Category Archives: Economics

Wall Street Primitivism: Nicaragua, China, The Middle East & Charlottesville

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By Caleb Maupin

Source: New Eastern Outlook

Wall Street, London, and the Bretton Woods institutions like the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund claim to support development and the eradication of poverty around the world. They also claim to support scientific progress and raising the global standard of living. However, often they seem to make friends and allies with very different goals. As Nicaragua proceeds with a huge construction project that has dynamic global implications, one can see a certain international pattern repeating itself, with quite dangerous implications.

“Native Activists” Fighting To Preserve US Maritime Dominance

Control of the Panama Canal by the United States has been vital in asserting control over the world economy. The US military has intervened militarily in Panama on many occasions to secure its control of this vital global shipping and transportation hub.

While the USA currently allows vessels to pass through, this could easily change in the case of a military confrontation. With so much of the world’s industrial shipping passing through this vital point, control of the canal gives the USA a level of unchecked power in the global economy. At any point they could “veto” a country’s economy by stopping ships.

However, a construction project currently in the works in Nicaragua could change that. The Chinese government and corporations based in China are cooperating with the socialist government of Nicaragua to construct a new canal, parallel to the Panama Canal. This canal will not be under US dominion, but under the dominion of the Sandinista government and the People’s Republic of China.

The announcement of the project was followed by all kinds of reports in western media claiming it would be an ecological disaster and contribute to global warming. Now, as the project proceeds, voices of the establishment are crying crocodile tears for the indigenous people who will be forced to move by the project. The Guardian has run stories bemoaning their plight. Amnesty International is warning Nicaragua not to interfere with their protests.

The USA is in the process of putting sanctions on Nicaragua, for their support of Venezuela. A bill currently in the US congress called the NICA Act aims to cripple the socialist government.

While it is ignored in US press reports, the Sandinista government has done a great deal to improve the lives of its population, a large percentage of which is indigenous. Poverty in Nicaragua has been reduced by 30%. The United Nations World Happiness Index reports the great increase of happiness in any country in 2016, as having taken place in Nicaragua.

The socialist government is asserting public control over major industries, guaranteeing jobs, housing, and education to the population, and moving toward a centrally planned economy. The Sandinistas are cultivating a layer of patriotic small business owners, who cooperate with the state to develop the economy with foreign investment. Their methods are similar to those employed by Deng Xiaoping when opening up China during the 1980s.

Though the Sandinistas are widely popular, the forces who oppose the canal project have found a number of indigenous leaders to align with. 76% of people in Nicaragua have some indigenous ancestry. The overwhelming majority of the country is ethnically “mestizo” meaning it has a mixture of European and native ancestry.

However, the forces being rallied to oppose the project are not from the overwhelming majority of the population which has indigenous ancestry, but rather to a specific group of just over 4% of the population, which is described as “unmixed indigenous inhabitants.” These are individuals who have cut themselves off from Nicaraguan society at large, and much like the Amish or Mennonites in the USA, maintain a lifestyle without technology, immersed in religious tradition. While the majority of Nicaraguans are Christians, these forces are Shamanists and practitioners of polytheistic faiths. They reject all “european” concepts and lump Marxism, dialectical materialism, and Christianity into the same basket.

The relationship between this isolated minority in Nicaragua and the US Central Intelligence Agency is not a new development. During the 1980s contra war, the CIA supplied weapons and military training to the indigenous Mosquito peoples to fight the Sandinistas. In addition to the weapons and funding they received from the USA, a number of Anti-Communist US Native American activists such as Russell Means joined with them. Many of these indigenous, anti-technology, and anti-science fanatics stood against what they called the “Racist European Marxism” of the Sandinista government, which was made up largely of dark skinned people with indigenous blood. While they claimed to oppose both “capitalism and communism” as European concepts, they quietly and sometimes not-so-quietly, worked with the Pentagon and the CIA.

Just as they took up guns in the 1980s in alliance with Washington, they now get promoted by pro-US Non-Governmental Organizations and Non-Profits, who conveniently see maintaining US maritime dominance as the latest, trendy, ecological, liberal cause, done to rescue some “mystical people” with “beautiful ancient traditions” being crushed by “racist” “dogmatic” Marxists.

“Traditionalist” CIA-Allies in China

Western utilization and manipulation of primitivist, conservative, and reactionary social forces in order to stop economic development is not restricted to Latin America. The political allies of the United States on the Chinese mainland, who work against the People’s Republic, often while spouting rhetoric about “human rights” are a rather interesting bunch.

The Chinese government has just cracked down on an extremist cult known as “Eastern Lightning.” The group is also known as the “Church of the Almighty God” and worships a woman who they claim is the second coming of Jesus Christ. They are reported to torture, mutilate, and even execute members who attempt to leave. Members of the group famously murdered a man in a Mcdonalds restaurant for refusing to allow his daughter to give her phone number to them.

While some would dismiss this simply as an obscure religious cult, it is important to note that the lead minister of the Church, along with the woman who claims to be Jesus Christ, both currently live in the USA. In 2001, they sought “political exile” in the United States, and while millions of people die attempting to cross the US border, the US government happily grants visas to anti-China activists, order to help them escape “persecution” from the US government.

Another friend of the USA in China is the Falun Gong, a strange buddhist sect. The group calls for the public execution of homosexuals and opposes inter-racial marriage. Li Hongzi, the group’s founder, lives in Queens, New York. His organization has been presented with awards by the Heritage Foundation.

Much like Eastern Lightning, the Falun Gong preaches that the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership, in particular its policies advancing the position of women, are harmful to society. The Falun Gong argues that the Chinese Communist Party’s rule represents a “Dharma Ending Period” and that its efforts to include women in government positions is one of its most grievous crimes. The group is also known for separating young people from their families, and threatening ex-members.

Following this pattern, the USA has worked endlessly to promote the deposed feudal theocratic monarchy of Tibet. The Dalia Lama, who ruled Tibet with an iron fist and executed and tortured all who questioned him, is presented as a harmless self-help, spiritual guru in US media.

While he is presented as a man of peace, it is widely known that his brother was given military training in Colorado, and air dropped into the Tibet Autonomous Region in the 1950s. With guns and weapons from the USA, the Tibetan separatists waged a violent proxy war in the mountains for years. This is all boasted about in the right-wing, anti-China book “The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet.”

All these bizarre religious groups aligned with the USA in China seem to glorify feudal, pre-Communist China. They all oppose the Chinese Communist Party for its modernization. While they speak different languages, and glorify different traditions, they probably would agree a lot with the Nicaraguan, US-backed “indigenous activists” who oppose the socialism of the Sandinistas. Meanwhile, it is a similar crowd of western liberals who admire them, and would accuse any who criticized them of “racism” and “white-splaining.”

Not only does Washington have a history of aligning with primitivist and feudalist forces, so do European fascists. Julius Evola, the Italian far-right ideologue who spoke of a “revolt against the modern world” had a particular admiration for feudalism and primitive societies around the world. In his book “Man Among Ruins” he speaks of “the demonic nature of the economy” in western countries, which people are always trying to advance, create, and become more prosperous. He admires pre-capitalist civilization for its poverty and “stability” amid starvation.

As members of the European far-right, the Nazis also admired primitivism and poverty. Heinrich Harrier, the author of the beloved “Seven Years in Tibet,” practically a holy book for advocates of Tibetan seperatism, was actually an SS officer. The Nazis believed Germans to be descended from Tibetans, and sent scientists to measure ancient skulls in order to somehow prove this. The Nazis had similar admiration for the caste system in ancient India, and adopted the swastika as their symbol for that reason.

