of Iraq. As the U.S. failure to impose its will in Iraq was becoming unmistakable, the actual goals of the invasion could no longer be concealed behind pretty rhetoric. In November 2007, the White House issued a Declaration of Principles demanding that U.S. forces must remain indefinitely in Iraq and committing Iraq to privilege American investors. Two months later, President Bush informed Congress that he would reject legislation that might limit the permanent stationing of U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq or "United States control of the oil resources of Iraq" -- demands that the U.S. had to abandon shortly after in the face of Iraqi resistance.
In Tunisia and Egypt, the recent popular uprisings have won impressive victories, but as the Carnegie Endowment reported, while names have changed, the regimes remain: "A change in ruling elites and system of governance is still a distant goal." The report discusses internal barriers to democracy, but ignores the external ones, which as always are significant.
The U.S. and its Western allies are sure to do whatever they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world. To understand why, it is only necessary to look at the studies of Arab opinion conducted by U.S. polling agencies. Though barely reported, they are certainly known to planners. They reveal that by overwhelming majorities, Arabs regard the U.S. and Israel as the major threats they face: the U.S. is so regarded by 90% of Egyptians, in the region generally by over 75%. Some Arabs regard Iran as a threat: 10%. Opposition to U.S. policy is so strong that a majority believes that security would be improved if Iran had nuclear weapons -- in Egypt, 80%. Other figures are similar. If public opinion were to influence policy, the U.S. not only would not control the region, but would be expelled from it, along with its allies, undermining fundamental principles of global dominance.
The Invisible Hand of Power
Support for democracy is the province of ideologists and propagandists. In the real world, elite dislike of democracy is the norm. The evidence is overwhelming that democracy is supported insofar as it contributes to social and economic objectives, a conclusion reluctantly conceded by the more serious scholarship.
Elite contempt for democracy was revealed dramatically in the reaction to the WikiLeaks exposures. Those that received most attention, with euphoric commentary, were cables reporting that Arabs support the U.S. stand on Iran. The reference was to the ruling dictators. The attitudes of the public were unmentioned. The guiding principle was articulated clearly by Carnegie Endowment Middle East specialist Marwan Muasher, formerly a high official of the Jordanian government: "There is nothing wrong, everything is under control." In short, if the dictators support us, what else could matter?
The Muasher doctrine is rational and venerable. To mention just one case that is highly relevant today, in internal discussion in 1958, president Eisenhower expressed concern about "the campaign of hatred" against us in the Arab world, not by governments, but by the people. The National Security Council (NSC) explained that there is a perception in the Arab world that the U.S. supports dictatorships and blocks democracy and development so as to ensure control over the resources of the region. Furthermore, the perception is basically accurate, the NSC concluded, and that is what we should be doing, relying on the Muasher doctrine. Pentagon studies conducted after 9/11 confirmed that the same holds today.
It is normal for the victors to consign history to the trash can, and for victims to take it seriously. Perhaps a few brief observations on this important matter may be useful. Today is not the first occasion when Egypt and the U.S. are facing similar problems, and moving in opposite directions. That was also true in the early nineteenth century.
Economic historians have argued that Egypt was well-placed to undertake rapid economic development at the same time that the U.S. was. Both had rich agriculture, including cotton, the fuel of the early industrial revolution -- though unlike Egypt, the U.S. had to develop cotton production and a work force by conquest, extermination, and slavery, with consequences that are evident right now in the reservations for the survivors and the prisons that have rapidly expanded since the Reagan years to house the superfluous population left by deindustrialization.
One fundamental difference was that the U.S. had gained independence and was therefore free to ignore the prescriptions of economic theory, delivered at the time by Adam Smith in terms rather like those preached to developing societies today. Smith urged the liberated colonies to produce primary products for export and to import superior British manufactures, and certainly not to attempt to monopolize crucial goods, particularly cotton. Any other path, Smith warned, "would retard instead of accelerating the further increase in the value of their annual produce, and would obstruct instead of promoting the progress of their country towards real wealth and greatness."
Having gained their independence, the colonies were free to ignore his advice and to follow England's course of independent state-guided development, with high tariffs to protect industry from British exports, first textiles, later steel and others, and to adopt numerous other devices to accelerate industrial development. The independent Republic also sought to gain a monopoly of cotton so as to "place all other nations at our feet," particularly the British enemy, as the Jacksonian presidents announced when conquering Texas and half of Mexico.
