Fifty years ago, global capitalism came to a crossroads. The enormous costs of the US’s long, costly Asian war produced great debt and pressure on the gold-backed US dollar. The imperialist alliance with Israel brought a disruptive, unprecedented boycott on the part of the oil-producing nations resisting Israel’s occupation of Arab territories. Intense competition between the dominant US economy and the resurgent Euro-Asian economies was shrinking profit margins. Traditional macroeconomic tools failed to meet the challenges of this new situation. The ensuing crisis came to be called the era of stagflation – stagnant economic growth coupled with persistent, intractable inflation.

Stagflation persisted through most of the decade and ended with shock therapy – a radical dose of deregulation, privatization, and market fetishism, a regimen of austerity now prescribed by all mainstream parties.

The crisis of the 1970s bears some similarities with today’s turmoil.

The pandemic, like the oil crisis, has shocked the global economy. The US economy and subordinate economies have been running on the fumes of fiat money and central bank stimulation, exposing remedies that are losing their effectiveness. Despite the lack of even phantom existential threats, the US has conjured costly foreign adventures and an extraordinarily wasteful and large military budget and “security” spending, crowding out social spending and amplifying national indebtedness. Commodity scarcity generates rising prices. And both slow growth and inflation are now reappearing and promise to continue.

Does this mean that we are bound to relive the crisis of the 1970s? Are we seeing a replay?

Maybe, maybe not. Time will tell. But we would be foolish not to study the 1970s to distill the lessons that might apply to today.

Despite the admonitions of the central bankers and financial gurus, inflation seldom self-corrects. It rarely runs its course. Instead, inflation tends to gather momentum because all the economic actors attempt to catch up and get ahead of it.

In the 1970s, it was popular with the capitalist media to blame workers who were demanding cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) to ward off inflation. “Greedy” unions, welfare, senior, and disability advocacy organizations were claimed as the causes of inflation’s persistence and deepening.

Cynically, all were asked to sacrifice equally, while it was monopoly corporations that were raising the prices that constituted the core of inflation. They were using “catching up” as an opportunity to “profit up.” Under the guise of responding to inflation, dominant corporations raised prices beyond their growing costs to expand their profit margins.

Unlike monopoly corporations, small businesses were limited in their ability to raise prices because of intense competition. They were caught in a profit squeeze between their need to remain competitive and the grinding increases in their costs of doing business. They are especially victimized by inflation.

At the same time, inflation cheapened the value of debt, especially corporate debt, while choking new consumer debt with high interest rates.

Today, rising prices are eating up workers’ gains just as they did in the 1970s. Let the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) explain it: “From April 2020 to March 2021, the 12-month changes in real average earnings were all increases, between 4.0 percent to 7.4 percent. Prior to that, from January 2017 until March 2020, the over-the-year change in real average weekly earnings ranged from −0.5 percent to 2.0 percent.” But: “Real average weekly earnings of employees on private nonfarm payrolls decreased 1.6 percent from October 2020 to October 2021. In every month from April 2021 to October 2021, the 12-month changes in real average weekly earnings have been decreases, ranging from −0.8 percent to −2.6 percent” [my emphasis].

In other words, real average weekly earnings exploded with the labor shortages induced by the pandemic, but they were wiped out by the five months of over 5% inflation culminating in the 6.2% rise in October, a 31-year high.

It is not workers’ wages that are driving inflation, but something else.

In a revealing article, the Wall Street Journal exposes the real cause of escalating inflation. Inflation Helps Boost Profit Margins: Companies seize rare opportunity to increase prices and outrun their own rising costs [print edition] tells that “[n]early two out of three of the biggest U.S. publicly traded companies have reported fatter profit margins so far this year than they did over the same stretch of 2019… Nearly 100 of these giants have booked profit margins– the share of each dollar of sales a company can pocket– that are at least 50% above 2019 levels” [my emphasis]. The authors note: “Executives are seizing a once in a generation opportunity to raise prices…”

It is apparent from this candid article that monopoly capitalism is leading this profiteering. And it is important to recognize that this profit-taking has and will continue to fuel inflation. Once again, the commanding heights of the US economy– the monopoly corporations– are using the excuse of catching-up to profit-up.

If history’s repeat is not to be farcical, the workers’ movement must avoid the mistakes of the 1970s. It must fight against monopoly price increases and not join the purveyors of common sacrifice, like the silly WIN (Whip Inflation Now) campaign of that period.

The workers’ movement must not follow its false partner, the Democratic Party, down the road of wage and benefit restraint. The inflation-directed restraint of the 1970s gave way to the give-backs of the 1980s and 1990s.

Workers must understand that inflation is not a self-inflicted wound, but a feature of the capitalist system, especially in its finance-dominated, monopoly stage. And it must be contained by attacking the profit-taking that spurs the inflationary spiral.

Further, the working class must bring this understanding to the frightened petty bourgeoisie who feel threatened and are threatened by the scourge of inflation, a stratum that otherwise turns in great numbers to the extreme right for answers.

Of course, this task would be made easier if we had a robust Communist movement in all of the capitalist countries.

The post When Have We Seen This Before? first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Greg Godels.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/30/when-have-we-seen-this-before/feed/ 0 253475 News on China | No. 77 https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/27/news-on-china-no-77/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/27/news-on-china-no-77/#respond Sat, 27 Nov 2021 02:28:22 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=123822 In this week’s News on China in 2 minutes: economic changes in China; increased share of the wealth pie garnered by the richest 10%; curbing groundwater exploitation; Chinese entertainment achieving international popularity.

The post News on China | No. 77 first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dongsheng News.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/27/news-on-china-no-77/feed/ 0 252775 Collusion: The End of Nature, Brought to us by Zoom https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/19/collusion-the-end-of-nature-brought-to-us-by-zoom/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/19/collusion-the-end-of-nature-brought-to-us-by-zoom/#respond Fri, 19 Nov 2021 14:58:21 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=123302 The only way to break through a totalitarian (lite) thinking is to continue using blunt force, or airy force, to expose this massive experiment in turning Americans into screen dwellers. The new ghetto is the screen. The lockdown might be lifted, physically, for the Covdians, but in the minds of these people, the world is […]

The post Collusion: The End of Nature, Brought to us by Zoom first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> The only way to break through a totalitarian (lite) thinking is to continue using blunt force, or airy force, to expose this massive experiment in turning Americans into screen dwellers. The new ghetto is the screen.

The lockdown might be lifted, physically, for the Covdians, but in the minds of these people, the world is now shifting to the high tech, fiber optic, 5G/6G satellite-directed world.

Imagine this event, on the ecosystems of my area, now, a virtual event. It is embarrassing that science-minded people want public and community participation over zoom. No depth to why it has to be “virtual,” and no apologies for being so dense.

Or, are they dense? Are they loving this hybrid, virtual, remote work mentality? You know, I was just interviewed by the State of Oregon for a state job. The thing was on Zoom, and there were three there and me here. One question was around “how would you make virtual meetings and intakes more engaging . . . . ?” This is the new normal, alas, and this huge shift of bricks and mortar life, into the AI void, and with these huge (massive) transfers of trillions to a very few felons of the elite class, these scientists who have grants and faculty positions and tenure, they will not lead the way anywhere.

And their world is all fancy web-based crap, like cool photos, imaginary graphics, all compressed and collected to make people say, “Oh, isn’t it wonderful how wonderful the scientists working in the wonderful natural world are!!’

 

In this Greta-and-Company-Can-Fly-to-GLasgow-to-Protest-Their-Governments’-Fossil-Fuel-Lunacy, many people I know are so happy now that Zoom is a fixture in their lives, and that they do not have to brave the Highway 101, or the weather, or the climate warnings. These people who might be interested in ecology and marine preserves and environmental policy are usually on the left trough of the manure pile of politics called Democrats. They are, of course, the new Brown Shirts, but call them Green Shirts, or Zoom Shirts. Their world, and the one they are ushering in since youth, have no say in how things SHOULD be run. It is not a real world, but one that is full of maps and podcasts and TED Talks and faux interactive chats and Zooms:

We are talking about 14 square miles designated as a marine reserve. Then some overflow for seabird protection area. This is, again, embarrassing. There is an interpretive center at Cape Perpetua, one that I have been at for in-person events. There are parking spaces. There are so many ways these great thinkers and planners could have organized an in-person event, even with their defective masks and asinine social distancing. That, my friends, will not happen. More and more youth are getting more and more skills with the mouse, the CAD programs, with Publisher and Photoshop. Their world is a world where billionaires own everything, and living in a van with full bed, TV, running water, hell, that is what youth are going to be having to accept as more and more dictatorial thinkers run the world, run events, run programs and educational frameworks.

Between Florence and Yachats lies the Cape Perpetua area, a biodiverse recreation mecca home to lush coastal rainforests and deep cultural history. But past the coastline also lies the largest Oregon marine reserve. The Cape Perpetua Marine Reserve is dedicated to the research and conservation of ocean ecosystem, where take of wildlife and human development is restricted. Cape Perpetua area also contains two Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and a seabird protection area. Unlike the reserve, these protected areas allow limited take in their boundaries.

Within the reserve, creatures large and small live in various habitats from sand, gravel, to some of the most biologically diverse rocky intertidal habitats anywhere on the Pacific Northwest. These creatures live in a unique ecosystem shaped by the ever-changing weather and tides. Some days, strong winds will pull cold, oxygen-rich water and plankton up to the surface in a process called upwelling, while on other, more stagnant days, the water loses its oxygen and becomes hypoxic.

Because of its dynamic environment, the Cape Perpetua Marine Reserve is home to a plethora of wildlife such as whales, sea lions, seals, pelicans, cormorants, rockfish, and intertidal invertebrates that fuel a complex food web between the land and sea. (source)

It’s a fear pogrom that is both sophisticated beyond Big Brother, and yet, right to the primary brain center of reptilian stupidity and violence.

Here, Edward Curtain over at Dissident Voice, covers this fear, this divide, etc. Source.

Edward Curtin returns to discuss deep politics and what links the assassination of JFK, 9/11, and Covid-19. No president since Kennedy has dared to buck the Military-Industrial-Complex, including Trump, who is part of the same system that produced both Obama and Biden. He discusses the 1967 CIA memo which told mainstream media to use the disparaging term “conspiracy theory” to quell all deviation from the official narrative, and how this propaganda technique has continued to function from JFK to 9/11 to Covid-19. Many of the same actors involved in the MIC and 9/11 continue to be involved with the drug companies, CDC, WEF, WHO, Gates Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. It’s very obvious, but the story is so frightening people don’t want to do any homework. Too many people think there is this war going on between the right and the left, in the larger frame of reference there is no difference, it’s the warfare state against the regular people, the rich versus the poor. The 4IR is an effort for total political and economic control of peoples all over the world. He believes the purpose of the vaccine mandate is for political control. Ultimately, we are in a spiritual war. The Geopolitics & Empire Podcast conducts interviews with high-profile guests on geopolitics and international affairs seeking to gain insight from experts on both the left and the right as to the true nature of current events. Read other articles by Geopolitics & Empire, or visit Geopolitics & Empire’s website.

The tricksters are at it and have been for decades. The worker — that is teachers and faculty, too, especially — is the enemy. The students are the enemy. So many billions pumped into studying the brain, psychology, neurosciences, behavioral psychiatry, etc. I saw this in 1983 when I was a graduate student, teaching college English. Some of these long in the tooth folk, who want their Vermont or Hawaii lives, but still be the teacher of record for our campus, UT-El Paso. That’s Texas, and already in the 1980s these folk wanted hybrid classes, on-line. Imagine that, critical thinking and debating writing classes, on line! Before ZOOM.

Oh, big companies would “give” laptops to workers — Ford, IBM, HP — not as gifts, but to extract MORE work out of the 40 hour week, and that is now 50 or 60 hours. That is, well, the beginning of technology destroying every aspect of our real selves.

Now, community colleges are up shit creek, pre-planned-demic, but now, too. Imagine, more and more pieces of the state budget pie reduced for Podunk community colleges — vital places of not just learning, but community events, incubators of thinking, and connections to much more than just academia. So, more and more raised tuitions, more and more part-time faculty hired, more and more hybrid classes, and now, the Zoom Doom. Imagine, one teacher on Zoom running a class of 80, 90? This is the new normal — kill the person.

The online option seems to work for all kinds of students. When the financial-aid team returned to campus in August, Bohanon opened up her schedule for in-person appointments. For the first week, no one registered to see her. She told her supervisor she wanted to add online appointments again, and reserved 8 a.m. to noon for online and the rest of the day for in-person walk-ins. “In the morning when I come in — full,” she says. Afternoon? Nothing.” Now her schedule is full every day, but all her appointments are virtual.

The push-and-pull between in-person and online courses continues for students at Southwest, but it may be starting to shift toward the latter. One of the pieces of conventional wisdom about community colleges during the pandemic is that students often dislike or fear online learning — a refrain repeated often at Southwest. But more than a year and a half after colleges transitioned to large-scale distance learning, many of the students at Southwest who persisted have begun to favor online sections over the nearly 40 percent of courses being taught in person.

Rebuild? Time for a revolution inside K12 and higher education. Regroup? Revolt neoliberalism and illiberalism and the constant attack on education. Or, attack on schooling. Constant attack on learning! These so-called leaders have collapsed, and they have crawled under their retirement accounts, and they are seeing-hearing-speaking no evil. This is the Chronicle of Higher Education, a very retrograde, conservative, cover-their-asses-rag!

The new normal is being accepted by the masses, but the mealy mouthed academics and those on the peripheral of academia are coming out like flies on shit:

Southwest and other community colleges may just have to wait out Covid. Even if the virus doesn’t completely go away, the risks may get lower and people may become more accustomed to living with it. “I really think that’s going to be the biggest thing, is time,” Brown says, “and people feeling it’s safe to completely return to, we won’t call it normal, but like the new normal.”

If there’s one thing community colleges should not do, says Eddy, of William & Mary, it’s go back to normal. “It would be a mistake to think, I just need to wait this out to come to a time where we’re going to have more openness,” she says. After a decade of gradually declining enrollments, the pandemic has brought community colleges to an inflection point where they have a chance to — may even be impelled to — make some changes, many perhaps overdue.

Read the article, and look between the lines. These people are stating that the planned pandemic made virtual learning more onerous because students didn’t have laptops and Wi-Fi, and didn’t know what a JPEG or PDF were. Oh, you get it, don’t you? Get those students free (US taxpayer paid for) computers and free (US taxpayer paid for) Wi-Fi. Bootcamps for Microsoft Office 10.0 Adobe workshops. Get those students to be on-line warriors. Take it, and you can’t leave it or you will be cancelled from society.

And this all goes back to the Zoom event, about Cape Perpetua, about 12 miles from where I live, via Highway 101. You think there will be regard for people who want trails for hiking, trails for biking, rivers for kayaking? You think that the overlords want to have us out in nature, out along highways and by-ways? These overlords want to own the world, the land, the forests, the farms, all of it, and they want security, and they want no trespassing, and they want no by-standers and witnesses.

The scientists just take it, because that’s what mechanistic folk do — strip away the A from STEAM — Science Technology Engineering Arts and Math.

This is the motherfucker, the mentality, the demented thought process, and the messed up media, all the brainwashed fuckers of the world, in a nutshell:

“I Don’t Think We Should Ever Shake Hands Again.” Dr. Fauci Says Coronavirus Should Change Some Behaviors for Good

These are madmen:

Madman and madwoman —

Joe Biden CDC Director Rochelle Walensky Takes Over Institution in Crisis - Bloomberg

Terrorists and war criminals —

World Economic Forum: a history and analysis | Transnational Institute

Billionaires ‘R Us —

Davos 2020: What is the World Economic Forum and is it elitist? - BBC News

This is it, man, the last frontier — education! Covid car, online programs, internet-access solutions. If you read this site, The Chronicle of Higher Education, there is not pushback, no discussion of the 4IR, the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Oh, the senseless stupidity of it all, the Covid Van.

