IMPERATIVE

MICHAEL HUDSON—By “autocracy,” Biden means countries resisting this financialization and privatization takeover. In practice, U.S. rhettoric means promoting its own economic growth and living standards, keeping finance and banking as public utilities. What basically is at issue is whether economies will be planned by banking centers to create financial wealth – by privatizing basic infrastructure, public utilities and social services such as health care into monopolies – or by raising living standards and prosperity by keeping banking and money creation, public health, education, transportation and communications in public hands.

FINIAN CUNNINGHAM—The politicians do the bidding of the ruling class to serve their economic and political interests. This condition of permanent entrenched power accounts for why policies change little from one administration to another, whether Democrat or Republican. That’s why foreign policies change little, if at all. The unspoken foreign policy of the US is to serve the imperialist interests of its ruling class (Wall Street banks, commodity multinationals, overseas investors) and to maximize militarism for the financial benefit of the big and ancillary corporations that comprise the military-industrial complex.

LARRY ROMANOFF—Here’s another American, this one with a kind heart. He is tolerant and counsels patience. I like this guy. “We need to recognize that our ideology is not for everybody. The Chinese are still evolving upward, and without an educated society, US-style democracy will not work.” Now we know. The Chinese cannot adopt democracy because they are still primitive, having only just taken their first baby steps from apehood to Americanism. Those who reject our system do not do so because it’s unsuitable, dysfunctional and corrupt, but because they aren’t sufficiently educated.

PEPE ESCOBAR—The imperial modus operandi against geopolitical and geoeconomic competitors remains the same: an avalanche of sanctions, embargos, economic blockades, protectionist measures, cancel culture, a military uptick in neighboring nations, and assorted threats. But most of all, warmongering rhetoric – currently elevated to fever pitch.

The hegemon may be “transparent” at least in this domain because it still controls a massive international network of institutions, financial bodies, politicos, CEOs, propaganda agencies and the pop culture industry. Hence this supposed invulnerability breeding insolence.

FRED REED—Where does water come from in New York? I don’t know, but it doesn’t flow spontaneously to the thirtieth floor. It needs to be pumped, which involves electricity, from wherever it comes from to wherever it has to go. No electricity, no pump. No pump, no water. And no flushing of toilets. River water could be drunk, of course. Think of the crowds.