Bilderberg does China
By Pepe Escobar posted with his permission and widely cross-posted.
Discreetly, as under the radar as a looming virus, the 68th Bilderberg meeting is currently underway in Washington, D.C. Nothing to see here. No conspiracy theories about a “secret cabal”, please. This is just a docile, “diverse group of political leaders and experts” having a chat, a laugh, and a bubbly.
Still, one cannot but notice that the choice of venue speaks more volumes than the entire – burned to the ground – Library of Alexandria. In the year heralding the explosion of a much-awaited NATO vs. Russia proxy war, discussing its myriad ramifications does suit the capital of the Empire of Lies, much more than Davos a few weeks ago, where one Henry Kissinger sent them into a frenzy by advancing the necessity of a toxic compromise named “diplomacy”.
The list of Bilderberg 2022 participants is a joy to peruse. Here are just some of the stalwarts:
James Baker, Consigliere extraordinaire, now a mere Director of the Office of Net Assessment at the Pentagon.
José Manuel Barroso, former head of the European Commission, later the recipient of a golden parachute in the form of Chairman of Goldman Sachs International.
Albert Bourla, the Pfizer Big Guy.
William Burns, CIA director.
Kurt Campbell, the guy who invented the Obama/Hillary “pivot to Asia”, now White House Coordinator for Indo-Pacific.
Mark Carney, former Bank of England, one of the designers of the Great Reset, now Vice Chair of Brookfield Asset Management.
Henry Kissinger, The Establishment’s Voice (or a war criminal: take your pick).
Charles Michel, President of the European Council.
Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, which will duly relay all major Bilderberg directives in the magazine’s upcoming cover stories.
David Petraeus, certified loser of endless surges and Chairman of KKR Global Institute.
Mark Rutte, hawkish Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO top parrot, sorry, secretary-general.
Jake Sullivan, Director of the National Security Council.
The ideological and geopolitical affiliations of these members of the “diverse group” need no further elaboration. It gets positively sexier when we see what they will be discussing.
Among other issues we find “NATO challenges”; “Indo-Pacific realignment”; “continuity of government and economy” (Conspirationists: continuity in case of nuclear war?); “disruption of the global financial system” (already on); “post-pandemic health” (Conspirationists: how to engineer the next pandemic?); “trade and deglobalization”; and of course, the choice wagyu beef steaks: Russia and China.
As Bilderberg follows Chatham House Rules, mere mortals won’t have a clue of what they actually “proposed” or approved, and none of the participants will be allowed to talk about it with anyone else. One of my top New York sources, with direct access to most of the Masters of the Universe, loves to quip that Davos and Bilderberg are just for the messenger boys: the guys who really run the show don’t even bother to show up, ensconced in their uber-private meetings in uber-private clubs, where the real decisions are made.
Still, anyone following in some detail the rotten state of the “rules-based international order” will have a pretty good idea about the 2022 Bilderberg chatter.
What the Chinese say
Secretary of State Little Blinken – Sullivan’s sidekick in the ongoing Crash Test Dummy administration’s Dumb and Dumber remake – has recently claimed that China “supports” Russia on Ukraine instead of remaining neutral.
What really matters here is that Little Blinken is implying that Beijing wants to destabilize Asia-Pacific – which is a notorious absurdity. Yet that’s the master narrative that must pave the way for the US to muscle up its “Indo-Pacific” concoction. And that’s the briefing Sullivan and Kurt Campbell will be delivering to the “diverse group”.
Davos – with its new self-billed mantra, “The Great Narrative” – completely excluded Russia. Bilderberg is mostly about containment of China – which after all is the number one existential threat to the Empire of Lies and its satrapies.
Rather than wait for Bilderberg morsels dispensed by The Economist, it’s much more productive to check out what a cross-section of fact-based Chinese intelligentsia thinks about the new “collective West” racket.
Let’s start with Justin Lin Yifu, former Chief Economist of the World Bank and now Dean of the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University, and Sheng Songcheng, former head of the Financial Survey and Statistic Dept. at the Bank of China.
They advance that if China achieves “dynamic zero infection” on Covid-19 by the end of May (that actually happened: see the end of the Shanghai lockdown), China’s economy may grow by 5.5% in 2022.
They dismiss the imperial attempt to establish an “Asian version of NATO”: “As long as China continues to grow at a higher rate and to open up, European and ASEAN countries would not participate in the US’s decoupling trap so as to ensure their economic growth and job creation.”
Three academics from the Shanghai Institute of International Studies and Fudan University touch on the same point: the American-announced “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework”, supposed to be the economic pillar of the Indo-Pacific strategy, is nothing but a cumbersome attempt to “weaken the internal cohesion and regional autonomy of ASEAN.”
