Sept. 11 is deeply singed in the collective memory of the American people.
The attacks on American soil on Sept. 11, 2001, were a watershed event that has affected almost everything we do.
I write this column in the background of our relentless preaching of democracy around the world, but the fact is our government has violated the democratic rights of people in other countries with abandon.
It just happens that this year Sept. 11 marked another anniversary of events that happened 50 years ago. On that fateful day the democratically elected socialist president of Chile,
Salvador Allende, was toppled and killed by the Chilean army with the support of the United States.
An army general by the name of Augusto Pinochet assumed power and for the next 17 years let loose a reign of terror on his people.
Pinochet’s crimes against his own people are monumental. He arrested 80,000 people, executed anywhere between 1,200 and 3,200, and tortured tens and thousands. In addition, thousands of Chileans disappeared on his watch.
While the country faced political instability and financial crisis, the dictator amassed vast amounts of wealth.
His 17-year rule of terror came to an end when people rejected him in a plebiscite in 1988. By the time of Pinochet’s death in 2006, there were already 300 criminal charges still pending against him for numerous human rights violations and embezzlement.
And all through this the Nixon administration stood by and supported the dictator.
In 1979, the Pakistan army toppled the democratically elected government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. A meek and humble-looking army general, Zia ul Haq, became the dictator, and despite the promise of fresh elections within six months he protracted his rule for 10 years.
Zia ul Haq and Ronald Reagan
Left-leaning Bhutto had become an irritant for the United States. His idea of pursuing an independent foreign policy did not sit well in Washington. Neither did his ambition to develop an atomic bomb. Most people in Pakistan believe that the coup happened at the behest of the United States. Bhutto was later hanged by General Zia on flimsy evidence of ordering the murder of an opposition leader.
During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1978-1989), General Zia was the darling of the United States. He committed his country as a front-line state in the war against the Soviets.
Billions of dollars and sophisticated arms and ammunition were channeled through Pakistan to Afghan Mujahideen or freedom fighters. Young Muslim men from around the world, including the United States, were lured to participate in the jihad — holy war — against the Godless Soviet infidels. After 10 years, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in humiliation.
The United States and other Western countries also picked up and left, leaving behind a rampant drug culture, religious militancy, and terrorism in Pakistan.
At that time the United States determined that General Zia had outlived his usefulness. He died in the fiery crash of C130 airplane, taking down with him the U.S. ambassador, Arnold Raphel, who had at the last moment accepted General Zia’s invitation to fly with him to Islamabad, the capital.
In an exhaustive article for the New Yorker magazine the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh analyzed the possible causes of crash and concluded that sabotage caused the plan to explode in the the sky.
Then-Secretary of State George Shultz prevented FBI from investigating the crash even though two American citizens, the American ambassador, and a high-ranking American military officer, were killed in the crash.
The latest incident of American interference in Pakistan was the ouster of the populist Prime Minister Imran Khan. He had made an official visit to Russia, despite opposition by the United States on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Later, he publicly stated that he was removed from office on behest of United States.
And then there is the story of Patrick Lumumba. In 1960, Congo (later the Democratic Republic of Congo) wrestled independence from Belgium, and a young Patrick Lumumba was elected prime minister. Soon a Belgian-backed army mutiny threatened the nascent democracy.
Lumumba appealed to the United States and United Nations for help, but his pleas were ignored.
The rebels executed Lumumba in 1961 and threw the country in turmoil. A 2001 report by the Belgian Commission implicated the United States and Belgium in the plot to kill Lumumba.
[The media and the governments casually blamed UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld for Lumumba’s execution. Hammarskjöld subsequently died in an air crash:
“On 18 September 1961, Hammarskjöld was en route to negotiate a cease-fire between United Nations Operation in the Congo forces and Katangese troops under Moise Tshombe. His Douglas DC-6 airliner SE-BDY crashed near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). Hammarskjöld perished as a result of the crash, as did all of the 15 other passengers. Wikipedia]
Every country has the right to safeguard its interest at home and abroad.
But willful sabotage of democracy around the world contradicts our public stand on spreading democracy in the world.
The original source of this article is Newsbreak.com
Clashes between citizens and security forces broke out in several cities following the dramatic arrest of the former PM who was ousted in a US-backed coup
Pakistani police have detained at least 945 supporters of ousted prime minister Imran Khan in Punjab, the country’s most populous province, since protests erupted on 9 May following Khan’s arrest.
At least one protester was shot dead by security forces in the southwestern city of Quetta on Tuesday, according to a CNN reporter present at the scene.
“Police teams arrested 945 lawbreakers and miscreants from across the province,” officials said in a statement to the media, adding that 130 security officers were injured, 25 police and government vehicles were burnt, and 14 government buildings were attacked during the protests.
In the face of popular discontent, the interior ministry on 10 May requisitioned the help of the army to “maintain law and order” in Punjab.
On Tuesday, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) deployed dozens of paramilitary troops to dramatically detain Khan under alleged charges of “corruption and corrupt practices.”
— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) May 9, 2023
The former premier was presented in an Islamabad court on Wednesday morning to face the charges. During the hearing, the NAB requested the court approve Khan be kept under police custody for 14 days, a move his lawyers opposed.
Khan’s lawyers also insisted that the court investigate the irregular manner in which the 70-year old politician was arrested from the premises of the Islamabad High Court.
In a pre-recorded statement released on YouTube by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party after his arrest, the former premier said he was “detained on incorrect charges” and told his supporters, “the time has come for all of you to come and struggle for your rights.”
“I have always followed the law. I am being apprehended so that I can’t follow my political path for this country’s fundamental rights and for me to obey this corrupt government of crooks which has been hoisted on us,” Khan added.
Following his arrest, his supporters broke into the military’s headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi, just outside the capital.
Protesters also blocked one of the main thoroughfares into Islamabad, throwing stones and pulling down street signs.
Authorities responded by deploying internet jammers and disrupting access to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in the nation of 270 million.
Khan’s arrest came just a few months before crucial elections in October, where many expect the ousted premier to win the largest democratic mandate ever secured by any politician in the 75-year history of Pakistan.
The former cricket star was ousted from government last year in a that saw Shehbaz Sharif – a protégé of the Sharif business dynasty that has governed Pakistan for much of the last three decades – come to power.
Khan previously saw his relationship with the US sour after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. They were also at odds over Afghan state assets frozen by Washington and about US flights over Pakistan.
More pressure started to build against Khan after he criticized western powers for pressuring Islamabad into condemning Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine.
“What do you think of us? Are we your slaves … that whatever you say, we will do?” Khan said at a political rally early last year.
Since his ousting, he has been arrested, charged with “terrorism,” banned from running for office, and even survived an assassination attempt.
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During the Great Depression of 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt became the President. In his first 100 days in office, he rolled out a program called the New Deal. He embraced Keynesian economic policies and fought to expand the role of the government in the nation’s economy. He implemented a series of programs called the New Deal to stabilize the economy and give jobs to millions of Americans who had lost their jobs. New federal agencies were created including the Social Security Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. He created the Tennessee Valley Authority that enabled the federal government to build dams and hydroelectric projects creating thousands of jobs. The Congress passed the Social Security Act which provided a safety Net for the elderly, the unemployed, and the disabled. A decent minimum wage was established. The Glass-Steagall Act was passed to protect people with their savings and deposits in the banks. He raised taxes on the rich to pay for all these programs.
During these difficult times, labor unions were a critical part of the New Deal. Both the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 included protections for unions and required corporations to negotiate with unions. Unions were decimated during the 1920s, but now they had started growing rapidly. Millions of workers joined the unions. Unions felt empowered to fight for better wages and hours with the government on their side. These were all democratic moves. Union membership was at its peak in the 1950s. It was at 35% in 1954. From then onwards, its decline started. By 2021, it had declined to just 10.3%. That means corporate power has drastically increased. Millions of workers in America have no power, no say. Today, big corporations have become so powerful in America that they control every aspect of our lives. They directly or indirectly control not only our politicians but also where we live, what we eat, what we buy, how much we earn, and what we read, see on TV, or listen to on radio and ultimately what we think.
During his term, President Clinton signed the Telecommunication Act of 1996 into law. The act dramatically reduced important Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations on cross ownership, and allowed giant corporations to gobble up thousands of media outlets across the country, increasing their monopoly on the flow of information in the United States and around the world. Thus, all of us across this country and around the world get the same news and the same narrative on the TV, radio and even main stream printed media networks. Using Noam Chomsky’s famous phrase, they ‘Manufacture the Consent’ across America and the world. “Never have so many been held incommunicado by so few”, said Eduardo Galeano, the Latin American journalist, in response to the act. In 1983, some 50 corporations owned 90 percent of the media. That number dwindled after this Communication Act just in few years and today, five mega corporations own and control 90 percent of the media in America. The same thing happened in the radio as well as in the printed media network. No wonder democracy’s decline in America has accelerated further ever since.
Today, what do we hear on the radio or watch on the TV news? Mainly Weather, murders, shooting, rapes etc. No issue of major importance for the citizens is discussed in these media. People are intentionally kept ignorant and ill informed. This is what these oligarchs want. They want –as per their thinking—’dumb millions’ to keep serving them. Because they know, if people are well informed about how corrupt our politicians are, they may unite, create a revolution and take away their power in this country. They also know that to keep Americans divided into democrats, republicans, independents, liberals, progressives, conservatives etc., they can never unite and threaten the powers of the oligarchs or threaten their tight grip on the economy and the government.
The greatest tragedy is that we Americans think that we are ‘free’. But, in reality, most of us are slaves of these giant corporations. America has descended from a democracy of 1950s to an oligarchy today.
For last fifty years and more, we Americans have been indoctrinated with the massive propaganda that America is ‘the greatest democracy’ in the world. This propaganda is carried out by the mainstream news-media which is controlled by a handful of mega-corporations which are in turn controlled by billionaire oligarchs…super rich individuals.
So, let’s find out how democratic America is. As we all know, genuine democracy means a majority rule. In a democracy, the government acts according to the will of the majority of its people. Hence, here are the numbers of what majority of Americans want:
Medicare for all: According to Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) poll of April 3, 2020, this hot button issue gets majority support at 56%.
Tuition Free State and Public College: As per Hill-HarrisX poll of September, 2019, majority of Americans support free college and wiping out the student debt.
Paid Maternity Leave-American Enterprise Institute and Brookings Institutionsurvey found that a majority of 84% want this. This also includes government funding for childcare.
Minimum Wage: According to Pew Research Center survey conducted between April 29, 2019, and May 13, 2019, 67% of Americans want minimum wage to be raised from $7.25 per hour—federal and little higher in private jobs–to $15 per hour.
Higher Taxes for the Wealthy: Survey after survey, majority of Americans support higher taxes for the wealthy. The concept has gained more support since the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 that has disproportionately benefited the richest Americans and the world’s biggest corporations. As per Reuters/Ipsos recent poll, two-thirds of Americans strongly agree that the very rich should pay higher taxes.
Wealth Tax: According to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, 64%–77% Democrats and 53% Republicans– strongly agree that the very rich should contribute an extra share of their total wealth each year to support public programs. A 2019 CNBCpoll, some 60% of millionaires said that they would support an Elizabeth Warren-style wealth tax of 2% on assets over $50 million and 3% on assets over $1 billion.
Election of the President/Electoral College: A Pew Research survey found that as of 2020, 81% of Democrats and 32% of Republicans—so a majority of Americans want the president elected by a majority of votes. They want the Electoral College removed by amending the constitution.
Hate Speech: A majority of 51% want fines or jail time for hate speech. Nearly 60% of millennials support this. Some 60% of respondents support a crackdown on TV stations and Newspapers that publish content that is biased, inflammatory or false.
Capitalism vs Socialism: Half of Democrats (Democrats are in majority in America) and two-thirds of Progressives see socialism favorably while 23% of independents and 7% of Republicans viewed socialism favorably.
Gun-Control: Majority of us Americans—60%– want stricter gun-control according to the Pew Research. As per com, as of March 27, 2023, there have been four mass shootings this year. Compared to that, there was only one mass shooting in 1982, one in 2000 and 12 in 2022. As per ABV News, more than 9800 people were killed by gun violence so far in 2023. America today has become the 21st century ‘Wild Wild West’.
Foreign Wars: America goes to war every few years as its history confirms. As James Carden writes in the Nation Magazine of January 9, 2018,–according to Walling Opinion Research undertaken in November of 2017–that majority of Americans—78% of Democrats, 64.5% of Republicans and 68.8% of independents– supported restraining military actions overseas.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, the top marginal tax rate was 91%. Today, the highest income earners pay a 39.6% marginal tax rate. The rich mega corporations pay the tax rate of 21%. But many giant corporations pay 0$ taxes using various loopholes. Like Ralph Nader once said, “Average worker at General Electric Co., pays more taxes than General Electric”! Warren Buffett once said that his secretary pays more taxes than himself! What kind of a democracy is that? That means, in America, the rich are getting richer while the poor or the middle class remain poor. The rich are amassing so much wealth in America today—at the expense of the poor–that, as pointed out by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren not long ago, the top 0.1% of rich Americans have more wealth than bottom 90%. Is that democracy?
As per the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 55 major corporations paid $0 in Federal Taxes on 2020 profits while netting $3.5 billion in aggregate tax rebates. For decades, the biggest and most profitable American corporations have found ways to avoid paying federal income taxes on their profits. Large US firms generally pay effective tax rates far below 21 percent. In June 2021, the nonprofit ProPublica pointed out that over a five-year period, the 25 richest Americans paid a combined $13.6 billion in federal income taxes though their profits were huge. This amounted to a true tax rate of only 3.4 percent! How do they do this? They use all the loopholes kept in place by our corrupt politicians. The wealthiest Americans may be avoiding $163 billion in income taxes every year according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. They hire top accountants and lawyers to achieve this. They spend millions–on accountants and lawyers–to save billions.
Thus, most of us Americans want above mentioned items but are we getting them? No. Because the American oligarchs, the billionaires, the superrich do not want them. And they control our politicians by their billions of dollars’ worth of political donations. As per Statista Research Department, in 2022, there were 12,098 lobbyists in the country bribing our elected politicians. They spent $4.09 billion on lobbying. Our politicians’—from the President down to the Senators and the Congressmen—political careers depend on these donations or these legal bribes. For our politicians, their careers are more important than their country.
In a nationally syndicated radio show the Thom Hartmann Program on July 30, 2015, the former President Jimmy Carter said that the United States is now an “oligarchy” in which “unlimited political bribery” has created “a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.” Both Democrats and Republicans, Carter said, “look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves.”
An April 16, 2014 study (report) by Princeton and Northwestern Universities concluded that “The U.S. government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country’s citizens but is instead ruled by the rich and the powerful.”
As you can see from above, majority of Americans want these items passed by the U.S. Congress, for a long time. But are our Congressmen and Senators following the majority opinion? No. They are not obeying the ‘majority will’ because their paymasters, which are the billionaires and mega-corporations–through their lobbyists—do not want these laws to pass. In other words, most laws are passed or not passed for the benefits of these paymasters. Our Congressmen and Senators do the bidding of their paymasters. They are not working for their constituents…the American people.
Thus, it is obvious that after 1950s, American democracy has surreptitiously and systematically been replaced by an oligarchy. Simply put, the U.S. Government today is of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.
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Chaitanya Davé is a Chemist and a Chemical Engineer and a businessman. He has authored three books: CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: A Shocking Record of US Crimes since 1776-2007, COLLAPSE: Civilization on the Brink-2010, CAPITALISM’S MARCH OF DESTRUCTION: Replacing it with People and Nature-Friendly Economy-2020. Author of many articles on politics, history, and the environment. Founder/President of a non-profit charity foundation helping the poor villagers of India, Nepal, Haiti, USA-homeless and other poor countries. He can be contacted at cahumanity@gmail.com.
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
All images in this article are from the author
The original source of this article is Global Research
Uncensored Scandal Interview Leads To China-Wide Arousal
by Thorsten J. Pattberg for the Saker blog
[Take a seat and look over your shoulder. This is hilarious and funny: Everything you knew about China was a Western Umph. “China Studies” is untenable and must die!]
IMAGE 0 Western China Studies, Chinese Religions, and Chinese Philosophy Are Western Fabrications – China has 2000 Years Of Wenming, Ruxue and Sixiang
Interview (Uncensored) by Guancha Network with Dr. Pattberg. The Chinese of course made their pick and changed it. Here is what I really said…
…On New Imperialism And Taiwan Studies
IMAGE 1 Western China Studies Is A Fetish Of The Colonial Past
Guancha: In your opinion, the so-called “China Studies” major in the Western Universities is manufactured and serves as an imperialistic tool. Scholars, experts on China, under the threat or coercion from governments, have to sell their anti-China stances in order to make a living/career.
Dr. Pattberg: China Studies is pure fiction for our Western rulers to control, manipulate, and create the China they want. Of course, it is an imperialistic tool. Think of Taiwan Studies, which is offered at Oxford University in the UK or Tübingen University in Germany. This discipline was invented to facilitate the myth of Two Chinas.
…On How The UK Runs The Biggest Anti-China Racket In The World
IMAGE 2 Shove Your Democracy Up Your Ass Goes Viral in Taiwan
Guancha: In your essay [Shove Your Democracy Up Your Ass], you talked about how the British authority has been cooperating with tens of thousands of people from Taiwan and Hong Kong, in order to provide a false legitimacy to so-called “China Studies” majors in Western universities, and reinforce UK government’s stance on China. Could you explain these efforts in details?
Dr. Pattberg: I encourage you to buy three books for your collection: First, Press Soldiers. It is about how Western journalists subvert and sabotage China. Second, The Xin-Civilization. It is about the Chinese can and cannot do. These two works should stand in every library. And if you really want to be terrified, there is a third, Finis Sinarum. It is about how Peking University and Tsinghua University are run by Americans.
As to the personal question about when I was offered a Hong Kong scholarship, I was at Edinburgh University in 2001. Scotland is a proud nation, but it is part of the United Kingdom. So, of course, China Studies students are sent to Taiwan and Hong Kong, because those are British/American colonies.
When I refused to go to Hong Kong and instead contacted, on my own, Fudan University in Shanghai, and was accepted, my supervisors fumed with rage. I was away in Shanghai and Beijing for two years, at Fudan University and Peking University, and when I returned to the UK in 2004, those two academic years abroad were dismissed. They said (studying in) Chinese mainland was not OK.