MahoneyCar-1109.jpg
The post Collusion: The End of Nature, Brought to us by Zoom first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/19/collusion-the-end-of-nature-brought-to-us-by-zoom/feed/ 0 250814 Planning for a New, Better Future https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/15/planning-for-a-new-better-future/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/15/planning-for-a-new-better-future/#respond Mon, 15 Nov 2021 16:58:49 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=123242 As the world prepares to depart 2021 and head into 2022, it is clear that the United States is a declining economic power and that China continues its rapid upward trajectory. While homelessness and poverty sully the debt-laden US, China has eliminated extreme poverty. What is the American response to economic disparities domestically? Institute a […]

The post Planning for a New, Better Future first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> As the world prepares to depart 2021 and head into 2022, it is clear that the United States is a declining economic power and that China continues its rapid upward trajectory. While homelessness and poverty sully the debt-laden US, China has eliminated extreme poverty. What is the American response to economic disparities domestically? Institute a guaranteed minimum income? Andrew Wang who trumpeted such an income was rejected as a candidate by the Democratic Party. The Dems also pulled the rug out from under the social-democratic candidate Bernie Sanders who had promised medical care for all and to alleviate student debt. Instead the party apparatchiks anointed Joe Biden from the haggard old guard. So terrified was the business-led faction of the Dems to any progressivism seeping into the party, that they turned to a controllable candidate despite his appearing brain addled and often veering off script into rambling, incoherent speech. Biden campaigned on raising the minimum wage to $15 nationwide. He failed to follow through; but he managed to bump the minimum wage of federal contractors to $15.

To fund a $2 trillion economic-stimulus plan, Biden had counted on an increase in the corporate tax rate, which now seems off the table. Instead an asset tax was proposed for the very richest of the billionaire class. But as the Grayzone‘s Ben Norton tweeted, it appears to have fallen through the political cracks, and it is back to the White House as the reverse Robin Hood.

And while rank-and-file workers have been saddled with lockdowns and layoffs because of COVID-19, the 1%-ers have been siphoning up an ever increasing slice of the economic pie.

This is how capitalism continues doggedly apace in the US. Meanwhile the economically fast-developing Socialism with Chinese Characteristics sails onwards and upwards; the envious US oligarchy, in puerile response, sails its warships through the South China Sea. Dismally so. On one passage, its nuclear submarine smacked into an underwater mountain.

The specter of being supplanted as the number one economy has caused the top-dog capitalist to become ever more petulant and ever more roguish at being deposed from its position; and to rub salt into wound, by a communist nation.

Capitalism is not a complete failure. It works plenty fine for the billionaire class and its coordinator class. However, capitalism is unkind to the masses.

People of conscience know what they are against: capitalism, its warring, its racism, its inequity, and its callousness to humans outside the capitalist class. They also know what they are for — at least in general terms — a fairer economic model.

However, an economic model that aims to achieve core values such as solidarity, diversity, equity, and self-management requires a vision and a plan for how it would work. Michael Albert, in particular, has been writing many years about a vision for such a humanistic economy. The vision is called participatory economics — parecon for short.

Albert’s latest book on parecon is titled No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World. The title might lead one to assume that the book would focus more on dismantling permanent, unjustifiable hierarchies that disempower the workers. While No Bosses does discuss the situation of workers under capitalism and how empowering work under parecon would be, most of the text lays out how a parecon reality would look like.

Empowerment for workers requires their participation in decision-making. The decision-making is weighted according to how impactful a decision is individually and collectively within a workplace.

A consensus is sought in amiable negotiations. “As much as possible economic interactions should not be antagonistic. They should not be a rat race. They should not be a zero-sum game. I should not benefit more only if you benefit less.” (p 27)

Parecon will mean no private ownership of productive assets and no authoritarian control. Albert envisions a collective self-management which seeks, as closely as possible, to achieve balanced job complexes where …

all able to work would have responsibility for some sensible sequence of tasks for which they would be well trained, but also such that no one would enjoy excessive elevation by the empowerment effects of their work. (p 54)

Remuneration will be equitable — based on effort and sacrifice. Markets and central planning are replaced with “participatory planning.” This “participatory planning must include individual workers and consumers, and also workers and consumers councils and federations of councils as both self-managing conceivers and enactors of plans.” (p 115-116)

How to allocate goods in a parecon can appear quite dry and complex. This section of No Bosses becomes quite dense with many examples and reasoned responses to possible objections, but it is necessary to get at the nitty-gritty of what is entailed in a parecon society.

How to Achieve a Parecon?

There is a need to have a vision of a better world, a morally based society for all peoples. But to achieve that vision, there must also be a plan for implementing such a vision. No Bosses does not go deeply into this.

One possible solution: take immediate small possible steps and work towards serially implementing such steps until the vision is realized. Albert sees such a strategy as doomed. A wage increase obtained, for example, will lead to battle fatigue and enjoying a battle won while the war continues. (p 188)

A second solution is to only fight for the big prize: implementation of the parecon, and accept no partial victories on the way. Albert does not foresee an overnight, outright victory. Without tangible signs of success, hope diminishes. “We build nothing lasting. We win nothing lasting,” writes Albert. (p 189)

A third solution, the one favored by Albert, is to take whatever successes are achieved, keep up the pressure, and maintain solidarity until parecon is realized. “We build ties, connections, and means to exercise pressure that can win now. We also foreshadow, prepare for, and facilitate winning more later.” (p 189-190) Does it really differ from the first approach, besides a commitment to continue the good fight?

Of course, a movement to establish a better economic model requires committed organizing and solidarizing. But a question lingers: once a tipping point is achieved, then how best to proceed to win a victory for the masses?

This writer envisions a revolution in the form of a sustained general strike. To succeed, it cannot be limited to a one-day strike or a two-week strike or a one-year strike. The general strike must endure until victory is grasped. There will be immense hardships for the masses because the capitalists will not concede their power. They will dig in for the long haul, and they have their immense wealth to sustain this. Nonetheless, spread among the multitude of the masses are the skills and the means that, in totality, surpass that of the oligarchs. Solidarity requires that the masses must share and care for each other. In a parecon, everyone will be remunerated equitably, and there is no more meaningful place to begin the sharing than during a revolution. It is expected that strike-breaking Pinkertons cannot operate as ruthlessly today for their bosses, but assuredly, the oligarchs will seek to enact new laws as needed and to mobilize the police, military, and other security branches to try and crush a general strike. Therefore, the revolution calls for a steadfastness of purpose by the strikers.

Where to start?

Education is a must. Sadly, in societies where the monopoly media denigrates socialism, communism, and anarchism, it is difficult to bring such visions before the wider public. Also, few schools and universities entertain curricula discussing such “radical” models, often derided as “utopian,” asserting that they are unobtainable.

Workers must also be at the forefront of promulgating a vision of betterment for workers, families, and the wider society. Unions and worker organizations need to inform and hold discussions with the workers and other interested groups.

The parecon vision is not claimed to be perfect. And neither is that a compelling criticism since it is obvious that capitalism is far from perfect. Anyway, parecon is not set in stone; it is flexible; changes and tweaks are expected along the way and would be implemented as needed.

People must contemplate alternative models to fetid capitalism — one of which should be the parecon vision. Albert has written several books on parecon. Read and consider No Bosses and other books such as Realizing Hope: Life Beyond Capitalism and Parecon: Life After Capitalism.

Tomorrow’s youth deserve a better future than capitalism. Parecon is one vision that could lead to a better world. Why wait?

The post Planning for a New, Better Future first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kim Petersen.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/15/planning-for-a-new-better-future/feed/ 0 249632 Mainstream Economists Reject Economic Science https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/12/mainstream-economists-reject-economic-science/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/12/mainstream-economists-reject-economic-science/#respond Fri, 12 Nov 2021 08:29:34 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=123265 The “invisible hand” gives rise to a situation where it becomes natural and normal to conclude that no one knows how things work or what to expect. It renders the future unpredictable and unmanageable. Uncertainty and unpredictability become the norm because the economy as a whole is not under conscious human control. Different sectors and […]

The post Mainstream Economists Reject Economic Science first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> The “invisible hand” gives rise to a situation where it becomes natural and normal to conclude that no one knows how things work or what to expect. It renders the future unpredictable and unmanageable. Uncertainty and unpredictability become the norm because the economy as a whole is not under conscious human control. Different sectors and components of the economy do not work in harmony, free of crisis, because they are divided amongst competing owners of capital obsessed with their own narrow private interests. This inter-capitalist rivalry does not lend itself to the healthy balanced extended reproduction of society. It mainly damages the natural and social environment more. Everyone living in such a set-up is subject to constant chaos, anarchy, and violence in the economy and society. Stability, security, and peace are transient under such conditions. Thus, even in the 21st century with all the accumulated knowledge and experience of humanity, so-called “advanced” societies can turn upside down in no time at all; economic and social crises can hit at any time and leave society, the economy, and the people as a whole highly destabilized and damaged for months, years, even decades. On top of all this we are repeatedly told that there is no alternative to this outdated system. Apparently, this is the best humanity can do and no one should strive to replace existing arrangements with something better.

Last week, Jerome Powell, head of the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is not really part of the U.S. government, delivered his latest views and predictions on the economy and outlined what actions the Federal Reserve will be taking in the coming weeks and months. “Tapering” of fiat currency printing is expected to begin this month and continue for six more months, while interest rates will remain untouched for the foreseeable future. In reality, the Federal Reserve ran out of ammunition long ago and is trapped in the world of bad policy versus bad policy; there are no good options and no good endings here. Is it even possible to “taper” a Ponzi scheme? To be sure, the Federal Reserve has dug a deep hole. The system’s internal contradictions are too severe to “rescue” anything at this point.

One statement in particular by Powell speaks volumes about the state of economic science and human cognition in the final and highest stage of capitalism:

It’s difficult enough to just forecast the economy in normal times. When you’re talking about global supply chains in turmoil, it’s a whole different thing. And you’re talking about a pandemic that’s holding people out of the labor force for reasons that we can sample, but we don’t have a lot of experience with this, so it’s very difficult to forecast and not easy to set policy. (emphasis added,)

Powell casually and publicly admits that he and those who share his old world outlook reject economic science even “in normal times;” they do not believe in planning, control, science, human cognition, and predictability. “Forecasting” economic conditions and activities  even “in normal times” is far from precise and useful from the perspective of capitalist ideologues. The economy apparently cannot be controlled, known, or directed to serve the people and society. Powell openly creates the impression that fixing the economy is some sort of crapshoot, a mystery. Maybe things will work out, maybe not. Apparently, no one really knows how things are going to unfold or what impact neoliberal fiscal and monetary policies will have on the economy. Confusion and ignorance about the economy are so normal that the subtitle of a November 4, 2021 ABC News article reads: “If you find the current economy a bit confusing, don’t worry: So does the nation’s top economic official, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell”. This is hardly a good way to inspire confidence in the people. It is a scandalous thing to admit. People need leaders who know what they are doing and can reliably deliver meaningful pro-social results and solutions. Why is meeting people’s basic needs such a mystery?

Most Americans already know that the economy is in bad shape. On November 7, 2021, the New York Times reported that, “In a Gallup poll in October, 68 percent of respondents said they thought economic conditions were getting worse”. The overwhelming majority are simply not hopeful about the future of the economy and it does not help that President Joe Biden’s poor approval rating keeps steadily falling. People from all walks of life feel overwhelmed and exhausted with the way the rich and their cartel political parties (Democrats and Republicans) are wrecking the entire fabric of society.

There is a growing need for a real alternative to existing arrangements. The current situation is untenable at all levels. More and more people are rejecting the rich and their cartel political parties and demanding real solutions to the problems confronting the economy and society. Acting in the old way simply won’t work and doesn’t work anymore. People are disgusted with irresponsible and unaccountable leaders who can’t solve any problems. People are also tired of being reduced to vote banks for the parties of the rich. Constantly begging politicians to do the most basic simple things is humiliating, exhausting, and a massive drain on social energy that could be harnessed to expedite human-centered arrangements.

As the massive divide between the rich and everyone else keeps growing, contradictions and problems in society will get sharper and more severe, giving rise to new dynamics and new realities to confront. In this situation working people must mobilize themselves and others to leverage openings to advance arrangements that favor the people. There is a need for fresh independent thinking and a new outlook of the world and the future. There is an alternative to the ruling class wrecking all known arrangements in its quest to maximize profits at all costs.

The post Mainstream Economists Reject Economic Science first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Shawgi Tell.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/12/mainstream-economists-reject-economic-science/feed/ 0 248959 Mainstream Economists Reject Economic Science https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/12/mainstream-economists-reject-economic-science-2/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/12/mainstream-economists-reject-economic-science-2/#respond Fri, 12 Nov 2021 08:29:34 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=123265 The “invisible hand” gives rise to a situation where it becomes natural and normal to conclude that no one knows how things work or what to expect. It renders the future unpredictable and unmanageable. Uncertainty and unpredictability become the norm because the economy as a whole is not under conscious human control. Different sectors and […]

The post Mainstream Economists Reject Economic Science first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> The “invisible hand” gives rise to a situation where it becomes natural and normal to conclude that no one knows how things work or what to expect. It renders the future unpredictable and unmanageable. Uncertainty and unpredictability become the norm because the economy as a whole is not under conscious human control. Different sectors and components of the economy do not work in harmony, free of crisis, because they are divided amongst competing owners of capital obsessed with their own narrow private interests. This inter-capitalist rivalry does not lend itself to the healthy balanced extended reproduction of society. It mainly damages the natural and social environment more. Everyone living in such a set-up is subject to constant chaos, anarchy, and violence in the economy and society. Stability, security, and peace are transient under such conditions. Thus, even in the 21st century with all the accumulated knowledge and experience of humanity, so-called “advanced” societies can turn upside down in no time at all; economic and social crises can hit at any time and leave society, the economy, and the people as a whole highly destabilized and damaged for months, years, even decades. On top of all this we are repeatedly told that there is no alternative to this outdated system. Apparently, this is the best humanity can do and no one should strive to replace existing arrangements with something better.

Last week, Jerome Powell, head of the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is not really part of the U.S. government, delivered his latest views and predictions on the economy and outlined what actions the Federal Reserve will be taking in the coming weeks and months. “Tapering” of fiat currency printing is expected to begin this month and continue for six more months, while interest rates will remain untouched for the foreseeable future. In reality, the Federal Reserve ran out of ammunition long ago and is trapped in the world of bad policy versus bad policy; there are no good options and no good endings here. Is it even possible to “taper” a Ponzi scheme? To be sure, the Federal Reserve has dug a deep hole. The system’s internal contradictions are too severe to “rescue” anything at this point.

One statement in particular by Powell speaks volumes about the state of economic science and human cognition in the final and highest stage of capitalism:

It’s difficult enough to just forecast the economy in normal times. When you’re talking about global supply chains in turmoil, it’s a whole different thing. And you’re talking about a pandemic that’s holding people out of the labor force for reasons that we can sample, but we don’t have a lot of experience with this, so it’s very difficult to forecast and not easy to set policy. (emphasis added,)

Powell casually and publicly admits that he and those who share his old world outlook reject economic science even “in normal times;” they do not believe in planning, control, science, human cognition, and predictability. “Forecasting” economic conditions and activities  even “in normal times” is far from precise and useful from the perspective of capitalist ideologues. The economy apparently cannot be controlled, known, or directed to serve the people and society. Powell openly creates the impression that fixing the economy is some sort of crapshoot, a mystery. Maybe things will work out, maybe not. Apparently, no one really knows how things are going to unfold or what impact neoliberal fiscal and monetary policies will have on the economy. Confusion and ignorance about the economy are so normal that the subtitle of a November 4, 2021 ABC News article reads: “If you find the current economy a bit confusing, don’t worry: So does the nation’s top economic official, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell”. This is hardly a good way to inspire confidence in the people. It is a scandalous thing to admit. People need leaders who know what they are doing and can reliably deliver meaningful pro-social results and solutions. Why is meeting people’s basic needs such a mystery?

Most Americans already know that the economy is in bad shape. On November 7, 2021, the New York Times reported that, “In a Gallup poll in October, 68 percent of respondents said they thought economic conditions were getting worse”. The overwhelming majority are simply not hopeful about the future of the economy and it does not help that President Joe Biden’s poor approval rating keeps steadily falling. People from all walks of life feel overwhelmed and exhausted with the way the rich and their cartel political parties (Democrats and Republicans) are wrecking the entire fabric of society.

There is a growing need for a real alternative to existing arrangements. The current situation is untenable at all levels. More and more people are rejecting the rich and their cartel political parties and demanding real solutions to the problems confronting the economy and society. Acting in the old way simply won’t work and doesn’t work anymore. People are disgusted with irresponsible and unaccountable leaders who can’t solve any problems. People are also tired of being reduced to vote banks for the parties of the rich. Constantly begging politicians to do the most basic simple things is humiliating, exhausting, and a massive drain on social energy that could be harnessed to expedite human-centered arrangements.