Liu Zongyi stresses that China’s position at the heart of the vastly inter-connected Asian supply chains “has been consolidated”, especially now with the onset of the largest trade deal on the planet, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
Chen Wengling, Chief Economist of a think tank under the key National Development and Reform Commission, notes the “comprehensive ideological and technological war against China” launched by the Americans.
But he’s keen to stress how they are “not ready for a hot war as the US and Chinese economies are so closely linked.” The crucial vector is that “the US has not yet made substantial progress in strengthening its supply chain focusing on four key fields including semiconductors.”
Chen worries about “China’s energy security”; “China’s silence” on US sanctions on Russia, which “may result in US retaliation”; and crucially, how “China’s plan of building the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with Ukraine and EU countries will be affected.” What will happen in practice is BRI will be privileging economic corridors across Iran and West Asia, as well as the Maritime Silk Road, instead of the Trans-Siberian corridor across Russia.
It’s up to Yu Yongding, from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and a former member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank, to go for the jugular, noting how” the global financial system and the US dollar have been weaponized into geopolitical tools. The nefarious behavior of the US in freezing foreign exchange reserves has not only seriously damaged the international credibility of the US but has also shaken the credit foundation of the dominant international financial system in the West.”
He expresses the consensus among Chinese intel, that “if there is a geopolitical conflict between the US and China, then China’s overseas assets will be seriously threatened, especially its huge reserves. Therefore, the composition of China’s external financial assets and liabilities urgently needs to be adjusted and the portion of US dollar-denominated assets in its reserves portfolio should be reduced.”
This chessboard sucks
A serious debate is raging across virtually all sectors of Chinese society on the American weaponization of the world financial casino. The conclusions are inevitable: get rid of US Treasuries, fast, by any means necessary; more imports of commodities and strategic materials (thus the importance of the Russia-China strategic partnership); and firmly secure overseas assets, especially those foreign currency reserves.
Meanwhile, Bilderberg’s “diverse group”, on the other side of the pond, is discussing, among other things, what will really happen in case they force the IMF racket to blow up (a key plan to implement The Great Reset, or “Great Narrative”).
They are starting to literally freak out with the slow but sure emergence of an alternative, resource-based monetary/financial system: exactly what the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) is currently discussing and designing, with Chinese input.
Imagine a counter-Bilderberg system where a basket of Global South actors, resource-rich but economically poor, are able to issue their own currencies backed by commodities, and finally get rid of their status of IMF hostages. They are all paying close attention to the Russian gas-for-rubles experiment.
And in China’s particular case, what will always matter is loads of productive capital underpinning a massive, extremely deep industrial and civil infrastructure.
No wonder Davos and Bilderberg messenger boys, when they look at The Grand Chessboard, are filled with dread: their era of perpetual free lunch is over. What would delight cynics, skeptics, neoplatonists and Taoists galore is that it was Davos-Bilderberg Men (and Women) who actually boxed themselves into zugzwang.
All dressed up – with nowhere to go. Even JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon – who didn’t even bother to go to Bilderberg – is scared, saying an economic “hurricane” is coming. And overturning the chessboard is no remedy: at best that may invite a ceremonious tuxedo visit by Mr. Sarmat and Mr. Zircon carrying some hypersonic bubbly.
Pepe Escobar is a Brazilian journalist and geopolitical analyst. His column "The Roving Eye" for Asia Times regularly discusses the multi-national "competition for dominance over the Middle East and Central Asia."
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
Did you sign up yet for our FREE bulletin? This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORSRead it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读Is Elon Musk liable to be part of the solution or a more insidious problem? The omens are mixed.Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.
Tucker Carlson, Yasha Levine, Jimmy Dore, Lee Camp, & Caitlin Johnstone First an intriguing (if, in our view, way too optimistic) analysis by Tucker Carlson and Jimmy Dore. Then a short "cold water" opinion by Yasha Levine. Then realism—read a pessimistic look—by Lee Camp and, of course, Caity Johnstone, with whom we entirely agree. In an almost uniformly bleak media horizon, there is some reason for many people to want to be cautiously optimistic, but we must recall who Musk's closest business allies are, including his deep connections with the sinister national security state and the massive interests behind it. And that, like all arrogant businessmen and billionaires, he may also be alarmingly naive about the ugliness of imperialist politics.
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If Stalin Equals “Communism, Bad,” Why Doesn’t’ Hitler Equals “Capitalism, Bad?”
Soviet soldiers at Reichstag, May 1945.
A Special Column for The Greanville Post
(Annotated) • First posted on June 3, 2014
Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Senior Editor
ANNOTATED BY PATRICE GREANVILLE
"Many critics of the Soviet Union conveniently forget that the Soviet experience was shaped in a significant part by what someday will come to be known as 'The 75 Years War Against the Soviet Union, 1917-1992.'"