…On How Western Academia Is At Full War With China
IMAGE 3 History Shows The Western Powers Will Never Stop Until China Is Dismantled
Guancha: As you point out, the West has been fabricating lies on China through the leverage of their hegemony in global media and narratives. They even see it as a culture war on China with existential consequences. How would the sensible people from around the world respond to this? Professor Zhang Weiwei from Fudan University in China proposed the idea and discourse of “Civilizational State”, which facilitated the breakup of hegemonic status of Neo-Liberalism. What’s your take?
Dr. Pattberg: You mentioned Professor Zhang Weiwei from Fudan University. He is a brave man. See, the West has no concept of wenming. So Western scholars call it “civilization” or “nation”. Wenming is neither. Wenming is guaranteed not invented in the West, haha! Wenming is the China realm and it cannot be translated. Wenming is wenming.
I recently got commented on by political commentators Wu Qina and Wang Mengyuan. They long suspected there was something wrong with Western China Studies, especially all the fabricated lies about Xinjiang, the Confucius Institutes, and even coronavirus and the zero-Covid policy. All I can say is that the West is now terminally sick. And sick people lash out at the world. For example, Washington is planning a war with China. I live in Tokyo, and we have German Eurofighters and US warships here. West Germany and Japan are US vassal states. So the South China sea is a very militarized zone.
The West demands two things from China: Regime change and, at the same time, trade as usual for our Western multinationals. Under such pressure, considering that World War Three has already started with the US-NATO destruction of Russia, how can we expect China scholarship to remain clear-headed and academic? Evidently, academia is now heavily politicized. This leads to reactance.
Let me briefly explain this concept from psychology, because it is so important in international relations: Reactance means that if a person, group, or nation is pressured to behave in a certain way, it will almost invariably do the opposite, out of pure spite. So no matter what Chinese people are telling Western aggressors to “please stop, be reasonable,” the Western aggressors will never stop and will never be reasonable.
Washington or London will never adopt, consider, or even mention Wenming, Tianren-Heyi, Hexie Shehui or any other Chinese alternative worldview, sorry. We tried for decades. Not gonna happen. Read my book about it. It is called Knowledge is a Polyglot.
…On Chinese Students In the Fake UK
IMAGE 4 Getting A Western Degree Is The Ultimate Upgrade For The Chinese
Guancha: By insisting on studying China and sticking to your principles, you’ve been threatened and harassed by the anti-China agencies from UK, US etc, which cost you dearly. Yet, you broke up the obstacles and came to China, eventually earned your PhD degree from Peking University. Would you be willing to share with us the hardship you’ve experienced? What is it that keeps you moving on?
Dr. Pattberg: Everyone has his own survival story. I had two fellow students who committed suicide over Christmas in the past. One was Chinese, a law student. He just jumped off the eighth floor of his Edinburgh University Dormitory.He felt that UK degrees are fake. UK universities expanded into degree factories for Asians. Asians pay any price for a Western degree. So UK universities set up fake 1-year fast-track MA in Law Backscratching degrees for desperate Chinese. They even have their own dormitories, away from the real British students. My profs warned me that if I went to China, I would destroy my career. China is best studied at Cambridge or SOAS London School, not in Beijing or Shanghai, they said.
Western education is a misnomer. It is not about education, it is about privilege. If you have no affiliation with the West, you are a nobody. So by studying for a “Boshi” degree China, in the eyes of the Western elites, I lowered myself. When I briefly returned to Germany in 2019, my PKU doctoral degree became worthless, so I must stay in Asia permanently, currently I am in Japan.
…On Western Sanctions On Chinese Degrees
IMAGE 5 The West Already Infiltrated Chinese Top Universities
Guancha: Based on your descriptions, let’s say, for a young student in the US or UK, if he/she is interested in China, and seeks a career of studying China, what are the pressure or obstacles from the society, schools and professors? You mention your own experience in waking up from the big lies about China. Yet, many young people in the world, including those in China, are still facing such a challenge. What would be your suggestions to them?
Dr. Pattberg: Do you ask my advice for Western students who would love to come to China and get a Chinese degree? That is not advisable. The EU for example will not accredit your Chinese credentials. So you will have to go with a governmental-approved exchange program. For example, American planners are training their future “China experts” at Schwarzman Scholars (Jewish) at Tsinghua University or at Yenching Scholars (Harvard) at Peking University. Most Western universities have some form of official exchange programs with China, but unfortunately, about 95% of them are just fake ‘Chinese for Foreigners’ language courses, so be careful.
If you really want to study like a Chinese person at a Chinese University, you will immediately have American CIA, British M-6, or German BND agents blowing up your neck.I describe how it works in my books. Journalists are in this, too. My Institute a Peking University was run by the Harvard professor Tu Weiming. He had briefly worked for the CIA before, which is unavoidable in the USA as a Taiwanese Chinese.
He invited other Harvard professors, Ezra Vogel, Roderick MacFarquhar, and so on, also with CIA background. It is not a secret. He hired me, accidentally, because I was also at Harvard and because his latest wife was a Tiananmen activist and thought I could use money they got from Swiss-German Catholics (Christians) to do the German translations for them. It is not about studying China, but about how to crack China and take over.
Such activities are normal here, and the PKU deans and dons know this. I guess it is best to keep your enemy close, but that close? See, I am studying “language”, alright. And “language” is sacred to all governments, but especially to the US government, to which language is a weapon of US global hegemony. The Americans obviously want the world to speak American (English). No Chinese loanwords!
So when I published the Shengren – Avove Philosophy and Beyond Religion, these silly Harvard people canceled me. Over 700 Western publishers and media rejected my articles. The Economist magazine plagiarized it, but never mentioned the source. It is surreal, but they have that much clout. So this power clique is probably my deadliest match-up, but we shall see.
The Chinese still have a lot of winning chances, with their 30 million diaspora and above-average intelligence (compared to Europeans). But for the next two or three generations or so, I reckon, all our Chinese scholars will tremble in fear of the Americans. It is the American professors and journalists who create the heroes and martyrs for China, not the Chinese.
Real scholarship is still possible, but you will probably go underground and live in abject poverty. If you want to avoid cold-blooded politics and power-grabbers, you should probably avoid Beijing, Taipei, and Hong Kong.
I would go as far as to say that normal unbiased scholarship is now almost impossible. The West says NO to Chinese names, brands, and concepts. I said it before, I say it again, and I hope you’ll print it: Western ‘China Studies’ is wrong, incorrigible, and has to go. BUY THE SHENGREN.
…On Future Misunderstandings and Hostilities
IMAGE 6 Chinas Only Strategy Is To Lay Low And Survive
Guancha: With China embracing the world, the Chinese government, media and scholars face one major headache in communicating with the outside, i.e. how to convey their ideas and messages precisely. Sometimes, due to differences in cultural background or narratives, it may even create misunderstandings or hostilities. As someone who comes from Germany and studies China, understands China, what’s you take on this problem? What are your advice to both parties (the Chinese side, and the foreign side)?
Dr. Pattberg: Thank you for this question, which is the most important for the Chinese government and media. First, you must buy this book: The Human Hierarchy – With an Essay about a Place for China. You must understand World History, how it works, and who creates it. After that reading, you will understand all those Chinese difficulties and Western hostilities your just so alluded to.
My advice is just this: survival. Just try to stay alive. Everything the West tells China is delusion and lies. Take “democracy”. It obviously didn’t work for the Greeks or the Romans. Hitler Germany was a democracy. The White House is a democracy, haha. What a rubbish. Under democracy, the Americans enslaved the Negroes, wiped out the Indians, and conquered the Mongolian races. Think about that. Democracy means whatever reason they kill you for.
Only a thorough information campaign throughout humanity can save us. There are 300,000 Chinese students in the USA and 100,000 Chinese students in the UK. Obviously, they are incapable of producing a work like Shengren. So either something is wrong with them or they didn’t buy The Human Hierarchy. Britain ruled India with one person. The Crown. We have 6 scholars from Harvard who run China. The West will never tolerate Chinese media. All is blocked in the West. Don’t ask me. Wake up. And do what you have to do. Persevere！
Thorsten J. Pattberg, PhD, ex-Peking, ex-Harvard, ex-Tokyo scholar
US Congress discusses a new bill to increase grip over Central American countries that are shifting away from Washington’s influence.
US Congress
The US Congress is discussing a new bill to support Washington’s political influence in Central America, as the United States’s grasp over the region frails.
With leftist governments taking over in Nicaragua and Honduras, and an independent government in El Salvador, all critical of the United States, the US Congress is discussing a new bill titled “Central American network for Democracy Act.”
It was proposed to allocate an amount of USD 10 million to support this bill for the fiscal year 2023.
The new American legislative proposal stipulates that the US State Department shall establish a “fellowship program” to be known as the “Central American Network for Democracy.”
The program aims to “support a regional corps of civil society activists, lawyers (including members of the judiciary and prosecutors’ offices), journalists, and investigators for regional democracy and rule of law activities in Central America,” according to the bill.
The US empire has lost its chokehold on Central America. Nicaragua & Honduras have leftist governments; El Salvador has an independent government that is critical of the US and close to China
So the US Congress introduced a new "democracy act" to fund fifth columns in the region pic.twitter.com/7BPK4djq2v
The draft also includes in its clauses a focus on assisting “members of the regional corps in leveraging lessons learned in order to contribute to regional democracy and rule of law activities in Central America, including electoral and transition support, institutional reform, anti-corruption investigations, and local engagement.”
The new bill calls for the secretary of state to take steps that may be necessary to obtain support for the fellowship program associated with “international foundations, regional and United States governmental and non-governmental organizations, and regional and United States universities; and to ensure the fellowship program is well coordinated with and complementary of existing mechanisms, such as the Lifeline Embattled CSO Assistance Fund.”
It also calls for coordination of efforts between the “Department of State, the United States Agency for International Development, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Organization of American States, the Inter-American Court for Human Rights, and the United Nations.”
The most direct-interventionist approach set by the bill comes in the form of potentially strengthening “protection for the physical safety of individuals who must leave their home country to participate in the program, including assistance for temporary relocation, English language learning, and mental health support.”
The US midterm elections are nigh and, as I happen to be a good and patriotic Russian national, it behooves me to meddle in them. Election-meddling is an example of Russia’s soft power, which is much nicer than Russia’s hard power, so you should be glad that it’s still on offer.
I am on record saying that “The United States is not a democracy and it doesn’t matter who is president” multiple times in multiple places, and I stand by that statement, which I believe to be a provable statement of fact. Statistics show that there is zero correlation between public preferences and public policy decisions but a strong correlation between business lobby group preferences and pubic policy decisions. Thus the US is not a democracy (rule by the people) but an oligopoly (rule by business groups). From this it follows that it doesn’t matter who is president because both parties of the Democrat-Republican duopoly are owned by the same set of business groups.
And so it doesn’t matter who is president and your vote means nothing? Granted; but then does it matter WHETHER there is a president? Methinks, it does!
What if the president is an organo-servo-robot, a senile puppet, backed up by a vice president specifically chosen for being even more feeble-minded? This is an excellent ploy for putting in power an extremist group that is only tangentially related to the usual business lobbies that determine what gets done in Washington. Don’t think of some vast and amorphous “deep state”: executing such a power grab requires tight coordination, some amount of secrecy or, at least, discretion, and, of course, vast sums of money. Think instead of a singularly well-endowed evil oligarch and his multiple minions whom he has carefully groomed and insinuated into positions of power.
The overall goal of such an extremist group may well go far beyond the usual interests of business lobbies, such as preserving shareholder equity, a wider spot at the federal subsidy trough, knocking down transnational barriers to trade and movement of capital, lower business taxes and so on. These zealots may well have an altogether different view of the future in mind, in which a tiny group of ultra-rich owns everything while the rest of us own nothing but, being made tame and docile through all sorts of medical and technical manipulation, feel happy about this state of affairs… like so many animals in a menagerie… not too many animals, mind you: drastic population reduction is likely a key goal of theirs.
What might the overall goals of this organization be? It’s not exactly a secret. Here’s a sample, taken from the “Goals 2030” document from the 2018 conference at the Complexity Institute in Santa Fe:
No private or personal property.
Guaranteed basic income for all who accept this “new normal.”
Cash free society; digital money (as a method of social control).
Hydrocarbon ratings for states and companies.
Tight social controls (via drones, facial recognition, etc.)
Rationing of all consumption, including energy and natural resources.
Patents on all seed stocks and restrictions on food production for personal use.
Almost total elimination of livestock. The remaining population to be fed a vegetarian diet augmented with artificial protein, insects, etc.
Population reduction through sterilization and birth control.
Enforced vaccination.
Ban on alternative forms of medicine.
Erasure of sexual (male/female) distinctions.
Child sterilization and castration (chemical and/or surgical).
Some people may recognize in this list various items that have been on offer for some time at the Davis conference and other venues. That famously went nowhere when the perennial Davos maître d’, a Mr. Klaus, if memory serves, teleconferenced in Putin and Xi to ask them whether they’d like to go along with such a plan. The two answered that, no, they have plans of their own that serve the needs of their people. This threw a large wrench into the works.
The plan (I am guessing) was to use the senile grandpa and his idiot sidekick as a Trojan horse to infest the White House, then use that position to destroy America, and then use America’s rotting corpse as a staging area for launching similar attacks worldwide. But if Putin and Xi, and with them 80% of the world, are having none of it, then what? Fight a war against Russia and China in tandem, and lose it? What then?
And so they now wait for the inevitable. Russia is done chewing through the original Ukrainian military and its Soviet-era weaponry stockpile and is now halfway through chewing through any remaining Ukrainian raw recruits (old men and children, essentially), plus NATO mercenaries and NATO’s weaponry stockpile, all without breaking a sweat. It is now gradually disabling all public works throughout the Ukrainian territory, much of that work being done using a low-budget artificially intelligent flying chainsaw called Geranium 2. (We Russians like names like that. A 152mm cannon is called Hyacinth B; a 240mm self-propelled mortar is called 2S4 Tulip. Would you like to smell our flowers?)
The lack of electricity, heat or running water gives the remaining half of the Ukrainian population a very good reason to pack their suitcases and head West. Those 15-20 million additional ornery Ukrainians demanding to be fed and housed will be sure to do wonders for Western morale. This will come at a time when Western restrictions on the import of Russian energy will begin to seriously bite. People won’t be pleased.
Do you think the not even particularly shadowy oligarch whose minions who are currently running amok in the White House have a plan for dealing with the horrible mess they have created? No, they do not. They are freaking out. Worse yet, they are losing narrative control. The Biden presidency no longer looks real; it looks like what it actually is: a hoax. And if he isn’t real, then who are the cockroaches that have been running amok in the White House these past two years?
At this point, only a very silly person might think that Biden, who can barely read an entire sentence from a teleprompter without stumbling at least once, keeps shaking hands with ghosts, calling out to dead people in the audience, needs multiple tries to correctly name the country on which he has spent $20 billion, was able to review, never mind write, those 100 presidential orders he has signed, 19 of them during his first week in office.
Then who did write them and why? Wouldn’t you like to find out? I can’t tell you how to vote, but I can tell you this: in some states (not all) there is a specific way you can vote to make it more likely that we will find out who these cockroaches are. Flushing them out of their hiding places in positions of power and stepping on them would come next.
Listening to Biden prattling about democracy, democracy, democracy, and how we must save American democracy from swarming threats to democracy, with the insistence and urgency of a starveling aluminum-siding salesman, I am filled with wonder. Convincing people that they live in a democracy is a lot of work, like pumping air into an inner tube with a leak. America is no more a democracy than it is a potted plant.
Functional illiterates cannot fill out a job application, manage a checkbook, read a simple story in a newspaper, or use the social media. Those who can’t read don’t, and another large number who can barely read don’t either. At a low estimate they must amount to a quarter of the population. They vote.
Democracy is best suited to towns of a few hundred people who, however dim of wit in many cases, may understand such questions as should we build a new school which will cost me so many dollars in higher taxes. Even here the more crafty and avaricious will likely prevail.
A problem in democracies—“democracies”—is of course that the dim, the inattentive, and those who are both dim and inattentive, will always outnumber the bright and informed. However, the syndrome worsens as the domain upon which the electorate is to make judgement expands from town to state to country to world. The number of unintelligent is constant. The number who are insufficiently attentive rises with the complexity of things needing attention. A cardiac surgeon is no fool, but has work, medical literature he needs to read, family, and a hobby or two. Little time is left to worry about semiconductor sanctions against China or Washington’s desire for Russia to invade the Ukraine.
“Take your pick from this bouillabaisse of ignorance:
* More than one in three people (37%) could not name a single right protected by the First Amendment. THE FIRST AMENDMENT.
* Only one in four (26%) can name all three branches of the government. (In 2011, 38% could name all three branches.)
* One in three (33%) can’t name any branch of government.“
People so innocent of political grasp can have only the most vaporous notions of pressing political questions. They are either fools with minds best suited for working as gardeners or so little engaged with the surrounding society as to achieve the effect of being fools while still able to find their way home at night. Still others are not unintelligent but not interested. None of these should vote.
“A quarter of Americans surveyed could not correctly answer that the Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around, according to a report out Friday from the National Science Foundation.”
This is so astonishing that one might suspect it of coming from some crackpot blogger with no girlfriend living in his parents’ basement. But no. The National Science Foundation is about as respectable as they come. A quarter of the population are at the level of an undiscovered tribe living in the rain forests of the Amazon Basin and eating grubs fished from rotting logs. Little prospect exists that people in such darkness know much of anything else. Yet we encourage them to vote.
“Six Baltimore City schools — five high schools and one middle school — were found to have not a single student who scored proficient in math or reading in 2016, Fox News reports.”
Others schools had only a handful of literate students. Math results were as grim. These “students “will be around for another fifty years if they are not shot, virtually unemployable. Yet they can vote.
The schools mentioned are all black, and similar figures would come out of similarly black schools in many other cities. What does this say about “democracy “in America?
