Imagine Having So Much Money You Can Spend It on Instagram “Influencers”

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


That so much money concentrates at the top that capitalists can’t find useful outlets for it, and that capitalism produces huge amounts of junk we don’t need or want, was reinforced for me upon reading a New York Times article on what apparently has become a war against Instagram bots.

You can’t make this up, can you? So much capital is thrown into marketing that huge sums of money are thrown at Internet “influencers” who apparently are “influencers” because they have large numbers of followers on Instagram. The problem here, from the marketers’ perspective, is that large numbers of those followers are fake. They’re bots created to inflate the size of followings.

Although I couldn’t read this business-section article without laughing at the absurdity of this, it did also nicely illustrate the tremendous amount of waste in capitalist production. You’ve got to have a lot of capital lying around to afford spending on buying posts on Instagram. There is good money in this, it seems, for those who succeed at positioning themselves as “brands” as opposed to, say, human beings.

In one example, the Times article quoted an “influencer” who “said that she charged about $1,200 for a branded post. She added that she knew people with two million followers who charge $40,000 per post.”

With a straight face, the Times article casually referred to companies that exist to “connect brands with influencers” and discussed other companies that exist to ferret out Instagram accounts with high numbers of bots among their followers. The article said: “The interest in such firms reflects how easy it is to fake popularity on platforms like Instagram, where bots seem to run unchecked even on accounts where people have not paid for them.”

Apparently, Instagram’s response to this “problem” is to reduce access to its data. That prompted this reaction from another “influencer” in the article: “It will be unfair until Instagram really just cleans out the bots and the lurkers.”

All together now: Awwwwww.

Your intrepid blogger does his best to maintain his revolutionary optimism, but reading articles like this does sometimes make me despair for the future. I know such people are a small slice of overall humanity, but, still, there are large numbers of such people who hopelessly swallow capitalist ideology. What if the vast sums of money thrown around in marketing campaigns instead went to more useful functions, such as affordable housing, clean water, environmental cleanups and repairs to our crumbling infrastructure, to point out only a few needs. The investment needed to modernize and maintain school facilities is estimated to be at least $270 billion, a fraction of what is spent on marketing.

We are talking about huge sums of money here: Estimates of the money spent on marketing in the United States per year range from $460 billion to $1.07 trillion. (The former estimate is from the book Marketing by Charles W. Lamb, Joseph F. Hair Jr., and Carl McDaniel and the latter estimate is from the Metrics 2.0: Business & Market Intelligence web site.)

Such numbers provide an expensive hint that too much stuff that don’t fill a need is produced. The size of the marketing and advertising industries wouldn’t be so gigantic otherwise. Production under capitalism is for private profit, not to meet human needs. To achieve those profits, vast efforts must be made to induce spending.

The latest Internet scandal, the harvesting of data from 50 million Facebook users by the secretive company Cambridge Analytica, can be seen in this light. The immediate scandal is that Cambridge Analytica, a company created by extreme Right hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer and former Trump consigliere Steve Bannon, sought to manipulate elections in furtherance of their fascistic ideology. But there are plenty of multi-national corporations that would dearly love to get their hands on such troves of data. Who's to say some haven’t already? We don’t know.

Perhaps enough of these episodes will induce some naïve technology fetishists to re-examine their thinking. Why should corporate spying be more tolerated than government spying? An ex-son-in-law of a friend, prompted by being asked what he does for a living, actually saw himself as providing a necessary service when he explained how he works for a technology company to tailor advertising to the profile of a user, complaining that non-tailored advertising “would be a waste” — for the recipient of the advertising!

Those who work to create a better world sure have a lot of work to do.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 Pete Dolack writes the Systemic Disorder blog and has been an activist with several groups. His book, It’s Not Over: Learning From the Socialist Experiment, is available from Zero Books. 

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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Things to ponder

While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.