CIA Loves Islamic Extremists

It was the British empire that first discovered the political value of Wahabbism. The Saudi monarchy owes its origins to a cleric named Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab. His interpretation of Islam in 1700s enabled the Saudi royal family to establish its brutal, repressive theocratic monarchy. The British cooperated with the Saudi royal family, which conveniently allowed them access to oil in exchange for propping up the barbaric regime. In 1945, the USA joined with the British is coddling the Saudi autocracy.

Today, Saudi Arabia is one of the only countries in the world where housing in bedouin tents, not modern buildings is widespread. The lack of infrastructural development accompanies a government that outlaws women from driving cars, conducts public floggings and beheadings, and punishes crimes with mutilation. Every person and everything in Saudi Arabia is the property of the King. Citizens are routinely executed for “insulting the King” or “sorcery” among other crimes. Sometimes bodies are crucified and left on public display after execution.

A large percentage of the Saudi population are guest workers who live as slaves with no human rights. Even among the Saudi born population, the Shia oil workers face brutal discrimination and exploitation on the job, with their religious freedom often denied.

While the western economic institutions and governments all claim to support “poverty alleviation” and “development” in the third world, they embrace the Saudi Monarchy in all its horror and backwardness. Meanwhile, the targets of the USA and NATO in the Middle East, are not the primitive oil autocracies, but rather, regimes that work toward modernization.

The Iranian revolution of 1979 deposed western capitalism, and established a government under the slogan of “not capitalism, but Islam.” After the revolution, even in the context of a massive war with Iraq, Imam Khomeni launched a “construction Jihad.” In this effort inspired by Stalin’s Five Year Plans and the rapid industrialization of socialist countries, Iranians were mobilized to build highways, schools, hospitals, power plants, and so much else in order to bring the country out of poverty. Despite sanctions and attacks from the west, Iran has utilized oil revenue and central planning to construct a highly modern country, with a comparatively prosperous population. The Islamic Republic of Iran that emerged from the 1979 revolution, and has made huge strides toward modernization, is now the target of western leaders.

The Syrian Arab Republic, born in the Baath Socialist revolution, is also targeted by the west. This is a government that has multiple parties in office, and has worked with Russia and China to construct huge power plants and highways. Syrian industrial workers are organized into labor unions, and have legal protections on the job. The Communist Party and the Communist Party (Baghdash) are permitted to participate in the government process. Religious freedom is guaranteed with Sunnis, Shia, Alawi, Christians, Druze, and other religious groups all freely practicing their faith. The achievements of Syria’s state controlled healthcare system are widely praised by international bodies, with many doctors and medical professionals trained the state run Universities.

Fitting with this pattern, western leaders are now arming and training Wahabbis, a force representing primitivism and barbarism of the Saudi variety, in the hopes of toppling the Syrian government. It is worth noting that prior to 2011, when the USA began working to foment civil war in the context of the Arab Spring, Syria had begun constructing an oil pipeline, connecting Iran to Mediterranean.

Prior to its destruction by NATO bombs in 2011, Libya was the most prosperous country on the African continent. It had the highest life expectancy, and had constructed a huge irrigation system in order to spread water across this dry, desert country. The forces backed by the United States to topple the Islamic Socialist government in Libya were Wahabbis. Now ISIS and Al-Queda have set up shop in the country, and citizens are fleeing on rafts trying to reach Europe.

Different Definitions of Imperialism

In his 1917 book “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism,” Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin argued that capitalism had entered a globalist phase. He talked about the rise of “monopoly capitalists” in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States. He spoke of how bankers had triumphed over industrial capitalists, and described how wealthy financial elites in the west teamed up with governments to battle against each other, carving out “spheres of influence” in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere. He described how third world countries were utilized as “captive markets” in which western countries could sell commodities without competition.

Imperialism, as Lenin understood it, was about keeping the world poor, so that western bankers could stay rich. Furthermore, imperialism meant dividing the working class within the western countries. A “labor aristocracy” of well paid workers was created. These were working class people who could be cultivated to identify with the western capitalists against the colonized people. With their rising standard of living, they would see their interests as identical to the interests of the monopolists that controlled their governments.

This understanding of imperialism was developed by Lenin, and adopted by figures like Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Huey Newton. Even non-Marxists like Michel Aflaq, Juan Peron, and Moammar Gaddafi studied and came to understand imperialism this way. For various anti-imperialist figures of the 20th century, third world revolutions against imperialism were about raising their countries up from poverty, modernizing, and developing.

However, a large section of the modern political left has abandoned this understanding. The understanding of “imperialism” taught in Universities across the USA and western Europe is quite different.

Starting in the 1950s, the New Left, specifically beloved “cultural critics” in the Frankfurt School and elsewhere, began speaking about “cultural imperialism.” Suddenly, among western academics and leftist activists, imperialism wasn’t about holding back development and keeping people poor. Rather, it was about eroding “beautiful” “traditions” and “ways of life” and “imposing” supposedly “western” values.

So-called “Mcworld” & Wahabbi Extremists Work Together

When describing the supposed leftist critique of imperialism in his book “On Paradise Drive” New York Times Columnist David Brooks said that “anti-American” and anti-imperialist forces oppose “McDonalds, Barnes and Noble, and boob jobs.” Those who object to Wall Street running the world are depicted as Native American mystics, Islamic fanatics, or others who object to the industrialization, commercialization, and sexual freedom of western life.

This misrepresentation is widespread. The false dichotomy is often stated as “Mcworld vs. Jihad,” and was widely promoted in the USA, prior to, but especially after 9/11. In this “Clash of Civilizations” narrative, the forces said to represent “Jihad” were the Saudi Monarchy and Osama Bin Laden, while the forces said to represent “Mcworld” were the IMF, the World Bank, and Wall Street.

In reality, Mcworld globalizationists and the forces represented as “Jihad” are on the same team. They have never been enemies. Washington has been on friendly terms with Saudi Arabia since 1945. The CIA worked with Wahabbi extremists in Afghanistan to topple an independent, modernizing government called the People’s Democratic Party. The USA and Saudi Arabia worked with Wahabbis in Chechnya to fight against the Soviet Union and afterwards the Russian Federation. The USA currently funds and arms Wahhabis in Syria, and cooperated with these forces in Libya to topple the Islamic Socialist government.

The conservative forces in the Middle East that oppose modernization and development, and embrace the Wahabbi ideology of the 1700s are not enemies of Wall Street or the London Stock Exchange. Unlike the Shia revolutionaries, or the Baath Socialists, which represent legitimate resistance, the Wahabbi forces do not wish to modernize or industrialize the region. They want to keep it a mess of impoverished oil plantations ruled over by autocratic vassals. Wall Street has no objection to this setup, and it can largely be traced back to the Sykes-Pickot agreement, crafted by western colonizers.

However, in the west, especially in circles considered to be “progressive” there is a strange mystical and cosmopolitan admiration for the forces of primitivism. For example, those who defend the Syrian government, and point out the terrorist nature of the anti-government forces are labelled “Islamophobic.” Liberal crowds in the United States swoon over the pro-Saudi demagogue named Linda Sarsour as she wears a headscarf, uses exotic sounding Arabic words, accuses those who oppose her of racism, and holds rallies calling for the USA to topple the Syrian government.