Gallup: Forty-six Percent of Americans Believe in Creationism
The distribution of intelligence being symmetric, half of the population are below average. A man with an IQ of 90 is not actually stupid, doesn’t mumble or bump into things, and can successfully raise a family and drive a truck. Yet he is unlikely to grasp the foreign policy of the United States or, really, to have heard of it. If he has any knowledge at all of public affairs, it will be at the level of The Russians are bad, wherever exactly Russia is, so we need to spend more on Our Boys in Uniform.
A lot of people get their news from television, the medium of the illiterate and semiliterate. Obviously, not everybody who watches television is illiterate, but everybody who is illiterate watches television. Many don’t watch the news at all, it being complicated and mysterious and talking about the inexplicable and unknown, such as Kazakhstan and Nordstream Two. The consequence is that if MSNBC and CNN say over and over that the Chinese are doing something terrible, most will believe it. Judging by the intellectual level of much of television, a sentence with a dependent clause will exceed the capacities of many. They vote.
Lincoln famously said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” You don’t have to. Being a politician, he didn’t add that you can fool enough of the people enough of the time, and that is enough. This is the basis of American democracy.
77% Of Students At One Baltimore High School Read at Elementary, Kindergarten Level
”In reading, 628 Patterson High School students took the test. Out of those students, 484 of them, or 77%, tested at an elementary school reading level. That includes 71 high school students who were reading at a kindergarten level and 88 students reading at a first-grade level. Another 45 are reading at a second-grade level. Just 12 students tested at Patterson High School, were reading at grade level, which comes out to just 1.9%.”
Democracy? A democracy of fools is no democracy. It allows the very smart, concentrated in New York and Washington, the governing suites of major corporations and, nowadays, the distributed wunderkind of the tech firms, to run the country from behind the scenes. Whether intended or not, the drive to lower the voting age and enfranchise the ghetto populations serve only to further diminish the pitiable competence of the electorate and allow the elites to keep these untermenschen out of the hair of their betters.
“I myself have always been for lowering the voting age to 16,” Pelosi said. “I think it’s really important to capture kids when they’re in high school, when they’re interested in all of this, when they’re learning about government, to be able to vote.”
The less bright, less informed, and less experienced of life are easier to mold and manipulate. Who could be better than children?
If America wanted a functional democracy, which it doesn’t, it would, first, raise the voting age to 25 or 30. The idea that adolescents of eighteen with no experience of life beyond libidinous frat parties, much less sixteen-year-olds, can vote intelligently is silly. (Not that I have anything against libidinous frat parties. They just aren’t qualification for voting)
This would require a recognition that voting should be a privilege, not an entitlement and that government should be done by people able to do it.
Second, a demanding version of the old literacy test would serve wonderfully. This should demonstrate at a minimum a reading fluency of political ideas express in standard English. A reasonable grasp of world geography and American government might profitably be required. Perhaps a measured IQ of 120 or better should be in the mix.
This would make the bamboozlement and competitive shooing of the puzzled much, much harder, which is why it will never fly with the elites who find an electorate of the easily led congenial.
These measures would also screen out various minorities disproportionately. They would also ignite the resentment against the bright and cultivated that forms the bedrock of American society.
Comprehensive ignorance extends to groups many of whom are presumably well educated. Consider the following:
“According to the Washington Post database, regarded by Nature magazine as the “most complete database,” 13 unarmed black men were fatally shot by police in 2019. According to a second database called “Mapping Police Violence”, compiled by data scientists and activists, 27 unarmed black men were killedbypolice (by any means) in 2019.”
This shows that forty-four percent of liberals are incompetent to vote. If the misestimate is reduced to five hundred, many more believe it. Similar numbers could probably be compiled for conservatives on other questions, conspiracy theories being promising candidates.
Race is the most dangerous, destructive, and intractable problem facing America, yet these people are too stupid, lazy, inattentive, emotional, or worm-eaten by ideology to have even a faint grasp of what is happening. But they vote.
If liberals, a category including academia, the media, and a great many of the highly educated believe such wildly erroneous numbers, it is likely that blacks, a group in large part poorly educated, believe these things at a higher rate. Do you suppose convincing them that they are being slaughtered en masse improves race relations?
The very bright will always rule, though not always obviously. An IQ of 140 is said to be entry level for Wall Street. This excludes well over ninety-nine percent of the population. Mike Pompeo, while a wretched human being, was first in class at West Point and editor of the Harvard Law Review, Hillary a National Merit Fninalist, putting her in the upper .5 percent of test-takers in Illinois. Bill was a Rhodes scholar.
Intellectual mediocrities will often be in prominent positions, Joe and Kamala being examples, in Congress and the White House, these being storefronts for the very smart. The brains, and the power, are in the shadows. But, methinks, a genuinely bright electorate would be less likely to anoint freaks and rogues.
Interesting question: What would be the effect of requiring an IQ of 130, the cutoff for Mensa, to vote? The idea will arouse shrieks from an American public famously resentful of excellence except in football. (I am reminded of a fellow fourteen-year-old in Athens, Alabama who, seeing me reading a book on biology, said angrily, “You ain’t no gooder’n me.”) A test for voting of course runs against the current policy of enfranchising the mentally lame and halt. Would the upper two percent of the population do a better job of electing leaders? They would certainly be much more difficult to con.
I will now go to the American Legion in Chapala, which makes really good huevos rancheros, which I will accompany with a double bourbon, and pretend that things aren’t as they are. Sometimes, it works.
كاتب وباحث سياسي في العديد من المنافذ الإخبارية العربية ، ومنها جريدة الأخبار ، وقناة الميادين الإخبارية الفضائية ، وعربي 21 ، وراي اليوم
في ظلِّ انشغال الأوروبيين بقضاياهم الداخلية الضّاغطة، إضافةً إلى تزامن قمة بايدن “للديمقراطية” مع المؤتمر الشعبي المؤتمر عن مستقبل أوروبا، تراجَع بشكلٍ عام الاهتمام الأوروبي بالقمة.
في مقاله الشَّهير “لماذا يجب على أميركا أن تقود مجدداً؟”، الذي نُشِر في آذار/مارس 2020 قبيل خوضه السباق الرئاسي، والذي رسم فيه جو بايدن معالم سياسته الخارجية في حال انتخابه، كان بايدن قد ركّز على فكرة كون العالم يخوض معركة “الديمقراطية” ضد “الأوتوقراطية”، بحسب فهمه. وكان من أبرز ما طرحه في مقاله ذاك، عزمه على عقد مؤتمر دولي بقيادة أميركا لدعم “الديمقراطية” وتعزيزها حول العالم.
ولعلّ القمة من أجل “الديمقراطية” التي عقدها في 9 و10 كانون الأول/ديسمبر 2021 هي ذاك المؤتمر الذي بشَّر به في مقاله المذكور، فهل جاءت قمة “الديمقراطية” ونتائجها كما بشَّر بها العالم إبان انتخابه؟
دعت الإدارة الأميركية أكثر من 100 دولة إلى قمة بايدن، لكننا نجد غياباً كاملاً لأي معايير في توجيه الدعوات، فحتى لو سلَّمنا للأميركي بمعاييره المفترضة وشهادات حسن السلوك التي خوّل نفسه توزيعها في “الديمقراطية” والحُكْم الرشيد من خلال مؤسسة “فريدام هاوس”، فإننا نجد تناقضاً واضحاً في قائمة المدعوين، فقد تمت دعوة العراق وباكستان والهند وأكرانيا مثلاً، بينما لم تتم دعوة سنغافورة، ولا تركيا وهنغاريا الأطلسيتين، ناهيك بعدم دعوة روسيا وإيران، رغم تنظيمهما انتخابات دورية وحقيقية.
ولهذا، كان واضحاً من قائمة المدعوّين أنَّ الأميركي يتغطّى مجدداً بقضية “الديمقراطية” و”حقوق الإنسان” من أجل أهدافٍ جيوسياسيةٍ تتعلق بمواجهة الصين. أكّد هذا الاستنتاج الذي ذهب إليه غالبية المتابعين، دعوة تايوان إلى القمة، رغم أنها ليست دولةً مستقلةً.
على الأرجح، كان هذا الاستنتاج هو ما دفع باكستان إلى الاعتذار عن حضور قمة بايدن، إذ قال رئيس الوزراء الباكستاني عمران خان، في 9 كانون الأول/ديسمبر 2021، إنَّ باكستان غير راغبةٍ في الانضمام إلى أيّ تجمعٍ سياسيٍ ضد أحدٍ، وإنَّ العالم عانى الكثير من الحرب الباردة، وإن دولته لا ترغب في أن تجد نفسها جزءاً من حربٍ باردةٍ جديدةٍ.
وجاء موقف روسيا والصين حازماً تجاه قمة بايدن، إذ قالت المتحدثة باسم وزارة الخارجية الروسية، ماريا زاخاروفا: “تقوم الولايات المتحدة بتدمير نظام العلاقات الدولية المؤسسة على القانون الدولي والدور المركزي للأمم المتحدة، وذلك من أجل إنشاء منطقة راحة خاصة بها تنوي واشنطن أن تهيمن فيها بانفراد…”. ولهذا السبب بالذات، تنظّم الولايات المتحدة هذه الفعالية الجماعية في شكل “قمة الديمقراطية”، التي ستمنح المشاركين فيها شرف حق خدمة المصالح الأميركية.
أما الصين، فقال المتحدث باسم وزارة خارجيتها إن الديمقراطية أصبحت منذ فترةٍ طويلةٍ سلاح دمارٍ شاملٍ تستخدمه الولايات المتحدة للتدخل في الدول الأخرى، مشيراً إلى الثورات الملونة التي أثارتها أميركا في الخارج، وتابع كلامه بالقول: “إن القمّة نُظّمت لرسم خطوط تحاملٍ أيديولوجيةٍ، واستغلال الديمقراطية… والتحريض على الانقسام والمواجهة”.
إذاً، ما كان الهدف الحقيقي من قمة بايدن – كما بات واضحاً للقاصي والداني في دول العالم – إلا مواجهة صعود الصين في الدرجة الأولى، والتصدي لعودة روسيا إلى الساحة الدولية في الدرجة الثانية.
عندها، لا حرج إذا قيل إنَّ القمة لم تحقق الكثير على هذا الصعيد، فاستبعاد دول مثل سنغافورة، التي تقع في المجال الحيوي للصين، والتي يمكن أن يكون لها دور كبير ضمن استراتيجية أميركا لمواجهة الصين، لا يبدو خطوةً أميركيةً في الاتجاه الصحيح.
ولعلَّ استبعاد سنغافورة كان في الأساس بسبب رفض رئيس الوزراء السنغافوري الدخول في تحالف من أجل “الديمقراطية”، يكون الهدف الحقيقي منه الدخول في حربٍ باردةٍ جديدةٍ ضد الصين، ولا يبدو كذلك استبعاد تركيا ومصر، الدولتين الإقليميتين المهمتين، خطوة أميركية محسوبة، فكما قال ستيفن وولت في مقاله بعنوان “قمة بايدن للديمقراطية يمكن أن تأتي بنتائج عكسية”: “إذا ما كانت الصين تعدّ التحدي المركزي للولايات المتحدة الأميركية في هذه المرحلة، فإن التركيز على الديمقراطية يمكن ألّا يكون الطريق الأمثل لمواجهة هذا التحدي”.
أما عن حضور أوروبا في هذه القمة، فرغم تصريحات ممثل السياسات الخارجية للاتحاد الأوروبي، جوسيب بوريل، التي حثَّت الدول الأوروبية على المشاركة البنَّاءة في قمة بايدن، فإنَّ مصالح أوروبا لا تبدو متطابقة مع الولايات المتحدة الأميركية تجاه الصين في هذه المرحلة، ولا سيما في ظل جائحة “كوفيد-19” والتغيّر المناخي، إضافة إلى صعود الصين كقطب اقتصادي مهم لدول العالم، فكما أوضحت إيرين جونز وإليسا ليدو في مؤسسة كارنيغي للأبحاث: “تسود أوروبا تحفّظات على عودة أميركا لقيادة العالم، إذ يشير مصطلح “الاستقلال الاستراتيجي” الذي يُعد الأكثر رواجاً في أوروبا في هذه الحقبة إلى مَنحى أوروبيّ للخلاص من الخيار بين قيادة واشنطن أو بكين”.
وأضافت جونز وليدو أنَّ البعض في أوروبا يرى أنَّ تقسيم بايدن لدول العالم بين دول “ديمقراطية” يمكن التعامل معها، وأخرى “غير ديمقراطية” لا تصلح للتعامل معها، لا يأخذ بالحسبان تعقيدات العالم في هذه الحقبة.
وفي ظلِّ انشغال الأوروبيين بقضاياهم الداخلية الضّاغطة، إضافةً إلى تزامن قمة بايدن “للديمقراطية” مع المؤتمر الشعبي المؤتمر عن مستقبل أوروبا، تراجَع بشكلٍ عام الاهتمام الأوروبي بالقمة، في إشارةٍ إلى تراجع أهمية هذه القمة على المستوى العالمي.
لقد بشَّر بايدن الأميركيين والعالم بأنَّ “أميركا عائدة” في فترته الرئاسية، وكان العمل على تعزيز ما سمّاه “الديمقراطية” في العالم ومواجهة “الأوتوقراطية”، من خلال عقد قمّة عالمية لهذا الغرض، بحيث تكون فاتحةً لمسار جديد تقوده الولايات المتحدة الأميركية، وكلنا يدرك أنَّ هذه العبارات تخفي وراءها هدف مواجهة صعود الصين كقطب عالميّ، واستعادة روسيا مكانتها كقطب دولي آخر، فإذا بنا نجد بايدن يعقد قمة عن بُعد، رأى فيها الكثيرون مجرد استعراض لقيادةٍ أميركيةٍ عالميةٍ لم تَعُدْ موجودةً بالفعل، وظهر أنها كانت موجهةً إلى الداخل الأميركي أكثر من الخارج، وذلك، كما يبدو، في محاولةٍ لطمأنة الداخل الأميركي إلى موقع أميركا العالمي.
ولكنَّ المفارقة كانت في عقد أميركا مؤتمراً من أجل “الديمقراطية” عقب شهورٍ قليلةٍ فقط على إعلانها فشل مشروعها المزعوم لترسيخ ديمقراطيتها في أفغانستان، وعقب تزايد الحديث عن تراجع “الديمقراطية” في الداخل الأميركي ذاته، وذلك في ظلِّ عدم اعتراف قطاعٍ واسعٍ من بين الجمهوريين بنتائج الانتخابات الرئاسية الأميركية الأخيرة.
في ظلِّ تراجع الإمبراطوريات، يبدو أنَّنا سنبدأ بسماع الكثير من الجعجعة من دون رؤية الطحين. ولا أريد المبالغة كثيراً، لكنَّ قمة بايدن الأخيرة هذه تذكِّر بالقمم العربية التي لم يكن ينتج منها سوى البيانات، من دون أية نتائج عمليةٍ على أرض الواقع.إن الآراء المذكورة في هذه المقالة لا تعبّر بالضرورة عن رأي الميادين وإنما تعبّر عن رأي صاحبها حصراً
Let’s begin by stating the obvious: those who now claim that the Biden Putin summit did not produce anything tangible and was, at best, a waste of time are plainly wrong, mainly because they misunderstood what was really at stake (and what still remains at stake following the Summit).
What is the evidence for this?
Their dream still lives on
The first and most obvious sign that something very real took place is the absolutely hysterical reaction of the War Party (which I define as follows: the entire US media, the Neocons, the MAGA-GOP gang in Congress, the “non-Biden gang” inside the Democratic Party, the US energy sector, the US MIC, the entire US “deep state”, the Israel lobby, the Ukie lobby, the UK lobby, the Polish lobby, etc.) The Biden administration is coming under HUGE pressure from the War Party to continue to threaten Russia will all sorts of sanctions and “consequences” unless Russia stands down from her current “threatening” stance and give up Putin’s “dream” to invade the Ukraine and “restore the Soviet Union”. The fact that none of that verbiage has any connections to reality is not an impediment for the War Party. You could say that the War Party is a choir which only knows how to sing one song.
[Sidebar: on a recent talkshow on Russia TV one guest observed that it is truly hilarious to see the West threaten Russia with “sanctions from hell” while the latter are an absolute joke compared to the devastating crisis Russia survived in the 90s when the West was “helping” Russia. He is quite correct. I would also add that a country which lost 27 million people rather than to bow down and accept the become a colony of (Hitler’s) “United Europe” is unlikely be deterred by being disconnected from the SWIFT, especially since doing so would cripple the EU much more than Russia!]
Second, there are indirect but consistent signs of a very serious internal struggle inside the “Biden” administration. This is nothing new, it all began with Obama, continued under Trump and is still happening today: when a President is very weak, the various agencies and departments begin to develop their own, quasi private, foreign (and internal) policies. Under Obama and Trump this was not too much of an issue since neither President was willing or able to seriously negotiate with the Kremlin (which is when the Russians began to speak of their US counterparts as “non-agreement-capable”). This time around, however, “Biden” clearly made a concerted effort to try to initiate some kind of dialog, hence this time there is something very real at stake.
Third, the tone in Russia has changed rather dramatically. Just read the transcript of the interview of the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov: it is particularly amazing to hear that kind of language coming from a top Foreign Ministry official (Russian diplomats are very old fashioned and rarely use such a direct language). Most striking in this interview is Ryabkov’s deep pessimism about the USA being able to actually reach a negotiated agreement with Russia on pretty much anything.
So what is really at stake here?
First, we need to note that we still don’t know what really took place between Putin and Biden. All we know is that both sides agreed to continue their dialog on the expert level. However, we can make some educated guesses based on how both sides have behaved since the Summit.
Second, there are clear signs that the “Biden” Administration is still apparently trying not to fully cave in to the War Party. The problem is that this stance is only partial (different officials express often diverging opinion) and hesitant (even Biden himself seems to be zig-zagging about what is actually going on between the US and Russia). Most western analysts out there see the following as the key issues between Russia and the USA:
Russian plans to invade the Ukraine
North Stream 2
Russian subversive covert actions in the West (Skripal)
Putin’s desire to re-create the USSR, if needed by using military force
Russian support for non-democratic forces and regimes worldwide (Syria)
I happen to think that all of these are only secondary issues, pretexts.
Again, this is the only song the War Party choir knows how to sing, so why expect anything else from
The new “democratic” values
So what is really at stake here?