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

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

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BREAKING NEWS: XI-KIM PHOTOS YOU WONT’ SEE MUCH BEHIND THE GREAT WESTERN FIREWALL.

 

 .  

The buck stops with YOU. If you don’t share this, who will?

BREAKING NEWS: XI-KIM PHOTOS YOU WONT’ SEE MUCH BEHIND THE GREAT WESTERN FIREWALL. CHINA RISING RADIO SINOLAND 180328

NOTE: the SoundCloud and YouTube podcasts will be up this evening. Also, if you know something about Korean food, I almost couldn’t resist the culinary pun, Kim-Xi meeting, but I kept control of my fingers on the keyboard! You saw it here first…

If you have not already done so, first read/watch/listen to this very short article/podcast from the day before yesterday:


Here is the photo Eurangloland was dreading. Proof positive that all the CIA mainstream media propaganda about “strained relations” and “not talking” between these two countries – nations that spilled valleys of fraternal blood and lost millions of citizens fighting to keep the North free from Western empire and tyranny, during  Eurangloland’s Korean Genocide, 1950-1953 (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2017/10/01/chinas-communist-liberation-on-october-1st-1949-changed-the-world-forever-china-rising-radio-sinoland-171001/), was, well, just that – propaganda. Hell, they signed a mutual defense treaty together in 1961, that almost no one in the West has ever heard of!

China Rising Radio Sinoland fans are much better informed (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2017/04/18/do-trump-co-know-china-and-north-korea-have-a-mutual-defense-treaty-china-rising-radio-sinoland-140418/)


The two first couples, with the flags of the PRC and DPRK in the background. Xi’s wife, Peng Liyuan is a famous singer of communist-socialist and folk songs, which she can belt out in Russian too. I wouldn’t be surprised if she learned a few in Korean too.


Here is what Eurangloland is saying about the above meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping, on the left, with his high-powered entourage, and Chairman Kim Jong-Un, of DPRK, on the right: HOW CAN WE FUCK THIS UP? HOW CAN WE SABOTAGE ANY CHANCES OF DETENTE AND PEACE ON THE KOREAN PENINSULA? OH, SHIT!

Mr. and Mrs. Kim visiting an exhibition of the world’s largest telescope, China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST).




Lizard

Screen Shot 2015-08-05 at 6.19.17 PM

ABOUT JEFF BROWN

jeffBusyatDesktop

Punto Press released China Rising - Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations (2016); and for Badak Merah, Jeff authored China Is Communist, Dammit! – Dawn of the Red Dynasty (2017).

The Greanville Post, where he keeps a column, Dispatch from Beijing. He also writes a column for The Saker, called the Moscow-Beijing Express. Jeff interviews and podcasts on his own program, China Rising Radio Sinoland, which is also available on SoundCloud, YouTube, Stitcher Radio and iTunes.
In China, he has been a speaker at TEDx, the Bookworm and Capital M Literary Festivals, the Hutong, as well as being featured in an 18-part series of interviews on Radio Beijing AM774, with former BBC journalist, Bruce Connolly. He has guest lectured at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences and various international schools and universities. Jeff grew up in the heartland of the United States, Oklahoma, much of it on a family farm, and graduated from Oklahoma State University. He went to Brazil while in graduate school at Purdue University, to seek his fortune, which whetted his appetite for traveling the globe. This helped inspire him to be a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tunisia in 1980 and he lived and worked in Africa, the Middle East, China and Europe for the next 21 years. All the while, he mastered Portuguese, Arabic, French and Mandarin, while traveling to over 85 countries. He then returned to America for nine years, whereupon he moved back to China in 2010. He lives in China with his wife. Jeff is a dual national French-American, being a member of the Communist Party of France (PCF) and the International Workers of the World (IWW).

Jeff can be reached at China Rising, jeff@brownlanglois.com, Facebook, Twitter and Wechat/Whatsapp: +86-13823544196.