This degeneration of leftist politics has been a long time in the making. In the 1960s, the Hare Krishna movement, an extremely right-wing Hindu sect in India, suddenly became a beloved staple of Peace Marches. Gurus from India, figures who promoted drug use for “spiritual” purposes, all suddenly became the fixture of the left. Previously these kinds of bohemian elements had been embraced by the far-right and fascists.

In the 1950s, it was Republicans and the “China Lobby” that rallied support for the Dalia Lama and his insurgency in the Tibet Autonomous Region. Republicans accused the democrats of “losing China.” However, in the present context it is liberals who sport “Free Tibet” bumper stickers, while the right-wing is less interested in foreign meddling and applauds to the words “America First.” No matter what region is being discussed, in the present context, it is the liberals, not the conservatives, whose hearts bleed the loudest for US proxy fighters around the world.

While in the 1980s, it was conservatives like Ronald Reagan and Oliver North who championed the fight against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, it is now liberals who moan for the “indigenous cultures” that are supposedly being “oppressed” by the Marxist government, which dares challenge the hegemony of the Panama Canal.

The US Central Intelligence Agency is probably the most involved with supporting forces of primitivism around the world, as they work to battle independent modernizing governments that threaten the monopoly of western capitalism. It should be no surprise, that since the 1950s, the CIA has also been heavily involved in supporting the anti-communist political left, which seems now fully dedicated to their latest crusade.

The CIA began its infamous “Congress for Cultural Freedom” in the 1950s, hoping to direct anti-capitalist activists and artists away from the pro-Soviet Communist Parties in the USA and Europe. The CIA funded the art of Jackson Pollack, experimental music, and all kinds of cultural strata intended to clash with Marxist-Leninist dialectical materialism and socialist realism. The CIA also launched a program called “MK-Ultra” which involved distributing drugs on college campuses.

The Monument Fights in the USA

The media in western countries, as it champions various primitivist forces, has essentially embraced Julius Evola’s critique of the “demonic nature of the economy.” Like Mother Teresa who infamously said “There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering,” the non-Marxist, “liberal” element now sees social, economic, and technological progress as its enemy, and looks on poverty, ignorance, and primitivism in a condescending admiration.

While once it was the right-wing that pushed malthusian ideas about “overpopulation” it is now billionaire liberals like Bill Gates that work to decrease the global population. Often in the name of ecology, liberals will boast about how they refrain from shopping, and live frugal lives.

Now in the USA, a political clash that is very dangerous is unfolding. The fight involves monuments to various historical figures who did reprehensible things, such as owning slaves or fighting for the Confederacy in the hopes of preserving the slave system.

While it easy for anyone who hates racism and the racist mythology of films like “Gone With The Wind” and “The Birth of a Nation” to celebrate the destruction of Confederate Monuments, and they are absolutely right to do so, the context of their destruction, and who is destroying them, presents a new danger.

The forces that seek to defend the Confederate monuments are white supremacists, Ku Klux Klansmen, admirers of Hitler, traditionalists, and others. These are forces that want the USA to return to segregation, racial division, and other things overcome through decades of struggle. These forces are known to use violence, and they are widely hated and unpopular, though their prestige is slowly growing due to the absurd political context.

The problem is not that reactionary symbols are being destroyed. This is a positive thing. The problem is rather that the forces who line up against them do not seek to replace their hateful ideology with something new. In Charlottesville and elsewhere, the battle is taking place in which bigots who think Robert E. Lee was a hero are facing and off and violently clashing with those who believe society should have no heroes at all.

Racism Battles Post-Modernism

While the racist, hateful messaging and views of White Nationalists fill the airwaves, and become the subject of debate, what does Anti-Fa believe in? The media refers to crowds opposing the “Alt Right” as “anti-racist activists.” The White Nationalists are quick to call them “Communists.” But what ideas does “The Resistance” believe in? What alternative vision do they hold up to combat the right-wing?

The crowds of post-modern, non-ideological leftists largely do not seek to replace statues they destroy with statues of progressive figures like Frederick Douglas, Huey Newton, or William Z. Foster. Rather, they rally around the concept that “no one should be worshipped” and “there is no truth.” Images of Abraham Lincoln, the man who defeated Robert E. Lee and led the fight against slavery are now being destroyed, alongside the Confederates.

While “Anarchists” and liberals who destroy monuments are quick to point out and emphasize these leaders real crimes, the slogan they rally in opposition with is “No Gods and No Masters.” They fall back on concepts like “think for yourself” “question everything” and more subtly: “don’t believe in anything” “there is no truth.”

As media eulogized Heather Heyer, who was murdered by a white nationalist in Charlottesville, very few reports mentioned that she was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. The IWW, an anarcho-syndicalist labor union formed in 1905, also known as “the wobblies,” indeed has an ideology and belief system of its own. The IWW believes in creating a society in which the major industries and workplaces are controlled by those who work in them. Throughout its history, it was known for working in favor something, it syndicalist vision, not simply for the destruction the old. Not surprisingly, US media, which largely cheers for the opposition to the Alt-Right, obscures this important aspect of the woman who recently died opposing them.

As the media champions the fight against the Alt-Right, they work to obscure any solid ideology that would oppose them. The primary voices opposing the Alt-Right are post-modernists from middle class backgrounds, trained at elite Universities. They tear down the statues of confederate monuments as they cheer for the “Syrian revolution” that reduces Syria to chaos, or the various “oppressed” primitivist groups that fight against China or the government of Nicaragua.

Bill Maher, a left-wing TV commentator interviewed Leah Remini about her painful history in the Church of Scientology. In the interview, Maher outrageously compared scientology to Communism. The outrageous comparison was in reference to the low income of scientology practitioners.

As the polarization continues, the dangerous reality is that this is not the 1930s. The fighting fascists are not armed with Marxism-Leninism and guided by the Soviet Union, fighting for the ideal of Communism. Unlike the anti-fascist of the 1930s, anti-fa and the liberals who support them are not fighting to impose their own ideology onto society. Rather, they are fighting in the hopes of destroying ideology itself.

This is a hopeless mission. Every society since the dawn of agriculture has involved ideas, religions, and some concept morality, however, incorrect or distorted they may have been. These things are the foundation of human civilization. Even pre-historic tribes of hunter gathers had some rules or beliefs to guide their actions. Post-modernism and relativism cannot lay the foundations of a healthy society.

Western capitalism now rallies around the belief that “there is no truth.” At home it promotes free market capitalism and austerity, an economic model in which selfishness rules, and many people are left in poverty and misery. Meanwhile, it emphasizes a social liberalism based on hedonism and shallow values. Internationally, the west aligns itself with forces that seek to stop economic and technological progress, and freeze their societies in poverty and ignorance, so that Wall Street can maintain its monopoly.

As Americans, like all human beings, long for something to believe in, and long for their lives to improve, not get worse, they are likely to rally around forces who offer them such things. If no alternative is presented, only the now marginal far right-wing will be available to offer such things.

While its easy to call Trump a fascist, something far more deadly, and far closer the reactionary regimes of Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy could gain support. A population told to chose between either anarchy, chaos, and nihilism, or the hateful “truths” of reaction, could be pushed toward a very dangerous trajectory.

 

Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

When the Butterfly Flaps Its Wings

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credit: Twitter/@caroleenarn

By James Howard Kunstler

Source: Kunstler.com

It remains to be seen what the impact will be from Mother Nature putting the nation’s fourth largest city out-of-business. And for how long? It’s possible that Houston will never entirely recover from Hurricane Harvey. The event may exceed the physical damage that Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans. It may bankrupt large insurance companies and dramatically raise the risk of doing business anywhere along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the USA — or at least erase the perceived guarantee that losses are recoverable. It may even turn out to be the black swan that reveals the hyper-fragility of a US-driven financial system.