Think about the recent Summit for Democracy and ask yourself: what was this all about? It sure was not about democracy or human rights, not with countries like Israel or Latvia attending, both of which undeniably are Apartheid states. Not to mention what the US and UK are doing to Julian Assange whose life, apparently, is much less valuable that Navalny’s. All that nonsense is just PR, nothing else.
As I mentioned in my article about this summit, the real purpose of the summit was to issue certificates: those invited were certified as loyal House Negroes while those not invited were labeled as evil and dangerous Field Negros. Now, considering the extreme weakness and vulnerability of the United States, it is pretty clear that the actual value of the “good House Negro” certificate was very limited for those who received it. So this is not about the Negroes at all, it was about the Master of the house and his need to show that he still was the master and that he could still command a sizeable force of nice and obedient slaves to do his bidding. In other words, it was a show of force for (an otherwise rather desperate) Uncle Shmuel.
This is absolutely crucial: for a dead Empire and a dead USA, appearances are much more important than reality. As I have mentioned in the past, the AngloZionist Empire died on 8 January 2020 when the Iranians attacked US bases with missiles and the US did absolutely nothing while the USA, at least as we knew them, died on January 6th of 2021 (these two events were almost exactly a year apart, which makes me wonder what else could happen in January of 2022?). The main objective of the Summit for Democracy was to hide these realities as much as possible and the very fact that the US had to organize such a silly non-event to try to still look relevant tells us everything we really need to know about the real condition of the Empire and the USA (both dead).
In the light of the above, now let’s look at the current dialog (however tenuous) between the USA and Russia.
US position: first, and above all else, the White House needs to avoid giving the appearance that Russia and the USA are negotiating on an equal footing. This desire to maintain an appearance of superiority is made even harder by the stark reality which shows that far from being equal, Russia is the stronger party in this negotiation, and by a big margin at that (militarily of course, but also socially, politically and economically). This is the key to the USA’s dilemma: how do you negotiate with a stronger opponent while maintaining the appearance of your own (non-existing) superiority?
Russian position: the Kremlin is ready to negotiate, but only if the US accepts that both sides have equal rights and obligations. For example, if the USA gets to declare that it has “interests” thousands of miles away from home, then Russia gets to declare that she too has “interests”, especially in countries on her own border.
Clearly, those two positions are mutually exclusive.
Furthermore, both sides recognize that.
The USA’s method to deal with this problem is to do one thing while saying its opposite, that is to quietly accept the Russian stance on negotiations while publicly denying this.
The Russian method is even more simple: do nothing and simply wait. Wait for the EU to freeze, wait for the USA to further drown in its many and very serious internal crises and wait for country 404, the “moldy bagel” to use Dmitri Orlov’s very accurate expression, to simply rot away. Here is how the vast majority of Russian analysts and officials see the situation:
Russia has no need, plan, desire or even interest in invading country 404.
NS2 is important to Russia, but not crucially so.
Militarily, Russia can deal with the Ukie military in a few hours without sending a single soldier across the border.
Russia can also defeat the US on any level of warfare, from local tactical to strategic and nuclear.
Russia, being a much more free and democratic country than most of the House Negros invited to the Summit, has no interest whatsoever in the West’s verbiage about human rights.
Russia has no need to subvert or interfere in any of the countries which are so hostile to her simply because these countries are already quite busy committing economic, moral, spiritual, political and cultural suicide all by their own with no need for any further help from Russia
Russia is quite happy to work with the “bad” Field Negroes to build a multi-polar world composed of truly sovereign countries which agree to base their relations on international law.
Russia simply does not care what the House Negroes will do or say, simply because they have no agency (except for a few special cases like India).
Then what about the Russian forces near (relatively) the Ukrainian border?
Actually, several retired Russian generals have repeatedly explained what that is all about. This force is simply not large enough to consider an invasion (and subsequent occupation!) of the Ukraine. Its true purpose is quite simple: they are quite capable of stopping any Ukronazi invasion of the LDNR should the LDNR’s defenses collapse. And for this much more limited mission, this force is more than sufficient to quickly and successfully execute such a mission. No less important is that the presence of such an “insurance force” is a very clear message to the Nazi regime in Kiev: there is absolutely no way you will ever invade the LDNR – try this, and we will move our forces into the LDNR, disarm you, and recognize the LDNR as independent states.
Here is it important to repeat something one more time: it is not the West’s worst nightmare that Russia might invade the Ukraine. The West’s worst nightmare would be for Russia not to move a single solider across the border. That is the “peace nightmare” which the War Party wants, and needs, to avoid at any cost.
So, where do we go from here?
I get a sense that there are some people in the Biden Administration who are smart enough to choose a “soft landing” for the USA over a “crash and burn” scenario. They are quite aware of all the facts I describe above and what they aim for is an orderly retreat while negotiating for the best possible terms for the USA with Russia (and other countries, by the way). The problem is that any notion of an orderly retreat is presented by the War Party as abject surrender.
[Sidebar: this is not a uniquely US problem: ever since Putin came to power there were those who called the many Russian orderly retreats as signs of caving in to the West: they said that Putin was an obedient agent of “Davos” or Israel, and they blamed him for his alledged weakness and indecisiveness. The truth is that both in politics and in military art, orderly retreats are a very difficult maneuver to successfully pull-off and, worse, even when they are successfully executed, they still very rarely get any praise but, instead, get only disgusted accusations of weakness bordering on treason. “Couch-generals” have the luxury and time to demand a heroic counter-attacks, but they don’t have to then live with the responsibility for the inevitable consequences of such “heroic” grandstanding.]
Still, I am convinced that there are those in the Biden Administration who want an orderly retreat, not for the sake of peace, of course, but in order to buy time to regroup, reorganize, rearm, retrain and basically circle the wagons on a smaller, but better protected, part of our planet.
For the rulers of the USA, it is preferable to have the size of their plantation shrink, even quite significantly, than to have some combination of Field Negroes to completely burn down their house. So they want to settle for a smaller plantation and fewer House Negroes.
Sadly, I don’t see the Biden White House capably of riding out the hysterics of the War Party, if only because the War Party fully compensates what it lacks in common sense with a maniacal determination to prevail, if only because should “peace break out” they would lose their incomes. I sure hope that I am wrong here, but it would take a quite charismatic leader to dare to openly take on the War Party (we all remember how the swamp quickly drained Trump rather than the other way around).
Reality always defeats delusions
Most analysts see that 2022 will be the year of a massive internal crisis in the USA, with inflation, crime, riots, shortages, etc. all dramatically rising. Optimists will see that as a good sign (surely the US won’t start a war when it is itself in a quasi-civil war state!) while pessimists will see that as a sign that the US will certainly start some kind of war (war is an old and effective trick to avoid dealing with internal collapse).
Here we can only hope (and pray!) for the best, while preparing for the worst.
Then there is the UK+3B+PU gang which is absolutely desperate for some kind of war, hopefully short and triumphant. They are absolutely horrified at the idea that this war might not happen. Yes, in theory, the USA does have enough weight to bring them to heel, but the problem is that the US executive is itself very divided (and, not to mention, very corrupt). Russia most definitely cannot stop them, because for them even losing a war to Russia is preferable to not having one in the first place.
In summary:
The USA is deeply divided and cannot even give the appearance of accepting Russia as an equal partner.
The EU is run by a class of narcissistic infantiles who are terminally out of touch with reality.
The War Party will only increase its hysterics as it sees war as the only option to remain relevant.
Russia has done all she should and could by forcing the USA into a strategic retreat and now all she can do now is wait.
My personal conclusion will be in the form of a short video clip that eloquently shows what happened the last time around when the West wanted to crush Russia.
Did you know that a huge International Forum on Democracy is ongoing in China right now? This is before the supposed Summit on Democracy which is an attempt to divide the world into Democracies and Autocracies, according to the wishes of the rules-based international order.
As we have seen so often from China, they acted with incredible speed and presented their own high-quality International Forum. They also published a Chinese White Paper on Democracy and it outlines how their Whole Process People’s Democracy functions for their people: http://en.people.cn/n3/2021/1204/c312369-9928374.html
These are the first presentations followed by a panel discussion:
China has learned over the past three years how to defend itself against accusations coming from the combined Western influence sphere. Although we know that the media in general still balances toward the combined Western Sphere, there is now a serious contender in the room with the ability, incredible speed of implementation, track record, education, and creative expressive talent to gain media supremacy in getting their message to the world.
Oh, the poor ‘partners’ …
Australia
The ‘partners’ are being led by their noses. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the US and its allies are the “biggest beneficiaries” of Australia’s trade row with China. Washington is in bed with Canberra, at the same time, it points the finger at Beijing and in the background, it picks up Australia’s lost Chinese trade. So, simply stated, all the trade that Australia lost in their trade row with China, from coal to iron ore to meat, the US quietly picked up.
Taiwan
From Taiwan, I hear a similar activity is taking place but this is not yet confirmed by the needed 3 sources. The idea of keeping the issues with Taiwan hot, is that the Taiwanese semiconductor foundry company (TSMC), the biggest employer in Taiwan with a raft of supporting industries around it, is being moved lock, stock, barrel, and existence to new facilities in Arizona. We will wait for more confirmation, but this is a very dangerous move to make, as TSMC is not only the biggest semiconductor company in the world, the industry itself depends on a highly educated and trained workforce. The Taiwanese workforce will lose its lunch.
All the latest from Godfree Roberts’ newsletter, Here Comes China:
BeiDou conducted the first inter-satellite and ground station communication using using lasers instead of radio signals, transmitting data a million times faster than radio and increasing satnav accuracy 4000%. Read full article →
A high-speed railway linking China to landlocked Laos opened Friday. The 660-mile, 160 km/h line runs through mountains and ravines from Kunming to Vientiane. Read full article →
Premier Li Keqiang says the establishment of a centre in Hong Kong to handle Asia – Africa trade and investment disputes will strengthen the city’s role as an arbitration hub and “provide more convenient and efficient dispute resolution services” for parties in both regions. [It also bypasses the WTO–Ed.] Read full article →
China’s service trade rose 13% YoY to $659 billion in the first ten months of the year. Service exports rose 29% YoY, and service imports rose 1%. In October alone, the country’s service trade hit 414 billion yuan, up 24% YoY. Read full article →
China now leads the world in trade of both goods and services and its trading partners now cover 230 countries and regions. China contributed 35% of the growth in global imports in the past five years. Read full article →
Meeting its carbon goals could save China trillions:China could dodge $134 trillion in climate-related losses by meeting carbon neutrality targe. China is predicted to see an 81% reduction in its accumulative climate-related losses by 2100 if it achieves its carbon neutrality target, according to a new study from think tanks in Beijing and London. Read full article →
And extreme ethics violation in my view: In 2018, Dr. He Jiankui shocked the world by announcing that he had used the CRISPR genome-editing technique to alter embryos that were implanted and led to the birth of two children. Today, the children are healthy toddlers and Western researchers want to get their hands on their DNA. Read full article →
China has doubled installed renewable energy capacity since 2015, to one billion kW, or 43% of total installation: Wind power generation increased 30% year-on-year (299 million kWs), solar power generation grew 24% (282 million kWs), and hydropower remains at 385 million kWs; Cost inflation delays solar energy expansion. Read full article →
New groundwater regulations tackle overuse and contamination of 16 billion m³/year of water. Fines could reach $783,000 daily. Right now 44% of groundwater monitoring stations record Grade V, the lowest water quality. Read full article →
China is scouring the countryside to find native seed, animal and fish genetic resources in a national germplasm census to protect “family property” and gain self-reliance in crop and animal breeding. “Excellent” plant and animal resources will be protected on company-run farms if they are in danger of extinction or turned over to Chinese breeding companies to exploit their commercial potential to propel Chinese seed companies as global competitors. Read full article →
Guinea-Bissau and Eritrea join the Belt And Road Initiative. Guinea-Bissau covers 36,125 square kilometres, with a population of 1,874,303, and like China’s Macau, was once part of the Portuguese Empire. Eritrea also signed an MoU with China to join the BRI and is expected to cement China’s presence in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea, with interests ranging from a military base to protect shipping, in addition to infrastructure projects in ports and railways. China has been investing in the country for some time. Read full article →
To conclude, China developed its policies to deal with its national issues. But in so doing it has created both practical and theoretical achievements which are the world’s most advanced. China has never asked other countries to learn from its example, but neither can if forbid them to do so. Given the gigantic scale of China’s achievements anyone with sense in the world will study these intently. The “Resolution on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party over the Past Century” is therefore not only key for China, it is a document of crucial importance for the entire world. Learning from China.
US foreign policy is by no means becoming less ideological. Liberal ideology in its newest left-liberal form is turning from a means of expansion into an instrument for consolidating the “collective West”, defining “us and them” and splitting the international community into opposing blocs, writes Valdai Club expert Dmitry Suslov.
US foreign policy is undergoing an important transition. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan drew a final and symbolic line under the period of its foreign policy, which began not on September 11, 2001, but in the early 1990s — what’s commonly called the “post-Cold War” period. In the early 1990s, intoxicated by the “victory in the Cold War” declared by George Bush Sr., the United States, being confident of the “end of history” and not meeting any resistance from outside in the context of the emerging “moment of unipolarity”, embarked on a course to transform everything else in the world in accordance with its values. These included the universalisation of the collective West and the spread of the American-centric “New World Order”. It was then that the goal of American policy towards Russia and China became their liberal-democratic transformation in accordance with Western patterns and integration into the American-centric world as junior players. US policy objectives regarding so-called “Rogue countries” (that is, those who stubbornly did not want to go over to the “right side of history”) became regime change.
That policy reached an impasse in the second half of the 2000s; since then the United States has been mired in a deep foreign policy crisis, due to the fact that the world had “suddenly” stopped developing in line with the American ideological guidelines. Russia and China refused to be transformed in accordance with Western patterns and integrate into the American world order as junior players, and attempts to democratise Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East generally failed. It was obviously not possible to extend the American-centric world order to the entire international system, and this order itself gradually began to burst at the seams.
Barack Obama tried to find a way out of this crisis by changing the instruments of American foreign policy, but maintaining the paradigm of spreading the American-centric world order to the rest of the world. The “reset” of relations with Russia and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (Washington hoped that China would eventually be forced to join the TPP) were, in fact, the latest attempts to “draw” Moscow and Beijing into the American-centric world order. Supporting the Arab Spring and fighting Arab dictators was the latest attempt to transform the Middle East. Both attempts failed again.
The first president of the United States to abandon the paradigm of transforming the rest of the world in accordance with American values was Donald Trump. Under his administration, for the first time since the Cold War, the US didn’t initiate any new military interventions, openly declared its refusal to spread democracy by military means, and made a fundamental decision to leave Afghanistan by signing an agreement with the Taliban (banned in Russia). It announced that henceforth, US foreign and defence policy would be focused primarily on the confrontation with Washington’s global rivals and adversaries, namely China and Russia. However, both the American elite and the establishment of most of the US allies mistakenly perceived Trump and his policies as a temporary aberration, after which a “return to normal” US policy (as it was after the end of the Cold War) should occur. Trump’s turnaround did not seem real or final to many. However, their projections were all in vain.
Biden’s historical significance lies in the fact that, despite being flesh and blood part of the traditional American establishment, having removed Trump from the White House, and receiving the support of elites and the “deep state”, he not only did not abandon the foreign policy of Trump, but also saw it to its conclusion. In doing so, he gave it a much more systemic and complete character. The main ways in which Biden’s foreign policy differs from that of Trump are that the United States has increased the importance of combating transnational threats (primarily climate change), and also changed its rhetoric towards its European allies, making it more sympathetic. On most fundamental issues, however, continuity prevails.
The abandonment of the paradigm of universalisation of the American-centric world order is in no way a signal of the readiness of the United States to form a joint multipolar world order with non-Western centres of power, primarily with China and Russia. The fundamentals of American foreign policy — the commitment to primacy and ideological messianism — remain unchanged: they are the result of the nature of the American state as an ideological project and its position as the most powerful player in its environment. The history of US foreign policy does not know the joint formation of a multipolar world order and participation in it; the American ideology simply excludes this.
As a result, a new paradigm of American foreign policy is already being shaped. Its defining priority is the fight against global rivals, this time China and Russia, and attempts to build a new bipolarity, where one pole would be the “world of democracies” led by the United States, and the other pole would be the “world of authoritarians” with the leading roles played by China and Russia. From attempts to universalise the American-centric world order, the United States has moved to its consolidation and defence, and from the “post-Cold War” era to the era of a new global confrontation.
US foreign policy is by no means becoming less ideological. Liberal ideology in its newest left-liberal form is turning from a means of expansion into an instrument for consolidating the “collective West”, defining “us and them” and splitting the international community into opposing blocs.
By rejecting the old, failed foreign policy paradigm and adopting a new one, Biden has been able to lead America out of the foreign policy crisis of the past decade and a half. The fiasco in Afghanistan was associated with an incorrect assessment of how long the Ghani government would hold out after the withdrawal of American troops. However, this dramatic narrative should not be misleading: Washington was well aware that this government would fall and that the Taliban would inevitably come to power (within between several months and two years), but nevertheless decided to leave.
The new global confrontation is intended to restore meaning, order and self-confidence to American foreign policy. With its help, the United States seeks to rally allies and partners around itself, consolidate the “collective West” and strengthen its leadership, and, perhaps, even mitigate its internal problems — to try and glue back together a divided American society, albeit partially, and reduce the polarisation of the political elite.
Of course, the practice of American foreign policy is more complex and multidimensional than the rhetoric about a new global confrontation between democracies and autocracies.
First, the world does not fit into the Procrustean bed of a new ideological confrontation. As in the previous Cold War, in the fight against global adversaries, the United States needs to partner with a number of non-democratic countries (for example, Vietnam). Many of the official US allies are authoritarian (including most allies in the Middle East, including Turkey), and Washington is unlikely to abandon these alliances, even though relations with some of them have deteriorated. Loyal NATO allies such as Poland also face serious problems with democracy. However, most importantly, an increasing number of countries, including democracies, do not want to join the US-China or US-Russia confrontation on the side of one of the powers, and are striving to pursue an increasingly independent foreign policy. An illustrative example is South Korea, which, being an ally of the United States and a democracy, in every possible way avoids being drawn into anti-Chinese policies.