 
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Freedom Rider: Vladimir Putin and War Propaganda

horiz-long grey

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

Margaret Kimberley, BAR editor and senior columnist /Dateline: 21 Mar 2018


“Lies about the Russian government are war propaganda and they are meant to get public support for military action against Russia and its allies.”

Vladimir Putin is blamed for everything that goes awry in Europe and the United States. In the United Kingdom his country was even blamed for bad weather as tabloid headlines screamed about icy Russian winds. The Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s Electoral College victory are said to be the result of Putin’s interference, even though the machinations of American oligarch Robert Mercer are most responsible for both outcomes.

When high level vitriol is shared by the corporate media and the American political duopoly and then repeated ad nauseum it is clear that the target will be subjected to more than mere slander. Such an attack carried out against a foreign leader is proof that the United States is ready for war by other means if not outright military conflict.

Russia has been a target ever since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. In its weakened state it was a victim of its own rapacious oligarch class and aside from having a nuclear arsenal was no match for its former rival. Bill Clinton openly dispatched operatives to meddle in the 1996 election and ensured that Boris Yeltsin kept the country ripe for plunder.

“Such an attack carried out against a foreign leader is proof that the United States is ready for war by other means if not outright military conflict.”

But in a supreme irony of history Yeltsin chose Vladimir Putin to succeed him. He took on the worst of the thieves and in so doing made himself an enemy of forces who hoped to pull his country apart. But he was not antagonistic to the United States. Libya might have been saved if Russia had used its United Nations Security Council veto against the no fly zone resolution in 2011. Only when the United States installed a fascist, anti-Russian government in Ukraine did Putin get the message that America should not be accommodated.

Putin stopped going along to get along but the American appetite for conquest is unstoppable. Syria is the place where Russia drew a line in the sand -- and successfully, too. But the United States and NATO won’t admit defeat and continue the suffering of the Syrian people.

Now the drama surrounding the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergie Skripal in the U.K. has ensnared the Russian government. It is far fetched to think that in the midst of an election campaign and the upcoming world soccer cup in Russia that Putin would decide to attack a former double agent he had allowed to go free eight years ago.

“Politicians look for ever more bizarre ways to engage in Russophobia.”

Prime Minister Theresa May is like her American counterparts: a liar and a violator of international law. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has a process for nations to request information from one another and they are given 10 days to do so. Instead May demanded that Russia prove the unprovable, that it wasn’t responsible, and that it do so in 24 hours. She declared that Russia was “likely” responsible and expelled 23 Russian diplomats from the country.

Labour party opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn was little better. He did say that the government should actually wait for proof of Russian involvement in Skripal’s poisoning but he also indulged in an anti-Russian screed as he vented against authoritarianism, oligarchs and human rights abuses. Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman had just received a warm welcome in London from May, the royal family and the press. No one said a word about his genocide against the people of Yemen. But facts won’t get in the way of blatant war propaganda.

Putin has created a kind of madness on both sides of the ocean as politicians look for ever more bizarre ways to engage in Russophobia which is intended to damage his nation. Donald Trump’s appointment of Rex Tillerson as secretary of state was said to be influenced by Putin. Of course everyone conveniently forgot that trope and now Tillerson’s dismissal is said to have been carried out on Putin’s orders.

“May demanded that Russia prove the unprovable, that it wasn’t responsible, and that it do so in 24 hours.”

Putin is even accused of being a racist. The Christopher Steele dossier, a creation of the Democratic Party and the ill-fated Hillary Clinton campaign, alleges that some on Putin’s staff used the “N-word ” in reference to Barack Obama. Any assertions in this dubious document are impossible to prove and it is unlikely that Steele’s second hand Russian sources reached into the Kremlin inner circle. This particular assertion comes from Michael Isikoff, a Steele partner in crime who dutifully leaked information which led to the granting of a FISA warrant and the Mueller investigation of Trump.