In the Western, capitalist, telling of history, “Stalin” and “Stalinism” almost invariably equal “socialism/communism, which, of course, equal ‘bad,’ ” and beyond that, it/they could never work. One experiment (forgetting about what happened in China, and perhaps with more relevance, Cuba) and that’s it. Socialism, communism, the old term “Bolshevism,” was tried and failed in the Soviet Union and boy, it just couldn’t possibly work anywhere, anyhow, at any time in the future. This is a view that is adhered to not only by capitalist historians and political scientists. It is also adhered to by many self-styled “left-wingers” in the West. Without naming names, these folks, when talking about left-wing analyses of what is currently happening in the capitalist world, due to capitalist causation, like climate change and the coming Sixth Extinction or on a less-grand scale the export of capital from the advanced capitalist countries and what that is doing to living standards for most of their working classes, always start with an self-exculpatory statement.
The latter usually starts with something like: “of course ‘Stalinism’ [usually without defining what they mean by that term] was awful, the Soviet Union was a complete horror show, and we are definitely not talking about anything like that.” They often add that because of what happened over the next 75 years in the Soviet Union following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, carried out on Leninist principles, nothing like that sort of revolution could ever possibly succeed and, some of them say, must be opposed with as much fervor as that with which they claim to be opposing capitalism. Of course the capitalist analysts don’t have to engage in such exculpation, but use the same sort of analysis nevertheless.
For many years I have thought about what might have happened in the development of capitalism if, following the collapse of the Cromwellian Revolution in England and the Restoration of the Stuart Monarchy (1661, which brought us Restoration Comedy and all those cute dogs), both its critics and original supporters had said something like, “well, that’s it. It’s obvious that mercantile capitalism (which was the driving force behind the Cromwellians) cannot possibly work, feudalism is here to stay forever, and well, folks, just live with it.” Of course that didn't happen. In England next came the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Stuarts were replaced by an imported King who favored Constitutional Monarchy, and indeed the doors were opened to the development through the 18th century of mercantile capitalism and then industrial capitalism in the 19th century.
Unusual photo showing German soldiers in the USSR, in 1943, before a portrait of Stalin left behind by retreating Soviet troops. The eerie tranquility of the image is accentuated by the puppy.
In my view, there is no reason why much the same sort of historical development could not take place for the replacement of capitalism with some sort of socialism that, without going into any detail here, learns much from both the positive and negative elements of the Soviet experience. In fact, if that doesn’t happen, our species is doomed to become a very different, much smaller, rather miserable one over the next century, taking many other species with us as we shrink in size and world-coverage, driven towards that end on a profits-first-and-only capitalism that refuses to do anything meaningful to deal with global warming.
________
One never hears “Hitler Equals Capitalism Equals Bad, and it could never work.”
One must also acknowledge (which Western analysts, neither capitalist nor self-styled “socialist” do) that the Soviet experience was shaped in a significant part by what someday will come to be known as “The 75 Years War Against the Soviet Union, 1917-1992.” One must also acknowledge, that every other attempt at some sort of socialist experiment following World War II (except for Cuba) was beaten back and eventually destroyed by Western Imperialism, most often led by the United States.
The wages of Nazism: Dresden utterly destroyed in an allied "terror bombing." Nazism and fascism, logical and inevitable offshoots of capitalism, are inseparable from the cult of nationalism and constant war.
Nevertheless, we have the mantra “Stalin Equals Socialism/Communism, Bad, and nothing like it could ever possibly work.” But one never hears “Hitler Equals Capitalism Equals Bad, and it could never work.” Of course, the first reason for that is that there are other models for capitalism and its preservation/expansion than the Hitlerian one. (And so why could not one also say that there are other models for revolutionary/Leninist socialism which could work?) But more importantly, for both capitalist and non-Communist analysts of 20th century history, Hitlerism/Nazism/Fascism is almost never openly associated with capitalism as the driving force for its development. But indeed it, and it brother fascist states in Italy (the first major one [Hungary under Admiral Miklos Horthy preceded it] that gave the governmental form its name) and Japan, were created by capitalist ruling classes that no longer wanted to entrust their control of the economy and the state to the (bourgeois) “democratic process.”
Hitler was a creature of the international bourgeoisie. Fascism is normally the Frankenstein invoked by the ruling capitalist classes when threatened by social upheavals. Even many nobles in Britain were openly sympathetic to his regime.