As the massive divide between the rich and everyone else keeps growing, contradictions and problems in society will get sharper and more severe, giving rise to new dynamics and new realities to confront. In this situation working people must mobilize themselves and others to leverage openings to advance arrangements that favor the people. There is a need for fresh independent thinking and a new outlook of the world and the future. There is an alternative to the ruling class wrecking all known arrangements in its quest to maximize profits at all costs.

The post Mainstream Economists Reject Economic Science first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Shawgi Tell.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/12/mainstream-economists-reject-economic-science-2/feed/ 0 248960 Nicaragua’s Elections: The Reality https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/05/nicaraguas-elections-the-reality/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/05/nicaraguas-elections-the-reality/#respond Fri, 05 Nov 2021 17:37:03 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=122997 The Nicaraguan elections are on November 7, 2021. The US government, the media that does its bidding, and even some self-described “leftists,” present a Nicaragua in “turmoil” and “crisis” – and the elections as a farce. These attacks against the Sandinista government also emanate from academics, intellectuals, and journalists with ties to the members of […]

The post Nicaragua’s Elections: The Reality first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> The Nicaraguan elections are on November 7, 2021. The US government, the media that does its bidding, and even some self-described “leftists,” present a Nicaragua in “turmoil” and “crisis” – and the elections as a farce. These attacks against the Sandinista government also emanate from academics, intellectuals, and journalists with ties to the members of the now-defunct MRS, an organization with no political relevance or popular support whose members pretend to be leftist to an international audience but support the Nicaraguan right-wing and do the bidding of the US – betraying both Sandinismo and Nicaragua. The people and organizations vomiting these anti-Sandinista reports have taken it upon themselves to speak on behalf of Nicaraguans, whom they claim live in some sort of authoritarian nightmare that only U.S. intervention and the “international community” can fix.

Inside Nicaragua something else is afoot. The country is peaceful, getting ready for year-end activities that begin in November. People are going about their everyday business with interest but not obsession with the elections, as usually occurs in the U.S., where every inane and self-serving photo-op and publicist-generated skirmish is reported ad nauseum. No doubt there are plenty of news reported about the elections. For example, poll after poll, in various regions of the country, show majority support (about 2/3) for the FSLN’s ticket, with Daniel Ortega at the helm; in the North of the country, the support is even higher. About 180 international electoral “companions” will observe the elections. Some 245,000 Nicaraguans will be involved in working the elections as poll watchers, polling station board members, electoral police, and voting center coordinators. All parties registered their poll representatives by October 14. In conjunction with the Ministry of Health, the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) issued a range of health measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, which include the avoidance of massive in-person events while prioritizing virtual platforms. In-person events must be carried out in open areas with no more than 200 people. No caravans are allowed. With regards to voting, in late July, Nicaraguan citizens had the opportunity to update and check their address to verify their polling station; citizens can also check online. The CSE also notes that one cannot vote with witnesses or with a photocopy of one’s ID – although expired IDs can be used to vote, a measure taken to increase participation of the electorate. On Nov. 1 electoral material was sent to the 153 municipalities of the country. In sum, CSE, the Nicaraguan government, and the citizenry are very well organized and ready for the elections.

The issues that will determine election outcomes are straightforward. Nicaraguans are concerned, among other things, about their economic well-being. The Nicaraguan economy’s strong and enviable financial performance came to a screeching halt due to the US-backed coup d’état in 2018. As a consequence, thousands of people have left the country in search of work and economic stability – something that continues to be cynically reported in Western media as massive emigration due to government crackdowns, which is demonstrably false. Since the failed US-backed coup, the Sandinista government has gone into hyperdrive to recover the economic trajectory it was on prior to the US-funded attack. All economic indicators, particularly this year, suggest that Nicaragua is, in fact, recovering at neck-breaking speed, including an expected 6-8% GDP growth in 2021, to the chagrin of their aggressors. Nevertheless, some families have had more difficulty than others, leading some to consider – and some of them to depart for – the United States.

US Aggression and Subsequent Migration

During the electoral campaign, the Biden team promised a more humane, just, and rule-bound immigration regime in contrast to Trump’s. They communicated to Central Americans that they would be treated more fairly and even welcomed at the US border. The advertisement campaign worked. People in the US and all over the world – including in Nicaragua – believed what they said. Thousands embarked on their journey to the United States, believing they would be allowed in. In addition, in the US, immigrant workers seem necessary due to increasing layoffs following vaccine mandates among blue-collar workers and US citizen worker resistance to ever devolving labor conditions, including low pay, non-existent benefits, COVID fears, and increasing demand. Despite the Biden team backtracking once in office, with Kamala Harris telling Central American immigrants “do not come,” border agents whipping migrants on horseback increased roadblocks to asylum claims, and a continuation of many of Trump’s policies to varying degrees, people decided to depart for the US…in droves. Due to US imposition of unfettered imperial neoliberal policies in Northern Triangle countries, Central American migrants who appear at the US-border (if not caught and diverted by Mexico) largely come from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

Nevertheless, US intervention has also reached the shores of Nicaragua, not just with the US-backed coup d’état in 2018, but with subsequent meddling and sanctioning that has made it more difficult for the Sandinista government to look after its people. Hurricanes Eta and Iota made things worse. Consequently, some Nicaraguans have left for the US, in search of what they are prevented from achieving in Nicaragua due to US intervention and attacks. Moreover, due to US political aggression against Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba, migrants from these countries seem to be treated more favorably than others at the US border. Consequently, and predictably, since 2018, Nicaraguan migration to the United States has increased after historic lows in the years prior due to economic growth and enviable social governance of the socialist-oriented Sandinista government. Even in this context, the number of migrants from Nicaragua to the United States is small compared to overall immigration and from Northern Triangle migrants, in particular. Western media outlets admit that the apprehensions this year – that are part of longer emigration patterns since the 2018 US-backed coup d’état – are at a historic high “since at least a decade.” In fact, since the Sandinistas returned to power in 2007, border patrol “encounters” at the US border “hovered” around only 1,000. Nicaraguans, in short, were not emigrating to the US prior to the 2018 US-backed coup and their numbers at the US-Mexico border now are very low compared to those of their Northern neighbors. Paradoxically, the good governance of the Sandinista government meant low migration to the United States, precisely what the US government claims it wants.

Should I Stay or Should I Go? US Aggression Uproots a Few (Young) People

I’ve had informal conversations with some young adults in my town, on the outskirts of the city of Estelí, about emigration. Leading up to and including the summer 2021 (winter in Nicaragua), in the town where I live, some young people questioned: Should I stay or should I go? In the surrounding communities, including my own, some young people did leave – about 20 in total, I am told. They constitute a very, very small percentage of the young people in my and surrounding towns. Whatever the exact (small) number, enough people have left for individuals here to know someone who left or heard about someone who left for the US. The increase in apprehensions into the summer 2021 by U.S. Customs and Border Protection is consistent with these anecdotal accounts. When I asked about the reasons emigrants decided to leave, these young adults tell me that emigrants left due to economic aspirations and difficulties. NO ONE mentioned government repression, authoritarianism, fear due to their political leanings, or any other political reason, regardless of their political inclination. All of them tell me that the people who left did so because of economic pursuits and the belief that the US president was letting everyone in. It is important to point out that the people leaving tend to have enough money to pay for the trip, including the fees for a coyote. Some of the people who crossed successfully and are working in the US usually have someone helping them settle.

Some of the people whom I spoke with also mentioned that they were considering or had considered leaving for the US. Again, they told me that they could probably make more money in the United States and it was unclear that they were going to make the money they desired in Nicaragua. The reasons for deciding not to take the trip include: (1) not having money to take the trip; (2) family members do not want them to take the trip; (3) they thought about leaving because their friends had left and were doing well, but that, upon consideration, it was better not to do it – too risky or because they were doing just fine in Nicaragua. Even among those who considered but did not actually leave for the US, “political repression” did not figure in their decision. The reports of difficulties on the way to the US, including deaths, also had a sobering effect on wanting to go North.

COVID-19 in Nicaragua Amidst Western Aggression

COVID-19 has exacerbated economic difficulties that stem from the 2018 US-backed coup. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Sandinista government of Nicaragua has engaged in a herculean effort to secure vaccines for its people. Western aggression – coupled with Western greed – has limited vaccines for Nicaragua. This summer was a tough one for families whose members came down with COVID-19, making people more worried. Economic desires/needs and COVID worries converged to pushed some to consider – and some to head for – the United States. In my town, after a wave of vaccinations reached Estelí, the talk of heading to the US, however, waned. This is supported by data that shows a decrease in migration apprehensions at the US-Mexico border later in the summer 2021. The latest wave of vaccinations in Estelí on Oct. 7th, as with the rest of the country, showed high demand for vaccinations. The Ministry of Health organized four points for vaccinations. In all of them, people started making lines the day before to assure a poke. Experienced with the massive demand for vaccinations against COVID-19, the Ministry of Health started working and organizing the lines the day before vaccinations were to occur, handing out numbers so that people knew early whether they would be able to get vaccinated. They started vaccinating people at midnight the day of the announced vaccination, so as to not keep people waiting any longer. In a nearby municipality, San Nicolas, the wait times were much shorter.

Just a couple of weeks later, the arrival of the Cuban (Abdala and Soberana 02) and Russian vaccines (Sputnik Light) designated to vaccinate children between 2 -17 and those over 18 – 29, respectively, further allayed people’s concerns. Later, more Sputnik V and Pfizer vaccines also arrived. Unlike the United States, the Sandinista government of Nicaragua is not pursuing vaccine mandates. Vaccination is 100% voluntary. Even without mandates, the demand for vaccines is high, which reflects the amount of trust that the population has for the government. Given the way the oligarchs and empire have used the pandemic to score economic and political points, including a marketing and media campaign against non-Western vaccines, among some more well-to-do people, there is a desire for “American” vaccines. No doubt some in the Nicaraguan population have been manipulated with the ruse that “American” vaccines are “better.” Consequently, recently, some Nicaraguans went over to Honduras to get the Pfizer vaccine, having bought the propaganda. Western media outlets cynically and falsely reported that Nicaraguans deciding to get vaccinated in Honduras were doing so because of vaccine shortages in Nicaragua. Nothing could be further from the truth. The arrival of the 1,200,00 Cuban vaccines in Nicaragua has increased access. One no longer sees the lines for vaccines we were accustomed to. Recently, the government announced the arrival of an additional 3,200,000 Sputnik Light vaccines. Importantly, the percentage of Nicaraguans who have gone abroad to get vaccinated, whether in Honduras, the US, or anywhere else, is negligible. On Nov. 4, the Sandinista government announced that about 49% of the entire population (over 3 million people) have been vaccinated. Among the Nicaraguan working-class (most of the country), trust in the Cuban and Russian vaccines is equal to that of “American” vaccines. In fact, a few people whom I know that received Sputnik Light are even happier because it requires only one jab. Some of these working-class people speak about the “ignorance” of those who only want the “American” vaccines.

I personally know one case of an individual who decided to go to Honduras to vaccinate his 14-year-old child within days of having the option of vaccinating him with the Cuban vaccine. This individual’s mother – the child’s grandmother – died the day he went. He was unable to see her alive again. There was another terrible case in which a couple of people were injured in a car accident on the way back to Nicaragua from Honduras after getting the vaccine. Recently, the Nicaraguan government returned about 100,000 Pfizer doses to Honduras, which had lent these to the Nicaraguan government in early October so that it could vaccinate pregnant women and lactating mothers. Vaccination initiatives are part of the very successful policies that the Sandinista government has implemented due to COVID-19. Despite criticism and the lies on which it was based, the Nicaraguan government never implemented lockdowns, knowing that most of the population must work daily to provide for their necessities. In Latin American, people whose countries have enforced lockdowns have suffered dire consequences.

Economic elites have the option of taking a plane and going to the United States to get vaccinated, which is a widespread phenomenon throughout Latin America. The working classes do not have that luxury, so media campaigns against Russian and Cuban vaccines only hurt the most disadvantaged when they are swayed by the highly destructive Western rhetoric against non-Western vaccines, because they will be left without an option should they want to get vaccinated. The United States knows that if it subjects Nicaraguans to material suffering through economic attacks such as the NICA Act and the RENACER Act (approved by the House of Representatives on Nov. 3), some people will undoubtedly blame the Sandinista government for their individual economic suffering. Already, some Nicaraguans do blame the government for their stagnated economic well-being, either unaware of the attacks the US is launching or propagandized to minimize their importance.

Elections, Western Aggression, and Migration: An Old Story with a New Virus

Despite economic suffering generated by the US-backed coup d’état in 2018, which was subsequently exacerbated with COVID-19 and Eta and Iota hurricanes, emigration to the United States is not as widespread as reported, certainly much lower compared to emigration from the Northern Triangle. Nicaragua accounts for only 3% of the total apprehensions at the US-Mexico border this year thus far. The emigration of the Nicaraguans that do leave stem from mostly economic causes, which can be directly traced to the 2018 US-backed coup – difficulties that the worldwide pandemic and natural disasters has exacerbated. Uncertainty associated with US threats of economic unilateral coercive measures if the FSLN wins the presidential elections is no doubt another “push” factor for those who remember the economic blockade the US imposed on Nicaragua in the 1980s and its disastrous consequences. Therefore, migration to the US, in the Nicaraguan case such as it is now, can be largely traced to imperial intervention and subsequent imperial neglect and abuse. It’s not, as Western media repeatedly regurgitate, a consequence of political repression, a claim that is not supported but nevertheless used to manufacture consent against the Sandinista government so as to justify – and demobilize opposition to – imperial aggression. Importantly, all of these challenges in Nicaragua have not considerably dampened support for the Sandinista government. The latest poll, released on Nov. 3, 2021, just days before the elections, articulates, once again, massive support for the FSLN with Daniel Ortega’s leadership and predicts an easy win for the FSLN coalition.

The only “crisis” in Nicaragua is the one the US and its imperial lackeys want to inflict upon the country. Without a single vote cast, the US, the European Union and Western media – and some US- and Western-controlled international organizations – have already dismissed the upcoming election as a “fraud,” despite there being five opposition candidates on the ballot running against Daniel Ortega. By the looks of it and their announced plans, the United States and their allies will work hard to delegitimize the Nicaraguan elections and subsequent FSLN win at the ballot box. They have spared no regime change effort against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. For example, just days before the election, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter suspended the accounts of pro-Sandinista journalists and activists with the lie that the accounts were generated by “a troll farm run by the government of Nicaragua and the [FSLN].” The people who were censored have spoken out against this attack, which they suffered simply for being Sandinistas or supporting Sandinistas. US agents have misrepresented and exploited land disputes in Nicaragua’s autonomous Indigenous territories to the UN Human Rights Council and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In a bizarre turn of events, judging by apocalyptic Western media reports and US (and some European) politician rhetoric, the Nicaraguan election seems to be much more of an alarming and consequential event for Western elites than for Nicaraguans who, for the most part, want to continue leaving in peace, building their lives on the rights and privileges they have grown accustomed to since Sandinista returned to power.

A US citizen would be astounded at the amount of support that the Sandinista government provides to its people, especially because in the United States, policies enacted by the government represent, to an exceeding degree, the interest of its elites. Among its initiatives, the Nicaraguan Sandinista government has launched Vivienda Digna, Hambre Cero, Usura Cero as well as others that reduced poverty. For the next few years, the FLSN has articulated a bold plan to further reduce poverty and increase the well-being of all Nicaraguans, which extends what they have been working on since returning to power. Their efforts have, thus far, garnered international recognition. The achievements of the Sandinista government over the past 14 years have yet to be fully catalogued and recognized. The achievements with regards to public health have been truly astonishing, and great strides have been made in other domains, including public education, electricity and clean water access, housing for the poor, support for small and medium businesses, treatment of its indigenous communities, food sovereignty, and many, many more.

Of course, these achievements are never reported in Western media because they contradict the “dictator” narrative against Daniel Ortega that the United States and its allies use as part of their multi-pronged effort to destroy the socialist-oriented, highly successful FSLN government. The US and their lackeys are trying to tapar el sol con un dedo – block the sun with one finger! But the achievements of the socialist-oriented Sandinista government, while fuzzy for a Western audience, are crystal clear for Nicaraguans, especially its working class (most of the population).