The creation of an all purpose villain is meant to cover up Democratic Party electoral failures, end the Trump presidency, and of course make the case for the American exceptionalism and interventions. Regime change, proxy wars, and imperial conquest are all very much a part of the anti-Putin hysteria.

But the Russophobes are playing a very dangerous game. The story of the poisoned man does not take place in a vacuum. While the public are distracted by a tall tale of Putin killing any Russian who ever died outside of that country the very dangerous Syrian war continues. Lies about the Russian government should be taken very seriously. They are war propaganda and they are meant to get public support for military action against Russia and its allies.

“Regime change, proxy wars, and imperial conquest are all very much a part of the anti-Putin hysteria.”

The Skripal story is so murky that it will be difficult to ever determine culpability. But years of lies have had the desired effect. The public will believe anything about Putin and the Russian government no matter how ridiculous the charge. The American media are finally forced to report on the story of Robert Mercer’s Cambridge Analytica and the role it played in getting Trump an Electoral College victory. But the implications of a right wing oligarch tipping the scales in our so-called democracy are ignored. Instead the New York Timesreported on the Russian ancestry of a Cambridge Analytica staffer in a desperate effort to continue the dangerous charade.

Fifteen years ago this same government proclaimed that Iraq was the great danger and used the charge to make the case for war. Little has changed since. America excels at warfare and that is always preceded by propaganda.

In announcing new weapon developments Putin declared that mutually assured destruction (MAD) is not a thing of the past. If the U.S. and its allies were sane this would be a positive development. But they are not sane and every move and every charge brings the world closer to the precipice. The United States, not Russia, poses the greatest threat to peace and life on the planet. That must never be forgotten.


About the author
 Black Agenda report's Senior Editor and Columnist Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly at the Black Agenda Report. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley (at) BlackAgendaReport.com. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. 


 



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

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




The Death Of Democracy

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

Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com


Anyone who thinks democracy doesn’t matter may be in for a rude shock later this year, when we know the result of America’s mid-term elections. The Deep State is on course to take control of Congress. If this happens, it will be the next step in a global trend of side-lining democracy in the West, driven in large part by American foreign policy. It has led to governments everywhere increasing control over their people, in an inversion of democratic principles.

It affects us all. Since the Twin Towers tragedy, American foreign policy has taken the lead in extending personal surveillance to every nation in the formerly "free world." It has forced banks to divulge their customers’ private affairs in the name of preventing terrorism, crime and tax evasion. Governments that resist these moves have been destabilised, and independent agencies, such as the SWIFT banking system, have been forced to implement America’s foreign policy.

All countries have been made to go along with America’s imperatives, admittedly often willingly. Swiss banking confidentiality no longer exists, and over one hundred countries automatically swap financial information on their citizens and their businesses. The Americans routinely spy on their allies, as Mrs Merkel found out in 2015.

The erosion of democracy in America is a problem that was anticipated in its founding constitution. The rights enshrined in it are there to protect the individual from the Federal Government, yet the Federal Government chips away at those rights, as the founding fathers doubtless feared it would. The right to keep and bear arms in the Second Amendment, always a contentious issue, was framed by James Madison so that a local militia would be able to repel a standing [Federal] army. Americans still have the right to bear arms, due to the efforts of the National Rifle Association, but as the Bundy family discovered in Nevada, don’t expect the Federal government to respect your constitutional rights.

Few people think of freedom in these terms today, but a further erosion of democracy is an urgent issue facing American voters in November. It appears that a large number of former and current military and intelligence operatives are seeking nomination as Democrats for the 2018 mid-term elections. And if the Democrats succeed in getting a majority in the House of Representatives, which is the current prediction, they could comprise as much as half of the new members, in effect controlling Congress by holding the balance of power. [This issue as been covered extensively on The Greanville Post, noting that it is the Democrats who have chiefly opened the door to the Intel/Pentagon infestation. See for example, The CIA Democrats https://www.greanvillepost.com/2018/03/07/the-cia-democrats/ ).