In Germany, the Nazis came to power on January 30, 1933 because a significant element of the German ruling class had decided that they could no longer stay in control of the German state and economy if the prominent and powerful German Socialist and Communist Parties and the equally powerful German trade union movement stayed in existence. The Communist Party was outlawed almost immediately, the Socialist Party was gone by the end of March, 1933, and the trade unions were shut down in April, 1933. The capitalists now had no opposition of any kind, and they maintained their position of power and profit-making throughout the War. Hitler lost the war militarily, of course. But to the bitter end, with all the state power controlled by the Nazis, Germany remained a capitalist country (as did Italy and Japan). [In several notorious instances allied bombers were instructed to spare Anglo-American-owned factories and installations in the Third Reich territories.—Eds]
Anticommunism and anti-Sovietism have been deliberately cultivated by Western leaders for generations. Stalin's controversial image has been used as a convenient battering ram.
However, with the victory of the allies, including the Soviet Union, there was no reaction to fascism of the “look where capitalism leads [or can lead].” Rather the United States, unscathed physically by the war, moved immediately to re-secure capitalism in Western Europe. The Marshall Plan was designed specifically to restore Western Europe’s industrial base, especially that of Germany (the western part only, of course), which had been so heavily damaged during the war. No Marshall Plan aid for the Soviet Union, of course. On the contrary, announced by Winston Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain” speech, which associated the Soviet Union with a policy to divide Europe that had been developed in the West almost since the end of World War II, the “75 Years War Against the Soviet Union” was resumed almost immediately.
The very powerful Italian Communist Party was prevented, due to US and Papal intervention (1), from winning the election of 1948, for which it had been heavily favored. Immediately after the war, with British support, the Rightists in Greece fought, and won, a two-year civil war with the Greek communists, who had borne the brunt of the resistance against the Germans. The British fought an 8-year war against communists in Malaya, who had borne the brunt of Malayan resistance to the Japanese. The French Communist party, which had led the French Resistance during the war, was excluded from the French post-war government by the US-backed Gen. Charles DeGaulle. And then came, of course, the decades-long world-wide campaign, led primarily by US imperialism, to forcibly shut down any socialist or proto-socialist movements, all around the world. And capitalism flourished, or seemed to.
But now we come to the modern era, when capitalism, as usual clothed in “democratic” garments, is beginning to fail, as noted above. Just as in Germany, Italy and Japan, in which the capitalist ruling class turned to fascist forms to save its collective skin, so could that happen again, as, for example, the “wealth gap” increases around the world. The ruling classes of certain smaller countries, like Hungary (again) are turning towards fascist forms, even while maintaining the appearance of electoral democracy. In others, like the United States, the groundwork for a modern form of fascism has already been laid: the Patriot Act; the actions and programs of the National Security Agency; the adoption of religious-determination (abortion and gay marriage), ethnic-group politics, and the beginnings of demonization as national policy (e.g., the poor, the unemployed) by the Republican Party; and the unbridled, unregulated growth of heavily armed right-wing militias (can you say “Black Shirts” or “Brown Shirts”?). The form that fascism could take in the United States could indeed mimic in many ways that which it took in Nazi Germany. Yet while we hear all the time “Stalin/Stalinism – socialism/communism bad,” we never hear any discussion of what capitalism could easily develop into in the 21st century, as it developed into in the 20th, on the Hitler/Mussolini/Imperial Japanese model.
This unreferenced column, long as it is, should be taken as an introduction to a much longer, referenced essay on this subject, which is under development, but for which there is no clear time-frame.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STEVEN JONAS: A Comment on “Left Anticommunism: the Unkindest Cut”
Stalin’s personal archives exposed (Archives)
GAITHER STEWART: Stalin, the poet, and life’s choices
NOTES
(1) One of the CIA's earliest "victories" of this sort, and largely unknown to most Italian-Americans, who might resent learning that Italy was at one time treated as a "banana country".—Eds)
__________________________________________
APPENDIX
(Attachment prepared by Patrice Greanville, The Greanville Post)
Anticommunism as a mental illness, unresolvable psychosis
Psy•cho•sis : mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality". People suffering from psychosis are described as psychotic.
The Right—and the rightwing mentality— is well known for its ability to live comfortably with fantasies and lies, many of which the rank and file accept as gospel truth (literally). Since Obama came to power, the president and his closest associates, all by any sane observer demonstrable tools of Wall Street, and eager corporate globalists, have been described throughout the noise machine of the Right as "Marxists" and similar arrant nonsense. The gem below was found on one such spreader of stupidity, the petulantly named "The American Thinker" blog. Blogs like this abound on the web, they grow like wild fungus in a society filled with insecurity and cultivated anxieties. Of course, anticommunism is an old, well-established, and constantly buttressed cottage industry in the United States, perhaps the most politically ignorant nation on earth. Considering the gap between fact and reality fueling these statements it's safe to conclude that anti-communism, in general, is a bona fides psychosis. To my surprise, and I sure wish it were true, the author of the material below even claims that Obama is in favor of single-payer. I guess he was on another planet when Nancy Pelosi, speaking for Obama and the top Democratic leadership, pronounced the option completely "off the table."