Houston also happens to be the center of the US oil industry. Offices can be moved elsewhere, of course, but not so easily the nine major oil refineries that sprawl between Buffalo Bayou over to Beaumont, Port Arthur, and then Lake Charles, Louisiana. Harvey is inching back out to the Gulf where it will inhale more energy over the warm ocean waters and then return inland in the direction of those refineries.

The economic damage could be epic. Much of the supply for the Colonial Pipeline system emanates from the region around Houston, running through Atlanta and clear up to Philadelphia and New York. There could be lines at the gas stations along the eastern seaboard in early September.

The event is converging with the US government running out of money this fall without new authority to borrow more by congress voting to raise the US debt ceiling. Perhaps the emergency of Hurricane Harvey and its costly aftermath will bludgeon congress into quickly raising the debt ceiling. If that doesn’t happen, and the debt ceiling is not raised, the federal government might have to pretend that it can pay for emergency assistance to Texas and Louisiana. That pretense can only go so far before government contractors balk and maybe even walk.

Ordinarily, failure to raise the debt ceiling would lead to a government shut-down, including hurricane recovery operations, unless the president invoked some kind of emergency powers. That would be decisive action, but it could also be the beginning of something that looks like a full-out dictatorship. Powers assumed are often not surrendered when the original emergency is over. And what would the president use for money if a substantial enough number of congresspersons and senators are prompted by their distaste for Mr. Trump to drag out the process of financially re-liquefying the government? (And nevermind even passing a budget.)

Meanwhile, two other major sources of aggravation are waiting off-stage: one is North Korea. Why wouldn’t Kim Jong-un use the opportunity of political disarray in the US to create more headaches for a distracted US government? Never let a crisis go to waste. Another potential irritant is the return of students to American college campuses. Imagine how the campus Antifa forces would react to Mr. Trump assuming emergency powers. It’s easy to foresee an acceleration of violence between the extreme Left and the Extreme right during what is shaping up to look like a major crisis in governing. If the campus Left had any tactical brains, they’d stop marching around in black uniforms and instead organize a mass renunciation of college loan debt.

Behind all this political strife will be wobbling financial markets. The message from the debt ceiling stalemate to the bond market would be that the US can no longer be relied on to pay its debts. Interest rates on US Treasury paper would have to go up as the long-lost concept of risk returned to the bond scene. People and institutions will not be induced to hold bonds unless the yield is recalibrated to the actual risk. Of course, in the mysterious world of bonds (i.e. securitized debt), the price of bonds goes down as interest rates rise. Meaning a lot of current holders of bonds would be hammered if they tried to sell. Rates rising would also spell big trouble for corporations and governments who have to make regular interest payments to bond-holders. A rate rise to as little as 3 percent on US Treasury bonds could spin the country into comprehensive bankruptcy.

How might stock markets and currency markets react to the scenario above? To me it would look like a drop of at least 1000 points on the S & P. The US dollar might actually rise initially as a whole lot of debt is renounced — which makes money actually disappear — but then you have the Federal Reserve waiting on another flank to roll out their own emergency response: Quantitative Easing No. 4, flooding the system with new “money” that has all the appearance and none of the mojo of value, tanking the dollar anew. As a wise correspondent of mine wrote a while back: “financialization is nothing more than money with its value removed.” (Graham Reinders.)

A lot can happen when a faraway butterfly flaps its wings and sets a slight current of air in motion.

One nation under plutocracy

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By Jack Balkwill

Source: Intrepid Report

Americans are brought up believing a fairy tale in which there is somehow democracy in their governance. But the late, great, Leonard Cohen exposed the system’s dirty little secret, “Everybody knows that the dice are loaded, everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.”

Even at the start of the nation, the first Chief Justice John Jay admitted the “democracy” hoax upon which the Supreme Court is built when he conceded, “The people who own the country ought to govern it.” Justices have ruled that way throughout the centuries following, with government serving a privileged ruling class.

The United States has the largest number of billionaires of any country, with 536. They live here because it is the best place to live for a greedy bastard. It was billionaire Leona Helmsley who let the cat out of the bag that “Only the little people pay taxes.”

Grand Prince Billy Gates has his “Foundation,” to ensure that he not even think about paying taxes. What inconvenience if he were to contribute anything for the massive government services he uses to increase his fortune.

It takes oceans of sweat and rivers of blood to make a billionaire. This is the dark secret of the pyramid scheme known as capitalism. Those “little people” who do the sweating and bleeding are not full partners in the sharing of the wealth they produce.

Many of us work from the time we are born to the time we die in order to satisfy the few who control nearly all of the capital.

Increasingly, everything we do benefits the super rich. If our child gets sick or injured, the wealthy may benefit from investments in health insurance, Big Pharma, and private hospitals. If we go to prison, they get paid for it, as many prisons are now privatized. If we die, they increasingly own the funeral parlors (although their corporations often retain the old family names).

The rich profit when we eat, clothe ourselves, enjoy shelter, pay taxes, watch a movie or work (taking the lion’s share of what we produce). They seem to know how far they can push us—that to charge us for breathing might encourage the erection of guillotines (but they have considered buying up all the drinking water).

Michael Parenti once pointed out that the top one-fourth of one percent own more than the entire bottom 99% in the USA.

An old friend once remarked to me “I can’t understand why they don’t have it all.” Well, of course they are not trying to take it all. The more lucid of them are aware they must leave a few crumbs to placate the riffraff.

The biggest scam within this biggest scam is that which euphemistically passes as “national defense.” It does not defend 99% of us, most of us would prefer not to have the wars or 800+ military bases located abroad. We are, however, required to pay for it all, since we are the “little people” so scorned by the likes of Mrs. Helmsley.

Stealth bombers, Minuteman missiles, and Trident submarines are not made for defense, they are made to profit wealthy investors. Most of the profit goes to the wealthiest investors. CEOs of the corporations that make them get 7-figure salaries at the taxpayer’s expense. These weapons are made to deliver nuclear warheads, and the current national push for war with Russia and China is to “justify” making similar profit machines. Americans are told nuclear weapons have something to do with “defense,” but when I asked retired Admiral Gene LaRocque if we had enough nuclear weapons for our defense he replied “You cannot defend someone with a nuclear weapon.”

LaRocque told me he entered the Navy in the 1930s and in those days sailors made much of their own equipment, including weapons. Since nobody profited, they didn’t make weapons they didn’t need. That system, of course, would be called “socialism” today and is no longer allowed. “Defense” is now for the purpose of enriching the rich as priority one.

And the troops are deployed around the world to protect the interests of the billionaires, including foreign billionaires who own stock in the corporations that finance our elections, and therefore have far more political sway in the USA than do average citizens. Our government works for transnational billionaires, not the American people.

The most important part of the scam of capitalism is absolute control of the mass media. No hole may be left unplugged. Every one of the corporate-paid journalists is kept on their knees, a tight liplock on the derrieres of the elite at all times, slobbering and smooching. Not one of the bastards so much as tugs at their leash for fear of a pink slip.

I cringe whenever I hear a corporate media talking head speak of “American democracy.” It is a propaganda term. Often, I am “corrected” by someone when I say this, told that, “No, we don’t have a democracy, we have a republic.”

But a republic is a form of government in which the population is represented, and the American people, aside from the very rich, are not represented, hence, we have a plutocracy.