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has identified 102 seats as “competitive” in its red-to-blue campaign programme. Eighty of these seats are vulnerable Republicans, and 22 are seats where the incumbent is retiring. 57 of the 221 candidates standing for the Democratic nomination in these 102 districts are current or past agents of the military-intelligence complex. And of those 102 districts, 44 have one of these candidates, 11 have two, and one has three. Furthermore, there are indications that the financial backers of the Democratic Party are supporting this influx of intelligence operatives, and that they are well-funded.

Why should we worry?

These candidates either represent or have strong links with the military-intelligence complex. This complex, the Deep State, has already regained a high degree of influence over the White House following the last Presidential election, to the point where it now appears to have gained control over foreign policy.

It also dictates homeland security. Unsatisfied with the degree of control it has over the White House, the Deep State now appears to be seeking to control Congress as well, by having politicians in its pocket on both sides of the House, thereby holding the balance of votes.

While the military-intelligence complex has had a tight grip on America’s foreign policy for some time, this is a new development. Whatever the merits or otherwise of the leading candidates for the Presidency, the CIA appears to have been managing the democratic process for decades, so that their preferred candidate wins. First, there was Papa Bush, ex-Director of the CIA. He was followed by Bill Clinton, Governor of Arkansas, where it has been alleged the CIA used Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport as a drop point for secret operations. Whether this was true or not, Clinton was followed by Bush Junior, when 9/11 became the justification for the second Iraq invasion. And there can be little doubt Obama quickly toed the CIA line with the appointment of a compliant Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.

Following Obama, who was little more than a puppet president, Hillary was the anointed one, but then the voters rebelled and elected The Donald instead.

There can be no doubt that the chaos in the White House since Trump’s victory has reflected a fight behind the scenes for control of foreign policy, homeland security and military spending. It has been about the CIA’s ultimately successful attempts to ensure Trump backtracked on relevant electoral promises and complies with its own agenda. So far, Trump has backed down on Russia, North Korea, Iran and on military spending, suggesting he is well on the way to becoming the Deep State’s lackey. It now seems the CIA wants to control the balance of power in Congress.

This should be deeply troubling for Americans looking to draw a line under the erosion of their democracy. The US is already on its way to becoming a hidden dictatorship, where even the President is a captive of an unelected secret agency pursuing its own belligerent agenda. America’s allies should also be worried about taking direction from America’s intelligence community, no longer pursuing a balanced diplomatic itinerary, but one of geopolitical warmongering.

Seeking to control Congress is a logical extension of pre-existing Deep State policies. We have gone from the invention of weapons of mass destruction as an excuse to topple Saddam Hussein, to false-flag operations and other wars in the Middle East and Eurasia. And how much of the current anti-Russia rhetoric is concocted by American intelligence agencies, we may never know, but given the intelligence services’ stock in trade is disinformation and propaganda, it is hard to believe indisputable facts are involved.

There can be little doubt that moving missile systems towards Russia’s borders in the years after the collapse of the old Soviet Union has ensured America would continue to be seen by the Russians as an aggressor. The better, more democratic course, would have been to open borders to trade and cultural influence. And who knows, the need for a nationalistic strong man may not have arisen and Putin, if he continued in power in these altered circumstances, might be behaving very differently. But that would have meant the intelligence-military complex would have no purpose, beyond America’s diminishing domestic security.

Money is the root of this evil

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]or a long time, the senior operators at the top of the CIA must have felt that they are the masters of the human race. Regimes came and went at the CIA’s behest, but the CIA carried on regardless. To maintain this power, at a time when China and Russia are emerging as the powerhouses of Asia, requires more money, and lots of it. Money to bribe and subsidise foreign states: China is now the greatest source of funds for the world’s independent regimes. Money for technology and hardware: Russia’s military technology and missile capability is now potentially more advanced than America’s.