Well, as always, judge for yourselves. A link is provided so you may read the original material in toto.
—PG
•••••••• •••••••
In Their Own Words: Lenin, Stalin, Obama, and Hillary
(Excerpts)
It is well-recognized that President Obama's political philosophy is heavily influenced by Marxism-Leninism, originating primarily through his childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis. He has demonstrated through his policy implementation that he believes in a strong centralized government and increasing governmental control over the financial system, media, education, energy, healthcare, private property, where people live, their means of transportation, and how they behave.
His beliefs are reflected in his words:
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times."2
"Generally, the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties."3
"If you've got a business - you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."2
"I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."4
"Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."5
"I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program."6
"I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution because I actually believe in redistribution..."7
"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."8
"...We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us."9
In a similar vein, Hillary Clinton was immersed in a Marxist environment at an early age. Her senior thesis at Wellesley College was a positive analysis of the dirty political tactics of radical organizer Saul Alinsky, whom she referred to as having a "compelling personality" and "exceptional charm."
Biden’s Democracy Summit: America’s Push for World Domination
Christopher Black / News Eastern Outlook
On December 9 and 10 the American President will host a virtual meeting titled a “Democracy Summit” with participation from many countries with all their variety of government and political systems, and even the participation of the Chinese renegade province of Taiwan, justly angering China, perhaps the world’s largest socialist democracy, which is pointedly not invited.
This meeting is a follow up to the dress rehearsal Copenhagen Democracy Summit held in 2018 and again in May of this year which I wrote about at the time as a meeting of the new Nazis, organised by the “Alliance of Democracies” so-called, meaning the USA and its allies and nations seeking its favour. I do not think my characterisation was far off the mark.
That rehearsal revealed what it was all about with the opening address made by the former Secretary-General of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who was head of NATO when the US and its allies attacked Libya and murdered Gadhafi, overthrowing the socialist democracy there and reducing it to chaos and civil war. It is worth mentioning his other accomplishments, since he is emblematic of the cabal that is organising the Summit.
As prime minister of Denmark he supported the invasion of Iraq, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the Israelis against the Palestinians and at home, this “democrat” lowered corporate and property taxes for the benefit of the rich while shifting the tax burden to working people through sales taxes, and reduced democracy in Denmark by reducing the number of smaller towns and regions into larger ones with a consequent reduction of the ability of people to have their voices heard about local issues, and all the time encouraged privatisation of the economy.
It was he who founded the Alliance of Democracies in 2017 along with his friend Joe Biden who made the first address to its members in 2018, the whole thrust of which is to advocate “free markets” and hegemonic control of them by the US and its NATO allies.
The list of countries that are invited to the December Biden summit is long, but does not include China, Russia, Turkey, Iran, the DPRK, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Belarus. There are only two countries from the Middle East, Israel and Iraq, and only sixteen nations from Africa out of fifty-four.
The participants include nations where the existence of “democracy,” whatever its form, is questionable, such as Kosovo, the key province of Serbia occupied by NATO and handed over to the terrorists of the Kosovo Liberation Army, and Ukraine where the elected government was overthrown in a NATO backed coup in 2014 and replaced with US puppets with strong fascist tendencies and which has attacked its own people in the Donbass.
S I D E B A R
Russian-Chinese Ambassadors' Publish Joint Statement, Slam US 'Democracy Summit' |
It includes Poland which has a government of far-right tendencies which has banned abortions, reduced the independence of the judiciary, and meets refugees trying to cross its border with attack dogs, tear gas and gunfire, Israel which has created an apartheid state, India where farmers had to use strikes to make their voice heard against a hostile government of the right wing Modi, Brazil, where Mr. Bolsonaro, installed after President Lula was framed up on corruption charges, caused the rapid immiseration of his country, and as expected, none of them are socialist countries.
Finally, of course it is all arranged by the USA, where democracy hardly exists, with its tweedle-dum, tweedle-dee party system that maintains control of political life for the benefit of the industrialists, bankers, and the military caste that controls every aspect of American society, with results the world can only observe with disgust.
No, the “Democracy Summit” is purely a capitalist affair, and even then, does not include capitalist states that the Americans view as being in the way of their quest of for world hegemony, Russia being the most notable.
Those who are interested in democracy will be hard-pressed to find anywhere on the US State Department website any definition of what “democracy” means to them. It is just a word, a symbol, used to veil the real purpose of the meeting, which is to confirm and support the US Will To World Power against the peoples’ need for a Will To Peace.