For Egypt, a comparable course was barred by British power. Lord Palmerston declared that "no ideas of fairness [toward Egypt] ought to stand in the way of such great and paramount interests" of Britain as preserving its economic and political hegemony, expressing his "hate" for the "ignorant barbarian" Muhammed Ali who dared to seek an independent course, and deploying Britain's fleet and financial power to terminate Egypt's quest for independence and economic development.
After World War II, when the U.S. displaced Britain as global hegemon, Washington adopted the same stand, making it clear that the U.S. would provide no aid to Egypt unless it adhered to the standard rules for the weak -- which the U.S. continued to violate, imposing high tariffs to bar Egyptian cotton and causing a debilitating dollar shortage. The usual interpretation of market principles.
It is small wonder that the "campaign of hatred" against the U.S. that concerned Eisenhower was based on the recognition that the U.S. supports dictators and blocks democracy and development, as do its allies.
In Adam Smith's defense, it should be added that he recognized what would happen if Britain followed the rules of sound economics, now called "neoliberalism." He warned that if British manufacturers, merchants, and investors turned abroad, they might profit but England would suffer. But he felt that they would be guided by a home bias, so as if by an invisible hand England would be spared the ravages of economic rationality.
The passage is hard to miss. It is the one occurrence of the famous phrase "invisible hand" in The Wealth of Nations. The other leading founder of classical economics, David Ricardo, drew similar conclusions, hoping that home bias would lead men of property to "be satisfied with the low rate of profits in their own country, rather than seek a more advantageous employment for their wealth in foreign nations," feelings that, he added, "I should be sorry to see weakened." Their predictions aside, the instincts of the classical economists were sound.
The Iranian and Chinese “Threats”
The democracy uprising in the Arab world is sometimes compared to Eastern Europe in 1989, but on dubious grounds. In 1989, the democracy uprising was tolerated by the Russians, and supported by western power in accord with standard doctrine: it plainly conformed to economic and strategic objectives, and was therefore a noble achievement, greatly honored, unlike the struggles at the same time "to defend the people's fundamental human rights" in Central America, in the words of the assassinated Archbishop of El Salvador, one of the hundreds of thousands of victims of the military forces armed and trained by Washington. There was no Gorbachev in the West throughout these horrendous years, and there is none today. And Western power remains hostile to democracy in the Arab world for good reasons.
Grand Area doctrines continue to apply to contemporary crises and confrontations. In Western policy-making circles and political commentary the Iranian threat is considered to pose the greatest danger to world order and hence must be the primary focus of U.S. foreign policy, with Europe trailing along politely.
What exactly is the Iranian threat? An authoritative answer is provided by the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence. Reporting on global security last year, they make it clear that the threat is not military. Iran's military spending is "relatively low compared to the rest of the region," they conclude. Its military doctrine is strictly "defensive, designed to slow an invasion and force a diplomatic solution to hostilities." Iran has only "a limited capability to project force beyond its borders." With regard to the nuclear option, "Iran's nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy." All quotes.
The brutal clerical regime is doubtless a threat to its own people, though it hardly outranks U.S. allies in that regard. But the threat lies elsewhere, and is ominous indeed. One element is Iran's potential deterrent capacity, an illegitimate exercise of sovereignty that might interfere with U.S. freedom of action in the region. It is glaringly obvious why Iran would seek a deterrent capacity; a look at the military bases and nuclear forces in the region suffices to explain.Seven years ago, Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld wrote that "The world has witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy," particularly when they are under constant threat of attack in violation of the UN Charter. Whether they are doing so remains an open question, but perhaps so.
But Iran's threat goes beyond deterrence. It is also seeking to expand its influence in neighboring countries, the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence emphasize, and in this way to "destabilize" the region (in the technical terms of foreign policy discourse). The U.S. invasion and military occupation of Iran's neighbors is "stabilization." Iran's efforts to extend its influence to them are "destabilization," hence plainly illegitimate.