Therefore, the Deep State has a looming funding problem if it is to keep up with Russia and China on its accustomed terms. Government military funding is by means of the discretionary spending allocation that is set by Congress through the annual appropriations process. As well as that, there’s a classified amount allocated for the main intelligence departments, including the CIA. Taken together, Department of Defense and Overseas Contingency Operations, which includes funding wars on foreign soil, are budgeted at $886bn for 2019, a minor increase over 2018.

These amounts will have to be increased significantly for 2020, if the Deep State is to pursue its objectives. President Trump is now onside, but Congress will need to be compliant in order to ensure the funds required will be available. That appears to be the explanation why the Deep State is seeking to take control of Capitol Hill.

This will take the geopolitical conflict with China and Russia to a new level. Their own intelligence services will almost certainly be fully aware of the American Deep State’s congressional manoeuvres. It might explain the timing of Russia’s pre-emptive announcement, that it has missiles capable of delivering a punch at Mach 20. It might also explain China’s recent announcement of its intention to increase military spending, even though the timing is likely to have been set by the recent National Peoples’ Congress.

If the US military-intelligence complex manages to pack out Congress, it will be the killer blow for any democracy remaining in America. It will clear the field for a secret state organisation, which has shown little or no regard for human life and the rule of law, to accelerate its warlike agenda. It will have unfettered access to the national finances to accelerate its programme of global aggression, and damn the consequences for anyone else.

The stakes could hardly be higher.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alasdair Macleod@macleodFinance // Head of Research for GoldMoney I write my own blog on sound money and demystifying finance and economics. Background: stockbroker, banker and economist.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Things to ponder

While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.

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

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

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Europe is Pregnant

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

  



Europe is pregnant with something but what is it? War or peace? East or West? North or South? A still birth or a renaissance? The beginning or the end? Something has got to give. The past must let go.

The recent Italian elections are the latest birth pangs – the latest sign of something new. And the present European institutions aren’t part of it. Indeed the nation states that make up Europe today are slipping into the past while something else is moving forward.

The continent itself is fluid. In the fundamental social sense Africa and Asia have never been as close. And America has never been as far away. Europe in the classic sense is disappearing. And that’s not bad. The place at present feels like a bastard. It feels good.

In country after country the late 20th Century political blocks are turning into sand. And each economy is held together by dubious financial instruments and sinister anti-labor laws. Austerity and debt de-legitimize Euro capitalism. And promise Euro chaos. Bring it on.


If truth be told the “pro-European” liberals are the most ignorant of Europe. They’re the ones championing American leadership and playing Russian roulette with Russia nonstop. They’re the fanatical extremists that are endangering the life of Europeans today. Their market solutions and military solutions have taken Europe into an irrational swamp. A swamp in which the “far-right” makes more sense than the “extreme-center”.

Immigration is a scapegoat. But it is first and foremost the solution – the solution to low birth rates and labor shortages. Never mind the fact that diversity means dynamism. And the fact that “globalization” (the human kind) is now the norm. The white man like God is dead.

20th Century Europe however clings onto the 21st Century like a desperate man grasping at a life belt. Imperialism (the white man) and the Cold War (white hysteria) don’t want to drown in time. Neither does the United States of Europe (the EU). The 21st Century however can’t carry their weight. If the 21st Century doesn’t kick them away it’ll drown too. If the 21st Century wants to be born it must reject them. And it is doing so.

The immigrants and the elections are doing so. Because they’re the midwife to the new European child – whatever it is. Make no doubt about it though: the immigrants are civilizing Europe. And the elections are undermining Europe.

The bulk of the European 20th Century was shaped by the Communists, the Fascists and the Christian Democrats. They’re all gone now and in the vacuum there’s nothing but farce. But there’s the outline of something different.

The Europeans are pushing against liberalism and its neoliberal progeny. Never mind the fact that the new or alternative political parties they vote for are failing to live up to their critical manifestos. The point is that probably 50% or more of the Europeans have had enough of liberal capitalism. And this means that they have had enough of the EU. How this plays out though is anyone’s guess.