Therefore, it is already reasonable to raise the question of how soon the United States will enter a new foreign policy crisis associated with its inability to achieve a new global demarcation along ideological lines and rally around itself most of the “free world” in opposition to China and Russia. Where, in this case, will the American foreign policy strategy develop? But these are questions of a more distant future.
Second, an important priority of the Biden administration is the fight against transnational challenges, primarily climate change, which requires cooperation with global opponents of the United States and non-democratic countries in general. So far, the Biden administration has been trying to combine its geopolitical rivalry with Moscow and Beijing with cooperation with them regarding climate change and other global challenges. It is difficult to say whether such a combination works. Moreover, Russia and China are invited to cooperate on the basis of the Western agenda, not a joint agenda, and at the same time the United States is using the same climate agenda to discredit Moscow and Beijing, exposing them as “climate spoilers” that refuse to reduce carbon emissions on a larger scale.
Third, the Biden administration makes it clear that China, perceived as the only rival capable of undermining American global primacy today, is a much more important and strategic adversary than Russia, and the Pacific region is a much higher priority region than Europe.
It is precisely at the containment of China and the consolidation of the anti-Chinese coalition that the United States is trying to throw its main forces, sometimes to the detriment of its policy of consolidating the Atlantic community and containing Russia. The history of the creation of AUKUS and NATO’s decision to designate China in its future strategic concept (planned to be adopted in 2022) as a threat to the security of the alliance, along with Russia, speak of the same thing: Europe is interesting for the Biden administration not only as a springboard and an ally for containment Russia, but also as an assistant in the fight against China.
Equally, it is the desire of the United States to focus maximum resources and attention on the fight against China, as well as to weaken the tendency towards further rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing, which has led to their mutual strengthening, including the military strengthening of China. That is the main reason why the Biden administration is now aiming to stabilise the confrontation with Russia, and to prevent its further escalation. While maintaining the existing deterrent tools (sanctions, information war, support for the current governments in Ukraine and Georgia and their Euro-Atlantic orientation, etc.), Washington, nevertheless, has not provided a qualitative increase in support for Kiev and Tbilisi and seeks to prevent what could lead to a new escalation of the military conflict in the Donbass or in the South Caucasus.
However, while confrontation with Russia is not an equal priority of US foreign policy versus confrontation with China, it remains and will remain an important issue. The United States has neither the desire nor the ability to overcome or at least significantly reduce the confrontation with Russia at the cost of its own concessions, and will strive to make it more passive.
There is no possibility of reducing confrontation on the part of the United States, primarily due to its domestic political restrictions:
In recent years, a strong anti-Russian consensus has developed there. US policymakers perceive Russia as both a geopolitical and an ideological adversary that seeks to undermine the position of the United States around the world, strengthen its main strategic rival (China), as well as undermine the American political system, and undermine America’s faith in democracy and liberal values. This perception and the need to combat it is one of the few issues on which there is almost complete agreement in the polarised political system of the United States.
In the context of this polarisation, which has turned many foreign policy topics into instruments of domestic political struggle, any positive step towards Russia becomes a pretext for accusations of treason, and anyone who takes this step pays a high price. This limitation has been observed since the time of Barack Obama, but since then, its scale has increased many times over.
Since the adoption of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) in 2017, no administration has been able to significantly reduce the scale of anti-Russia sanctions.
In addition, NATO will try to maintain the Russian-American confrontation; the anti-Russian focus has sharply increased since the failure in Afghanistan. Finally, in the wake of the Afghanistan fiasco, the United States simply cannot afford to diminish support for countries directly involved in the conflict with Russia, such as Ukraine and Georgia. In order to reduce reparation damage and convince allies and partners of the reliability of American commitments, the Biden administration must show in every possible way that, although it is ready to turn away from “unnecessary” satellites, by no means will it abandon those that play an important role in the fight against global adversaries. The visits of US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to Georgia and Ukraine in October 2021 confirmed this very task.
The lack of any desire to improve relations with Russia is primarily due to the perception of Russia as a weakening power, which, in the opinion of the US, will in the foreseeable future be forced to seek cooperation with the West from the position of a vassal due to either a large-scale internal crisis or a geopolitical clash with China as a result of the growing asymmetry between Russia and the PRC (something the majority in the American mainstream stubbornly believe in).
As a result, the Biden administration’s policy towards Russia is essentially to wait and see as Russia returns to the western orbit while continuing the confrontation, but minimising the damage associated with this confrontation, that is, preventing it from creating an immediate threat to American security.
Thus, given the impossibility and unwillingness of the United States to reduce the intensity of the confrontation with Russia, let alone to overcome it, it is quite possible to conclude that the global confrontation with China and Russia has indeed become, and will remain in the near future, a new core and organising principle of US foreign policy. It will serve as the basis for the development of their national interests, determining the scale of their presence and the nature of their obligations in different regions of the world. One reservation: containing China and consolidating allies and partners against it will remain a higher priority than containing Russia.
In practical terms, this means that the United States will strive to increase its presence, range of partners and military-political commitments in Asia and strengthen relations with those countries it considers important in containing China (the creation of AUKUS and Biden’s statement that Washington will provide military assistance to Taiwan in the event of a military invasion by the PRC is a direct confirmation). It also intends to maintain its presence in Europe and support for Ukraine and Georgia as countries playing a central role in the geopolitical struggle with Russia at the current level. Additionally, it will seek to weaken the US presence and commitments in countries and regions that Washington does not consider central or important to the fight against China and Russia.
The latter include, for example, the Middle East. Washington does not see this region as an arena for fighting global opponents and therefore can afford to reduce its military presence and political role there. The US was guided by the same logic toward Afghanistan: they knew that the “vacuum” left there by their departure would not be filled by either Beijing or Moscow.
So, for Russian-American relations, the new paradigm of US foreign policy creates the preconditions for the formation of a model resembling a controlled or stable confrontation, when the parties are not interested in further escalation or in overcoming it through their own concessions.
Propaganda is easy to unpack once you get down a few basic rules. One of them is this: “the louder the slogan, the bigger the lie“.
That is also the case with Veteran’s Day in which US Americans thank their veterans for their “service”.
Now even setting aside the true reasons why US Americans sign up, there is a much more important fact which the US propaganda machine is trying to whitewash: US “servicepersons” (yup, let’s keep up with the times!) ALWAYS fight in the other guy’s backyard. Always.
So they have to somehow resolve this self-evident contradiction: I fight for the other guy, in his own backyard, by fighting against him.
In order to make that one stick or, at least, to damped the cognitive dissonance, you do two things: first, you demonize the other guy while, second, you claim to “serve” for high, lofty and utterly meaningless notions like “manifest destiny”, “democracy” or even, as I heard recently, to “save the Jews from the Nazi gas chambers”.
And it works.
The bigger the lie, the louder the slogans, the more energetic the flag-waving and the bigger the patriotic-hysteria around the “gratitude” towards those who are, undeniably, hired murders (even those who do not pull the trigger, but help others do so).
Of course, no matter what kind of mental gymnastics are needed to obfuscate the true nature of what the veterans really did (and still are doing), the truth seeps under this ideological concertina wire, especially when veterans blow their brains out, suffer from PTSD, drown in drugs and booze and end up homeless in immense numbers.
So Veteran’s Day is not about veterans at all, it is about self-absolution, about just for one day pretending to care about veterans and their “service”. But crucially, this day of shame is about whitewashing murder.
Violence and lies are twin brothers always working hand in hand towards their common goal.
We can get a feeling for the magnitude of the violence perpetrated by the US servicepersons by observing the ideological intensity of the “protective shield” of lies which are needed to conceal its true nature of their actions.
I don’t know of Latin American drug cartels have a “Dia del Sicario” but if they don’t they should emulate the “The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave” and create one, celebrated with lots of flags and expressions of patriotic piety.
I personally will join those few souls who hope that the day will come when the US military will truly be what it has never been before: a force whose mission is to protect the people of the USA from foreign threats (not that I see from where this threat may come from).
Only then will the US sicarios become real soldiers.
Andrei
UPDATE: in one of the comments which the mods (rightly) sent to trash there was one question which I feel needs to be addressed: what about the Russians in Syria? Ain’t that the same?
Nope, for the following reasons:
The Russians went to Syria not to start a war (the Empire did that), but to STOP one
The Russians did not commit mass atrocities in Syria
The Russians were directly threatened by “Axis of Kindness” operations in the Middle-East (what the CIA was doing in Afghanistan in the 70 it never stopped doing and was STILL at it in Syria)
Last, but not least, the Russians did not flee in disgrace from Syria (or Afghanistan, for that matter)
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Someone should tell the Biden team.
Soon after the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, David Ignatius, Washington Post columnist and Deep State insider, remarked “The reversals in Afghanistan are confounding for a Biden national security team that has rarely known personal failure (…) These are America’s best and brightest, who came to the messy endgame of the Afghanistan war with spotless résumés.”
Though his criticism of the national security team is understandably guarded, anyone taking a dispassionate look at the establishment liberals who are deemed America’s “best and brightest” in Washington circles would reach the conclusion that they are stronger on slogans than substance, which leads to a disconnect between ideas and implementation, and lack overseas experience: there is only one career diplomat in a senior position on the National Security Council, the director for Africa.
Their ability to display ideological cohesion at the expense of a reflexive process of dialogical thinking is remarkable but not surprising: establishment liberals do see themselves as the centre of political enlightenment. If they appear vainglorious and self-righteous it is because they are part of a power structure that produces and perpetuates these character traits. Those who entertain the possibility of failure are side-lined as bearers of bad news, the centre-stage is reserved for those who project confidence and a sense of moral superiority. As to considering opposing viewpoints, that is entirely optional.
In the same Washington Post article Ignatius observed “Failure can shatter the trust and consensus of any team, and that’s a danger now for the Biden White House. This group has been extraordinarily close and congenial during Biden’s first seven months. But you can already see the first cracks in Fortress Biden.”
Are these the kind of cracks that appear when reality hits delusions, when ‘what is’ collides with ‘what ought to be’, when military logic makes a dent in the fairy tale of a benign power successfully exporting “freedom, democracy and human rights”?
Trained for hybrid warfare, Biden’s aides were suddenly dealing with a conventional military crisis and looked out of their depth. As we have seen, managing a retreat and putting a spin on it require a completely different set of skills.
There is no doubt that the optics of one of the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history damaged the reputation of the U.S. both at home and overseas and that’s why we should expect new and more aggressive initiatives to harden American soft power and tighten control of the narrative through underhand methods.
Carefully crafted narratives are crucial for the U.S. because it is selling the world a failed model of development. Trumpeting it as inclusive, gender equal, green and sustainable is like putting lipstick on a pig, it looks grotesque. Managing perceptions, denigrating alternative civilizational and economic models, and demonizing the competition is no longer working, an increasingly large segment of the world population is developing stronger antibodies to the virus of American propaganda. That’s why traditional soft-power tools — trade, legal standards, technology — are increasingly being used to coerce rather than convince.
After the Afghanistan disaster former French ambassador to Israel, UN and U.S. Gérard Araud shared his dismay on Twitter: “The absence of self-examination in the West is seen elsewhere with disbelief. Wars waged by the West have recently cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians for no result and we still lecture the world about values. Do you have any idea about how we are seen abroad?”
If even allies are growing tired of America’s preaching, guess how it is going down in the rest of the world.
At the end of August, when U.S. allies were weighing what the shambolic, badly-coordinated retreat means for Western power and influence, Biden delivered a speech in which he explained “This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It is about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries.”
His statement signalled the intention to extricate the U.S. army from a war that had exhausted itself, politically, militarily and epistemically, but didn’t suggest that the U.S. will renounce its imperialistic ambitions. In the last twenty years there have been tectonic shifts: cyber, biological, information, cognitive and economic warfare are changing the way wars are being fought. Putting boots on the ground is no longer the best nor the only option to subjugate an adversary.
The reconfiguration of the geopolitical landscape and rapidly changing power relations also required a reassessment of priorities. Now that all eyes are on the Asia-Pacific region the question is whether Biden’s team is the best fit for the challenges U.S. power is facing.
Biden’s closest aides never learned the fundamentals of realpolitik, they hold the belief that liberal values are universally valid and the use of force (rebranded “humanitarian interventionism”) morally motivated. They never doubted that the Western model would conquer the world because they grew up at the end of the Cold War, a time that was indeed characterized by a “unipolar moment”. This period is well and truly over and the Western liberal order in its present form is a fraying system.
While the U.S. allocated resources to the destruction and destabilization of sovereign countries, and ignored the widening income gap at home, their main competitor, China, lifted millions of its citizens out of poverty and kept building state-of-the-art infrastructure at home and abroad, that is projects that make a tangible difference in people’s livelihoods. No wonder concealing the truth has become a matter of national security.
Democrats openly admit their intent to co-opt Silicon Valley to police political discourse and silence the bearers of inconvenient truths. They effectively sowed the seeds for a future where everything and everyone can be(come) a national-security threat. Glenn Greenwald revealed that Congressional Democrats have summoned the CEO’s of Google, Facebook and Twitter four times in the last year to demand they censor more political speech. They explicitly threatened the companies with legal and regulatory reprisals if they did not start censoring more. Pulling the plug on dissenting opinions and de-platforming people who challenge the dominant discourse makes a mockery of free speech, one of the rights that the U.S. claims to be defending when it selectively condemns alleged violations of human rights in other countries. Increasing censorship is also an indication that control of the narrative both at home and overseas has become vital for the U.S.
The conviction that “for America, our interests are our values and our values are our interests’’, one of the tenets of NeoCons, has been revamped by the liberal Left to aggressively promote a different kind of values and causes. A sort of symbolic capital that would allow the U.S. to maintain dominance as rights defender while its own constitutional rights are being eroded at home. Moral grandstanding can only compound the hypocrisy, but that is not stopping liberal totalitarians who are trading off freedom of speech for a child’s right to gender self-identification or for a binding gender or race quota on corporate boards.
History shows that declining empires tend to produce incompetent, self-delusional and divisive leaders who unwittingly accelerate the inevitable fall. That’s exactly what seems to be happening now. Not only the radical liberalism embraced by the Biden administration and Western elite has already antagonized millions of Americans leading to social and political polarization, it is also antagonizing foreign leaders, including the leaders of allied countries such as Hungary and Turkey who are being labelled as ‘authoritarian’. As the U.S. system of alliances is becoming increasingly fragile, dogmatic progressives in the current administration look more and more like Aesop’s donkey in a pottery shop, or a bull in a China shop, if you prefer.
The current National Security Council (NSC) is staffed with advisers who are the product of the kind of groupthink that has long been dominant in Anglo-American universities, those madrassas of the liberal Left where debate is stifled by ideological purges. The opinions and worldviews that are shaped and reinforced in these echo chambers are disseminated and amplified by the media and other industries. Countless careers depend on exporting simulacra of freedom, democracy and human rights, not only because these “experts” have internalized a conviction that these immaterial goods possess an intrinsic moral value, but also because the U.S. has little else to offer the world and leverage on, unless you count assured mutual destruction as leverage.
A case in point is The Summit for Democracy that Biden will convene in virtual mode on December 9–10, 2021, while a second meeting will take place a year later. The plan is to bring together over 100 leaders from selected governments (some of the choices have already stirred controversy among democracy advocates) plus various NGOs, activists (regime change actors) and corporations to “rally the nations of the world in defence of democracy globally” and “push back authoritarianism’s advance”, “address and fight corruption”, “advance respect for human rights”.
Though this initiative is mainly a way to strengthen ideological cohesion among allies by appealing to “common values” and conjuring up yet another global threat, namely “authoritarianism”, it effectively divides the international community into two Cold War-style blocks, friends and foes. On one side countries that earned a seal of approval for toeing the line and therefore deserve to be labelled “democratic”; on the other side a basket of deplorables that refuse to recognize the superiority of the U.S. model of governance and civilizing mission. Basically, the politically correct version of neocolonialism.
The Summit for Democracy will take place against the backdrop of AUKUS, the new Anglo-Saxon alliance that effectively joins NATO to the Asia-Pacific through Britain. What is clearly intended as an alliance against China severely damages regional peace and stability, intensifies the arms race, and jeopardizes international efforts against the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
On one hand the U.S. is flexing its military muscle, on the other hand is flexing the ideological muscle that, in the intentions of the Summit organizers, will provide the impetus to renew and strengthen the liberal international order that has served U.S. interests since the end of WW2.
The Summit for Democracy may have a higher profile convener than similar events held in the past but its premise sounds just as tone-deaf and over-ambitious. Take for example The Copenhagen Summit for Democracy that was organized in May by the “Alliance of Democracies”, a foundation set up by former NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen in 2017. Its objective was to create a Copenhagen Charter, modelled on the Atlantic Charter, having a Clause 5 similar to NATO’s Article 5, whereby “a state coming under economic attack or facing arbitrary detentions of its citizens due to its democratic or human rights stance could ask for unified support including retaliatory measures of fellow democracies.” This and other creative proposals included in the Copenhagen Charter will likely be rehashed at the Summit to be opened by Biden in December.
Rasmussen too can boast a spotless resume as cheerleader for U.S. global leadership, and that might explain why he seems trapped in a time warp and blind to the actual state of that leadership. If the reader needs further confirmation of Rasmussen’s complicated relationship with reality, here is an excerpt from an article titled ‘The Right Lessons From Afghanistan’ that he wrote for Foreign Affairs a few weeks after the Afghanistan fiasco, “The world should not draw the wrong lessons from Afghanistan. This fiasco was far from inevitable. It would also compound the folly if the world’s developed democracies stopped supporting the quest for freedom and democracy in authoritarian states and war-torn countries. That includes Afghanistan, where the United States and its partners should lend their support to the ongoing resistance efforts to oppose the Taliban.” We all know what happened to those “resistance efforts”, but Rasmussen won’t let reality get in the way of his illusions.
It is unlikely the Summit for Democracy will achieve the unspoken objective of creating an Alliance of Democracies that could bypass the UN Security Council. But it is undeniable that international law has long been under attack and is incrementally replaced with the Atlanticist concept of a “rules-based international system”, which does not have any specific rules but allows the West to violate international law under the pretext of advancing liberal ideals and exporting democracy.