Such usage is routine. Thus the prominent foreign policy analyst James Chace was properly using the term "stability" in its technical sense when he explained that in order to achieve "stability" in Chile it was necessary to "destabilize" the country (by overthrowing the elected government of Salvador Allende and installing the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet). Other concerns about Iran are equally interesting to explore, but perhaps this is enough to reveal the guiding principles and their status in imperial culture. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s planners emphasized at the dawn of the contemporary world system, the U.S. cannot tolerate "any exercise of sovereignty" that interferes with its global designs.
The U.S. and Europe are united in punishing Iran for its threat to stability, but it is useful to recall how isolated they are. The nonaligned countries have vigorously supported Iran's right to enrich uranium. In the region, Arab public opinion even strongly favors Iranian nuclear weapons. The major regional power, Turkey, voted against the latest U.S.-initiated sanctions motion in the Security Council, along with Brazil, the most admired country of the South. Their disobedience led to sharp censure, not for the first time: Turkey had been bitterly condemned in 2003 when the government followed the will of 95% of the population and refused to participate in the invasion of Iraq, thus demonstrating its weak grasp of democracy, western-style.
After its Security Council misdeed last year, Turkey was warned by Obama's top diplomat on European affairs, Philip Gordon, that it must "demonstrate its commitment to partnership with the West." A scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations asked, "How do we keep the Turks in their lane?" -- following orders like good democrats. Brazil's Lula was admonished in a New York Times headline that his effort with Turkey to provide a solution to the uranium enrichment issue outside of the framework of U.S. power was a "Spot on Brazilian Leader's Legacy." In brief, do what we say, or else.
An interesting sidelight, effectively suppressed, is that the Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal was approved in advance by Obama, presumably on the assumption that it would fail, providing an ideological weapon against Iran. When it succeeded, the approval turned to censure, and Washington rammed through a Security Council resolution so weak that China readily signed -- and is now chastised for living up to the letter of the resolution but not Washington's unilateral directives -- in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, for example.
While the U.S. can tolerate Turkish disobedience, though with dismay, China is harder to ignore. The press warns that "China's investors and traders are now filling a vacuum in Iran as businesses from many other nations, especially in Europe, pull out," and in particular, is expanding its dominant role in Iran's energy industries. Washington is reacting with a touch of desperation. The State Department warned China that if it wants to be accepted in the international community -- a technical term referring to the U.S. and whoever happens to agree with it -- then it must not "skirt and evade international responsibilities, [which] are clear": namely, follow U.S. orders. China is unlikely to be impressed.
There is also much concern about the growing Chinese military threat. A recent Pentagon study warned that China's military budget is approaching "one-fifth of what the Pentagon spent to operate and carry out the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," a fraction of the U.S. military budget, of course. China's expansion of military forces might "deny the ability of American warships to operate in international waters off its coast," the New York Times added.
Off the coast of China, that is; it has yet to be proposed that the U.S. should eliminate military forces that deny the Caribbean to Chinese warships. China's lack of understanding of rules of international civility is illustrated further by its objections to plans for the advanced nuclear-powered aircraft carrier George Washington to join naval exercises a few miles off China's coast, with alleged capacity to strike Beijing.
In contrast, the West understands that such U.S. operations are all undertaken to defend stability and its own security. The liberal New Republic expresses its concern that "China sent ten warships through international waters just off the Japanese island of Okinawa." That is indeed a provocation -- unlike the fact, unmentioned, that Washington has converted the island into a major military base in defiance of vehement protests by the people of Okinawa. That is not a provocation, on the standard principle that we own the world.
Deep-seated imperial doctrine aside, there is good reason for China's neighbors to be concerned about its growing military and commercial power. And though Arab opinion supports an Iranian nuclear weapons program, we certainly should not do so. The foreign policy literature is full of proposals as to how to counter the threat. One obvious way is rarely discussed: work to establish a nuclear-weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in the region. The issue arose (again) at the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference at United Nations headquarters last May. Egypt, as chair of the 118 nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, called for negotiations on a Middle East NWFZ, as had been agreed by the West, including the U.S., at the 1995 review conference on the NPT.
International support is so overwhelming that Obama formally agreed. It is a fine idea, Washington informed the conference, but not now. Furthermore, the U.S. made clear that Israel must be exempted: no proposal can call for Israel's nuclear program to be placed under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency or for the release of information about "Israeli nuclear facilities and activities." So much for this method of dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat.