A glance at Europe’s political jigsaw right now reveals unstable contradictions. Hung parliaments, Grand Coalitions, secessionists and deadlock predominate. New or once ostracized political parties are shaping the narratives. And the strongest one is Euroscepticism.

Alternative for Germany, Podemos (Spain), Syriza (Greece), Law and Justice Party (Poland), Freedom Party of Austria, Fidesz Party (Hungary), Five Star Movement (Italy) and National Front (France) all have subverted smug liberal Europe.

And when you add to this mix old time anti-imperialists like Sinn Féin (Ireland) and new time imperialists like La Republique En Marche (France) the concept of Europe is being pulled all over the place. Brexit, Catalonia, Lega Nord (Italy) and the financial ultras in the Netherlands and Finland complete the picture of political chaos. Unity  – if there ever was any – is a thing of the past.

The Polish President Andrzej Duda summed it up best recently when he said that the EU is like an occupying force in Poland. It's not crazy to say that that’s exactly how most ordinary Europeans experience the EU today. And they want out. They want something new.

For wanting to halt liberal capitalism the “anti-European” Europeans are being described as idiotic populists or as the idiotic far-right. But this criticism doesn’t hold since it comes from a liberal European Empire that’s based on foreign wars and foreign slaughter. It comes from in other words a liberalism that is inherently racist. One that plays all the time upon popular fears (the war on terror, for example). It's a liberalism that has proven itself at home and abroad (austerity and war) to be not only idiotic but criminal in every way.

If truth be told the “pro-European” liberals are the most ignorant of Europe. They’re the ones championing American leadership and playing Russian roulette with Russia nonstop. They’re the fanatical extremists that are endangering the life of Europeans today. Their market solutions and military solutions have taken Europe into an irrational swamp. A swamp in which the “far-right” makes more sense than the “extreme-center”.

The far-left though remains the most rational. However in a swamp the sinking feeling clouds reason. Many Europeans do bemoan the immigrants while the banks pick their pockets. But many if not most do sense the theft taking place and have an appetite for a left-wing confrontation with the bosses.

Indeed this cloudy division between unhappy Europeans manifests itself roughly in a rift between the East / West on the one hand and the North / South on the other. In the East and North the tendency is right wing (they bitch about the immigrants) while in the West and South it's left wing (they bitch about the banks). There’s overlap but the currents are visible.

For the left the only way out of this swamp – the only way out of the womb – is the foothold that is immigration. Much like in America immigrants now form the very basis of society in Europe. They’re the basic working class upon which the whole of Europe now rests.

We’re not just talking about the Syrian refugees in the headlines but those economic “refugees” away from of the headlines: the Filipinos, the Chinese, the Indians, the Brazilians, the Nigerians and the Moroccans. You can add every other nationality there is to this list. Because Europe today is as much a melting pot as America is. And despite what Europe’s white supremacists might think: there’s no getting rid of Europe’s new skin color.

As the new Europe emerges it will blend more and more with Africa and Asia. Quietly a cultural revolution is taking place. In Paris and London this has been obvious for some time. But now it's almost everywhere. Madrid, Berlin, Dublin, Malmo, Milan and a thousand other European cities echo what has already happened in the capitals of France and Britain.

20th Century Europe was a disaster made in Europe. If 21st Century Europe is not to be the same it must let humanity do its thing. Forget about a European Union or a United States of Europe. And let Europe unite with the world instead. It's happening whether Europe likes it or not. But the more Europe is conscious of it and positive about it the easier it will be to change the world for the better.

Europe is dissolving. It's adjusting to reality. And the reality is that it has always been just an extension of Asia and Africa. It's not an island. Or a unique unity. The workers of the world by migrating to Europe and doing their thing are proving this. The Europe being born is anything but Europe. And that’s something to celebrate.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Aidan O’Brien lives in Dublin, Ireland.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Things to ponder

While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.

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

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

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