The expected, resounding victory of Daniel Ortega from the FSLN coalition is not a function of authoritarianism, but a consequence of the work the Sandinista government has done for the Nicaraguan population and the trust they’ve garnered as a result. One project at a time.

The post Nicaragua’s Elections: The Reality first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yader Lanuza.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/05/nicaraguas-elections-the-reality/feed/ 0 247380 Turning Points, Contradictions, and Dynamics https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/03/turning-points-contradictions-and-dynamics/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/03/turning-points-contradictions-and-dynamics/#respond Wed, 03 Nov 2021 16:56:07 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=122598 Cuba will always remember your expressions of support, your permanent call for the lifting of the embargo…[My invitation to attend the Independence Day celebrations] has an immeasurably greater value in times in which we are suffering the ravages of a multidimensional war, with a criminal blockade opportunistically intensified in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic […]

The post Turning Points, Contradictions, and Dynamics first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]>

Cuba will always remember your expressions of support, your permanent call for the lifting of the embargo…[My invitation to attend the Independence Day celebrations] has an immeasurably greater value in times in which we are suffering the ravages of a multidimensional war, with a criminal blockade opportunistically intensified in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic with 240 [new] measures…In parallel, we are facing an aggressive campaign of hate, disinformation, manipulation, and lies assembled on the most diverse and influential digital platforms that ignore all ethical limits…Under the fire of this total war, the solidarity of Mexico with Cuba has awakened in our people greater admiration and the deepest gratitude. Viva México! Long live the friendship between Cuba and Mexico.

— Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Mexico City, September 16, 2021 Mexican Independence Day Celebration

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez

Cuba’s Advances Against COVID-19 is Political Problem for Biden and Blinken

In recent weeks, “communist” Cuba has begun to steadily and sharply reduce the rates and numbers of both new infections and deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic. This unfolding turnaround is from the worst period from July to September 2021.

Cuba now is well on the road to the near-total full vaccination of the entire island population of 11.3 million people, including children over two, with its three-dose — domestically designed and produced — program in the remaining months of 2021. Furthermore, the Cuban government and Ministry of Tourism is now able to project the reopening (formally on November 15, 2021) and steady recovery of its crucial tourism industry which had been shuttered by some 95.5%, with a devastating drop in foreign exchange, compounding the cruel US economic war under the Donald Trump Administration through Biden with seamless continuity.

(See excellent 10-5-21 article by Helen Yaffe, “Cuba Accelerates Vaccine Drive.”)

The socialized (and state-of-the-world) Cuban scientific, bio-technology, epidemiological, and pharmaceutical industry, as a whole, is now in a stronger position to carry out the production of its highly efficacious vaccines with increasing availability (through sales or donations) to other nation-states and international health organizations within the huge worldwide demand. Cuban production, which is hindered by US sanctions, will be independent of the price-gouging and arbitrary distribution of the pharmaceutical oligopolies centered in the advanced capitalist countries who lord over grotesque inequality in access to vaccines worldwide.

Perversely this creates a serious political conundrum for US policymakers who are enforcing and deepening the cruel, bipartisan extraterritorial embargo (the blockade) under the Joseph Biden White House and State Department.

Heroic Cuban Resistance 

It is the heroic resistance led by the Cuban government and revolutionary mass organizations, including the Committees in Defense of the Revolution (CDR); the Federation of Cuban Workers (CTC), Federation of Cuban Women (FMC); student, and farmers organizations under the umbrella and power of Cuba’s medical and scientific industry that is propelling these advances in the teeth of US aggression. This heroic Cuban resistance has been manifested even amidst the shortages, stresses, and long lines from the tightened US economic war, which was its purpose.1

This has been supplemented by an outpouring of international solidarity that has been instrumental in countering and beginning to conquer the short-term, but devastating, economic and human impact of US asphyxiation policies.

These anti-Cuba policies have been deepened precisely as the 2020-21 tourism collapse combined with a spike in Delta-variant infection that landed in Cuba, spread, and set in. This was exploited by Biden’s White House, and bipartisan Washington as a whole, leading up to the highly orchestrated July 11 events.

Some three months later we can say that unintended consequences for the Biden Administration are mounting alongside Cuba’s medical advances against the pandemic.

All of these accelerating developments amount to a turning point and new political reality in the decades-long struggle to defeat the US blockade.

Mexico Stands Up

The Biden Administration is going to find it difficult in the coming months to separate their aggressive anti-Cuba policy from the overall challenges to US policies across the Americas. This was underlined in very sharp terms by the public initiative of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s Mexican government to expedite – in the teeth of the Biden-led anti-Cuba propaganda campaign – significant material aid to Cuba in three Mexican naval vessels filled with medical, energy, and food aid in the summer of 2021.

Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment Rodrigo Malmierca delivers a speech next to Mexico’s Navy multipurpose ship Arm Libertador Bal-02, that just arrived with humanitarian aid at the port of Havana, Cuba, July 30, 2021. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini

From June 23 to July 11 to November 15

On June 23, 2021 for the 29th straight year, by an overwhelming 184-2 with three abstentions (non-binding) vote, the United Nations General Assembly condemned the “economic, commercial, and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.” Washington’s utter political isolation in its anti-Cuba policies was again illustrated. Rather than concede this and change, Biden and his team consciously chose to orchestrate, exploit, and manipulate the events of July 11, 2021 and recruit allies.

After the isolation of the June 23 UN General Assembly vote, leading up to the July 11, Biden and Blinkin scraped the globe, actively seeking allies and recruits. They managed to scrape together a group of 20 lackeys for a narrow anti-Cuba statement. 2

Biden and his team have deepened US bellicosity and sanctions since the highly orchestrated July 11 “events” in Cuba and the accompanying US government and big-business media (and social media) anti-Cuba propaganda blitzkrieg.

Now the US government, under the direction of Biden and his team, is attempting to step up their subversion and provocations with another round of “protests” on November 15 in an effort to revive and activate Washington’s agents and clients on the ground. It is consciously aimed, in the November 15 date chosen, at disrupting the reopening of tourism amid Cuba’s amazing turnaround with COVID-19 amid mass vaccinations.

Post-Afghanistan Challenges and Pressures Coming for Biden

Amid the political hand-wringing and jockeying that accompanied Washington’s bipartisan decades-long intervention, invasion, war, and endgame in Afghanistan at the end of August 2021, the broader question of the international political consequences for US policymakers and the Joseph Biden Administration is more sharply posed. Will Washington’s blink-of-the-eye, post-Afghanistan-defeat mode make the US rulers more constrained or more coiled to act along the course of combining devastating economic sanctions with threats of military aggression?

In an August 21, 2021 column, written in the wake of Washington’s Afghan defeat, Andres Oppenheimer, Miami Herald columnist and veteran voice of virulent opposition to the Cuban Revolution and Washington-Havana normalization, argued that the debacle need not be accompanied by any easing up on anti-Cuba policies. (“Biden might take harder line in Cuba, Venezuela to make up for bungled exit from Afghanistan”, 8-21-21).3

How likely is Oppenheimer’s “against the conventional wisdom” self-proclaimed “prediction?” Certainly, Biden and Co. have been implementing a policy that was settled on many months ago — consciously deciding against any amelioration of US sanctions and the extraterritorial embargo — and they seem compelled to stick with it for now. The question is how sustainable Washington’s bipartisan anti-Cuba policies will be in the coming months.

Toe the Line!

US anti-Cuba policy under Biden, Harris and Blinken remains focused on increasing economic stress, disruption, and shortages – especially in food, energy, and medical supplies – that will lead to enough accumulated suffering to render more effective US-organized subversion and “regime-change” efforts. This was articulated early in US anti-Cuba subversion and aggression in the infamous 1960 “Mallory Memorandum” shortly before the US-mercenary invasion at the Bay of Pigs. 4

But it is also very clear that a major purpose of the mendacious anti-Cuba capitalist media extravaganza after July 11 (that followed the lead of the Biden Administration) was to force into line, up and down the line, any Democratic or Republican politician or elected official who might be tempted to promote legislation to ameliorate or end US economic, commercial, and travel sanctions against Cuba.

This has been basically accomplished so far for now. Even the few timid statements issued formally against the embargo by elected officials in Washington, DC after July 11 were prefaced with obligatory sophistry about “human rights” and “freedom of assembly” in Cuba and bogus charges directed against the Cuban government.

More directly, the best of such statements are contemptuous of the mobilized large majority of the Cuban working class and entire sovereign people who are defending their country and their Revolution from US-orchestrated subversion and intervention. This is called “repression” in the US capitalist media and social media, echoing the bipartisan state policy of US imperialism. Revolutionary and socialist Cuba has a right to defend itself! Why is Cuba obligated to tolerate paid agents and clients of a foreign power — with the rich US history and continuity of violent intervention since the turn of the 19th Century! — openly engaged in “regime change” policies by any and all means possible?

False Premises

Accepting the false premises rationalizing a US anti-Cuba sanctions and bellicosity you claim to oppose is the exact opposite of how to effectively oppose the policy. This should be crystal clear from the history over 13 White Houses and on Capitol Hill — whether the House and Senate majorities and leadership were Democratic or Republican — since the triumph of the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

US anti-Cuba policy, once motivated as anti-Soviet, of course, continued through the collapse of the Soviet Union. It continued through the passing of Fidel Castro, through the revolutionary governments led by Raul Castro, to this very day under President Miguel Diaz-Canel. There was the brief interlude of a positive shift under President Barack Obama (while US economic, commercial, and financial sanctions and regulated travel continued), which was largely reversed under Donald Trump and been still-further deepened under Biden.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D. NY) gave perhaps the “best” of the few statements opposing the blockade from any elected officials in the wake of the July 11 events. She condemned as “absurdly cruel” Biden’s “defense of the embargo.” And yet her first three sentences (see below) are full of lies and disingenuous half-truths that ensure no political way forward.

The fact is that even before July 11, the individual figures on Capitol Hill who have been most outspoken against US policy and sanctions had been unable to move legislation toward public consideration and vote. Since the 1996 Helms-Burton legislation anti-embargo in general or even anti-travel sanctions legislation is generally blocked in Committee, not even, or ever, allowed to the House and Senate floor for vote. (The Helms-Burton legislation signed in 1996 by the William Clinton White House makes Congressional legislation the only legal route to end US sanctions and their extraterritorial nature.)

To distract from this obvious David v. Goliath reality, Washington throws dust in people’s eyes with deeply, purposely outrageous prattle, hypocrisy, and diversions around “human rights” and “democracy.”

It follows that, for the time being at least, openings in the legislative field, especially on the federal level, to ameliorate or limit the blockade, will themselves be limited if not precluded for now. But it is also true that there remain more promising prospects and results – despite inevitable counter-pressures from pro-blockade, pro-US intervention forces — for Resolutions from City Councils, trade unions, religious bodies and denominations, and other institutions. Over 30 City Councils from coast-to-coast have already passed such Resolutions.  (See excellent statement from US Presbyterian Church here.)

Statements or Resolutions from labor, African American, women’s rights forces, civic, medical, scientific, academic bodies, or anyone with the courage to speak out are more urgent than ever. These can complement street actions such as the monthly Bridges of Love Cuba Caravans initiated by Cuban American families, social media action, and continuing to build the US-Canadian and international movements.

Magnificent Victory of Syringes for Cuba Campaign!

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the early months of 2020, the international Cuba solidarity movement has made important advances. This is particularly the case in the critical North American arena where the power and political weight of US anti-Cuba policy is centered.

Launched in May 2021 by the Saving Lives Campaign under the auspices of the National Network on Cuba (NNOC), the Canadian Network on Cuba (CNC), and La Table de Concertation et de Solidarite Quebec-Cuba (La Table) and coordinated by Global Health Partners, the united North American Cuba solidarity and anti-blockade movement as a whole completed the very successful Syringes for Cuba Campaign, raising over the $650,000 (the initial goal was $75,000!). Six million syringes were purchased and delivered. And are now being used in Cuba’s stepped-up vaccination drive with the home-grown, highly efficacious Cuban vaccines Soberana 2, Abdala, and Soberana Plus. (Sisters and brothers from the Canadian Network on Cuba, successfully delivered an additional two million syringes to Cuba.)

This magnificent victory made a real material difference in Cuba! It helped inspire worldwide efforts and political campaigns for international humanitarian solidarity aid to Cuba that are themselves acts of defiance against the cruel US blockade. The saving Lives Campaign is now shifting to raising funds to deliver medical supplies and especially PPE to the island and working with Cuban Americans with Project El Pan.

Benefits of a Non-Sectarian United Front

This effort registers the benefits from a non-sectarian united front to fight the blockade drawing all the different political orientations and organizations in the broader movement, including Cuba solidarity organizations and political parties and tendencies that identify strongly with the Cuban socialist revolution. It should be noted that there is hardly an issue in US politics today that has conquered such a united front within the generally fractious “US Left.”

End of an Illusion

If Cuba solidarity activists and opponents of US policy all took a multiple-choice question at the time of Biden’s assumption of Executive Branch power on January 20, 2021 (with Trump kicking and screaming all the way), along the lines of: What will Biden-Harris and Blinken actually do with US anti-Cuba policy in its first 6 months? And the choices were:

  1. A) Reverse all or many of Trump’s anti-Cuba Executive Orders;
    B) Reverse some of Trump’s anti-Cuba measures while maintaining a contentious political-diplomatic posture;
    C) Maintain full continuity with Trump and bolster “regime change” efforts

I’m sure a majority would have chosen A or B.

There were no doubt hopes, if not illusions and wishful thinking, in the Cuba solidarity movement and broader anti-embargo forces and activists that Biden-Harris, Blinken would at least ameliorate some aspects of the blockade that steadily accumulated under Trump. There was also anticipation in some circles that Biden and Blinkin would move to reverse or obviate some, all, or any of Trump’s anti-Cuba measures that were Executive Orders (EOs), as he did with other Trump EOs.

While US Cuba normalization was not an issue that was elevated by the Biden-Harris campaign, the formal language put forward in the 2020 Presidential election campaign indicated that the direction would be to revert to the Obama period shift of 2014-2015, and the limited retreat of US anti-Cuba policies that released the remaining Cuban 5 prisoners, established formal Washington Havana diplomatic relations, and expedited the removal of Cuba from the “terrorist” list of the State Department, and some loosening of travel regulations.

(Why Obama led this US shift and retreat and why the situation decisively reversed under Trump, with Democratic acquiescence and support, is a question I will return to.)

Biden and Blinken’s team also leaked stories that indicated they would pick off some of the “low-hanging fruit” of Trump’s 243 anti-Cuba EOs and directives such as restoring family remittances and a loosening of travel regulations and restrictions. Other signals were sent, or stories planted in top corporate media, that there might be some re-staffing of routine embassy and consular offices and services that could expedite family reunifications and mutual people-to-people exchanges between the US and Cuba, and also have more US agents on the ground for subversive campaigns and projects such as the November 15 provocations. This latter idea is apparently moving forward according to the Miami Herald.

Biden’s Blockade

After nine months in office, Biden has made it difficult to have any serious illusions in him on the “Cuba Question,” which, whether Washington likes it or not, has a political resonance and even centrality to other hemispheric questions. The brutal line of the Biden team — for now – is clearly set. This is now Biden’s blockade!

But this does not mean the political framework for sustaining the US blockade will be static or that Biden and Blinken’s policy is sustainable.

During the long anomalous transition to Biden’s government which unfolded after the election results were ratified, there were regular discussions in the International US-Cuba Normalization Conference Committee zoom meetings, repeated within all the growing forces uniting the broader Cuba solidarity movement, and within and between the numerous self-defined socialist, communist, and national-liberationist political parties, tendencies, and organizations that explicitly defend and support the Cuban Revolution. There is a remarkable degree of unity in this latter category that has so far eschewed sectarian divisions within the growing movement. All of us asked:

What would now happen? What would Biden and his team actually do with the political hot potatoes of US anti-Cuba policy; the repeated debacles on Venezuela and Bolivia under Trump and the Organization of American States (OAS); and the accelerating crises in Latin America under the whip of the COVID-19 pandemic. The answer so far has been the continuity of bipartisan US state policy.