Privatizing the Planet
While Grand Area doctrine still prevails, the capacity to implement it has declined. The peak of U.S. power was after World War II, when it had literally half the world's wealth. But that naturally declined, as other industrial economies recovered from the devastation of the war and decolonization took its agonizing course. By the early 1970s, the U.S. share of global wealth had declined to about 25%, and the industrial world had become tripolar: North America, Europe, and East Asia (then Japan-based).
There was also a sharp change in the U.S. economy in the 1970s, towards financialization and export of production. A variety of factors converged to create a vicious cycle of radical concentration of wealth, primarily in the top fraction of 1% of the population -- mostly CEOs, hedge-fund managers, and the like. That leads to the concentration of political power, hence state policies to increase economic concentration: fiscal policies, rules of corporate governance, deregulation, and much more. Meanwhile the costs of electoral campaigns skyrocketed, driving the parties into the pockets of concentrated capital, increasingly financial: the Republicans reflexively, the Democrats -- by now what used to be moderate Republicans -- not far behind.
Elections have become a charade, run by the public relations industry. After his 2008 victory, Obama won an award from the industry for the best marketing campaign of the year. Executives were euphoric. In the business press they explained that they had been marketing candidates like other commodities since Ronald Reagan, but 2008 was their greatest achievement and would change the style in corporate boardrooms. The 2012 election is expected to cost $2 billion, mostly in corporate funding. Small wonder that Obama is selecting business leaders for top positions. The public is angry and frustrated, but as long as the Muasher principle prevails, that doesn't matter.
While wealth and power have narrowly concentrated, for most of the population real incomes have stagnated and people have been getting by with increased work hours, debt, and asset inflation, regularly destroyed by the financial crises that began as the regulatory apparatus was dismantled starting in the 1980s.
None of this is problematic for the very wealthy, who benefit from a government insurance policy called "too big to fail." The banks and investment firms can make risky transactions, with rich rewards, and when the system inevitably crashes, they can run to the nanny state for a taxpayer bailout, clutching their copies of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.
That has been the regular process since the Reagan years, each crisis more extreme than the last -- for the public population, that is. Right now, real unemployment is at Depression levels for much of the population, while Goldman Sachs, one of the main architects of the current crisis, is richer than ever. It has just quietly announced $17.5 billion in compensation for last year, with CEO Lloyd Blankfein receiving a $12.6 million bonus while his base salary more than triples.
It wouldn't do to focus attention on such facts as these. Accordingly, propaganda must seek to blame others, in the past few months, public sector workers, their fat salaries, exorbitant pensions, and so on: all fantasy, on the model of Reaganite imagery of black mothers being driven in their limousines to pick up welfare checks -- and other models that need not be mentioned. We all must tighten our belts; almost all, that is.
Teachers are a particularly good target, as part of the deliberate effort to destroy the public education system from kindergarten through the universities by privatization -- again, good for the wealthy, but a disaster for the population, as well as the long-term health of the economy, but that is one of the externalities that is put to the side insofar as market principles prevail.
Another fine target, always, is immigrants. That has been true throughout U.S. history, even more so at times of economic crisis, exacerbated now by a sense that our country is being taken away from us: the white population will soon become a minority. One can understand the anger of aggrieved individuals, but the cruelty of the policy is shocking.
Who are the immigrants targeted? In Eastern Massachusetts, where I live, many are Mayans fleeing genocide in the Guatemalan highlands carried out by Reagan's favorite killers. Others are Mexican victims of Clinton's NAFTA, one of those rare government agreements that managed to harm working people in all three of the participating countries. As NAFTA was rammed through Congress over popular objection in 1994, Clinton also initiated the militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border, previously fairly open. It was understood that Mexican campesinos cannot compete with highly subsidized U.S. agribusiness, and that Mexican businesses would not survive competition with U.S. multinationals, which must be granted "national treatment" under the mislabeled free trade agreements, a privilege granted only to corporate persons, not those of flesh and blood. Not surprisingly, these measures led to a flood of desperate refugees, and to rising anti-immigrant hysteria by the victims of state-corporate policies at home.