Their propaganda is replete with code words for hegemony under the guise of “fighting corruption” –for is not the American government one of the most corrupt, or “fighting authoritarianism”-is not the American system with its heavily armed police that shoot down citizens on the slightest pretext, especially if the citizen is dark-skinned or poor, elections controlled by the ruling elite, its controlled media, economic and social policies that benefit only the capitalists while reducing the working population to penury and desperation-one of the most authoritarian states? What is “democracy” to them? It is nothing more than the worship of form over content. Joe Biden and his Democratic Party are proof of it.
During President Trump’s regime, Biden’s party concocted a litany of lies about Russian influence on the US electorate in order to explain their loss and justify their continued attempts to remove Trump from office, to frustrate the will of the people that voted for him. The recent revelations that the entire affair was fabricated have shown how tawdry American democracy has become so that the consequence is a nation in which half the voting population believe Biden’s election victory was rigged. It matters not whether it was or was not. The fact is the entire political system in the USA has become so corrupted that the population no longer trusts the electoral wins of their political opponents. The Democrats argue Trump’s win was rigged, while the Republicans believe Biden’s win was rigged, resulting in a precarious state of affairs in which no one in the USA has any confidence in their democracy” whatsoever. Yet Biden presumes the right to lord it over the world as some high priest of “democracy” while the structure of what remains of American democracy is on the verge of collapse.
The US State Department website states:
“Democracy and human rights are under threat around the world. Democracies — whether in transition or established for decades — are confronting serious challenges from within and outside of their borders. Public distrust and the failure of governments to deliver equitable and sustainable economic and political progress have fuelled political polarization and the rise of leaders who are undermining democratic norms and institutions. Across the globe, weak state capacity, tenuous rule of law, high inequality, and corruption continue to erode democracy”.
To take this statement apart could take a book, but in short when they say “around the world” they really mean the nations that stand up against the American diktats, and not themselves, although they make a nod to the troubles they face inside their own nation. Who is responsible for the lack of trust in western governments but the parties who controlled those governments and behind them the owners of the American, British, Canadian, Australian, Japanese and European capital who have pursued policies designed to keep wages low and profits high, with war as an accepted instrument of policy, and in so doing have had to lie to their people to be able to do it?
The State Department then looks in its own mirror and catching its own reflection states,
“At the same time, authoritarian leaders are reaching across borders to undermine democracies — from targeting journalists and human rights defenders to meddling in elections — all while sowing disinformation to claim their model is better at delivering for people. Hostile actors exacerbate these trends by increasingly manipulating digital information and spreading disinformation to weaken democratic cohesion.”
For is this not a description of the United States today?
Finally they state,
“As President Biden has said, we have to prove democracy still works and can improve people’s lives in tangible ways. To do that, democracies have to come together …”
And there you have part of the reason this Summit is taking place; to make propaganda to be used against the people of the United States to somehow convince them that they actually live in a democracy in order to shore up the continued domination of political and economic power by US capital threatened by the rising discontent of the people.
The other reason of course is to create propaganda against all the nations the United States wants to dominate and exploit, which not only resist but also advocate a multipolar world, in which every nation respects every other. The ultimate objective is to justify war against those nations. For that is where this leads. And how can war lead to democracy?
In 1795 Immanuel Kant wrote his famous essay “A Perpetual Peace, A Philosophical Sketch,” and it was President Theodore Roosevelt who, on receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace stated,
“It would be a masterstroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would form a League of Peace.”
But of course his county and many others were never honestly bent on peace when war was more profitable.
The eternal quest for more profit drives the modern imperialist nations to rely on plunder and pillage as a regular means of income just as much as the empires of the past. The claim by early capitalists and philosophers that free trade and commerce would lead to peace and not war, out of pure commercial self-interest, and the ruinous cost of wars, was proved wrong as soon as the claim was made. We see similar claims made today by world leaders who every day wage war on other states, or resist the wars conducted against them.
Morality, law, ethics, these are empty words for those who the capitalist system makes into thieves and murderers. But then, when the working population is composed of wage slaves, whose labour power is taken from them every hour of the day without compensation, the only way by which profit can be derived from industrial production, when the whole basis of the economy is theft, how can we expect the governments of such nations, the captains of this slave system, to be anything else except murderers and thieves.
And since the United States has been the preeminent capitalist power since 1945, a world imperialist power, we witness the United States, and its servant nations in the NATO, and other vassal alliances, forcing the world to the edge of world war in a continual and never-ending cycle of crises.
Its actions against Russia, against China, against Iran, against the DPRK, even against its own allies, can push us over that edge into the abyss at any time. The Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, the North Koreans, warn the American leadership, warn the world, again and again that the consequences will be catastrophic for the world; but the irrational leadership of the United States, corrupted beyond redemption by the presumption that their power gives them the right to dominate the world, only increase their aggressive rhetoric and actions, blinded by hubris and an ignorance of reality. They think they can triumph over the world and threaten to reduce it to a radioactive wasteland.