It’s expected that USAID will be called to play a major role at the summit. USAID under Samantha Powers has a seat in the NSC and has been tasked with the mission to “modernize democracy assistance across the board”. This includes “supporting governments to strengthen their cybersecurity, counter disinformation and helping democratic actors defend themselves against digital surveillance, censorship, and repression.” In typical Orwellian doublespeak the U.S. is seeking help by claiming to help. With a military budget already stretched over the limit, enlisting foreign actors (both state and non-state) to do its bidding in the information and cognitive warfare becomes imperative.
NED, USAID, USAGM, “philanthropic” organizations like Open Society Foundations and the Omidyar Network have long been grooming and bankrolling journalists, activists, politicians, various types of influencers and community leaders. Their job is to paint a negative picture of China, Russia and any country resisting U.S. diktats. In Africa, just to mention one of many examples, “independent” journalists are paid to investigate Chinese companies that are involved in mining, construction, energy, infrastructure, loans and environment and portray them as causing harm to communities, environment and workers.
At the beginning of October, Secretary of State Antony Blinken unveiled a new partnership with the OECD in Paris: the overt goal was to combat corruption and promote “high-quality” infrastructure. But the partnership is part of a broader effort to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The U.S. has also appealed to the G7 and QUAD to provide the financial muscle for its Build Back Better World initiative (BW3), a rehash of Trump’s Blue Dot Network. Since the U.S. and its partners cannot respond to BRI symmetrically — they are unable to match China dollar for dollar, project for project — they are relying on virtue-signalling both as a marketing and bullying tactic. According to this initiative, infrastructure building in developing countries should comply with a certification scheme and lending rules set by the U.S. and its partners, rules that are cloaked in the familiar jargon of social and environmental sustainability, gender equality, and anti-corruption.
In case the competition with China in Asia, Europe and Africa does turn into open confrontation, the U.S. could use the BW3 to increase pressure on investment funds, global financial institutions and insurance companies to discriminate against projects that don’t meet standards set by the U.S. in return for concessions and sweeteners. When Western companies cannot compete fairly with Chinese ones, they can always rely on friendly officials in Washington to rewrite the rules of the game in their favour.
American policymakers seem unable to abandon a Cold War mentality that is essentially utopian in expectations, legalistic in concept, moralistic in the demands it places on others, and self-righteous. Some analysts believe that the source of the problem might be the force of public opinion, deemed emotional, moralistic and binary, the old “Us vs Them.”
Classical international relations theorists have long held the assumption that American public opinion has moralistic tendencies: for liberal idealists the moral foundation of public opinion, mobilized by norm entrepreneurs, opens up the possibility of positive moral action, whereas for realists, the public’s moralism is one of the main reasons why foreign policymaking should be insulated from the pressures of public opinion.
However it is myopic to conceive of public opinion and policymaking as separate entities when in fact they are both shaped by the interests of powerful elites. Public opinion doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it is swayed by new and old media that are often controlled by the same interest groups and corporations that fund the think tanks and foundations influencing U.S. foreign policy.
For instance, not only was the collusion and revolving door between government and the tech industry a feature of the Obama administration, it characterizes the Biden administration as well. The transnational interests of these elite groups are usually cloaked in a progressive, inclusive, democratic rhetoric to make their narrow agenda appear big enough so that unsuspecting ordinary people may want to claim ownership and subscribe to it. Corporate interests and national interest are a tangled web no longer subjected to public scrutiny since national level democracy has been hollowed out. When the trilemma of democracy, state, and market becomes irreconcilable, global market players call the shots without democracy or state being able to control them, oversee unceasing technological innovation (including artificial intelligence) or curb the excessive financialization of the economy.
Though U.S. attempts at nation-building result in chaos and misery for local populations, Americans haven’t given up on trying to remake the world in their own distorted image by aggressively promoting their worldviews, exporting a simulacrum of democracy and politicizing human rights issues.
They reject true multilateralism by trying to dominate the international organizations that were created to further cooperation and harmonize national interests. For the corporate donors of both the Democratic and Republican Party other countries’ national interests are a relic of the past that should be done away with. And indeed national interests would hardly be compatible with a world order led by the U.S. in partnership with global stakeholders (global corporations, NGOs, think-tanks, governments, academic institutions, charities, etc.)
These global stakeholders and their political representatives effectively want to replace the modern international system of sovereign states that is enshrined in the United Nations Charter. Under this system, commonly referred to as Westphalian system, states exist within recognised borders, their sovereignty is recognised by others and principles of non-interference are clearly spelled out. Since this model doesn’t allow the government of one nation to impose legislation in another, the U.S. loudly promotes the idea of global governance, under which a global public-private partnership is allowed to create policy initiatives that affect people in every country as national governments implement the recommended policies. Typically this occurs via an intermediary policy distributor, such as the IMF, World Bank, WHO, but many international organizations now play a similar role.
In the Biden administration we see a dangerous convergence of the national security establishment and Silicon Valley tech giants. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines both worked for WestExec, the consulting firm that Blinken cofounded with Michèle Flournoy, a former undersecretary of defence under President Obama. Google hired WestExec to help them land Department of Defense contracts. Google’s former Chief Executive Eric Schmidt made personnel recommendations for appointments to the Department of Defense. Schmidt himself was appointed to lead a government panel on artificial intelligence. At least 16 foreign policy positions are occupied by CNAS alumni. The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is a bipartisan think tank that receives large contributions directly from defence contractors, Big Tech, U.S. finance giants.
These donors spend considerable resources shaping the intellectual environment, academic research and symposia in order to build consensus around their agenda. The Biden administration also features dozens of officials hailing from the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank set up by John Podesta, a longtime Clintonworld staple, with George Soros’ generous contribution. The ties between Open Society Foundations (OSF) and CAP are so strong that Patrick Gaspard, the former head of OSF, was nominated president and CEO of CAP.
When government becomes the expression of global corporate interests and channels the belief system of a small, privileged elite it can be hard to tell who is leading who, who is really making policy and setting national security strategies and goals.
Biden’s national security team is the product of this corrupt system. Its members may tone down the “freedom, democracy and human rights” rhetoric if it gets in the way of achieving a particular strategic goal, but they won’t abandon it because it has proven to be effective in providing a legitimating frame and moral justification to U.S. hegemony.
If we look at the Roman empire we see how one constant theme was “expand or die”. Expansion isn’t only to be intended as territorial or military. Expanding influence, alliances, the use of Latin, the spread of Roman laws, currency, standards, culture and religion all contributed to the cohesion of the Empire. Given the current constraints to U.S. ambitions — namely the strategic partnership between China and Russia, BRI, the more assertive role played by regional powers, nervousness and conflicting interests among U.S. allies and a large budget deficit — the room for expansion has been considerably reduced. Thus the U.S. is doubling its efforts in areas where it still has room for maneuver.
Biden’s slogan “America is Back” sought to reassure allies but cannot hide the fact that the emperor is naked. Advertisers, politicians and psyops planners are continuously manipulating people into changing their perceptions of reality and making choices that ultimately do not benefit them. But no matter how hard the power-knowledge regimes of Western intellectual production work to conceal the decline, the West no longer dominates the world and the values it advocates are not unanimous, far from it. Labelling governments that don’t embrace liberal values and U.S. standards as “autocratic regimes” is just foolish sloganeering and doesn’t take into account the changing balance of power on the ground. The world is evolving toward a multipolar system and the U.S. had better take notice of it. Those serving in the NSC are still imagining a world that no longer exists, one where America has the power to force other countries into doing its bidding. The current ideological approach blinds pragmatic thinking, thus impeding discussions and negotiations.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Someone should tell the Biden team.
Foreword, Prologue, Introduction: This is Part 1 of 6 and will form a complete ebook that will be available for download with part six.
Foreword
From: James Bacque
Date: Saturday, Jan 5, 2019 9:13 PM
Dear Larry
Thanks for the information–as you guessed I have encountered much of it myself already. I wish you good luck . . . Be as moderate as you can in expressing your very important findings. Remember that hardly anyone knows as much as you do and some of your findings are very upsetting.
All the best
Jim
Prologue To Volume One
A Brief History of America That You Won’t Learn in a University
One of the more popular historical myths embedded in the American consciousness by the propaganda machine relates to the migration of settlers to the New World, the narrative detailing how hundreds of thousands of the virtuous oppressed flocked to the dockyards in a headlong rush for freedom and opportunity. There may indeed have been five or six such persons, but a much larger group was there to escape the hangman and jailer and an even larger selection were slave traders, hookers, and budding capitalist scam artists looking for greener pastures. When we add in the vast numbers hoping to escape justified persecution for their perverted witches-brew versions of Christianity, the first Americans were hardly role models for a new nation. The evidence is more clearly on the side of criminals, losers and misfits, religious whackos and opportunists than on the mythical oppressed. And, for the record, there is no evidence whatever of settlers emigrating to America in search of either “freedom” or “opportunity”, at least not within the current meaning of these words.
Good mental health was not a prerequisite for European settlers emigrating to the New World. We are fond of reminding ourselves that Australia was (and mostly still is) populated primarily with murderers, thieves and sexual perverts, but the immigrants to America were not noticeably better. Indeed, the inscription on the Statue of Liberty got the words more or less correct in referring to “the wretched refuse of your teeming shore”. While the Australians had their serial killers and muggers, the Europeans went one better with their Christian extremists who spent their weekdays burning witches and killing Indians, and their Sundays in church thanking God for the opportunity. The Australians have marginally improved their habits over the centuries while the Americans have not.
America is widely accepted, and indeed even prides itself, on being a deeply Christian country, with 65% or more of the population declaring religion important in their lives. This would be supported by history, since the major migrations to the New World consisted of a long list of flaky religious sects whose primary goal in emigration was the opportunity to build a society entirely based on those isolationist and extremist heresies. It is probably safe to say that Salem witchcraft was the seedbed in which the peculiarly American version of Christian theology sprouted and flourished, and which also served as a practical introduction to mass hysteria which would later be so usefully applied to the concepts of patriotism and democracy. The enduring echoes of this religious ancestry have been highly influential in all of subsequent American history.
The Preamble to the American Declaration of Independence (“The most famous words in the English language”, if you’re American; just another Hello Kitty greeting card, if you’re not), states: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all White Men were created superior and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, the most important of which is slavery”. In the recent history of the modern world, only two nations of people have so thoroughly embraced slavery as to have practiced it on an immense scale for hundreds of years: the Christians in America and the Dalai Lamas in Tibet. And only these two groups so cherished slavery in their hearts they fought a civil war over the right to maintain it. It is hardly a moral selling point that both sets of racist bigots lost the war and, while Mao cleaned up Tibet, the racism and bigotry persisted in America, often violently, for another 200 years and is still widely in evidence today. Christian virtue does not die easily.
Internationally, the American government and its leaders function with an absolute amorality, driven primarily by their commercial Darwinism, their law-of-the-jungle, might-makes-right philosophy. Yet individually most Americans accept all this as somehow being righteous and pleasing in the eyes of their god. The vast network of torture prisons, the numerous governments overthrown, the countless brutal dictatorships installed and supported, the commercial and military enslavement of so many populations, the 10 to 20 million civilians massacred, the constant meddling in the internal affairs of other nations, the so-frequent destabilisation of governments, the plundering of the resources of so many nations. All of these are excused, justified, forgiven, often praised, then quickly forgotten by these moral Christians. Americans may be comfortable with all this cognitive dissonance, but as Jiddu Krishnamurti aptly wrote, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”.
Hypocrisy has always been a prominent, if not quite endearing, feature of Americans, and especially of their government. It is Americans who preach democracy and freedom at home while installing brutal puppet dictators all over the world, who preach free trade at home while practicing savage mercantilistic protectionism abroad. It is Americans who espouse human rights at home while building the largest network of torture prisons in the history of the world. And of course, preaching that human life is precious at home while murdering millions in other nations in trumped-up wars of liberation. It is only Americans who moan about “the appalling loss of 5,000 American lives” in Iraq while killing one million Iraqis, half of whom were children. It is only the Americans who use the CIA, NED, USAID and the VOA to pay and prod individuals in other countries to create internal political dissent, then condemn a government for cracking down on “innocent dissidents”. Maybe one day Americans will lose their stomach for all this creation of worldwide instability and have another American revolution. And not before time.
Most Americans are only dimly aware of their own sordid past, a situation abetted by all the blank pages in the history books. The portions of US history contained in these pages have mostly been excised from the historical memory of Americans because they don’t fit the mythical narrative. Most Americans fervently believe their country was founded on God and Christian virtue, liberty, democracy, human rights and free trade, but when we dig beneath the propaganda and jingoism we discover the United States of America was founded on religious extremism, racism, slavery, genocide, a brutal imperialism and a virulently predatory strain of capitalism.
These volumes contain a capsule history of the United States of America with selections that will not be found in any history book, but that nevertheless consists of facts which are not in dispute. From here, we will look at some specifics, beginning with how America became rich. From this point forward, ideology and reality will be in constant conflict, presenting stark challenges to our uninformed beliefs.
Quiz on American History
a. Which US Secretary of State holds the World Record for being the most prolific baby-killer in recorded history?
b. Which US General holds the World Record as the greatest pathological mass killer in modern history?
c. Fidel Castro listed in the Guinness Book of Records as surviving 638 murder attempts by the US government. For what was he being punished?
d. The father of which recent US President conspired with a group of Jewish bankers and industrialists in 1933, engaging a famous General to amass an army of 500,000 troops to overthrow the US government and install a fascist dictatorship in America?
e. How many times has the US invaded Canada?
f. The US has been a nation for about 245 years. For how many of those years has the US been at war?
g. How many democracies has the US installed in other nations during its lifetime? How many brutal dictatorships has the US installed in other nations during its lifetime?
h. Japan conducted abominable human experimentation in China during WWII – Shiro Ishii’s infamous Unit 731. Why was Japan spared war crimes trials?
i. How many Presidents, Prime Ministers and senior government officials of other countries has the US assassinated for disobedience or obstruction to hegemony?
j. Which country operates the only Torture University in the world?
k. For several hundred years, slave-trading was the highest-paying job in America. What was the second-highest-paying?
l. Which government for about 100 years paid a lifetime salary to any citizen who could steal patents and processes from other countries?
m. Which revered US Supreme Court justice recommended killing off all Americans of low IQ?
n. The government of which country for decades silenced political dissidents by performing frontal lobotomies and turning them into vegetables?
o. Which famous American institution recommended “mercy killings” of the economically unfit, these to be performed in local gas chambers?
p. Which American Defense Secretary gathered 500,000 young men with an average IQ of about 65 and sent them to Vietnam? How many returned? What was his punishment?
q. Which American Military physician appeared before Congress in what year, asking for $10 million to fund the creation of the HIV virus? Did he receive the money?
r. When and where was Coca-Cola was invented?
s. Which famous person invented the incandescent light bulb? Which the telephone? The most famous American inventor was Thomas Edison. How many things did Edison invent?
t. We are told Germany killed some 6,000,000 Jews during WWII. How many Germans were killed in Germany AFTER the end of WWII?
u. Which famous physicist wrote to Roosevelt, offering to fund the entire unknown cost of creating the atomic bomb, stating the funds were already confirmed available?
v. Which famous US President was the illegitimate son of a Jewish slave trader?
w. Abraham Lincoln’s wife was an inveterate opium addict. Who was her opium supplier?
x. In what year was slavery abolished in the US?
y. Which US President exposed tens of millions of US citizens to radiation from open-air atomic tests, then instructed medics to inform women experiencing leukemia, hair loss, miscarriages, that they were suffering from “housewife syndrome”?
z. Which famous shoe did Nike design that set Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman on the road to fame and glory?
Answers
a. Madeleine Albright; Iraq, 500,000
b. Cutis LeMay; about 20 million, give or take
c. Expelling the Jews from Cuba
d. George Bush
e. Five so far
f. 235
g. Zero. More than 50, and counting
h. Ishii and his entire unit were transported to the US to teach Americans the pleasures of live vivisections and other atrocities. Ishii was a Professor at the University of Maryland until his death decades later.
i. More than 150, and counting (including Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General of the UN)
j. The US of A; the “University of the Americas” in Fort Benning, Georgia
k. Killing Indians
l. The US of A. Amounts of $20,000 to $50,000, in the 1800s
m. Oliver Wendell Holmes
n. The US of A. (FBI)
o. Carnegie
p. Robert McNamara. Not many, but the Defense Dept. refuses to release statistics. Made President of the World Bank.
q. Dr. Donald MacArthur, Deputy Director, Research and Engineering, Department of Defense. 1969. Yes.
r. The Spanish town of Aielo de Malferit, 40 years before Coke stole the patent.
s. Joseph Swan, USA, five years before Edison stole the patent. Antonio Meucci, Italy, five years before Bell stole the patent. None. All Edison’s patents were either stolen, bullied, extorted or purchased.
t. Between 12 million and 14 million; some by execution, the bulk by starvation.
u. Albert Einstein, funds offered by Rothschild and other European Jewish bankers.
v. Abraham Lincoln; the son of A. A. Springs(tein) and Nancy Hanks. Adopted by the Lincoln family.
w. A Jewish drug dealer named John Wilkes Booth.
x. Slavery was never abolished in the US. It just changed form.
y. Eisenhower
z. The Japanese Onitsuka Tiger. Nike stole the design and began manufacturing in the US. American courts ruled Onitsuka and Nike could “share” the patent.
Introduction to the Series
David Edwards was quoted in the Third World Traveler as having written:
“Even open-minded people will often find themselves unable to take seriously the likes of Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, Howard Zinn and Susan George on first encountering their work; it just does not seem possible that we could be so mistaken in what we believe. The individual may assume that these writers must be somehow joking, wildly over-stating the case, paranoid, or have some sort of axe to grind. We may actually become angry with them for telling us these terrible things about our society and insist that this simply ‘can’t be true’. It takes real effort to keep reading, to resist the reassuring messages of the mass media and be prepared to consider the evidence again.”
This is the condition we face in dealing with America and Americans today: a blind faith and conviction based on a century of clever marketing and nationalistic propaganda that is almost inevitably contradicted by the facts. In truth, there is little about the US today that is not based on fabricated historical mythologies, buried history, biased presentations, facts twisted so badly as to be often unrecognisable. Probably 95% of what Americans ‘know’ about their nation, its history and its conduct in international affairs, is wrong, and often violently wrong. I am not so much concerned with what Americans believe about their own country, but it is a concern that this enormous compendium of historical fiction has been marketed to the rest of the world as truth, with peoples in many other nations believing the same fairytales as do the Americans and holding that nation in a level of regard that is to say the least undeserved, and often dangerous for the absence of truths.