It should be obvious to the public, who only need open their eyes. We must maintain the largest prison system on earth for American capitalism to function, even as we call it “The Land of the Free.” We are the only industrialized nation on earth where thousands die each year for a lack of medical care, because we don’t have a medical care system, but a system that rewards the rich when people get sick or injured.

Those who are both poor and mentally ill are often left to sleep in our streets, eating out of garbage cans similarly to a third-world existence in the richest nation on earth.

I have often called the system “plutocratic oligarchy,” because the plutocrats don’t usually run the government (President Trump, however, has pretty much set it up that way for his administration with a cabinet filled with fellow billionaires).

Normally, transnational corporations rent the Members of Congress and presidents by financing their election campaigns. These CEOs then, with allegiance to nothing beyond greed, decide who will run the country. But the CEOs in turn work for the wealthy, who own the lion’s share of the investments, so in a back-handed way the rich do always run things, however remotely.

Members of Congress, some of the most corrupt people on the planet, then line up with the corporate media talking heads and begin kissing butt for the money they will need to stay in office. Most of their time in office is spent begging for money, there is little time for much else. The servile bastards soon find out that the best way to do this is to sell out the American people, and those who best sell out the people get buried in campaign money.

Oxfam earlier this year pointed out eight billionaires own as much as the bottom half of humanity, that being 3.75 billion people. Because we have billionaires, we have millions starving to death unnecessarily. There is enough food in the world to feed everyone, but a lot of it rots in warehouses while seeking a price that would please the billionaires.

The super rich want more money, at any cost, and obviously don’t care how many die from unsafe workplaces, unsafe products or a poisoned environment.

It was one of our wealthy slave-owning founders who described the elites who rule today. Thomas Jefferson said “Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.”

Jefferson always struck me as being the maverick among the ruling class who formed our plutocracy. He told a truth we don’t see in the mainstream press today, where all of this is covered up like the location of President Kennedy’s brain.

 

Jack Balkwill has been published from the little read Rectangle, magazine of the English Honor Society, to the (then) millions of readers USA Today and many progressive publications/web sites such as Z Magazine, In These Times, Counterpunch, This Can’t Be Happening, Intrepid Report, and Dissident Voice. He is author of “An Attack on the National Security State,” about peace activists in prison.

US Sanctions Symptomatic of a Failing Empire

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By James ONeill
Source:  New Eastern Outlook

On 26 July 2017 the US Congress overwhelmingly approved a Bill providing for fresh sanctions against North Korea, Russia and Iran. The passage of this Bill , and its level of support in the US Congress, is instructive on a number of levels.

The first point is that the US, or more accurately factions within the US establishment, are prepared to pursue policies irrespective of the lack of an evidential foundation; run counter to the interests of its supposed friends and allies, and completely lacks any knowledge of or reference to historical realities. The net result of the latest sanctions is to create a singularly dangerous situation that could very easily lead to a nuclear war. Contrary to the bizarre beliefs of some US policy makers, there would be no winners in such an outcome.

These points may be illustrated by reference to the sanctions applied to Iran. For years, the rhetoric from the US and its close ally Israel was that Iran was on “the verge of developing a nuclear bomb”. For more than a decade, the Israel government was saying that Iran was “only months away” from such a development. That the deadlines came and went without incident did not deter the repetition of what were manifest falsehoods.

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu appeared before the UN General Assembly brandishing a cartoon depiction of the alleged “imminent threat”. The western media largely omitted to mention the fact that it was Israel that was the Middle East’s sole nuclear power; that Israel was not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; and that it was Israel that consistently refused to allow inspections by the IAEA of its nuclear facilities.

Not only was there no evidence that Iran had or wished to develop a nuclear weapons capability, it was the unanimous view of all 17 US intelligence agencies on two separate occasions that Iran was not developing a nuclear weapons program.

To head off the prospect of the constant anti-Iran propaganda escalating to an attack by the US and its allies upon Iran, the Russian government was instrumental in achieving an agreement in 2015 that prevented an alleged non-existent nuclear weapons program becoming a justification for war. The recent historical example of Iraq was illustrative of how constant demonization, undermining by sanctions, and overblown false allegations of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction could quickly lead to the utter devastation of a previously prosperous nation.

The lessons that should have been learned from Iraq, Libya and Syria are determinedly ignored by the western media that is currently beating the drums of war over North Korea, again ignoring history, logic and military realities.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated in 2015 and agreed by the participating parties, including the United States, provided an instrument through which it became virtually impossible for Iran to become a nuclear-armed power. The mechanisms for ensuring compliance included regular IAEA inspections, and six-monthly reports certifying Iran’s compliance. Those reports went to the US Congress.

For the Americans and their allies however, it was not enough. Although the JCPOA deprived them of an immediate casus belli for war, the anti-Iran rhetoric continued non-stop. One example of the false propaganda was the constant claim that Iran was a supporter of Shia groups, intent on fostering terrorism and destabilization across the Middle East and elsewhere.

This allegation bore no resemblance to the facts. The US Carnegie Foundation, for example, in a report entitled “Iran’s Small Hand in Yemen” criticized the depiction of Iran as supporting “Shia rebels” against the forces supporting the deposed President Hadi. The reality is that Hadi was a dictator, elected in an election where he was the only candidate, and whom popular opposition forced him to flee to Saudi Arabia.

The Houthis, who are the main opposition to Hadi, are Zaidi Muslims, much closer theologically to the Sunni branch of Islam than they are to predominantly Shia Iran. The brutal war currently being waged on Yemen is led by Sunni Saudi
Arabia, supported by the UK, US and a heavy involvement of mercenaries, including Australians, about which the Australian government is silent. The reality has more to do with Yemen’s strategic location overlooking the narrow outlet from the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea and its massive oil reserves coveted by the Saudis than it does with any alleged Iranian support. Djibouti, across the strait from Yemen, has similarly attracted US and Chinese strategic involvement, without as yet being ravaged by war.

Iran also offers political and moral support for Hamas in Palestine, Muslims in Kashmir and the Rohingya in Myanmar, all of whom are overwhelmingly Sunni. The feature they all have in common is that they are repressed and subject to genocidal policies by other political and religious groupings.

The Trump administration is demonstrating the truth of President Putin’s observation about the previous Obama administration, that they “are not agreement capable.”

Trump told the Wall Street Journal “if it was up to me I would have found (the Iranians) non-compliant 180 days ago” (when he was sworn in). According to an article in the US Journal Foreign Policy Trump threw a tantrum in the Oval Office and berated his three senior foreign policy advisers (Tillerson, Mattis and McMaster) for not having found a way to claim that Iran was in breach of the provisions of the JCPOA. The New York Times ran a similar story.

In fact it is the United States that is in violation of the JCPOA, both the letter and the spirit of the agreement, and also of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015) that approved the agreement. Article 29 of the JCPOA commits the US to refrain from any policy intended to affect the normalization of trade and economic relations with Iran.

The latest round of sanctions, and the bellicose rhetoric accompanying them are manifestly not in compliance with Article 29.

Among the many falsehoods asserted against Iran is the claim that Iran’s missile tests are a violation of the JCPOA. There is nothing in the agreement that inhibits Iran from developing a self-defence capability, including the use of anti-aircraft and anti-missile technology. That is also a right enshrined in the UN Charter.