Kant thought that democracy, that republican forms of government, in which the people ruled, would necessarily lead to peace among nations as democratic rule spread among nations. But we have seen through history that so long as the debt system allows nations to have standing armies and to spend huge sums on creating weapons of unlimited destructive power, so long as the quest for profit remains the basis of the economic system, which leads inevitably to imperialism and colonialism, so long as governments pay men and women in their standing armies to kill, to be killed, for the benefit of others, to be reduced to expendable machines of death, we shall risk incessant war and annihilation.
What better example of this is there than The President of the United States of America threatening to “obliterate” North Korea, to “obliterate” Iran. This is the vocabulary of the deep evil that rests within the heart of the system, evil because it knows no morality, no law, and regards itself to be superior to humanity itself.
Democracy works only when there is a free exchange of ideas, but they control the ideas, control and manipulate the people, blind us with a world-wide system of propaganda using the mass media, and more and more, the social media, to mould our opinions and actions, or inaction. Independent media that are dedicated to peace and dialogue between peoples are becoming fewer or are compromised. So few are able to see the reality, to understand how the system works, how they fit into the system and how they can overcome it.
During the Soviet period, after the defeat of European fascism, the idea spread through the world of the equality of peoples, of nations, of international cooperation, of the community of mankind, of economic systems designed to produce social wealth for the benefit of the people instead of private wealth, making money for a few. Che Guevara wrote a book about the new human beings that this system needed and would produce.
But instead, we have a world in which the oldest capitalist powers are ruled by cutthroats and mobsters. The United States acts as captain of a world order of bandits; all of them dressed up in the clothing of democrats. They want world order, but their “order” is state of world servitude to their moneyed interests.
The Russians, the Chinese, and other still independent nations, call for a new order, one of multi-polarity, but this is to replace the world order of American autocracy with the order of a world aristocracy, still the rule of big powers over small, however well-intentioned they may be. But what is needed is a just world order in which all nations and peoples are equally respected, and have a real voice in solving global problems, an order which exists for the benefit of all the world’s peoples.
We need a world League of Perpetual Peace to replace the United Nations, which, because of its undemocratic structure and control by the great powers, has not been able to accomplish its objectives. Armies need to be abolished, for if all armies are abolished, no one can have the excuse to create one. Differences among nations have to be solved peacefully and this cannot be done if armies and weapons of mass destruction are in the possession of nations. Without the means to make war, there cannot be war. Only then can we have and enjoy any real democracy, and the democracy that each nation and people are able to choose for themselves.
Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
APPENDIX[This Joint Article was published on The National Interest on November 26, 2021. Qin Gang is the Chinese Ambassador to the United States. Anatoly Antonov is the Russian Ambassador to the United States.]
The upcoming American-led online Summit for Democracy will stoke ideological confrontation. Faced with an array of global challenges, countries urgently need to strengthen coordination and cooperation for common progress.The United States will be hosting the online Summit for Democracy on December 9-10, 2021, empowering itself to define who is to attend the event and who is not, who is a “democratic country” and who is not eligible for such status. An evident product of its Cold-War mentality, this will stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world, creating new “dividing lines.” This trend contradicts the development of the modern world. It is impossible to prevent the shaping of a global polycentric architecture but could strain the objective process. China and Russia firmly reject this move. Peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy, and freedom are common values of humanity. Democracy is not a prerogative of a certain country or a group of countries, but a universal right of all peoples. It can be realized in multiple ways, and no model can fit all countries. Whether a country’s path works depends on whether it meets the country’s realities, follows the trend of the times, and brings about economic development, social stability and progress, and better lives for the people. Ultimately, it relies on the support of the people and will be proven by its contribution to human progress. Therefore, a basic criterion of democracy should be about the people, i.e. whether the people have the right to govern their country, whether their needs are met, and whether they have a sense of fulfillment and happiness. If the people are only awakened when casting their votes and sent back to hibernation when the voting is over, if they are served with sweet-sounding slogans in campaigns but have no say after the election, if they are wooed during canvassing but left out in the cold after that, this is not a genuine democracy. What China has is an extensive, whole-process socialist democracy. It reflects the people’s will, suits the country’s realities, and enjoys strong support from the people. In China, the people have the right to elections, and they can get deeply involved in national governance, exercising their power through the People's Congresses at the national and other levels. China has eight non-Communist parties participating in governance, as well as a unique system and corresponding institutions of political consultation. On matters concerning people's keen interests, there are broad-based and sufficient consultations and discussions before any decision is made. Policies and measures can only be introduced when there is a consensus that they are what the people want and will serve the people’s needs. It has been proved that the whole-process democracy works in China, and works very well. China calls for building a community with a shared future for mankind. As residents of the same global village, we should handle international affairs through consultation. Russia is a democratic federative law-governed state with a republican form of government. Democracy is the fundamental principle of its political system. The democratic