Venezuela and Bolivia

This shift during the Trump period away from the “halcyon days” of 2014-16 under Barack Obama has always been politically connected to the renewed efforts, over the course of Trump’s four years in the White House, to sanction and overthrow the Nicolas Maduro-PSUV government in Venezuela and also subvert and destabilize the Evo Morales-MAS government in Bolivia. Overall, Trump and his team organized a series of debacles trying to overthrow the governments of both countries.

In Bolivia, Trump and his team oversaw a US-Canada-OAS-backed bloody police and military coup in November 2019. The coup regime fronted by Jeanine Añez was finally ousted in May 2020 after mass popular resistance forced the scheduling of presidential and parliamentary elections that were subsequently swept by MAS.

Again, around these momentous events in Bolivia, the Democratic Party leadership, elected representatives in the House and Senate, and leading candidates during the presidential primary campaigning, mostly stayed silent, with a few low-keyed exceptions like Bernie Sanders, and certainly did nothing to stop it.

Throughout this period – while otherwise furiously tangling with Trump – the Democratic Party leadership was no less effusive than Trump minions like John Bolton and Elliot Abrams in their praise for the neocolonial Venezuelan flunkey Juan Guaido and the pro-imperialist opposition (now badly fractured and increasingly demoralized inside Venezuela) that he fronted for. These Washington interventionist machinations took place following the collapse of world oil prices plus US sanctions and pressures led to calamitous economic conditions and the generation of massive migrations in Venezuela.

With hardly a whiff of dissent, there was broad bipartisan support for Guaido’s preposterous declaration (falsely claiming to be based on the Hugo Chavez-era Constitution these same forces furiously op+-posed at the time!) of being the legitimate Venezuelan head-of-state. This was the cover for various failed covert operations led from Trump’s Washington in 2019 and 2020.5

Juan Guaido with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi

There was more than enough bipartisan support for all the accumulating anti-Venezuela sanctions, the “legal” theft of Venezuelan assets such as CITGO gas stations, ratified in US courts, as well as the funneling of funds and mercenary advisors to Venezuelan clients, agents, and allies. Obviously, without too much of an effort to cover their trail, all roads in this hemispheric subversion lead to Washington!

Washington’s bipartisan antipathy to Venezuelan sovereignty transferred easily into attempts to blackmail or threaten to break Cuba (and Bolivia’s) anti-imperialist solidarity with the sovereign Maduro-PSUV government. This became a demand and precondition to end Trump’s (and now Biden’s) deepening of the blockade and a pretext and cover to maintain and deepen the US economic war. It was a thoroughly bipartisan attempt in Washington to promote “regime change” in Venezuela as a priority of US state policy.

Clearly Cuba’s solidarity with Venezuela and refusal to acquiesce to a US-directed installation of the hapless Guaido foreshadowed and anticipated the actual fact that, despite Biden’s campaign language of returning to President Barack Obama’s relative expansion of US-Cuba relations, Venezuela would likely continue to be the peg by which bipartisan Washington would squeeze Cuba.

While the successive debacles in Venezuela and Bolivia under the Trump team’s direction from 2018-2020 certainly did not thrill them, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer’s corner and piece of Washington were no less advocates for US “regime change” policies and sanctions than Republican leaders Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell. And remain so under the Biden White House and State Department. Below is a mealy-mouthed form letter sent by Schumer to New York State “constituents” protesting US sanctions and in favor of US-Cuba Normalization.

Dear Ms. Feely-Nahem:

Thank you for contacting me regarding your concerns with the U.S. sanctions against Cuba and for expressing your support for improving the U.S.-Cuba relationship.

Under the oppressive communist regime led by President Miguel Díaz-Canel, Cuba has been devastated by political corruption, economic instability and humanitarian crises ranging from physical violence by law enforcement against detainees, to mass unlawful arrests and summary convictions of peaceful protestors without a defense present. Many Cubans continue to be in dire need of food assistance, health services and other basic necessities. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, these impacts and needs are exacerbated.

I strongly believe the U.S. should promote democracy, human rights, and peace efforts in Cuba and around the world. Throughout my career, I have been a strong supporter of ending the embargo on Cuba and believe the best way to bring down the communist regime is to open up Cuba, economically and otherwise. However, I also believe it is important to acknowledge the threat that Cuba poses and that is why a robust sanctions infrastructure is in place. While I understand your serious concerns about the potential impacts of U.S. sanctions on the situation in Cuba-especially in the context of the current pandemic-it is ultimately an area that Congress will need to consistently monitor in order to effectively stand with the Cuban people.

Again, thank you for contacting me. Please keep in touch with your thoughts and opinions.

Sincerely,

Charles E. Schumer
United States Senator

Cuba and Africa in the 1970s

There is nothing new in US Adminstration’s demanding changes in Cuba’s internationalist foreign policy as a precondition for US-Cuba normalization and ending US sanctions and hostility. You have to go back to the late-1970s with Jimmy Carter in the White House to locate the last time, before the Obama shift, when there was any prospect of ending the US embargo before the 1996 Helms-Burton blockade legislation signed by Clinton.

But Carter’s “offer” to lift all travel and commercial sanctions was very conditional on the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Africa who were fighting US and apartheid South Africa-backed forces and South African troops directly in Angola and southern Africa. This was rejected by the Cuba government and Cuba’s revolutionary armed forces were subsequently decisive in securing the sovereignty of Angola, the independence of Namibia, and the unravelling and defeat of apartheid South Africa. Out of office Carter has spoken out more clearly against US policy.

Lessons of Obama’s Shift

Why did Barack Obama carry out the 2014-15 shift and agree to implement the establishment of diplomatic relations? Why did Obama agree to meet the major Cuban preconditions for the December 14, 2014 announcement: the release of the remaining Cuban Five prisoners from US jails and clear motion toward removing Cuba from the State Department’s list of “states” supporting US-defined “terrorism.” The latter carries with it “legal” mandates to sanction and cause harm and widespread hardship for working people. 6

In actual fact, Cuba made no concessions to any US political demands as Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced the reestablishment of diplomatic relations on December 17, 2014. (The concurrent release of US State Department “client” and “contractor” Alan Gross — and allegedly another veteran of decades-past CIA violent anti-Revolution subversion — was not a “concession” since Cuba had long and continuously proposed a swap to get back the Cuban 5 revolutionary heroes. For years Obama preferred to maintain the ludicrous cover that Gross was acting on his own on behalf of Cuba’s small but vibrant Jewish community. That community had nothing to do with Gross’s subversion for the US State Department’s Agency for International Development (USAID). Obama maintained the cover despite pressures from Gross’s family for Washington to take responsibility for its busted agent.

The first term of the Obama Administration saw basic continuity with the policies of George W. Bush, with the exception of a significant lowering of barriers to Cuban-American travel and exchanges to Cuba, including barriers to direct remittances. These were broadly popular among Cuban-Americans. And such travel and other exchanges greatly increased.

Advance of the “Pink Tide”

Obama took office in 2009 at a time when Bush’s policies, particularly against Venezuela and Cuba, were in crisis, turmoil, and political retreat across the Americas. The 2002 attempted military coup against Hugo Chavez had collapsed after mass working-class mobilizations in Caracas and nationwide. Policymakers and notorious anti-Cuba aggressive interventionists such as Otto Reich, Elliot Abrams, and John Bolton were forced out or pushed aside even as Bush 2’s White House came to an end.

The governments of Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales – anti-imperialist, allied with Cuba, and implementing socially progressive policies counter to the neoliberal “Washington Consensus” and the interests of foreign capital survived and consolidated in the face of US subversion and bellicosity. Rafael Correa was elected in Ecuador with a similar anti-imperialist political program and hemispheric perspective as Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales. Brazil’s President Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva was a firm opponent of US anti-Cuba policy. Hemispheric bodies such as ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) emerged as political alternatives to the neocolonial OAS.

Such OAS “Summits” that took place in Obama’s first term were diplomatic battlegrounds on the still-hot post-Bush era‘s terrain. “Unprecedented Latin American opposition to U.S. sanctions on communist Cuba left President Barack Obama isolated at the Summit of the Americas on Sunday and illustrated Washington’s waning influence in the region,” read an April 15, 2002 NBC News account.  (See my 2009 article here.)

Opposition to US anti-Cuba policy became perhaps the sharpest expression of deepening hemispheric rifts. This was leading to a potential crisis of political legitimacy for the OAS. It got so bad that Obama and his accompanying Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were compelled to hear lectures on the good works of Cuban doctors, etc. from the heads-of-state inside (along with popular anti-imperialist protests outside) at the regular OAS “Summits.”

There was a united front of sorts of Latin American and Caribbean governments against the US anti-Cuba blockade. This included more conservative governments that maintained normal or friendly relations with a Cuba that had renounced none of its revolutionary socialist and Marxist views and program.

This was in addition to the regular, overwhelming anti-blockade votes at UN. This was the framework and context for the Obama-led shift which had the public support of his then-former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who was preparing her presidential run. Vice-President Biden voiced no opposition to the shift. The consensus decision was to retreat and remove the “Cuba Question” from the “Summit” agendas and salvage the OAS at that conjuncture.

A Public Lynching in the 21st Century

Of course, as Cuba emerges from the August 2021 COVID spike, exacerbated by Washington’s cruelty and the mendacious imperialist propaganda campaign after July 11, US policymakers have to be concerned that the Biden-led effort will now start to wobble or even fizzle out as the world comes to Cuba’s political and material support and Cuba opens up to mass tourism.

What we are seeing is bipartisan Washington pressure on the world to acquiesce in the public lynching of socialist Cuba! In broad daylight! But this is not the opening decades of the 20th Century, the historical epoch where Cuba was transformed into a Yankee neocolony after its War of Independence against Spain.

Revolutionary, socialist Cuba today has friends and allies. As Cuban Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment Rodrigo Malmierca put it on Twitter, ”Cuba is not alone.”

Outside Pressure on Biden

The main pressure on US anti-Cuba policy is coming and will mount from outside of US bourgeois electoral politics. This pressure will be international and particularly hemispheric in an increasingly polarized Latin America, Central America, and the Caribbean. There is bound to be a mounting and accumulating abhorrence and disgust at US policy that may bring forward some courage among governments and entities around the world that step-up and defy the blockade. This is an international dynamic that coordinated solidarity work must promote.

It cannot be acceptable for the United States government to openly asphyxiate socialist Cuba in broad daylight! It cannot be acceptable to drown out the truth about the Cuban Revolution and US “regime change” subversion, intervention, and violence over many decades with highly orchestrated lies, half-truths, and grotesque misinformation.

It seems Biden’s Washington is determined to carry out this interventionist, regime-change line and are convincing themselves it can succeed given the stress and hardship that is precisely the purpose of the blockade. As Malcolm X put it, “I can’t stop you from deluding yourself.”

If there was ever a Which Side Are You On? moment in US and world politics, this is it! Washington has crude, vulgar force on its side, but we must always grasp that they are nonetheless acting out of clear political weakness. And the counter-offensive in defense of Cuba is starting to get in gear.

As the Cuban workers state continues to drive down and reverse COVID-19 numbers and deaths, as mass vaccinations kick in, and as basic food and power shortages are addressed and reversed with mass mobilization, mass resistance and mass participation, Cuba is seeing an upsurge in patriotic unity, increased morale and consciousness for the working-class majority inside Cuba that will continue to thwart decisively US subversion and economic warfare.

  1. Over 95% of Cuba’s 11.3 million people have received at least one shot of the three-dose immunization regimen. As of this writing over 60% of Cubans are now fully vaccinated, well ahead of “our World in Data” website global average of 34%. Of course, the most impoverished and destitute nation-states have far lower percentages. And Cuba is the first nation-state to have begun the mass, safe vaccination of children.
  2. See Press Statement issued on July 26, 2021 by Antony Blinken: “United States and Concerned Nations Stand Together for the Cuban People”.
  3. Oppenheimer’s clairvoyant abilities are indicated in the title of his breathless Castro’s Final Hour: An Eyewitness Account of the Disintegration of Castro’s Cuba, published in 1993. The book captured the buoyant, champagne-on-ice mood among counter-revolutionary exiles in their Miami base after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its allied Eastern European governments from 1989-1991 and the onset of the severe economic depression Fidel Castro called “the Special Period” in Cuba.”
  4. 499. Memorandum From the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Mall9ory) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Rubottom), April 6, 1960.
  5. see my “Venezuela Diary:  January 24 to February 23, 2019.”
  6. For the arbitrary in-your-face hypocritical essence of the State Department terrorism list see “The Real Winner of the Afghan War? It’s Not Who You Think,” New York Times, (8-26-21) which states, “Washington’s relationship with Pakistan cooled after Navy SEALS killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 at a safe house located near a Pakistani military academy. Top American officials stopped visiting Pakistan and assistance was reduced. But the Obama administration never said publicly what it suspected: that the Pakistani military knew all along that bin Laden was living with his extended family in Abbottabad, one of Pakistan’s best-known garrison towns. If Washington had declared that Pakistan was harboring bin Laden, then Pakistan would have legally been a state sponsor of terrorism, and subject to mandatory sanctions like Iran, said Mr. Riedel, the former South Asia adviser to the Bush and Obama administrations. That would have forced the Americans to end its support for Pakistan and that in turn, would have led Pakistan to stop American war supplies from transiting Pakistan, increasing the cost of the war.”
The post Turning Points, Contradictions, and Dynamics first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ike Nahem.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/03/turning-points-contradictions-and-dynamics/feed/ 0 246647 The West’s China Complex: Beijing as the Enemy and the Savior https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/02/the-wests-china-complex-beijing-as-the-enemy-and-the-savior/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/02/the-wests-china-complex-beijing-as-the-enemy-and-the-savior/#respond Tue, 02 Nov 2021 05:20:11 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=122852 “Could China’s economy collapse?” was the title of an October 15 article published by QUARTZ magazine. The article makes an ominous case of a Chinese economic crash and its impact on China’s and global economies. This is one of numerous reports appearing in recent weeks in Western mainstream media, all motivated by recently published economic indicators pointing […]

The post The West’s China Complex: Beijing as the Enemy and the Savior first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> “Could China’s economy collapse?” was the title of an October 15 article published by QUARTZ magazine. The article makes an ominous case of a Chinese economic crash and its impact on China’s and global economies.

This is one of numerous reports appearing in recent weeks in Western mainstream media, all motivated by recently published economic indicators pointing to less-than-expected growth in various sectors of the Chinese economy, especially in the field of construction.

It is understandable that the volatility of global markets could instigate immediate concern among economists worldwide, especially when the economic output of a country the size of China – the world’s overall fastest-growing and second-largest economy – stalls, however briefly.

What is puzzling is how a fully predictable economic slowdown – considering the adverse effects of the pandemic on global trade – becomes a compelling reason to fuel predictions of a supposedly imminent Chinese collapse.

For QUARTZ, China’s supposed economic woes are an outcome of Beijing’s centralized economy, the Communist party’s political crackdowns and the restructuring of the private sector. If growth continues to slow down, “China may well witness civil unrest,” the article predicts, though without providing concrete evidence to back up such a dramatic assertion.

Compare this doomsday reading of the manufactured ‘crisis’ in China to the real fuel crisis in the UK, where a collective panic led to millions of people rushing to buy petrol and diesel fuels, resulting in massive disruptions, shortages of supplies and traffic jams. Western media downplayed the unprecedented crisis, as if it was merely the outcome of simple bureaucratic mismanagement or a mere miscalculation pertaining to supply and demand. If the equivalence of the UK’s dystopian scenes were witnessed in China, Western journalists would be ready to report on the ‘civil unrest’ and the impending revolution, even.

However, the anti-China media hype, which has been on the rise since the beginning of the Donald Trump Administration’s term in office, is a double-edged sword. While media propaganda, which habitually portrays China as an unstable country and depicts its decades-long economic growth as if a fleeting phenomenon, benefits greatly from downgrading China’s status, Western economies will be the first to pay the price should China enter a long-term economic recession.

Unlike the Soviet Union, which economy had existed in near-total isolation of Western markets, the Chinese economy is closely intertwined with the global economy, from Europe to North America, to Africa and beyond. The saying ‘if China sneezes, the world catches a cold’ has never been truer.

According to a recent Bloomberg illustration, displaying “Contributions to Global Growth” by various leading economic powers, China, especially starting 2010, served the role of the backbone of the global economy. The year 2020 was particularly interesting, as only China sustained a significant growth above the zero-percentage point.