Much the same appears to be happening in Europe, where racism is probably more rampant than in the U.S. One can only watch with wonder as Italy complains about the flow of refugees from Libya, the scene of the first post-World War I genocide, in the now-liberated East, at the hands of Italy's Fascist government. Or when France, still today the main protector of the brutal dictatorships in its former colonies, manages to overlook its hideous atrocities in Africa, while French President Nicolas Sarkozy warns grimly of the "flood of immigrants" and Marine Le Pen objects that he is doing nothing to prevent it. I need not mention Belgium, which may win the prize for what Adam Smith called "the savage injustice of the Europeans."
The rise of neo-fascist parties in much of Europe would be a frightening phenomenon even if we were not to recall what happened on the continent in the recent past. Just imagine the reaction if Jews were being expelled from France to misery and oppression, and then witness the non-reaction when that is happening to Roma, also victims of the Holocaust and Europe's most brutalized population.
In Hungary, the neo-fascist party Jobbik gained 17% of the vote in national elections, perhaps unsurprising when three-quarters of the population feels that they are worse off than under Communist rule. We might be relieved that in Austria the ultra-right Jörg Haider won only 10% of the vote in 2008 -- were it not for the fact that the new Freedom Party, outflanking him from the far right, won more than 17%. It is chilling to recall that, in 1928, the Nazis won less than 3% of the vote in Germany.
In England the British National Party and the English Defence League, on the ultra-racist right, are major forces. (What is happening in Holland you know all too well.) In Germany, Thilo Sarrazin's lament that immigrants are destroying the country was a runaway best-seller, while Chancellor Angela Merkel, though condemning the book, declared that multiculturalism had "utterly failed": the Turks imported to do the dirty work in Germany are failing to become blond and blue-eyed, true Aryans.
Those with a sense of irony may recall that Benjamin Franklin, one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment, warned that the newly liberated colonies should be wary of allowing Germans to immigrate, because they were too swarthy; Swedes as well. Into the twentieth century, ludicrous myths of Anglo-Saxon purity were common in the U.S., including among presidents and other leading figures. Racism in the literary culture has been a rank obscenity; far worse in practice, needless to say. It is much easier to eradicate polio than this horrifying plague, which regularly becomes more virulent in times of economic distress.
I do not want to end without mentioning another externality that is dismissed in market systems: the fate of the species. Systemic risk in the financial system can be remedied by the taxpayer, but no one will come to the rescue if the environment is destroyed. That it must be destroyed is close to an institutional imperative. Business leaders who are conducting propaganda campaigns to convince the population that anthropogenic global warming is a liberal hoax understand full well how grave is the threat, but they must maximize short-term profit and market share. If they don't, someone else will.
This vicious cycle could well turn out to be lethal. To see how grave the danger is, simply have a look at the new Congress in the U.S., propelled into power by business funding and propaganda. Almost all are climate deniers. They have already begun to cut funding for measures that might mitigate environmental catastrophe. Worse, some are true believers; for example, the new head of a subcommittee on the environment who explained that global warming cannot be a problem because God promised Noah that there will not be another flood.
If such things were happening in some small and remote country, we might laugh. Not when they are happening in the richest and most powerful country in the world. And before we laugh, we might also bear in mind that the current economic crisis is traceable in no small measure to the fanatic faith in such dogmas as the efficient market hypothesis, and in general to what Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, 15 years ago, called the "religion" that markets know best -- which prevented the central bank and the economics profession from taking notice of an $8 trillion housing bubble that had no basis at all in economic fundamentals, and that devastated the economy when it burst.
All of this, and much more, can proceed as long as the Muashar doctrine prevails. As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.
This piece is adapted from a talk given in Amsterdam in March.
Copyright 2011 Noam Chomsky
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
France and Italy Send Advisers to Libya Rebels
The culinary experts will teach rebels how to make exotic sauces and al dente pasta in hopes that after they are defeated they can get jobs at restaurants in Tripoli and attempt poisoning government supporters.
The USA has offered to pay for all pots, pans and poisons used in a new Obama inspired program to murder enemies by getting them to eat sub standard diets, such as are offered at most American schools, hospitals and prisons.