institutions were further strengthened by the amendments to the Constitution adopted through a referendum in 2020. In Russia, the development of democracy is closely connected to culture and traditions. Traditions of its parliamentarianism go back over a hundred years. Russia’s political system is evolving steadily and needs a stable and calm environment that guarantees the rights and interests of its people. Democracy is not just about domestic governance; it should also be reflected in international relations. A truly democratic government will support democracy in international relations. It will not foster hegemony and division abroad while building democracy and unity at home. The path to prosperity of nations goes through respectful cooperation with each other, despite some differences in views on particular issues. The sovereignty, security, and development interests of a country should not be violated. Interfering in other countries’ internal affairs—under the pretext of fighting corruption, promoting democratic values, or protecting human rights—hindering their development, wielding the big stick of sanctions, and even infringing on their sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity go against the UN Charter and other basic norms of international law and are obviously anti-democratic. No country has the right to judge the world’s vast and varied political landscape by a single yardstick, and having other countries copy one’s political system through color revolution, regime change and even use of force go against international law, and are obviously anti-democratic. International affairs should be handled in accordance with the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution, and shared benefits, and decided in the spirit of true multilateralism. There should be a more inclusive global governance, not something like “might makes right.” Seeking supremacy and putting oneself always first are acts of hegemonism and unilateralism, and are obviously anti-democratic. Common security and development are a prevailing aspiration of the international community. Using ideology to bring down other countries, and promote a geo-strategy for absolute security will lead to division and confrontation, and are obviously anti-democratic. There is only one international system in the world, i.e. the international system with the United Nations at its core. There is only one international order, i.e. the one underpinned by international law. And there is only one set of rules, i.e. the basic norms governing international relations based on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. Flaunting the “rules-based international order” without referencing the UN and international law and attempting to replace international rules with the dictums of certain blocs falls into the category of revisionism and is obviously anti-democratic. There has seen no shortage of wars and turmoil worldwide to prove that spreading “democracy,” its political system, and values against other countries’ will severely undermine regional and international peace, security, and stability. Bombings of Yugoslavia, military intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and “democratic transformation” do nothing but harm. Countries should focus on running their own affairs well, not condescendingly criticizing others. There is no need to worry about democracy in Russia and China. Certain foreign governments better think about themselves and what is going on in their homes. Is it freedom when various rallies in their countries are dispersed with rubber bullets and tear gas? It does not look very much like freedom. Faced with an array of global challenges, countries urgently need to strengthen coordination and cooperation for common progress. Especially today when the international community needs to improve cooperation between all countries to counter the pandemic of COVID-19, foster economic development, and neutralize cross-border threats. China and Russia call on countries: to stop using "value-based diplomacy" to provoke division and confrontation; to practice mutual respect and win-win cooperation in international relations, and to work for harmonious coexistence between countries with different social systems, ideologies, histories, cultures, and development levels. |
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Biden’s Totally Failing Foreign Policies
Eric Zuesse
To borrow from Trump, this is life in a "shithole nation", a nation like Somalia the US can bomb with impunity.
Eric Zuesse, originally posted at Strategic Culture
Psychopaths don’t apologize — unless they’re forced to. That’s because they have no conscience. And Biden, like all recent American Presidents, is a representative of that reality, and of the arrogance of America’s billionaires, the people who are being served by the permanent-warfare state: the U.S. Government.
• •Work with the Israeli and Palestinian leadership to support peacebuilding efforts in the region. Biden will urge Israel’s government and the Palestinian Authority to take steps to keep the prospect of a negotiated two-state outcome alive and avoid actions, such as unilateral annexation of territory and settlement activity, or support for incitement and violence, that undercut prospects for peace between the parties.
• •Reverse the Trump Administration’s destructive cutoff of diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority and cancellation of assistance programs that support Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation, economic development, and humanitarian aid for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza, consistent with the requirements of the Taylor Force Act, including that the Palestinian Authority end its system of compensation for individuals imprisoned for acts of terrorism.
• •Urge Arab states to move beyond quiet talks and take bolder steps toward normalization with Israel. • •Firmly reject the BDS movement — which singles out Israel and too often veers into anti-Semitism — and fight other efforts to delegitimize Israel on the global stage.
• •Hold Iran’s government accountable and rejoin a diplomatic agreement to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, if Iran returns to compliance with the JCPOA, using renewed commitment to diplomacy to work with our allies to strengthen and extend the Iran deal, and push back against Iran’s other destabilizing actions.
• •Support the critical economic and technological partnership between the United States and Israel, further expand scientific collaborations and increase commercial opportunities, and support cooperation on innovation throughout the region./su_note]
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
All image captions, pull quotes, appendices, etc. by the editors not the authors.
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