The centrality of China as the main fuel of global economic growth presents the West with an impossible dilemma. On the one hand, the US and its allies want to ensure that China remains a minor global political power while, on the other hand, they continue to rely on the Chinese ‘economic miracle’ to keep their own economies afloat. It should come as no surprise that, according to the European Commission, “China is the EU’s biggest source of imports and its second-biggest export market”.

As US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin headed to Brussels on October 21 to join his first in-person NATO defense ministers’ conference, the Washington Post reported that Austin was joining the highly-influential meeting “with China on his mind”.

What worries Austin and the US military more than the vast capabilities and constant improvements of its Chinese counterpart, is NATO’s supposed failure to appreciate the ‘China threat’. Indeed, despite the US’ repeated warnings about China’s military ascendency, Europe and most NATO members remain largely nonchalant.

Simply put, Washington wants Europe to shoot itself in the foot. By isolating China, Europe would consequently isolate itself, thus curtailing its own economic growth and, by extension, slowing down the entire global economy. Considering the trust deficit between the EU and the US, resulting from the instability of the Trump Administration’s years, Biden’s failure to completely change course, and the more recent Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, chances are Europeans will not be following in Washington’s footsteps this time around, as they have during the height of the US-Soviet Cold War.

The above assertion has been demonstrated, time and again, in real numbers, the latest of which was a survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations, which polled Europeans in twelve different EU member states. Most Europeans, 59 percent, the survey showed, felt that their countries are not involved in a cold war with China.

Foreign Policy magazine reported on the findings with the following title: “Europeans Want to Stay Out of the New Cold War”. Chances are neither Western media alarmists nor Austin’s interventions at the NATO conference will change this reality.

China’s economy is likely to continue experiencing its ebbs and flow, thanks to the global recession resulting from the pandemic. On their own, such fluctuations will unlikely change the narrative of the determined Chinese rise as a global power, or that of the unmistakable western decline. The sooner we acknowledge this reality, the better.

The post The West’s China Complex: Beijing as the Enemy and the Savior first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/11/02/the-wests-china-complex-beijing-as-the-enemy-and-the-savior/feed/ 0 246131 Bad Economic News: Reality Trumps Capital-Centered Anticonsciousness https://www.radiofree.org/2021/10/27/bad-economic-news-reality-trumps-capital-centered-anticonsciousness/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/10/27/bad-economic-news-reality-trumps-capital-centered-anticonsciousness/#respond Wed, 27 Oct 2021 16:26:24 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=122618 For months, the ruling elite at home and abroad have used their media to incessantly repeat the nonsense that economies around the world are doing very well and rebounding nicely. Endless headlines from around the globe screamed wantonly about how economies everywhere were breaking all kinds of growth records and that everything looked bright and […]

The post Bad Economic News: Reality Trumps Capital-Centered Anticonsciousness first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> For months, the ruling elite at home and abroad have used their media to incessantly repeat the nonsense that economies around the world are doing very well and rebounding nicely. Endless headlines from around the globe screamed wantonly about how economies everywhere were breaking all kinds of growth records and that everything looked bright and promising. Apparently, country after country was coming out of yet another profound economic crisis that has wreaked havoc around the world.

However, in the last few weeks or so there has been a sharp and visible turn to more gloomy headlines about the economy. There has been a notable rise in the number of headlines and articles containing negative economic news. There are still some overly exuberant claims being made by certain news sources about the economy but on the whole there is a discernable increase in reporting on bad economic conditions that have been with us for some time.

The rich and their media are having a harder time ignoring and concealing miserable economic conditions, not to mention that it can be difficult to avoid looking hypocritical and tone-deaf by constantly repeating cheerful claims that clash with the difficult daily lived experience of millions of people.

Not surprisingly, imperialist organizations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have started their predictable downward revisions for economic growth in many parts of the world. This is not unusual because they, along with other capital-centered organizations, continually over-shoot economic growth forecasts and mis-assess economic phenomena, and then when reality catches up they are forced to acknowledge the harsh conditions that are actually confronting millions. This has been a pattern for years.

It should be recalled that most economies never recovered from the 2008 economic collapse engineered by Wall Street and that continuing the same monetary and fiscal policies that started 12 years ago is clearly not improving things today. If anything, the groundwork is being laid for a bigger economic disaster down the road. In fact, many have said, and reality has shown, that conditions are even worse now than they were back then. General estimates indicate that the “COVID Pandemic” is at least three times as destructive as the 2008 economic collapse organized by the rich. It is likely more than that. Eighteen months after the start of the “COVID Pandemic” approximately one million people per month are still losing their jobs in the U.S. At the height of the “COVID Pandemic” more than 70 million workers had filed for unemployment benefits in the U.S. That is more than 40% of the entire U.S. labor force, which stood at about 165 million workers in early 2020. In addition, the Congressional Budget Office states that deficits over the next decade will add another $12.1 trillion to the national debt. On top of this, inflation is very high and the labor force participation rate remains low, despite trillions of dollars printed by the Federal Reserve. We are also in the midst of “striketober,” which refers to a large wave of workers across the country going on strike in October to demand better pay, better working conditions, and a real say in things. Tens of thousands of workers from several different sectors are currently on strike; they have endured austerity for decades.

These and many other indicators are not signs of a resilient, modern, stable, substantive economy that people can rely on. There is no security, stability, predictability, and peace under such an obsolete and feeble economic system. An alternative is needed, possible, and long overdue.

In the coming weeks and months the rich and their media will continue to work overtime to disinform the polity about economic conditions. All kinds of ideological twists and turns will be taken to distort economic realities. They will strive to maintain maximum confusion so that people cannot find their bearings or sort things out and open the path of progress to society.

People can avoid such disorientation and sabotage by constantly and energetically engaging in a conscious act of finding out for themselves what is really unfolding. This has to be done on an uninterrupted basis because the disinformation is massive and relentless. Without disciplined ongoing investigation it will be easy to succumb to media disinformation.

The rich and their media have no interest in economic science or the public interest. It is up to people themselves to investigate matters in a serious way, draw the warranted conclusions, and use this analysis to usher in the alternative.

The post Bad Economic News: Reality Trumps Capital-Centered Anticonsciousness first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Shawgi Tell.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/10/27/bad-economic-news-reality-trumps-capital-centered-anticonsciousness/feed/ 0 244817 No Substantive Economic Recovery In Sight https://www.radiofree.org/2021/10/12/no-substantive-economic-recovery-in-sight/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/10/12/no-substantive-economic-recovery-in-sight/#respond Tue, 12 Oct 2021 05:22:12 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=122018 One of the fundamental economic laws under capitalism is for wealth to become more concentrated in fewer hands over time, which in turn leads to more political power in fewer hands, which means that the majority have even less political and economic power over time. Monopoly in economics means monopoly in politics. It is the […]

The post No Substantive Economic Recovery In Sight first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> One of the fundamental economic laws under capitalism is for wealth to become more concentrated in fewer hands over time, which in turn leads to more political power in fewer hands, which means that the majority have even less political and economic power over time. Monopoly in economics means monopoly in politics. It is the opposite of an inclusive, democratic, modern, healthy society. This retrogressive feature intrinsic to capitalism has been over-documented in thousands of reports and articles from hundreds of sources across the political and ideological spectrum over the last few decades. It is well-known, for example, that a handful of people own most of the wealth in the U.S. and most members of Congress are millionaires. This leaves out more than 95% of people. Not surprisingly, “policy makers” have consistently failed to reverse these antisocial trends inherent to an obsolete system.

At the same time, with no sense of irony and with no fidelity to science, news headlines from around the world continue to scream that the economy in many countries and regions is doing great and that more economic recovery and growth depend almost entirely, if not entirely, on vaccinating everyone (multiple times). In other words, once everyone is vaccinated, we will see really good economic times, everything will be amazing, and we won’t have too much to worry about. Extremely irrational and irresponsible statements and claims of all kinds continue to be made in the most dogmatic and frenzied way by the mainstream press at home and abroad in a desperate attempt to divert attention from the deep economic crisis continually unfolding nationally and internationally. Dozens of countries are experiencing profound economic problems.

While billions of vaccination shots have already been administered worldwide, and millions more are administered every day (with and without people’s consent), humanity continues to confront many major intractable economic problems caused by the internal dynamics of an outdated economic system.

A snapshot:

  1. More rapid and intense inflation everywhere
  2. Major supply chain disruptions and distortions everywhere
  3. Shortages of many products
  4. “Shortages” of workers in many sectors worldwide
  5. Shortened and inconsistent hours of operation at thousands of businesses
  6. Falling value of the U.S. dollar and other fiat currencies
  7. Growing stagflation
  8. Millions of businesses permanently disappeared
  9. More income and wealth inequality
  10. High dismal levels of unemployment, under-employment, and worker burnout
  11. Growing health insurance costs
  12. Unending fear, anxiety, and hysteria around endless covid strains
  13. More scattered panic buying
  14. The stock market climbing while the real economy declines (highly inflated asset valuations in the stock market)
  15. Spectacular economic failures like Lehman Brothers (in the U.S. 13 years ago) and Evergrande (in China in 2021)
  16. All kinds of debt increasing at all levels
  17. Central banks around the world printing trillions in fiat currencies non-stop and still lots of bad economic news
  18. And a whole host of other harsh economic realities often invisible to the eye and rarely reported on that tell a much more tragic story of an economy that cannot provide for the needs of the people

The list goes on and on. More nauseating data appears every day. Economic hardship, which takes on many tangible and intangible forms, is wreaking havoc on the majority at home and abroad. There is no real and substantive economic improvement. It is hard to see a bright, stable, prosperous, peaceful future for millions under such conditions, which is why many, if not most, people do not have a good feeling about what lies ahead and have little faith in the rich, their politicians, and “representative democracy.” It is no surprise that President Joe Biden’s approval rating is low and keeps falling.

What will the rich and their political and media representatives say and do when most people are vaccinated, everyone else has natural immunity, and the economy is still failing? What will the rich do when economic failure cannot be blamed on bacteria or viruses? To be sure, the legitimacy crisis will further deepen and outmoded liberal institutions of governance will become even more obsolete and more incapable of sorting out today’s serious problems. “Representative democracy” will become more discredited and more illusions about the “social contract” will be shattered. In this context, talk of “New Deals” for this and “New Deals” for that won’t solve anything in a meaningful way either because these “New Deals” are nothing more than an expansion of state-organized corruption to pay the rich, mainly through “public-private-partnerships.” This is already being spun in a way that will fool the gullible. Many are actively ignoring how such high-sounding “reforms” are actually pay-the-rich schemes that increase inequality and exacerbate a whole host of other problems.

It is not in the interest of the rich to see different covid strains and scares disappear because these strains and scares provide a convenient cover and scapegoat for economic problems rooted in the profound contradictions of an outmoded economic system over-ripe for a new direction, aim, and control. It is easier to claim that the economy is intractably lousy because of covid and covid-related restrictions than to admit that the economy is continually failing due to the intrinsic built-in nature, operation, and logic of capital itself.

There is no way forward while economic and political power remain dominated by the rich. The only way out of the economic crisis is by vesting power in workers, the people who actually produce the wealth that society depends on. The rich and their outmoded system are a drag on everyone and are not needed in any way; they are a major obstacle to the progress of society; they add no value to anything and are unable and unwilling to lead the society out of its deepening all-sided crisis.

There is an alternative to current obsolete arrangements and only the people themselves, armed with a new independent outlook, politics, and thinking can usher it in. Economic problems, health problems, and 50 other lingering problems are not going to be solved so long as the polity remains marginalized and disempowered by the rich and their capital-centered arrangements and institutions. New and fresh thinking and consciousness are needed at this time. A new and more powerful human-centered outlook is needed to guide humanity forward.

Human consciousness and resiliency are being severely tested at this time, and the results have been harsh and tragic in many ways for so many. We are experiencing a major test of the ability of the human species to bring into being what is missing, that is, to overcome the neoliberal destruction of time, space, and the fabric of society so as to unleash the power of human productive forces to usher in a much more advanced society where time-space relations accelerate in favor of the entire polity. There is an alternative to the anachronistic status quo.

The post No Substantive Economic Recovery In Sight first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Shawgi Tell.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/10/12/no-substantive-economic-recovery-in-sight/feed/ 0 240913 The Fear Pandemic and the Crisis of Capitalism https://www.radiofree.org/2021/10/05/the-fear-pandemic-and-the-crisis-of-capitalism/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/10/05/the-fear-pandemic-and-the-crisis-of-capitalism/#respond Tue, 05 Oct 2021 11:25:14 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=121874 In October 2019, in a speech at an International Monetary Fund conference, former Bank of England governor Mervyn King warned that the world was sleepwalking towards a fresh economic and financial crisis that would have devastating consequences for what he called the “democratic market system”. According to King, the global economy was stuck in a […]

The post The Fear Pandemic and the Crisis of Capitalism first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> In October 2019, in a speech at an International Monetary Fund conference, former Bank of England governor Mervyn King warned that the world was sleepwalking towards a fresh economic and financial crisis that would have devastating consequences for what he called the “democratic market system”.

According to King, the global economy was stuck in a low growth trap and recovery from the crisis of 2008 was weaker than that after the Great Depression. He concluded that it was time for the Federal Reserve and other central banks to begin talks behind closed doors with politicians.

In the repurchase agreement (repo) market, interest rates soared on 16 September. The Federal Reserve stepped in by intervening to the tune of $75 billion per day over four days, a sum not seen since the 2008 crisis.

At that time, according to Fabio Vighi, professor of critical theory at Cardiff University, the Fed began an emergency monetary programme that saw hundreds of billions of dollars per week pumped into Wall Street.

Over the last 18 months or so, under the guise of a ‘pandemic’, we have seen economies closed down, small businesses being crushed, workers being made unemployed and people’s rights being destroyed. Lockdowns and restrictions have facilitated this process. The purpose of these so-called ‘public health measures’ has little to do with public health and much to do with managing a crisis of capitalism and ultimately the restructuring of the economy.

Neoliberalism has squeezed workers income and benefits, offshored key sectors of economies and has used every tool at its disposal to maintain demand and create financial Ponzi schemes in which the rich can still invest in and profit from. The bailouts to the banking sector following the 2008 crash provided only temporary respite. The crash returned with a much bigger bang pre-Covid along with multi-billion-dollar bailouts.

The dystopian ‘great reset’ that we are currently witnessing is a response to this crisis. This reset envisages a transformation of capitalism.

Fabio Vighi sheds light on the role of the ‘pandemic’ in all of this:

… some may have started wondering why the usually unscrupulous ruling elites decided to freeze the global profit-making machine in the face of a pathogen that targets almost exclusively the unproductive (over 80s).

Vighi describes how, in pre-Covid times, the world economy was on the verge of another colossal meltdown and chronicles how the Swiss Bank of International Settlements, BlackRock (the world’s most powerful investment fund), G7 central bankers and others worked to avert a massive impending financial meltdown.

The world economy was suffocating under an unsustainable mountain of debt. Many companies could not generate enough profit to cover interest payments on their own debts and were staying afloat only by taking on new loans. Falling turnover, squeezed margins, limited cash flows and highly leveraged balance sheets were rising everywhere.

Lockdowns and the global suspension of economic transactions were intended to allow the Fed to flood the ailing financial markets (under the guise of COVID) with freshly printed money while shutting down the real economy to avoid hyperinflation.

Vighi says:

… the stock market did not collapse (in March 2020) because lockdowns had to be imposed; rather, lockdowns had to be imposed because financial markets were collapsing. With lockdowns came the suspension of business transactions, which drained the demand for credit and stopped the contagion. In other words, restructuring the financial architecture through extraordinary monetary policy was contingent on the economy’s engine being turned off.

It all amounted to a multi-trillion bailout for Wall Street under the guise of COVID ‘relief’ followed by an ongoing plan to fundamentally restructure capitalism that involves smaller enterprises being driven to bankruptcy or bought up by monopolies and global chains, thereby ensuring continued viable profits for these predatory corporations, and the eradication of millions of jobs resulting from lockdowns and accelerated automation.

Author and journalist Matt Taibbi noted in 2020:

It retains all the cruelties of the free market for those who live and work in the real world, but turns the paper economy into a state protectorate, surrounded by a kind of Trumpian Money Wall that is designed to keep the investor class safe from fear of loss. This financial economy is a fantasy casino, where the winnings are real but free chips cover the losses. For a rarefied segment of society, failure is being written out of the capitalist bargain.