Iran took delivery of the Russian made S300 anti-missile system in 2016, also in pursuance of its right to self-defence. Given the bellicose threats made against Iran on an almost constant basis; the two recent incidents of “warning shots” being fired at Iranian vessels by US Navy ships operating close to Iran’s territorial waters; and the recent history of American actions in Iran’s neighborhood, self defence measures are at the very least a prudent course of action.

Iran’s compliance with the terms of the JCPOA has enabled action in another area arguably more important than military self-defence measures. Rapid progress has been made by Iran in strengthening its economic ties to China, India and Russia. Memoranda of Understanding worth $40 billion have been signed with Russia or Russian companies. The Russian company Gazprom has signed a multi-billion dollar deal to develop Iran’s Farzad B gas field. Gazprom is also helping to develop the Azar and Ghanguleh oil fields in Lurestan province where there is an estimated 3.5 billion barrels of oil reserves.

Iran similarly has $7 trillion in natural gas reserves. The $200 billion needed to develop those reserves will come from Russia, China and other non-western sources. Iran has announced that it will give preference in infrastructure and other development deals to those nations who were supportive through the years of sanctions and other forms of warfare.

China, that is currently building a high-speed rail link between Mashad and Tehran (to link with other Central Asian lines) sees Iran as a key player in its massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that is transforming the Eurasian economic and geopolitical landscape.

Iran is similarly a key player in the North South Transportation Corridor that links India via Iran and Azerbaijan with Russia, transporting goods at a fraction of the cost and time of existing conventional routes that are vulnerable to US Navy interference.

Also of major significance is Iran’s associate membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, with full membership highly likely in 2018. The SCO is a central component of the BRI with ever growing trade and security links with the Russian initiated Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Russia is the common denominator of BRICS, the SCO, the EEU, the SCO and the NSTC. The countries in these four groups, as well as other nations (now more than 60) who have joined the BRI, are increasingly trading in other than dollar denominated arrangements. The days of the US dollar’s dominance are clearly numbered.

It is this combination of major economic and geopolitical shifts in the balance of power away from US dominance that has prevailed for the past seven decades that is the key to understanding why the Americans are reacting in the desperate, dangerous and irrational manner that they are. It is the classic end of empire syndrome. One hopes that the adults in the room will constrain the US from traveling further down a path that could spell the end of humanity.

End of Nuclearism or the End of the World: Utopian Dreams, Dystopian Nightmares

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By Richard Falk

Source: Global Justice in the 21st Century

We are living amid contradictions whether we like it or not, driving expectations about the future toward opposite extremes. Increasingly plausible are fears that the ‘sixth extinction’ will encompass the human species, or at least, throw human society back to a technology of sticks and stones, with a habitat limited to caves and forests. This dark vision is countered by gene editing designer promises of virtual immortality and super-wise beings programming super-intelligent machines, enabling a life of leisure, luxury, and security for all. Whether the reality of such a scientistic future would be also dark is a matter of conjecture, but from a survival perspective, it offers an optimistic scenario.

On political levels, a similar set of polar scenarios are gaining ground in the moral imagination, producing national leaders who seem comfortable embracing an apocalyptic telos without a second thought. The peoples of the world, entrapped in a predatory phase of global capitalism, are using their democratic prerogative to shut down dissent, rationality, and science. On one side, 122 governments pledge a legal commitment to the prohibition of nuclear weapons as an unprecedented prelude to the abolition of the weaponry; on the other side, all nine nuclear weapons states, and their closest allies, oppose the prohibition and opt for modernizing their nuclear weapons arsenals even devising strategic plans for their possible use, prompting an urgent search for counter measures.

John Pilger issues a solemn reminder that Nevile Shute’s On the Beach depicting a post-nuclear human future that is now more resonant than when it was published in 1957. Leaders that could bluff their way to shared catastrophe bellow forth in Washington and Pyongyang, each deluded by the belief that military options even with nuclear weapons are the only geopolitical security blanket worth relying upon, projecting a reckless obliviousness to the risk of losing their balance while engaging in inflammatory rhetorical posturing alarmingly close to the nuclear precipice.

As Pilger also points out, the liberal opposition to this right wing populism in the West is also dangerously disposed toward warmongering. Donald Trump is being pilloried by a bipartisan anti-Russian hysteria that imposes harsh sanctions, seemingly intent on driving Putin’s Kremlin into a corner from which there is no retreat except by way of confrontation, and possibly war.

We read of record heat waves, extreme weather events, extended droughts, and wild fires as common as clouds in the sky without blinking. The newspapers report that climate scientists are ready to push the panic button in reaction to the latest studies of grim global warning trends, while the Trump factor renews coal mining and treats denial a political virtue.

While these alarming realities dim the light of hope for many of us, the American stock market, a barometer of capitalist expectations by the shrewdest investors, achieves record heights. At the same time famine warnings have been officially endorsed for a series of long suffering populations: Syria, Yemen, South Sudan, northern Nigeria, Gaza. The entire Middle East is being turned into a war and conflict zone, with an anti-Iran warmongering coalition pressuring Iran to choose between nuclear deterrence and sectarian warfare inflamed by militarist Israeli/U.S. grand strategy that appears to be motivated by a regional vision of geopolitical pacification.

How best to endure in the face of such fatalistic dualisms? That may be the question of our time, dodged for the sake of sanity by almost all of us, at least most of the time. Business as usual, while living with therapeutic forms of cultural blindness, the opioids of those fortunate enough to live for now in gated communities, whether on the scale of private dwellings or walled off countries.

Recently a lively young woman told me that many of her friends had decided not to have children because they are so fearful of the storm clouds of the future, and refuse to wait around for liberating rainbows. At the other extreme, today’s International Edition of the New York Times contains a front page ad of enticement encouraging attendance at an International Luxury Conference to be held in Brussels, November 13-14, on the demeaning theme of “What’s Next: Luxury in a Turbulent World.” My somewhat impatient response—‘whatever turns out to be next, it will not be and should not be luxury!’ More likely, those grown accustomed to luxury will shift their residences to those underground homes built by Silicon Valley billionaires on vast tracts of lands in the New Zealand countryside as the ultimate hedge against an imminent global catastrophe. It could be that the NYT conference will devote its attention to this form of post-apocalyptic luxury living! Yet that assumes a quite unlikely focus on how the world of luxury is adapting to the unpleasant realities of the Sixth Extinction.

3 Signs You Might Be a Pawn of the New World Order

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By Sigmund Fraud

Source: Activist Post

The mother lode of all conspiracies is the New World Order. In essence, it is a high-level, multi-generational plan to render all sovereign national governments subservient to an unelected, supranational, authoritarian world government. In this scheme, the people of planet earth will be micromanaged with strict social, technological and financial controls. It is the total consolidation of global power into the hands of a ruthless, minority elite who aim to rape the planet and enslave the human race.

They can’t do it alone, though, they need your help. They need witting and unwitting minions to set the brush fires of revolutionary change in our towns and cities. They need pawns to agitate and disrupt the relative peace, and to upend the status quo with turmoil. They need senseless, animal-like violence, caught on camera and replayed ad infinitum on cable news and social media. They need terror, of both the foreign and domestic variety. They need fear in the streets, and fear in the minds of the proles.

Most of all, though, they need you to create chaos, so that they can bring order.

The powers that be, those demons of the deep state, those orchestrators of fear, famine, debt and war, cannot achieve their plan without leading the masses into confusion and disarray, for only then will the masses demand an end to their own freedoms and privacy. And sadly, it appears their army of minions is growing in strength and audacity.

In the aftermath of Charlottesville it is more clear than ever that there is no shortage of pawns for the New World Order. The armies of ignorance are gathering, and here are three signs you might be among them.