These truths are the content of these books, the history of the US as it really was then and still is today, harsh provable truths and documented realities without the vast comforter of propaganda, jingoism, patriotism and misinformation that blankets the nation we know as the United States of America. Coincident with what is truly an almost incomprehensible volume of rose-tinted misinformation about the US is an equal volume of black-tinted information about the world outside the US. To the same extent that Americans have been subjected to a century or more of positive and unforgivably false propaganda about their own nation, they have also been subjected to enormously false negative propaganda and misinformation about the world outside their borders.
This series of books was to a large extent an accident of circumstance which began with my extended stay in China and the almost immediate realisation that the voluminous negative flood about China persistently emanating from the Western Zionist media was entirely false; demonisation and propaganda at their worst, giving Americans wholly unrealistic and often vicious misinterpretations and misunderstandings about the realities of China. After viewing a decade or more of this onslaught, and after writing many series of articles in attempts to correct some of the more egregious falsehoods, it seemed a book might be a more appropriate format. But then during ten years or more of historical research, it became apparent that Americans had been subjected to an even greater campaign of misinformation about their own nation than about China and other foreign countries.
I then seemed faced with a two-fold task: to correct – in the eyes of Americans, and perhaps Westerners generally – some of the more glaring misinformation about China, but then to correct – in the eyes of Americans – the even more glaring misinformation about their own country. To further complicate the issues, it gradually became clear that the world outside the US had been so contaminated by American historical mythology, jingoism and propaganda that foreigners were largely living in the same fairyland, insofar as the realities of America were concerned, as were the Americans themselves. To add to the confusion, it eventually emerged that the US-based power of the media, of advertising, of propaganda and misinformation, had contaminated not only the American view of other nations but the views of the peoples within those nations – to the point where Russians or Chinese or Vietnamese had been excessively exposed (thanks in no small part to malignancies like the VOA and Radio Free Europe) to both the glorified but false images of the US and the comparatively derogatory but false images of their own nations that had been so heavily propagated by the American government and the Zionist media to their own people. One book thus became five.
These books are intended to provide only a summary of the related topics. Full volumes can, and have been, written on many of the topics in these chapters. We have seen many books on the CIA involvement in narcotics or in Tibet, volumes on the discrepancies in the official 9-11 narrative or the Bush regime torture prisons, others on the various failings of US democracy or the American educational system. But these individual offerings, useful as they are, treat the segments as essentially disparate and unrelated issues where in reality most of them are integral parts of a deeply-connected whole. My purpose in these volumes is to present a unified picture to enable readers to see the entire landscape as a single canvas and appreciate the inter-relationships of the parts. It is this unified image that will provide a comprehensive understanding of world events and the forces driving them.
Preface To Volume One
Almost every individual or family has what we call ‘skeletons in the closet’, a collection of perhaps embarrassing or even shameful events, regrettable actions, unsavory family members, sins we committed that we would rather not confess in public, things we do not dwell on and would prefer to forget, recognition not only of our imperfections but reflecting the reality that we not so much make mistakes as sometimes act with less than honorable motives.
Included in this category are lies that we tell. Many of these are what we call ‘white lies’, usually small avoidances of truth often done for convenience or even a good cause. No doubt all of us lie on occasion, but there are precious few of us for whom lies constitute the foundation of our lives, where we are in a real sense “living a lie”. We occasionally encounter people who lie about their educational credentials or work history, sometimes greatly exaggerating their accomplishments, and in these instances the lies may serve as an important part of the foundation of a person’s life, perhaps obtaining a highly-paid position based on entirely false credentials, a life that would in part disintegrate if all the truths were known. We find this sometimes with con artists, whose very existence seems built on a vast and intricate weaving of lies, with lives that would indeed disintegrate if the truths were made public. These latter people are, in some real sense, “living a lie”.
Moving from individuals to nations, there are a few countries in the world that fit this latter category, one being the United States of America – a nation and a people that are in every sense living a lie, with virtually the entire foundation of beliefs, of actions, of history, of national pride, of citizenship, based on things that are not only not true but constitute an all-encompassing network of fabricated historical myths. This is not an idle claim, and is not an accusation that can be made against many other countries. I know of no place regarding the US where we can look and not find the landscape littered with falsehoods and supported by an enormous scaffolding of myths, half-truths, buried facts, boldly revised history, nationalistic propaganda and magnificent outright lies. It is true that most nations sugar-coat some parts of their history, but the US is almost unique in the world in being a nation that is genuinely built – and almost entirely built – on a foundation of lies.
With most other nations, if all their historical and political lies were fully exposed with all truths openly documented, they would still survive. But for Americans, the existential threat would be unbearable and I do not believe the US could survive as a nation if all its historical truths were unveiled and confirmed, in a manner by which Americans were compelled to confront them as fact, where denial was not an option.
As two minor examples, we have the now well-documented fact that the US government abandoned several thousand prisoners of war in Vietnam, men held back by the Vietnamese pending the American payment of the agreed war reparations of several billions of dollars. The US government had no intention of paying the money and so walked away from the table, leaving the men behind. Many veterans attempted to bring this to public attention, even testifying before Congress; many had unshakable proof of their claims, but the government – and the media – ignored them until recently when all the factual details emerged in second-tier internet news sites and could no longer be avoided. A much greater existential threat lies in the truth of Pearl Harbor, where it is no longer a secret, except to Americans, that Roosevelt knew not only of the impending Japanese attack (which he had carefully and deliberately provoked), but that he knew precisely the location and course of the Japanese fleet and the date and time of the attack. Roosevelt and his aides held back this information from their own high-level military at Pearl Harbor, sacrificing those lives for the greater objective of a “justified” entry into both theaters of the Second World War.
I believe there are almost no Americans with the emotional capacity to face this brutal truth, either philosophically or emotionally, and yet similar evidence virtually floods the available information sources. I would repeat here David Edwards’ words that “we will become angry with them for telling us these terrible things about our society and insist that this simply ‘can’t be true’.” Yet these things have always been true about the American government. It wasn’t so long ago that declassified documents revealed Operation Northwoods, where the CIA proposed to shoot down a planeload of American college students and a US space shuttle launch, using those as justification to invade Cuba and remove Castro. The US government has both proposed and executed dozens of these atrocities over the years, all hidden from the American mind and heart with the compliance of the media. Pearl Harbor was by no means the worst of these, but few Americans will be able to deal with these truths of their nation.
Many other events are perhaps less brutal but no less breathtaking in their dishonesty. All the tales of how the US became rich, the jingoistic mantras of ingenuity and innovation, of wealth resulting from freedom and democracy, hard work and fair play, are entirely false, and repugnantly so. America became rich through a program of organised violence encompassing hundreds of years, through centuries of unpaid slave labor, military invasions, and the bullying and plundering of weaker nations. The propaganda of the benefits of American-style capitalism follows this same pattern, but Americans are fed this pulp from birth and no longer have the intelligence to see the truth. The US government statistics on items like inflation, unemployment, GDP and more, are the most misleading and dishonest of all nations today. The propaganda machine tells us otherwise, but one need only look at the facts. The US has for the last century been the largest perpetrator of espionage in the world, this activity provably including commercial espionage on a grand scale for more than a century, but the propaganda machine lays this accusation on other nations while claiming a desire to collect only information on terrorists. An enormous lie of a magnitude almost too large to comprehend or refute.
Thomas Edison, revered in American history books as one of the most prolific inventors of all time, never invented anything. The stories about him are fabricated historical myths, as are the cherished legends of the Wright Brothers making the first powered flight or Alexander Graham Bell inventing the telephone. Coca-Cola was a world-famous Spanish product stolen and patented by US pharmacist John Pemberton, with the US government refusing to recognise the prior patents. Tales of American inventiveness and IP are almost 180 degrees from the truth, with solidly documented proof that the US stole more IP from more countries than did any other nation, by orders of magnitude, paying $20,000 to $50,000 to anyone who could accomplish such a theft, at a time when even $20,000 was a lifetime salary for an average person. This pattern is consistent in every area and every field of endeavor in American society. The entire history of the US, as described in the history books and repeated incessantly by everyone from Hollywood to various Presidents, is almost all false, and the parts not false are almost always misrepresented. The nation of America and all of its people, are truly living a lie.
The entire thread of “Democracy” and “democratic values” is one of the greatest serial lies ever told. American history books, and American minds, are filled with tales of the US “making the world safe for democracy” by battling tyranny everywhere and installing democratic governments, but this has never happened even one time. While the propaganda machine was flooding the imaginary world with tales of democracies, the US was flooding the real world with brutal military dictators that would permit US multinationals and banks to pillage their countries. All the theory of the US’ fabled democracy, the government by the people, the checks and balances, is false, with the truth in the open but Americans so indoctrinated nobody seems able to see. Furthermore, the US government has made it illegal to teach many of these truths in America’s public schools.
All the propaganda of moral superiority, of concern for human rights, are, as we will see, lies in their entirety. The US is not only not morally superior, but has the worst human rights record of all nations excepting one, in recent centuries. Americans have many tales – almost all false – of other nations committing wartime atrocities while their own government and military were committing far worse and heavily censoring the media to prevent that knowledge from escaping custody. Almost no Americans know of the vast massacres committed by their military in the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Germany and Iraq. Human rights atrocities began from the first days of the white settlers landing in North America, and have never ceased. Ever since the US outsourced to other countries its human rights atrocities, it has boasted to the world of its moral righteousness in human rights leadership, but all was based on lies, deception and marketing. The world’s only “torture university” – the infamous School of the Americas, the decades of cruel and even savage atrocities inflicted on so many of the world’s nations, have been lost in the American propaganda of goodness.
The US heavily promotes its fictitious position as the world’s policeman, but it has never once acted in such a capacity. No nation has ever been protected or defended from anything by the US, but many dozens have instead been ravaged and destroyed by this same imaginary angel of mercy. Everything about the US protecting any part of the world, is an outright lie. American heads are filled with tales of American goodness rescuing these populations from tyranny, but the hundreds of US military interventions have been undertaken to beat down indigenous populations who were rebelling against American imperialism, poverty and death. The US Congressional Record lists these interventions as “protecting American interests” without providing details on precisely what interests were being protected, by what means this “protection” was being inflicted and, most importantly, why America had any “interests” in those nations in the first place.
The US government has not only lied about every war and foreign military intervention, but has most often created false-flag events to accompany the lies and create fictitious justifications for belligerent action. The American entry to World War One was promoted by perhaps the greatest woven tapestry of lies ever created, thanks to Lippman and Bernays, a project that involved literally millions of lies told over a period of years, sufficient to brainwash an entire population into hating an innocent country. The promotion of World War Two was not better in any respect. The Americans have done this since the destruction of the warship Maine in Cuba’s harbor more than a century ago, and have never ceased these enormous self-inflicted injuries. Lies used to justify more lies.
It is now well-known and not in dispute that US officials told more than 900 separate lies to justify the invasion and destruction of Iraq. The same is true with Libya, and with Syria today. The same is true of the destruction of Yugoslavia, another devastating military adventure based 100% on lies. All of the so-called “color revolutions” and other similar were not initiated to protect local populations from dictators but to punish unwilling nations for resisting the brutal American-style capitalism that was ravaging their shores. Ukraine, Russia, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and so many more nations have been under attack by the US government simply for resisting colonisation, but stillborn American minds believe they are God’s representatives pressuring “the bad guys”. Every part of American foreign policy and foreign involvement is covered with a carpet of lies, the media assisting in subversion and burying of the truths.
It would be useful to collect a catalogue of lies told by American presidents, Secretaries of State and other high officials, and publish these alongside the true facts. Consider this statement by George Bush made in 2003, just as his vast international kidnapping and torture regime was running at top speed: “The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy.” Name one president of any country that has told a greater lie than this one by George Bush.
The US government and its agencies boast to the world about their freedom of speech while condemning censorship in other nations, yet the US is probably the most heavily censored of all countries. The fact that the media are willing conspirators does not change the fact that all news and public content is heavily controlled and that 95% of what Americans “know” about their own nation and the world, is false. The US news media invariably present only one side of events that proselytise the current political agenda, leaving the American people hopelessly in the dark about the true facts. This is so true that one US columnist noted that only 4% of Americans have any awareness of the immense brutality perpetrated on the people of Palestine by the state of Israel for the past 70 years. American history books and other educational materials consist largely of historical myths, propaganda about the goodness of America, about the badness of other nations, lies about the foundation and entire history of America itself. Hollywood is one of the worst criminals in this regard, with virtually every movie containing historical content being little more than a twisted propaganda film, satisfying one ideology or another while totally misleading Americans on the truths of their own nation. Stephen Spielberg’s recent ‘Lincoln’ movie is one such example, but there are hundreds of others.
The US, the one nation in the world stridently claiming an absolute freedom from propaganda, brainwashing and censorship, is in fact and reality the nation most overwhelmed with precisely these attributes. We will see irrefutable evidence that American schoolchildren are exposed to extensive indoctrination virtually from birth in terms of politics, capitalism, consumerism, patriotism, moral superiority, American exceptionalism and so much more. We will see that this indoctrination and brainwashing are so extensive that the American view of itself and its place in the world bear almost no comparison to reality, to the extent that this vast gulf between beliefs and reality constitutes a national mental illness. Given the enormous cognitive dissonance in America today, one can conclude only that Americans are the most deluded people on earth.
And in the end, this is the reason the US Department of Homeland Security has built its 800 detention centers and purchased its three billion bullets, the same reason that many (Western) columnists are openly suggesting that the rampant abuse of power, the entrenched corruption and feeding from the public trough, the persistent plundering and terrorising of nations with civilian casualties in the millions, “has become so widespread, so deeply entrenched and so increasingly bold, that the only possible remedy is a revolution”. American and European columnists are becoming increasingly vocal in actually recommending another American revolution, convinced that only a popular uprising of the population acting in concert would have the power to reverse this tide. Until then, America, unlike almost every other nation in the world, will continue to be a nation built on lies.
Part Two of Six will contain: Colonisation, Labor and Slavery
In the United States, there is a dispute over whether democracy and freedom are compatible. Some, such as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, have questioned their compatibility, and even asserted that freedom, rather than democracy, is what the U.S. really stands for. These terms are often used out of context and the dispute often suffers from a lack of historical knowledge, but there is nothing surprising about that.
Most of the men who put together the U.S. Constitution saw the world in class, racial and gender terms. While they wanted a more democratic government than that in England which, for propaganda purposes, they had portrayed as a tyranny, the new American democracy had to be carefully structured. Here is how this translated from theory into practice: the common man’s passions should be held in check by a system that kept the power to make policy in the hands of those white males who had “a material stake in society”—that is, the propertied class. For large segments of the population democracy was to be denied due to both gender and color.
Only a relative few of these men were thinking about freedom per se. And those who did, certainly did not define it in open-ended libertarian terms. Indeed, in late 18th century America, freedom came in two flavors: (1) first and foremost, the freedom from “unreasonable” taxation. What is unreasonable in this sense, would be argued about incessantly right up into the present. (2) Protection against the abuse of government power. The notion of abuse was directly connected to a) examples of alleged British excesses leading up to the American Revolution and b) Federalist party practices (when in power) like the suppression of critical newspapers and pamphlets. It is to cover a host of these sorts of issues, collectively posited as the protection of individual rights or freedoms, that Jefferson and Madison insisted a bill of rights be added to the Constitution as its first set of amendments. Once this was accomplished (December 1791) America’s democracy and a constitutional list of protected rights/freedoms, became compatible.
Part II—Getting Things Wrong
Now we fast forward to the present and Republican Senator Rand Paul, who was recently quoted in the New York Times as follows: “The idea of democracy and majority rule really is what goes against our history and what the country stands for [which is freedom]. The Jim Crow laws came out of democracy. That’s what you get when a majority ignores the rights of others.” He goes on to connect Republican Party opposition to a bipartisan congressional investigation of the January 6 “protest” (it was really an attempted insurrection) with the right of the political minority to protect itself against the majority. All of this is ahistorical and illogical.
When taking up Paul’s position there are several points to consider:
First: Historical accuracy. Paul seems confused about the status of majority and minority when it comes to freed slaves in the American South at the time Congress abandoned Reconstruction (March 1877). At this time, the Black population in large parts of the rural South constituted the numerical majority. So, the Jim Crow laws that quickly followed were the products of a local political/racial minority (southern Whites) seeking to suppress the newly won rights of their local majorities (southern Blacks). Thus, Paul has his facts backwards. He might have made this mistake because he thinks that the American Black population has been a minority at all times and in all places throughout the country’s history. Yet here we have an important exception—an exception that challenges the senator’s argument that discriminatory behavior principally has its source with oppressive majorities.
Today, if Senator Paul is looking for a minority in need of protection, he should focus on contemporary southern Blacks (who are now indeed a minority both in size and power.) They are now faced with a white Republican Party in control of state legislatures seeking to suppress the voting access of minorities.
Second. Paul seems not to take into consideration that the American majority has grown and diversified. In other words, when it comes to what the government (local, state and federal) cannot do to you (like suppress your voting rights)—the you have steadily grown larger. Theoretically this should bode ill for the rightwing state legislatures mentioned above. It is unclear how Senator Paul personally feels about this (such narrowing of the election laws has not taken place in his home state of Kentucky), but he is an active member of the Republican Party, and that is party playing fast and loose with the voting laws in a host of southern and mid-western states. Why is the Republican Party doing this? Because a growing and diversifying majority creates a growing number of voters and most come from Black and other non-white segments of the population. Exercising their participatory political rights, they tend to vote Democrat.
Third. The constitutionally protected rights or freedoms are not open-ended. Yet Paul seems to suggest that they are when he asserts that to protect the Republican minority in the Senate, the party can block a bipartisan investigation of the January 6 insurrection. On the one hand, it is quite true that the bill of rights was designed as, and remains, a necessary defense of individual rights from majority demands for political or cultural uniformity. On the other, one can ask, what is Paul and the Republicans trying to protect their party from? The bill of rights does not, and never was supposed to stifle investigation of criminal acts. The only thing the bill of rights does in this regard is to guard the individual against illegal evidence gathering procedures and other abusive practices on the part of law enforcement.