The World Economic Forum says that by 2030 the public will ‘rent’ everything they require. This means undermining the right of ownership (or possibly seizing personal assets) and restricting consumer choice underpinned by the rhetoric of reducing public debt or ‘sustainable consumption’, which will be used to legitimise impending austerity as a result of the economic meltdown. Ordinary people will foot the bill for the ‘COVID relief’ packages.

If the financial bailouts do not go according to plan, we could see further lockdowns imposed, perhaps justified under the pretext of  ‘the virus’ but also ‘climate emergency’.

It is not only Big Finance that has been saved. A previously ailing pharmaceuticals industry has also received a massive bailout (public funds to develop and purchase the vaccines) and lifeline thanks to the money-making COVID jabs.

The lockdowns and restrictions we have seen since March 2020 have helped boost the bottom line of global chains and the e-commerce giants as well and have cemented their dominance. At the same time, fundamental rights have been eradicated under COVID government measures.

Capitalism and labour

Essential to this ‘new normal’ is the compulsion to remove individual liberties and personal freedoms. A significant part of the working class has long been deemed ‘surplus to requirements’ – such people were sacrificed on the altar of neo-liberalism. They lost their jobs due to automation and offshoring. Since then, this section of the population has had to rely on meagre state welfare and run-down public services or, if ‘lucky’, insecure low-paid service sector jobs.

What we saw following the 2008 crash was ordinary people being pushed further to the edge. After a decade of ‘austerity’ in the UK – a neoliberal assault on the living conditions of ordinary people carried out under the guise of reining in public debt following the bank bail outs – a leading UN poverty expert compared Conservative welfare policies to the creation of 19th-century workhouses and warned that, unless austerity is ended, the UK’s poorest people face lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.

Philip Alston, the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty, accused ministers of being in a state of denial about the impact of policies. He accused them of the “systematic immiseration of a significant part of the British population”.

In another 2019 report, the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank laid the blame for more than 130,000 deaths in the UK since 2012 at the door of government policies. It claimed that these deaths could have been prevented if improvements in public health policy had not stalled as a direct result of austerity cuts.

Over the past 10 years in the UK, according to the Trussell Group, there has been rising food poverty and increasing reliance on food banks.

And in a damning report on poverty in the UK by Professor David Gordon of the University of Bristol, it was found that almost 18 million cannot afford adequate housing conditions, 12 million are too poor to engage in common social activities, one in three cannot afford to heat their homes adequately in winter and four million children and adults are not properly fed (Britain’s population is estimated at around 66 million).

Moreover, a 2015 report by the New Policy Institute noted that the total number of people in poverty in the UK had increased by 800,000, from 13.2 to 14.0 million in just two to three years.

Meanwhile, The Equality Trust in 2018 reported that the ‘austerity’ years were anything but austere for the richest 1,000 people in the UK. They had increased their wealth by £66 billion in one year alone (2017-2018), by £274 billion in five years (2013-2018) and had increased their total wealth to £724 billion – significantly more than the poorest 40% of households combined (£567 billion).

Just some of the cruelties of the ‘free market’ for those who live and work in the real world. And all of this hardship prior to lockdowns that have subsequently devastated lives, livelihoods and health, with cancer diagnoses and treatments and other conditions having been neglected due to the shutdown of health services.

During the current economic crisis, what we are seeing is many millions around the world being robbed of their livelihoods. With AI and advanced automation of production, distribution and service provision on the immediate horizon, a mass labour force will no longer be required.

It raises fundamental questions about the need for and the future of mass education, welfare and healthcare provision and systems that have traditionally served to reproduce and maintain labour that capitalist economic activity has required.

As the economy is restructured, labour’s relationship to capital is being transformed. If work is a condition of the existence of the labouring classes, then, in the eyes of capitalists, why maintain a pool of (surplus) labour that is no longer needed?

A concentration of wealth power and ownership is taking place as a result of COVID-related policies: according to research by Oxfam, the world’s billionaires gained $3.9 trillion while working people lost $3.7 trillion in 2020. At the same time, as large sections of the population head into a state of permanent unemployment, the rulers are weary of mass dissent and resistance. We are witnessing an emerging biosecurity surveillance state designed to curtail liberties ranging from freedom of movement and assembly to political protest and free speech.

The global implications are immense too. Barely a month into the COVID agenda, the IMF and World Bank were already facing a deluge of aid requests from developing countries that were asking for bailouts and loans. Ideal cover for rebooting the global economy via a massive debt crisis and the subsequent privatisation of national assets.

In 2020, World Bank Group President David Malpass stated that poorer countries will be ‘helped’ to get back on their feet after the various lockdowns but such ‘help’ would be on condition that neoliberal reforms become further embedded. In other words, the de facto privatisation of states (affecting all nations, rich and poor alike), the (complete) erosion of national sovereignty and dollar-denominated debt leading to a further strengthening of US leverage and power.

In a system of top-down surveillance capitalism with an increasing section of the population deemed ‘unproductive’ and ‘useless eaters’, notions of individualism, liberal democracy and the ideology of free choice and consumerism are regarded by the elite as ‘unnecessary luxuries’ along with political and civil rights and freedoms.

We need only look at the ongoing tyranny in Australia to see where other countries could be heading. How quickly Australia was transformed from a ‘liberal democracy’ to a brutal totalitarian police state of endless lockdowns where gathering and protests are not to be tolerated.

Being beaten and thrown to the ground and fired at with rubber bullets in the name of protecting health makes as much sense as devastating entire societies through socially and economically destructive lockdowns to ‘save lives’.

It makes as much sense as mask-wearing and social-distancing mandates unsupported by science, misused and flawed PCR tests, perfectly healthy people being labelled as ‘cases’, deliberately inflated COVID death figures, pushing dangerous experimental vaccines in the name of health, ramping up fear, relying on Neil Ferguson’s bogus modelling, censoring debate about any of this and the WHO declaring a worldwide ‘pandemic’ based on a very low number of global ‘cases’ back in early 2020 (44,279 ‘cases’ and 1,440 supposed COVID deaths outside China out of a population of 6.4 billion).

There is little if any logic to this. But of course, If we view what is happening in terms of a crisis of capitalism, it might begin to make a lot more sense.

The austerity measures that followed the 2008 crash were bad enough for ordinary people who were still reeling from the impacts when the first lockdown was imposed.

The authorities are aware that deeper, harsher impacts as well as much more wide-ranging changes will be experienced this time around and seem adamant that the masses must become more tightly controlled and conditioned to their coming servitude.

The post The Fear Pandemic and the Crisis of Capitalism first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Colin Todhunter.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/10/05/the-fear-pandemic-and-the-crisis-of-capitalism/feed/ 0 239291 Is the US Global Empire Actually in Decline? https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/23/is-the-us-global-empire-actually-in-decline/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/23/is-the-us-global-empire-actually-in-decline/#respond Thu, 23 Sep 2021 23:10:28 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=121274 It is almost taken for granted, if not an article of faith, in the progressive milieu (e.g., here) that the US empire is declining. Does this hold up, or is it comfort food for the frustrated hoping for the revolution? First, it is essential not to confuse the ongoing decline of the living conditions of […]

The post Is the US Global Empire Actually in Decline? first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> It is almost taken for granted, if not an article of faith, in the progressive milieu (e.g., here) that the US empire is declining. Does this hold up, or is it comfort food for the frustrated hoping for the revolution?

First, it is essential not to confuse the ongoing decline of the living conditions of US working people with a decline in the power of the US corporate empire. The decline of one often means the strengthening of the other.

In the aftermath of World War II, the US was the world manufacturing center, with the middle class rapidly expanding, and this era did end in the 1970s. It is also true the heyday of uncontested US world and corporate neoliberal supremacy is over, its zenith being the decade of the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its allies. Now, looming on the horizon is China, with the US empire and its subordinate imperial allies (Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, Belgium, Canada, Australia, Italy) unable to thwart its rise this century, even more than when China stood up in 1949.

Yet the US imperial system still maintains decisive economic and political dominance, cultural and ideological hegemony, backed by tremendous military muscle. If US ruling class power were in decline, why have there been no socialist revolutions ­­­− the overturning of capitalist rule ­­­− in almost half a century? What would the world look like if the US lacked the muscle to be world cop?

Imperialism continually faces crises; this is inherent to their system. The question is: which class takes advantage of these crises to advance their interests, the corporate capitalist class or the working class and its allies at home and abroad. In the recent decades, capitalist crises have resulted in setbacks for our class, and a steady worsening of our conditions of life.

Previous proponents of US empire decline have predicted its demise with an expanding Communist bloc, then Germany and Japan with their supposedly more efficient capitalist production methods, then the European Union encompassing most of Western Europe into a supra-national entity, then the Asian Tigers, and then BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). All challenges turned out to be wishful thinking. Now the proponents of decline expect China itself will soon supplant US dominion.  We explore a number of the economic, political, and military difficulties the US empire confronts in its role as world cop.

Imperial Decline or Adjustments in Methods of Rule?

A common misconception among believers of US ruling class demise holds that imperial failure to succeed in some particular aim signifies imperial weakening. Examples of setbacks include Afghanistan, the failure to block North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, catastrophic mishandling of the COVID pandemic, and seeming inability to reign in the mammoth US national debt. However, throughout history, successful maintenance of imperial hegemony has never precluded absence of terrible setbacks and defeats. Most importantly, the fundamental question arising from a setback is which class learns to advance its interests more effectively, the imperial overlords or the oppressed.

The US rulers, as with other imperial nations, have proven adept at engineering more effective methods of control from crises, as Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine illustrates. For instance, in the mid-20th century the imperial powers were forced to relinquish direct political governance of their colonial empires, often due to costly wars. Until after World War II, the Western nations owned outright most of Africa and much of Asia. Yet this new Third World political independence did not herald the end of imperial rule over their former colonies. The imperialists simply readjusted their domination through a neocolonial setup and continued to loot these countries, such as siphoning off over $1 trillion  every year since 2005 just through tax havens.

Likewise, for seven decades the imperial ruling classes endured repeated defeats attempting to overturn the seemingly invincible Russian revolution. But they only needed to succeed one time, using a new strategy, to emerge victorious.

A third example, the growing US national deficit due to the cost of the war on Vietnam forced Nixon to no longer peg the value of the dollar to gold at $35 an ounce. After World War II, the US had imposed the dollar as the international reserve currency, fixed at this exchange rate.  Today gold is $1806 an ounce, yet the dollar continues as the world reserve currency. The US rulers resolved their crisis by readjusting the manner their dollar reigned in international markets.

A fourth example is the world historic defeat dealt the empire at the hands of the Vietnamese. Yet Vietnam today poses no challenge to US supremacy, in sharp contrast to 50 years ago.

The US ruling class is well versed in the lessons gained from centuries of Western imperial supremacy. They have repeatedly demonstrated that the no longer effective methods of world control can be updated.  Bankruptcy in methods of rule may not signify a decline, but only the need for a reset, allowing the domination to continue.

Part 1:  US Economic and Financial Strength

Decline in US Share of World Production

A central element of the waning US empire argument comes from the unparalleled economic rise of China. As a productive powerhouse, the US has been losing ground. As of 2019, before the COVID year reduced it further, the US share of world manufacturing amounted to 16.8%, while China was number one, at 28.7%.

Similarly, the US Gross Domestic Product itself (GDP) slipped from 40% of the world economy in 1960 to 24% in 2019. GDP is the total market value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country.

When GDP is measured by the world reserve currency, the dollar, the US ranks first, at $21 trillion, with China number two at $14.7 trillion. Using the Purchasing Power Parity measure of GDP,  which measures economic output in terms of a nation’s own prices, China’s GDP surpasses the US at $24.16 trillion. By either measure, a steady US erosion over time is evident, particularly in relation to China, and a major concern for the US bosses.

Worsening US balance of trade reflects this decline. In 1971 the US had a negative balance of trade (the value of imports greater than the value of exports) for the first time in 78 years. Since then, the value of exports has exceeded that of imports only two times, in 1973 and 1975. From 2003 on, the US has been running an annual trade deficit of $500 billion or more. To date the US rulers “pay” for this by creating dollars out of thin air.

Ballooning US National Debt

The ballooning US national debt is considered another indicator of US imperial demise. The US debt clock puts the national debt at $28.5 trillion, up from $5.7 trillion in 2000. According to International Monetary Fund (IMF) numbers, the US debt is 118% of the GDP, near a historic high point, up from 79.2% at the end of 2019.

The international reserves of the imperialist nations do not even cover 2% of their foreign debt. In contrast, China tops the list with the largest international reserves, which covers 153% of its foreign debt.

However, today US debt as a percent of GDP is lower than in World War II, at the height of US economic supremacy. Germany’s debt to GDP ratio is 72%. Japan’s is 264%, making its debt over two and a half times the size of the country’s GDP. China’s is 66%.

Yet a key concern with the ballooning national debt − inflation caused by creating money backed with no corresponding increase in production − hasn’t been a problem in any of these countries, not even Japan. The immediate issue with debt is not its size in trillions of dollars, but the degree annual economic growth exceeds the annual interest payment on the debt.

In the US, this payout costs almost $400 billion a year, 1.9% of GDP. Federal Reserve Board president Powell stated: “Given the low level of interest rates, there’s no issue about the United States being able to service its debt at this time or in the foreseeable future.” Former IMF chief economist and president of the American Economic Association, Olivier Blanchard likewise declared: “Put bluntly, public debt may have no fiscal cost” given that “the current US situation in which safe interest rates are expected to remain below growth rates for a long time, is more the historical norm than the exception.” According to these ruling class economists, the huge size of the US national debt presents no economic difficulty for their bosses.

Technological Patents

Patents are an indicator of a country’s technological progress because they reflect the creation and dissemination of knowledge in productive activities. Today China is on the technological cutting edge in wind power, solar power, online payments, digital currencies, artificial intelligence (such as facial recognition), quantum computing, satellites and space exploration, 5G and 6G, drones, and ultra-high voltage power transmission. In 2019, China ended the US reign as the leading filer of international patents, a position previously held by the US every year since the UN World Intellectual Property Organization’s Patent Cooperation Treaty System began in 1978.

The failure of the US rulers to thwart China’s scientific and technological advances threatens the preeminence the US holds on technological innovation. Rents from the US corner on intellectual property is a major contributor to the US economy. The drastic measures the US has taken against Huawei exemplify the anxiety of the empire’s rulers.

US technological superiority is now being challenged. Yet, as John Ross points out, “Even using PPP measures, the US possesses overall technological superiority compared to China…. the level of productivity of the US economy is more than three times that of China.”1

The US Still Controls the Global Financial Network

While the world share of US manufacturing and exports has shrunk, the US overlords still reign over the world financial order. A pillar of their world primacy lies in the dollar as the world’s “reserve currency,” an innocuous term referring to US sway over the global financial and trade structure, including international banking networks, such as the World Bank and the IMF.

Following the 1971 end of the dollar’s $35 an ounce peg to gold, Nixon engineered deals with the Middle East oil exporting regimes, guaranteeing them military support on condition they sell their oil exclusively in dollars. This gave a compelling new reason for foreign governments and banks to hold dollars. The US could now flood international markets with dollars regardless of the amount of gold it held. Today, most of the world’s currencies remain pegged directly or indirectly to the dollar.

To facilitate growing international trade, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) was created in 1973. SWIFT is a payment and transaction network used by international banks to monitor and process purchases and payments by individuals, companies, banks, and governments. Dominated by the US, it grants the country even greater mastery over world trade and financial markets. Here, China poses no challenge to US supremacy.

After the euro became established, the percent of world reserves held in US dollars diminished from the 71% share it held in 2001. Since 2003, the dollar has kept the principal share, fluctuating in the 60-65% range. Today, the percent of world nations’ currency reserves held in US dollars amounts to $7 trillion, 59.5% of international currency reserves.

In 2021 the dollar’s share of total foreign currency reserves is actually greater than in the 1980s and 1990s.

Because only a few reserve currencies are accepted in international trade, countries are not free to trade their goods in their own money. Rather, over 90% of nations’ imports and exports requires use of the dollar, the euro, or the currencies of other imperial states. The Chinese RMB, in contrast, constitutes merely 2.4% of international reserves, ranking China on the level of Canada. The US continues as the superpower in world currency reserves, while China is a marginal player.