1. You’re Playing the Divide and Conquer Game

Left vs. Right. Black vs. White. Republican vs. Democrat. Citizen vs. Immigrant. Communist vs. Fascist. Have vs. Have Not. My Team vs. Your Team. Me vs. You.

There a thousand and one ways for a society to faction and split apart, but without community and unity we are lost, doomed and done. If you’re entrenched in one side of any dualistic paradigm, seeking to convert or to crush the other side, then you’re playing right into the hands of the NWO.

The tactic of top-down divide and conquer is the oldest play in the book of how to overthrow sovereign people. The rulers foment conflict amongst the people, then step out of the way and let them fight it out, so that they can step in later as the benevolent savior… big brother.

If you’re playing this game, then you’re doing their work for them.

2.) You’re a Vocal Supporter of the War Du Jour

Today the drums are beating for a nuclear assault against North Korea… and military intervention in Venezuela. Just recently we’ve been told we need to prepare for conflict with Russia, and that an invasion of Syria is in our best interests. Prior to that we destroyed Libya and Iraq, we occupied Afghanistan, and we’ve been using the war on drugs and the war on terror as casus belli for interference in dozens of countries around the world.

The imperial mindset is several generations deep in America, and the citizenry has all but fully abandoned the anti-war stance in favor of gung-ho, jingoistic cheerleading of any and all military escapades.

The New World Order is brute force, but in our hyper-connected world they need to create the appearance of public support in order to advance the military industrial colonization of the world. It cannot do this without the public support and advocacy of at least some segment of the proletariat.

If you’re always on board for the expansion of international conflict, taking cues from mainstream media in this regard, and demanding action against all of our perceived enemies, you are aiding and abetting the New World Order.

3.) You Direct Your Anger and Frustration Towards Anyone but Those at the Very Top of the Pyramid

Zero doubt there are a million problems plaguing our complex world today, and it can be comforting to blame someone whom you can look in the eye, someone who is unprotected by the wealth and security afforded by the oligarchy. Emotional reactions to the stresses in our modern world are to be expected, but without knowledge of the contemporary power structures pulling the big strings, those reactions can be sorely misdirected onto lesser players and other pawns.

The truth is out there. At the root, a geo-political financial elite is conquering the world through manipulation of currencies, the imposition of astronomically insurmountable levels of public and private debt, and full-spectrum military dominance of uncooperative nations. This program is far above and beyond the capacity of your fellow citizen.

If you’re convinced that taking your outrage to the streets in war against your fellow countrymen is going to solve the problems of the world, you’re helping to fulfill the goals of the New World Order.

Final Thoughts

Social unrest and civil war are the final stepping-stones to a brave new authoritarian future. In order to get there, the American people must exhibit a self-motivated and determined resolve for violence against each other.

The New World Order needs blue pill takers, those people who deliberately choose ignorance in exchange for spurious peace of mind. They need useful idiots to help distract the rest of the population from the crimes of the oligarchy. They need armies of volunteer foot soldiers and pawns who will create the conditions necessary for martial law and even broader restrictions of rights and freedoms.

For the New World Order to succeed, we must ultimately demand our own slavery.

Just Wait a Little While

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By James Howard Kunstler

Source: Kunstler.com

The trouble, of course, is that even after the Deep State (a.k.a. “The Swamp”) succeeds in quicksanding President Trump, America will be left with itself — adrift among the cypress stumps, drained of purpose, spirit, hope, credibility, and, worst of all, a collective grasp on reality, lost in the fog of collapse.

Here’s what you need to know about what’s going on and where we’re headed.

The United States is comprehensively bankrupt. The government is broke and the citizenry is trapped under inescapable debt burdens. We are never again going to generate the kinds and volumes of “growth” associated with techno-industrial expansion. That growth came out of energy flows, mainly fossil fuels, that paid for themselves and furnished a surplus for doing other useful things. It’s over. Shale oil, for instance, doesn’t pay for itself and the companies engaged in it will eventually run out of accounting hocus-pocus for pretending that it does, and they will go out of business.

The self-evident absence of growth means the end of borrowing money at all levels. When you can’t pay back old loans, it’s unlikely that you will be able to arrange new loans. The nation could pretend to be able to borrow more, since it can supposedly “create” money (loan it into existence, print it, add keystrokes to computer records), but eventually those tricks fail, too. Either the “non-performing” loans (loans not being paid off) cause money to disappear, or the authorities “create” so much new money from thin air (money not associated with real things of value like land, food, manufactured goods) that the “money” loses its mojo as a medium of exchange (for real things), as a store of value (over time), and as a reliable index of pricing — which is to say all the functions of money.

In other words, there are two ways of going broke in this situation: money can become scarce as it disappears so that few people have any; or everybody can have plenty of money that has no value and no credibility. I mention these monetary matters because the system of finance is the unifying link between all the systems we depend on for modern life, and none of them can run without it. So that’s where the real trouble is apt to start. That’s why I write about markets and banks on this blog.

The authorities in this nation, including government, business, and academia, routinely lie about our national financial operations for a couple of reasons. One is that they know the situation is hopeless but the consequences are so awful to contemplate that resorting to accounting fraud and pretense is preferable to facing reality. Secondarily, they do it to protect their jobs and reputations — which they will lose anyway as collapse proceeds and their record of feckless dishonesty reveals itself naturally.

The underlying issue is the scale of human activity in our time. It has exceeded its limits and we have to tune back a lot of what we do. Anything organized at the giant scale is headed for failure, so it comes down to a choice between outright collapse or severe re-scaling, which you might think of as managed contraction. That goes for government programs, military adventures, corporate enterprise, education, transportation, health care, agriculture, urban design, basically everything. There is an unfortunate human inclination to not reform, revise, or re-scale familiar activities. We’ll use every kind of duct tape and baling wire we can find to keep the current systems operating, and we have, but we’re close to the point where that sort of cob-job maintenance won’t work anymore, especially where money is concerned.

Why this is so has been attributed to intrinsic human brain programming that supposedly evolved optimally for short-term planning. But obviously many people and institutions dedicate themselves to long-term thinking. So there must be a big emotional over-ride represented by the fear of letting go of what used to work that tends to disable long-term thinking. It’s hard to accept that our set-up is about to stop working — especially something as marvelous as techno-industrial society.

But that’s exactly what’s happening. If you want a chance at keeping on keeping on, you’ll have to get with reality’s program. Start by choosing a place to live that has some prospect of remaining civilized. This probably doesn’t include our big cities. But there are plenty of small cities and small towns out in America that are scaled for the resource realities of the future, waiting to be reinhabited and reactivated. A lot of these lie along the country’s inland waterways — the Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri river system, the Great Lakes, the Hudson and St. Lawrence corridors — and they also exist in regions of the country were food can be grown.

You’ll have to shift your energies into a trade or vocation that makes you useful to other people. This probably precludes jobs like developing phone apps, day-trading, and teaching gender studies. Think: carpentry, blacksmithing, basic medicine, mule-breeding, simplified small retail, and especially farming, along with the value-added activities entailed in farm production. The entire digital economy is going to fade away like a drug-induced hallucination, so beware the current narcissistic blandishments of computer technology. Keep in mind that being in this world actually entitles you to nothing. One way or another, you’ll have to earn everything worth having, including self-respect and your next meal.

Now, just wait a little while.