The USA has offered to pay for all pots, pans and poisons used in a new Obama inspired program to murder enemies by getting them to eat sub standard diets, such as are offered at most American schools, hospitals and prisons.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
The System Is A Social Disease
The globalization process that began in the 15th century brought incredible material gains, spreading the advance of something called civilization. But a great majority suffered even while it seemed the world was developing to the ultimate benefit of all people. That process has peaked and is now descending so fast that it isn’t only threatening those who have paid for the material comforts enjoyed by a minority; the world is moving on a disastrous path under a privately controlled market force that menaces all humanity.
Western culture developed in its subjects a self-centered pursuit of personal gain and disrespect for social organization. Beyond wars, when community is identified as nation, the western program teaches i-me-mine to the exclusion of we-us-ours, unless addressing identity groups not yet fully market incorporated. Older cultures were treated as primitive for their communalism, their attachment to place and their lack of individualist obsession. But the development of personal ego and private property that was progressive to some was socially regressive to others.
Striving for personal gain at another’s expense destroyed any balance between self and other and helped rationalize attacks on nature as a form of progress. The system’s economics demand pursuit of private interests without regard for moral principles. It demands a supply of cheap labor and creates an ever-widening social gap between the rich minority and its servant majority. A world organized by selfish individualism and competitive identity groups is courting disaster which can only be avoided by a democratic, cooperative balance achieved among all people.
What passes for western democracy usually means accepting slightly less evil as slightly more good. Most governments are creatures of private capital, with supposed majority rule coming only after it purchases candidates marketed in elections that replicate commodity sales at the mall. But the rising demand for real democracy, most obvious in the Arab world, is a sign that humanity will no longer tolerate living under the reign of these minorities and the threat they represent.
The dangers of war, racism, pollution, climate change and the political economics that profit from such madness grow worse each day. Oppression of majorities by minorities cannot continue, nor can use of the fossil fuels that powered some of our past and are now a threat to destroy much if not all of our future.
While many work to change the world, they often continue the profit and loss marketing which has brought the present crisis. This is advocating cancer as a treatment for AIDS. A social disease cannot be cured by indulging in further unprotected global economics.
The present situations in Libya and Japan are indicative of the historic turning point humanity has reached.
Under the guise of humanitarian aid against supposed genocide, as usual identified in an individual demon, bloody civil war is being waged in Libya to support a dictatorship of capital. Libya, one among only five nations in the world without a privately controlled national bank - until its “rebels” started one with the collusion of international finance - may resolve whether minority capital maintains control or national democratic power can be achieved. Capital’s disinformation media cartel has reduced a vital national struggle with serious implications for humanity to a fairy tale about an evil dictator.
The past victim of nuclear warfare, Japan is experiencing what may be the worst nuclear energy disaster in history. Under the guise of cleaner, safer nuclear power, the Japanese tragedy reveals the danger of such private benefit gained at such social cost. Finance capital places the full burden of paying for nuclear plants on society while its employees, like President Obama, call for more nuclear energy regardless of potential social calamities. We have no idea nor has there been any debate among the people as to exactly what the risk of nuclear power entails. Again, minority wealth rules and majority society pays the price.
These two national crises exemplify humanity’s critical problem; profits that accrue to a handful of global capitalists mean further deadly loss suffered by billions of earth dwellers through the deadly use of fossil fuels and the domination of governments by rich minorities.
The future calls for democratically controlled state power exercised in centrally overseeing decentralized local power, and a balance between global, national and local communities. This can only happen with more equitable sharing of resources, rather than wealth accruing to some at the expense of all. New energy forms are as important as new governing forms. The continued rape of the earth to acquire energy owned by private capital is countered by the need for democratic sources of energy available to all who experience sun light and wind power. These cannot be marketed as private property.
Change can seem an insurmountable obstacle in a world divided into competing individuals and groups, but that is the source of our problem. Its radical transformation is our solution. Another world is not only possible, but also absolutely necessary in order to overcome the twin terrors of capital’s war on humans and earth itself.
We are witnessing the end of fossil fuel powered minority dominated society, the backbone of global capitalism. We need to start using renewable energy that is available above the ground and end the rape of earth’s interior to suck out fuel that destroys earth as it is removed and pollutes when transformed into carbons and green house gas. Democracy will be far more possible when people see through myths about evil dictators and allegedly benign energy sources that cover the reality of a system that is a danger to the survival of the human race.
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