Part III—Misusing the Bill of Rights
Against this background, how are we to understand Paul’s specific application of minority rights? At the very least, we can understand it as a misinterpretation of the purpose and intent of the bill of rights and the protections it offers individual citizens. In other words, he is defending his party’s refusal to allow a bipartisan investigation of an apparent crime—a crime with potentially embarrassing trail of evidence.
The Republican Party and its conspiracy-spinning allies in the press and social media (whose speech is nonetheless protected) essentially created an alternate reality for millions of Americans that led some of them to insurrection. Despite many evidence-based demonstrations to the contrary, millions have bought into the myth that former President Donald Trump was cheated—and thus they, his supporters, were also cheated—out of victory in the 2020 presidential election. While both the Republicans and their supporters may believe the unbelievable—aver the demonstrably false—they have no right under the Constitution and its bill of rights to express such a delusion by going on a rampage, destroying public property, and attacking public officials. They have no protected right—no “freedom” to do this even if they claim, probably truthfully, that they believed the president told them to do it.
Taking the next step, what is the real-world consequence of Paul’s defense? Well, given the likelihood that the investigation would connect elements of the Republican Party to the actions of the insurrectionists, this must be seen as self-serving obstruction of justice—itself a crime. For Paul, this is the “freedom” that—conveniently—supersedes democracy.
Finally, the whole affair is a scary example of a paradox: The protection of speech, that is the right to free speech, can degenerate into a campaign of lies and this can easily lead people to unprotected, that is criminal, actions. This is, admittedly, a downside of the bill of rights. An individual (and keep in mind that under U.S. law corporations are seen as individuals) has a protected right to lie to the public—to wit: broadcasted fantasies ranging from those of the National Inquirer to Fox TV and, lest we forget, Donald Trump.
Part IV—Conclusion
It is worth repeating that one of the positive things about the political evolution of the United States is that it has expanded the ranks of the participatory majority. In political terms, citizens of all genders and races now have both participatory rights and protected individual rights. Correspondingly, the minority—referring here specifically to those who object to this historical expansion—is slowly shrinking. While the latter’s rights to, say free speech, will remain protected, their ability to retain political and cultural power may well diminish over time. There is no doubt that the Republican leadership has a sense of this possibility, and this accounts for their increasingly fierce and frenzied attempts to turn back the clock.
The shift of emphasis from an expanding democracy with protected individual rights/freedoms, to a dangerously ad hoc and sometimes illogical version of freedom, is part of that frenzied activity. Senator Paul and his friends, very short on historical facts and judgment, want all of us to believe in the absurd. That is, obstruction of justice in the name of minority rights is “what the country stands for.”
The recent US aggression against the resistance axis; clamping down its electronic sites is very revealing and represents a new surge of confrontation!
By doing this, Washington has proved how fragile and weak the American democracy is.
In its attempt to gag the voices and prevent spreading the truth about the real events and the ongoing events in the region, especially in Palestine, the US administration is testifying to the following:
First: the resistance axis media has been very effective, especially recently in sending the message to the masses and elites, not only in the region, but also all over the world. A message of truth that resonated and formed a new awareness among huge segments of societies and elites in the US and across the Western world.
Second: the recent aggression by the “Israeli” occupation forces against Gaza has revealed more than any time before the true face of “Israel” as an occupying force and an apartheid regime that can never be tolerated or accepted to exist in today’s world.
Third: the American unwavering staunch support to “Israel”; supplying it with sophisticated high tech weaponry and offering a permanent political and diplomatic immunity to “Israeli” atrocities against the Palestinian people in the name of the American people cannot continue as is, as more serious questions are being leveled to the US officials about their role in supporting “Israel” against Palestinians, and how that complies with the US integrity and system of values that Washington keeps preaching its people and the world.
Fourth: the US officials, supported by a heavy media machine, have always boasted about their systems of values, and attributed to themselves a moral mission in the world to support righteousness and defend doomed and oppressed people; This has almost come to an end or has been heavily criticized and contested by mounting number of citizens and elites in the US who started to shatter this American myth about defending democracy and democratic values. Moreover, they are questioning the whole US conduct in the region and the world causing real headache to a long relieved US administration that never expected to be confronted with existential questions about its role in the region and many other sensitive areas of the world.
Fifth: it is worth mentioning that this is only a start that can be built upon and not a main stream current or a huge transformation that can bring about change overnight. All those who believe in independence and freedom from US hegemony should coordinate and work closely and relentlessly to gain more support to their cause and send the right message to the Western audiences because this is a new weapon that cannot be ignored or underestimated in our struggle against the US hegemony.
As such, all the victims of the US- “Israeli”-Western bloody interference in the region and the world should organize their efforts and coordinate their campaigns smoothly and smartly to start a long term strategy built upon perseverance, patience and deep knowledge of the intended messages that should reach to bring about the anticipated results.
The effort should present a narrative easy to circulate and understood, a moving narrative that brings more people to join and support our righteous cause. We should benefit from every single support and make sure to gain many effective voices to our side whether in media, judiciary, politics, diplomacy, academia, syndicates, art, or any other area or field.
This could insure that we can give “Israel” supporters in the world a real hard time and establish a strong foundation to win our future battles with these warmongering forces!
Address issues which Ukraine, the West’s client state, does not like and you could end up on a ‘hit list’. Because that’s apparently how flourishing democracies roll…
Last week, photojournalist Dean O’Brien participated in a United Nations meeting to give his perspective on the war in Donbass, Ukraine’s breakaway region in the east. Shortly after the discussion, O’Brien came under fire from the Ukrainian embassy in the UK.
However, smears from Ukrainian officials are nothing compared to what the controversial ‘enemies of Ukraine’ database, the Mirotvorets (Peacekeeper) website, could bring.
In May, O’Brien and I discussed this hit list, noting that we were both on it, with photos of us published on the witch-hunt website.
“It’s a website called ‘Peacemaker.’ It’s anything but, really. It seems to be a hit list, a target for journalists or anybody that goes against the grain in Ukraine. If you’re reporting on them, they see you as some kind of threat and put you on this list,” he said.
The platform was created in 2014, shortly after Crimea was reabsorbed by Russia and the Kiev government’s military campaign in eastern Ukraine was launched. As TASS noted in 2019, Mirotvorets “aims to identify and publish personal data of all who allegedly threaten the national security of Ukraine. In recent years, the personal data of journalists, artists or politicians who have visited Crimea, Donbass, or for some other reason have caused a negative assessment of the authors of the site, have been blacklisted by Peacemaker.”
Talking about the horrors that Donbass civilians endure under Ukrainian shelling is, according to this rationale, a threat to Ukraine’s national security. As is going to Crimea, maintaining that Crimeans chose to be a part of Russia (or, as many in Crimea told me, to return to Russia) and criticising the influence neo-Nazis wield in Kiev.
“The most worrying thing is that they seem to be able to get a hold of people’s passports, visas,” O’Brien told me. “The fact that they can get ahold of your passport photo, your visa photocopies, these can only come from official government offices in Ukraine. This is a governmental website, it’s been discussed in parliament, to close it down. They’re not interested in closing it down. This website is kind of like a hit list, really.”
That might seem like an exaggeration, but people listed on Mirotvorets have been targeted and even killed.
A report by the Foundation for the Study of Democracy titled “Ukrainian War Crimes and Human Rights Violations (2017-2020)” gave the example of a Ukrainian journalist assassinated in 2015 after his personal details were published on the website.
“A few days before his death, Oles Buzina’s details, including his home address, had been posted on the Canadian-based Mirotvorets website, created with the initiative of Anton Gerashchenko, the Ukrainian deputy minister of internal affairs. The people listed on it are recommended for liquidation and arrest, and the total number of people listed are in the tens of thousands.
According to many experts, it was the listing on the site and the publication of the home address that prompted the murder of Oles Buzina, Oleg Kalashnikov, and many other opposition figures by members of the Ukrainian ‘death squads’.
Back in 2015, Georgiy Tuka, who participated in the creation and operation of the site, stated that, of the people listed on the site, “more than 300 were either arrested or destroyed,” the report states.
When in April 2015 the Ukrainian parliament’s Commissioner for Human Rights Valeriya Lutkovskaya launched an effort to shut the list down, the then-adviser to Minister of Internal Affairs Anton Gerashchenko threatened her position and stated that the work of the site was “extremely important for the national security of Ukraine.” He said that “anyone who does not understand this or tries to interfere with this work is either a puppet in the hands of others or works against the interests of national security.”
So the website remains active, with Ukraine’s security service reportedly stating that it did not see any violations of Ukrainian law in the activities of the Mirotvorets website.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, too, has refused to have the website shut down, ironically claiming that it’s wrong to interfere with the work of websites and the media.
Let’s remember that in Ukraine, untold numbers of journalists, activists and civilians have been imprisoned, and killed, for their crimes of voicing criticism of the government and neo-Nazi groups.
Ukraine isn’t the only country to host such a hit list. Although Stop the ISM (International Solidarity Movement) – the project of crazed US-based journalist, Lee Kaplan – named activists, including myself, for our crimes of reporting on Israel’s brutal bombardment of Gaza in 2008/09, the website has since changed format and is far less detailed. But cached versions show the extent of its insanity, including a clear call for our murders:
“ALERT THE IDF MILITARY TO TARGET ISM
“Number to call if you can pinpoint the locations of Hamas with their ISM members with them. Help us neutralise the ISM that is now definitely a part of Hamas since the war began.”
Others on the kill list were named for their crimes of reporting Israel’s systematic abuse and killing of Palestinians. Their personal details, including passport information, were published.
An article on this heinous website noted: “The dossiers are openly addressed to the Israeli military so as to help them eliminate ‘dangerous’ targets physically, unless others see to it first.”
Although arguably that website was the project of one lunatic and their allies, the fact that for many years it stayed active and called for the murders of international peace activists speaks volumes on America’s own values.
I’m sure these two hit-list examples are not isolated ones. Quite likely, there are similar lists targeting journalists reporting on the crimes of other countries. But they are the height of absurdity, and fascism: targeting people whose reporting aims to help persecuted civilians.
Meanwhile in Donbass, Ukraine reportedly continues its shelling of civilian areas. Recently in Gorlovka, a northern city hammered by Ukrainian bombing over the years, a mine blew off part of a woman’s leg as she gathered mushrooms.
This is the woman who was earlier blown up by a mine in Gorlovka. She had her left leg torn off when the mine exploded whilst she was innocently picking mushrooms. Yet again, another innocent victim caught up in this brutal conflict. #Donbasspic.twitter.com/DBQGD2h8J9— Dean O’Brien – BA (Hons) (@DeanoBeano1) June 6, 2021
In spite of the hit list, journalists, rightly, continue to report on these war crimes.
By Pepe Escobar for The Saker Blog and thereafter widely distributed
Nakba, May 15, 2021. Future historians will mark the day when Western “liberal democracy” issued a graphic proclamation: We bomb media offices and destroy “freedom of the press” in an open air concentration camp while we forbid peaceful demonstrations under a state of siege in the heart of Europe.
And if you revolt, we cancel you.
6 members of the same family assassinated at this bombing in Beit Lahia
Gaza meets Paris. The bombing of the al-Jalaa tower – an eminently residential building which also housed the bureaus of al-Jazeera and AP, among others – by “the only democracy in the Middle East” is directly connected to the verboten order carried out by Macron’s Ministry of Interior.
For all practical purposes Paris endorsed the occupying power’s provocations in East Jerusalem; the invasion of al-Aqsa mosque – complete with tear gas and stun grenades; racist Zionist gangs harassing and crying “death to Arabs”; armed settlers aggressing Palestinian families threatened with expulsion from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan; a campaign of carpet bombing whose lethal victims – on average – are 30% children.
Paris crowds were not intimidated. From Barbes to Republique, they marched in the streets – their rallying cry being Israel assassin, Macron complice. They instinctively understodood that Le Petit Roi – a puny Rothschild employee – had just firebombed the historical legacy of the nation that coined the Déclaration Universelle des Droits de L’Homme.
The mask of “liberal democracy” kept falling again and again in a loop – with imperial Big Tech dutifully canceling the voices of Palestinians and defenders of Palestine en masse, in tandem with a diplomatic kabuki that could fool only the already brain-dead.
On May 16, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi chaired a United States Security Council (UNSC) debate via video link that had been stalled by Washington, non-stop, throughout the week. China presides the UNSC throughout May.
The UNSC could not even agree on a mere joint statement. Once again because the UNSC was blocked by the – cowardly – Empire of Chaos.
It was up to Hua Liming, former Chinese ambassador to Iran, to break it all down in a single sentence:
“The US doesn’t want to give the credit of mediating the Palestine-Israel conflict to China, especially when China is the president of the UNSC.”
The usual imperial procedure is to “talk”, “offer you can’t refuse” Mafia-style, to both sides under the table – as the combo behind Crash Test Dummy, an avowed Zionist, had already admitted on an appalling White House tweet “reaffirming” its “strong support for Israel’s right to defend itself”.
Liming emphasized, correctly, “this is the key reason why any solution or ceasefire between Israel and Gaza or other forces in the region would be temporary.”
The whole Global South is incessantly bombarded by the imperial “human rights” rhetoric – from convicted crook Navalny to fake reports on Xinjiang. Yet when there is a real human rights catastrophe unleashed by the settler colonialist ally’s carpet bombing, Liming pointed out how “the hypocrisy and double standards of the US have been exposed again”.
One phone call can stop it
Amos Yadlin is the former IDF Military Intelligence Directorate chief, and also former Israeli military attaché to the US.
In a meeting with South African Zionists, he admitted the obvious: the Zionist carnage against Gaza can be stopped by Crash Test Dummy – who happens to be, what else, a Zionist puppet.
Yadlin claimed that the Crash Test Dummy administration, rather the combo behind it, was getting “impatient” and he would be “not surprised if this will all stop in 48 hours.” And once again he had to reinforce the obvious: “When the Egyptians ask Israel to stop, Israel doesn’t want to stop. But if the Americans will ask Israel to stop, Israel will have to listen.”
The Empire practices trademark doublespeak when referring to the “international community” – which in theory gathers at the UN. The concomitant 24/7 propaganda barrage applies only to the motley crew of partners in crime, minions, lackeys, poodles and vassals, imperially ignoring and/or pissing on the heads of over 80% of the planet. Confronted with the reality of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine and others, “rules-based international order” does not even qualify as a joke for retards.
So next time you see some sub-zoology specimen deploying the “Israel has the right to defend itself” Maximum Stupidity argument, the only possible response is to unleash facts as missiles.
Every sentient being with a conscience knows Palestine faces a racist settler colonialism project boasting an armed-to-the-hilt-military and several nuclear bombs, specialized in practicing state terrorism.
Gaza though is a particularly horrifying case. Population: nearly 2 million people. One of the top densely populated areas on the planet. A de facto open air concentration camp where no less than 50% are children, one in ten stunted to a great extent because of food shortages provoked by the Israeli blockade. The official Israeli military plan is to allow just enough food in so the whole population barely survives. 50% of the population depends on food aid.
No less than 70% of families are refugees, who were ethnically cleansed from what is now southern Israel: there are roughly 1.46 million refugees out of a population of 1.9 million.
Gaza has 8 refugee camps – some being bombed as we speak. Never forget that Israel ruled Gaza directly from 1967 to 2005 and did less than zero to better their appalling conditions.
There are only 22 health centers, 16 social services offices and 11 food distribution centers, serving roughly 1 million people. No airport or port: both destroyed by Israel. The unemployment rate is 50% – the highest on the whole planet. Clean water is available to only 5% of the population.
But then there’s the Resistance. Elijah Magnier has shown how they have already pierced Israel’s pre-fabricated aura of invulnerability and “prestige” – and there’s only one way to go, as the speed, accuracy, range and potency of rockets and missiles can only improve.
In parallel, in a wise strategic move, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have made it very clear they prefer that Hezbollah does not get itself directly involved – for now, thus allowing the whole Global South to be focused on the carnage perpetrated against Gaza.
“A landscape of iron and desolation”
Sociologie de Jerusalem, by Sylvaine Bulle, is a short but quite illuminating book showing how the battle for East Jerusalem is as imperative for the future of Palestine as the tragedy in Gaza.
Bulle focuses on the “internal racism” in Israel directly linked to the hegemony of extreme-right Zionist “elites”. A key consequence has been the “peripherization” and marginalization of East Jerusalem, thrown into a situation of “forced dependence” of Westernized West Jerusalem.
Bulle shows how East Jerusalem only exists as “a landscape of iron and desolation”, through a juxtaposition of ultra-dense and totally abandoned zones. Palestinians who live in these areas are not regarded or respected as citizens.
Beit Lahia – the horrifying detail
It got much worse after 2004 and the construction of The Wall – which prevented the daily mobility of Palestinians living in the occupied territories and the Palestinians in Jerusalem. That was an extra fracture, with parts of East Jerusalem isolated on the other side of the wall and a lot of people now living in a real no man’s land. Very few across the “liberal democratic” West have any idea how does that feel in practice.
Palestinians in East Jerusalem don’t have Israeli nationality. Most have Jordanian passports. Yet now even Palestinians with Israeli nationality are rebelling – in most cases in very poor towns in the center of the country. Young generations simply have no reason to believe they belong in Israel.
As for Israeli secular leftists, they have been “neutralized” and carry no political power, as they were incapable of integrating the working masses, which in turn were completely captured by hardcore religious extremists.
Bulle’s conclusion, expressed with way too much diplomacy (this is France, after all), is inevitable: the state of Israel is more and more Jewish and less and less democratic, a de facto Zionist regime. She believes it might be possible to rebuild the link between Jewish national identity and democracy, including the rights of Palestinian minorities.
Sorry, but that’s not gonna happen, as the current tragedy, which started in East Jerusalem, graphically shows.
The Via Dolorosa continues – as we all watch in horror. Just imagine the inter-galactic Western levels of hysteria if Russia or China were bombing, firing shells and missiles and killing children in residential areas. No wonder the Empire of Chaos – and Lies, posing as a “liberal democracy” while enabling the murderous Zionist project, is firmly flirting with the dustbin of History.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 