Sweat Shops, GMOs and Neoliberal Fundamentalism: The Agroecological Alternative to Global Capitalism

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By Colin Todhunter

Source: Global Research

Much of the argument in favour of GM agriculture involves little more than misrepresentations and un scrupulous attacks on those who express concerns about the technology and its impacts. These attacks are in part designed to whip up populist sentiment and denigrate critics so that corporate interests can secure further control over agriculture. They also serve to divert attention from the underlying issues pertaining to hunger and poverty and genuine solutions, as well as the self-interest of the pro-GMO lobby itself.

The very foundation of the GMO agritech sector is based on a fraud. The sector and the wider transnational agribusiness cartel to which it belongs have also successfully captured for their own interests many international and national bodies and policies, including the WTO, various trade deals, governments institutions and regulators. From fraud to duplicity, little wonder then the sector is ridden with fear and paranoia.

“They are scared to death,” says Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University and author of several books on food policy. She adds: “They have an industry to defend and are attacking in the hope that they’ll neutralize critics … It’s a paranoid industry and has been from the beginning.”

War against reason

Global corporations like Monsanto are waging an ideological war against not only critics but the public too. For instance, consider that the majority of the British public and the Canadian public have valid concerns about GM food and do not want them. However, the British government was found to have been secretly colluding with the industry and the Canadian government is attempting to soften up the public to try to get people to change their opinions.

Instead of respecting public opinion and serving the public interest by holding powerful corporations to account, officials seem more inclined to serve the interests of the sector, regardless of genuine concerns about GM that, despite what the industry would like to have believe, are grounded in facts and involve rational discourse.

Whether via the roll-out of GMOs or an associated chemical-intensive industrialised monocrop system of agriculture, the agritech/agribusiness sector wants to further expand its influence throughout the globe. Beneath the superficial façade of working in the interest of humanity, however, the sector is driven by a neoliberal fundamentalism which demands the entrenchment of capitalist agriculture via deregulation and the corporate control of seeds, land, fertilisers, water, pesticides and food processing.

If anything matters to the corporate agribusiness/agritech industry, contrary to the public image it tries to convey, it clearly has little to do with ‘choice’, ‘democracy’ or objective science. It has more to do with undermining and debasing these concepts and displacing existing systems of production: economies are “opened up through the concurrent displacement of a pre-existing productive system. Small and medium-sized enterprises are pushed into bankruptcy or obliged to produce for a global distributor, state enterprises are privatised or closed down, independent agricultural producers are impoverished” (Michel Chossudovsky in The Globalization of Poverty, p16).

Critics are highlighting not only how the industry has subverted and debased science and has infiltrated key public institutions and regulatory bodies, but they are also showing how trade and aid is used to subjugate regions and the most productive components of global agriculture – the small/peasant farmer – to the needs of powerful commercial entities.

Critics stab at the heart of neoliberalism

By doing this, critics stab hard at the heart such corporate interests and their neoliberal agenda.

According to Eric Holt-Giménez:

“The World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the World Food Program, the Millennium Challenge, The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and industrial giants like Yara Fertilizer, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Syngenta, DuPont, and Monsanto, carefully avoid addressing the root causes of the food crisis. The ‘solutions’ they prescribe are rooted in the same policies and technologies that created the problem in the first place: increased food aid, de-regulated global trade in agricultural commodities, and more technological and genetic fixes. These measures only strengthen the corporate status quo controlling the world’s food… The future of our food-and fuel-systems are being decided de facto by unregulated global markets, financial speculators, and global monopolies.”

The geopolitics of food and agriculture has played a significant role in creating food-deficit regions. For instance, African agriculture has been reshaped on behalf of the interests described in the above extract. The Gates Foundation is currently spearheading the ambitions of corporate America and the scramble for Africa by global agribusiness. And in India, there has been an ongoing attempt to do the same: a project that is now reaching a critical phase as the motives of the state acting on behalf of private (foreign) capital are laid bare and the devastating effects on health, environment and social conditions are clear for all to see.

Any serious commitment to feeding the world sustainably and equitably must work to challenge a globalised system of capitalism that has produced structural inequality and poverty; a system which fuels the marginalisation of small-scale farms and their vitally important cropping systems and is responsible for the devastating impacts of food commodity speculation, land takeovers, rigged trade and an industrial system of agriculture.

And embedded within the system is a certain mentality. Whether it is the likes of Monsanto’s High Grant, Robb Fraley or Bill Gates, highly paid (multi-millionaire) white men with an ideological commitment to corporate power are trying to force a profitable but bogus model of food production on the world.

They do so while conveniently ignoring the effects of a system of capitalism that they so clearly promote and have financially profited from.

It is a capitalism and a system of agriculture propped up by the blood money of militarism (Ukraine and Iraq), ‘structural adjustment’ and strings-attached loans (Africa) or slanted trade deals (India) whereby transnational agribusiness drives a global agenda to suit its interests and eradicate impediments to profit. And it doesn’t matter how much devastation ensues or how unsustainable their model is, ‘crisis management’ and ‘innovation’ fuel the corporate-controlled treadmill they seek to impose.

Genuine solutions: agroecology, decentralisation and localism

However, what really irks the corporate interests which fuel the current GMO/chemical-intensive industrialised model of agriculture is that critics are offering genuine alternatives and solutions. They advocate a shift towards more organic-based systems of agriculture, which includes providing support to small farms and an agroecology movement that is empowering to people politically, socially and economically.

This represents a challenge to all good neoliberal evangelists (and outright hypocrites) with a stake in corporate agriculture who rely on smears to attack those who advocate for such things.

To understand what agroecology involves, let us turn to Raj Patel:

“To understand what agro-ecology is, it helps first to understand why today’s agriculture is called “industrial.” Modern farming turns fields into factories. Inorganic fertilizer adds nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous to the soil; pesticides kill anything that crawls; herbicides nuke anything green and unwanted—all to create an assembly line that spits out a single crop… Agro-ecology uses nature’s far more complex systems to do the same thing more efficiently and without the chemistry set. Nitrogen-fixing beans are grown instead of inorganic fertilizer; flowers are used to attract beneficial insects to manage pests; weeds are crowded out with more intensive planting. The result is a sophisticated polyculture—that is, it produces many crops simultaneously, instead of just one.”

And it works. Look no further than what Cuba has achieved and the successes outlined in this article. Indeed, much has been written about agroecology and its potential for radical social change, its successes and the challenges it faces (see this, this and this). And now there a major new book from Food First and Groundswell International: Fertile Ground: Scaling agroecology from the ground up.

Executive Director of Food First Eric Holtz-Gimenez argues that agroecology offers concrete, practical solutions to many of the world’s problems that move beyond (but which are linked to) agriculture. In doing so, it challenges – and offers alternatives to – the prevailing moribund doctrinaire economics of a neoliberalism that drives a failing system (also see this and this) of GM/chemical-intensive industrial agriculture.

He adds that the scaling up of agroecology can tackle hunger, malnutrition, environmental degradation and climate change. By creating securely paid labour-intensive agricultural work, it can also address the interrelated links between labour offshoring by rich countries and the removal of rural populations elsewhere who end up in sweat shops to carry out the outsourced jobs: the two-pronged process of neoliberal globalisation that has devastated the economies of the US and UK and which is displacing existing indigenous food production systems and undermining the rural infrastructure in places like India to produce a reserve army of cheap labour.

When you fail to understand capitalism and the central importance of agriculture, you fail to grasp many of the issues currently affecting humanity. At the same time, when you are part of the problem and fuel and benefit from it, you will do your best to attack and denigrate anything or anyone that challenges your interests.