The US Dollar as the World Reserve Currency

The US maintains preeminence because banks, governments and working peoples around the world regards US dollar as the safest, most reliable, and accepted currency to hold their savings.

A capitalist economic crisis, even when caused by the US itself, as in 2008, actually increases demand for the dollar, since the dollar is still viewed as the safe haven. People expect the dollar to be the currency most likely to retain its value in periods of uncertainty. Ironically, an economic crisis precipitated by the US results in money flooding into dollar assets, keeping world demand for dollars high. The 2008-09 crisis enabled the ruling class to advance their domination over working people, fleecing us of hundreds of billions of dollars.

SWIFT data show that China’s RMB plays a minor role in world trade transactions.  While China has become the world exporter, its currency was used in merely 1.9% of  international payments, versus 38% for the US dollar, with 77% of transactions in the dollar or euro. This means almost all China’s own imports and exports are not traded in Chinese currency, but in that of the US and its subordinates.

Being the leading force in SWIFT gives the US a powerful weapon. The US rulers can target countries it seeks to overthrow (such as Venezuela, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, and Iran) with sanctions declared illegal by the United Nations. SWIFT enables the US rulers to prevent those countries’ access to their overseas bank accounts, blocks their access to international trade as well as loans from the World Bank, the IMF and most international banks. The US uses its authority in the World Trade Organization to prevent countries like Venezuela from demanding the WTO punish the US for disrupting Venezuela’s legitimate trade by means of these sanctions.

Arguments that China and Russia are abandoning the dollar point out that, while in 2015 approximately 90% of trade between the two countries was conducted in dollars, by spring 2020 the figure had dropped to 46%, with 24% of the trade in their own currencies. This shows some increasing independence, yet almost twice as much China-Russia trade still takes place in the dollar rather than in their own money. Further, their moves from the dollar have been in reaction to US imposed sanctions and tariffs, forcing them off the dollar, not from their own choice to cast aside the dollar as the international currency.

If China and Russia had the means to create a new world economic order they could withdraw their over $1.1 trillion and $123 billion invested in US Treasury bonds and use the funds to start their own international financial structure.

That China pegs the RMB to the dollar, rather than the dollar pegged to the RMB, also indicates the economic power relations between China and the US. China has expressed unease about the US potential to cut China off from the SWIFT network. Zhou Li, a spokesperson for China’s Communist Party, urged his party’s leaders to prepare for decoupling from the dollar, because the US dollar “has us by the throat… By taking advantage of the dollar’s global monopoly position in the financial sector, the US will pose an increasingly severe threat to China’s further development.”

While China has displaced the US as the primary productive workhouse of the world, it remains far from displacing the US as the world financial center. The size of China’s economy has not translated into a matching economic power.

Part 2: Military and Ideological Forms of Domination

The US regards as its Manifest Destiny to rule the world. The US bosses equate their national security interests with global security interests; no place or issue is insignificant. The US sees its role as defending the world capitalist order even if narrow US interests are not immediately and practically involved.

The Question of a US Military Decline

The second central element of the waning US empire argument is based on the US armed forces failures in the Middle East wars. However, they overlook that the US rulers suffered more stinging defeats in Korea 70 years ago and Vietnam 50 years ago, when the US was considered at the height of its supremacy. While over 7000 US soldiers and 8000 “contractors,” a code word for mercenaries, have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, this is much smaller than the 41,300 troops killed in Korea, or the 58,000 in Vietnam. Although in wars against Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan, the US ruling class could not achieve its aims, these peoples’ anti-imperial struggles were derailed, a US key objective. To the extent the peoples of these countries “won,” they inherited a country in ruins.

Likewise, the rising British empire suffered defeats at the hands of the US in 1783 and 1814, but this had little impact on 19th century British global ascendancy.

Save Iraq in 1991, the US has not won a war since World War II. Yet even in its heyday, the US military did not take on and defeat another major power without considerable outside aid. Spain was mostly defeated in Cuba and the Philippines before the US attacked. The US entered World War I after the other fighting forces were reaching exhaustion. In World War II, the Soviet Red Army broke the back of the German Wehrmacht, not the US. Only against Japan did the US military play a key role in crushing an imperial rival, though even here, the bulk of Japanese troops were tied down fighting the Chinese.

While today, the US military is reluctant about engaging in a full-scale land war, this has been mostly the case for the whole 20th century before any alleged imperial deterioration. Previously, the US rulers proved adept at not entering a war until it could emerge on top once the wars ended.

The “Vietnam syndrome,” code word for the US people’s opposition to fighting wars to defend the corporate world order, continues to haunt and impede the US rulers when they consider new military aggressions. This “syndrome,” which Bush Sr boasted had been overcome, has only deepened as result of the Afghanistan and Iraq debacles. Yet the corporate class took advantage of these wars to loot trillions from public funds, with working people to pay the bill.

The US is spending over a trillion dollars to “upgrade” a nuclear capacity which could wipe out life on the planet.  Even if US military capacity were diminishing in some areas, this is immaterial so long as the US still can, with a push of the button, annihilate all it considers opponents, even if this means a likely mutually assured destruction. The US also possesses similarly dangerous arsenals of biological and chemical weapons. It is not rational to think the US rulers spend mind-boggling sums of money on this weaponry but will not use them again when considered necessary to preserve their supremacy.

The US empire’s military dominion remains firmly in place around the world. Peoples’ struggles to close US military bases have met with little success. US ruling class de facto military occupations overseas continue through its over 800 bases in over 160 countries. These constitute 95% of the world’s total foreign military bases.

To date, if there has been any lessening of US military destructive capacity, no new armed forces or uprisings have dared to take advantage of this. If some national force considered it possible to break out of the US world jailhouse, we would be seeing that.

Hybrid Warfare: US Regime-Change Tools Besides Military Intervention

Military victory is not necessary for the US rulers to keep “insubordinate” countries in line. It suffices for the US to leave in ruins their attempts to build political and economic systems that prioritize national sovereignty over US dictates.

When incapable of overturning a potential “threat of a good example” through military invasion, the US may engineer palace coups. Since 2000, it has succeeded in engineering coups in Honduras, Bolivia, Georgia, and Haiti, to name a few.

Alternatives to fomenting a military coup include the US conducting lawfare to overturn governments, as seen in Paraguay and Brazil. The US ruling class also skillfully co-opts “color revolutions,” as seen in the Arab Spring and in the implosion of the Soviet bloc. Worldwide, the US regularly violates the sovereignty of nations through its regime-change agencies such as the CIA, USAID, and NED.

Besides invasions, coups, lawfare, election interference, and color revolutions, the US relies on its command over the global financial system and the subservience of other imperialist nations. This enables the US overlords to impose crippling sanctions and blockades on countries that assert their national sovereignty. The blockades on Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, and Syria constitute a boot on their neck, which have only become more severe the more these peoples valiantly defend their independence.

Condemnation of these blockades by working people and nations worldwide has yet to have material effect in constraining this imperial cruelty against whole peoples. Rather than a decline of the US empire’s ability to thwart another country’s right to determine their own future, there have been changes in method, from overtly militaristic to more covert hybrid warfare. Both are brutal and effective means of regime change.

US-First World Ideological Hegemony

The corporate leaders of the West wield world dominion over the international media, including news services, social media, and advertising. Their Coke and Disney characters, for instance, have penetrated even the remotest corners of the world. Today most of the world’s viewers of the news are fed a version of the news through media stage-managed by the US and its subordinate allies. In addition, there are almost 4 billion social media users in the world, with six social media companies having more than one billion users. China owns just one of these. Only the US and its subordinates have world reach in their control of news and social media, while China does not.

Ramon Labanino, one of the Cuban 5, illustrated how the US rulers use their media to foment the July 12 regime change operation in Cuba:

We are in the presence of an international media dictatorship, the big media are in the hands of imperialism and now the social networks and the alternative media also use them in a masterful way. They have the capacity, through data engineering, bots, to replicate a tweet millions of times, which is what they have done against Cuba. A ruthless attack on social networks and in the media to show a Cuba that is not real. On the other hand, we have an invasion in our networks to disarticulate our computer systems so that even we cannot respond to the lies. The interesting thing is the double purpose, not only that they attack us, but then we cannot defend ourselves because the media belong to them… Within the CIA, for example, they have a special operations group that is in charge of cyber attacks of this type and there is a group called the Political Action Group that organizes, structures and directs this type of attack.

Worldwide use of media disinformation and news spin plays a central role in preserving US primacy and acceptance of its propaganda. As Covert Action Magazine reported:

United States warmakers have become so skilled at propaganda that not only can they wage a war of aggression without arousing protest; they can also compel liberals to denounce peace activists using language reminiscent of the McCarthy era. Take the case of Syria. The people and groups one would normally count on to oppose wars have been the ones largely defending it. They have also often been the ones to label war opponents as “Assad apologists” or “genocide deniers”—causing them to be blacklisted.

The ruling class media’s effective massaging of what is called “news” has penetrated and disoriented many anti-war forces. This illustrates the appalling collapse of a world anti-war opposition that almost 20 years ago had been called “the new superpower,” not some decline of the US as world cop. Corporate media operations play a role comparable to military might in perpetuating US global control.

Part 3: The Threat US Rulers Perceive in China

Secretary of State Blinken spelled it out:

China is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to seriously challenge the stable and open international system, all the rules, values and relationships that make the world work the way we want it to, because it ultimately serves the interests and reflects the values of the American people.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin responded to Washington’s view that the international system operates primarily to advance US corporate interests:

The ‘rules-based order’ claimed by the US…refers to rules set by the US alone, then it cannot be called international rules, but rather ‘hegemonic rules,’ which will only be rejected by the whole world.

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov recently said:

The United States has declared limiting the advance of technology in Russia and China as its goal…They are promoting their ideology-driven agenda aimed at preserving their dominance by holding back progress in other countries.

The Challenge China Presents to US Rulers Differs from that of the Soviet Union

China’s development poses a threat to imperialist hegemony different from the former Soviet bloc. China competes in the world markets run by the Western nations, slowly supplanting their control. China’s economic performance, 70 years after its revolution, has been unprecedented in world history, even compared to the First World countries. In contrast, the Soviet economy after 70 years was faltering.

China does not provide the economic and military protection for nations striving to build a new society the way the Soviet Union had. The importance of the Communist bloc as a force constraining the US was immense and is underappreciated. The Communist bloc generally allied itself with anti-imperialist forces, encouraging Third World national liberation struggles as well as the Non-Aligned Movement. The Communist bloc’s exemplary social programs also prompted the rise of social-democratic welfare state regimes (e.g., Sweden) in the capitalist West to circumvent possible socialist revolution.

Now, with no Soviet Union and its allies to extend international solidarity assistance to oppressed peoples and nations, countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea are much more on their own to defend themselves against US military maneuvers and blockades.

As John Ross points out, China is capable of slowly supplanting US-First World power over a long period of time, but in no position to replace these imperial states as world hegemon, nor does it desire to do so. US products are being driven out by China’s cheaper high-quality products and China’s more equitable “win-win” business arrangements with other countries, offering the opportunity for Third World countries to develop. However, China cannot displace the US in the world financial system, where the US and its allies retain overwhelming control.

The US has proven incapable of impeding China from becoming an independent world force. No matter the tariffs and sanctions placed on China, they have had little impact. Yet, the US has caused China to digress from its socialist planned economy, through US corporations and consumerist values penetrating the Chinese system.

Part 4:  The World if the US were in Decline

Revolutions on the International Stage

A weakened US imperialism would encourage peoples and nations to “seize the time” and score significant gains against this overlord’s hold on their countries. Yet since shortly after 1975, with the victories in Vietnam and Laos, a drought in socialist revolutions has persisted for almost half a century. If the US empire were in decline, we would find it handicapped in countering victorious socialist revolutions. However, the opposite has been the case, with the US rulers consolidating their hegemony over the world.

This contrasts with the 40-year period between 1917 and 1959, when socialist revolutions occurred in Russia, China, Korea, Vietnam, eleven countries across eastern Europe, and Cuba. These took place in the era of US rise, not decline. During this period, the US empire had to confront even greater challenges to its dictates than presented by today’s China and Russia in the form of the world Communist bloc, associated parties in capitalist countries, and the national liberation movements.

During the period of alleged US imperial demise, it has been socialist revolution that experienced catastrophic defeats. In the last 30 years, the struggle for socialist revolution has gone sharply in reverse, with the US and its subordinates not only blocking successful revolutions but overturning socialism in most of the former Communist sphere. The last three decades has witnessed greater consolidation of imperial supremacy over the world, not a deterioration.

The socialist revolutions that continue − North Korea, China, Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba − have all had to backtrack and reintroduce private enterprise and capitalist relations of production.  North Korea has allowed the growth of private markets; Cuba relies heavily on the Western tourist market. They have this forced upon them to survive more effectively in the present world neoliberal climate.

A victorious socialist revolution, even a much more limited anti-neoliberal revolution2 , requires a nation to stand up to the imperial vengeance that enforces neo-colonial subjugation. Small countries, such as Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela, have established political and some economic independence, but they have been unable to significantly advance against crushing blockades and US-backed coups in order to create developed economies. Historically, the only countries that have effectively broken with dependency and developed independently based on their own resources have been the Soviet Union and China.

Raul Castro made clear this world primacy of the US neoliberal empire:

In many cases, governments [including the subsidiary imperial ones] do not even have the capacity to enforce their sovereign prerogatives over the actions of national entities based in their own territories, as these are often docilely subordinated to Washington, as if we were living in a world subjugated by the unipolar power of the United States. This is a phenomenon that is expressed with particular impact in the financial sector, with national banks of several countries giving a US administration’s stipulations priority over the political decisions of their own governments.

A test of the US overlords’ decline can be measured in the struggle against US economic warfare in the form of sanctions. To date, the US can arm twist most countries besides China and Russia into abiding by its unilateral sanctions against Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, North Korea, and Iran. The US rulers still possess the power and self-assurance to ignore United Nations resolutions against economic warfare, including the UN General Assembly’s annual condemnation of the US blockade on Cuba. The peoples and nations of the world cannot make the US rulers pay a price for this warfare.

Domestic Struggles by the Working Class and its Allies that Shake the System

If the US empire were weakened, our working class could be winning strikes and union organizing drives against a capitalist class on the defensive. But the working class remains either quiescent, its struggles derailed, or most strikes settled by limiting the degree of boss takebacks. The 1997 UPS and 2016 Verizon strike were two that heralded important gains for workers. So far, however, the weakening class at home is not the corporate bosses, but the working class and its allies.

The workers movement has not even succeeded in gaining a national $15 minimum wage. The US rulers can spend over $900 billion a year on its war machine even during a pandemic that has killed almost 700,000, amid deteriorating standard of living  − no national health care, no quality free education, no raising of the minimum wage − without angry mass protests. This money could be spent on actual national security at home: housing for the homeless, eliminating poverty, countering global warming, jobs programs, and effectively handling the pandemic as China has (with only two deaths since May 2020). Instead, just in the Pentagon budget, nearly a trillion dollars a year of our money is a welfare handout to corporations to maintain their rule over the world. This overwhelming imperial reign over our workers’ movement signifies a degeneration in our working class organizations, not in the corporate overlords.

A weakened empire would provide opportunities for working class victories, re-allocating national wealth in their favor. Instead, we live in a new Gilded Age, with growing impoverishment of our class as the corporate heads keep grabbing greater shares of our national wealth. Americans for Tax Fairness points out:

America’s 719 billionaires held over four times more wealth ($4.56 trillion) than all the roughly 165 million Americans in society’s bottom half ($1.01 trillion), according to Federal Reserve Board data. In 1990, the situation was reversed — billionaires were worth $240 billion and the bottom 50% had $380 billion in collective wealth.

US billionaire wealth increased 19-fold over the last 31 years, with the combined wealth of 713 billionaires surging by $1.8 trillion during the pandemic, one-third of their wealth gains since 1990.

This scandalous appropriation of working people’s wealth by less than one thousand bosses at the top without causing mass indignation and working class fightback, encapsules the present power relations between the two contending classes.

With a weakened empire, we would expect a rise of a militant mass current in the trade unions and the working class committed to the struggle to reverse this trend. Instead, trade unions support corporate governance and their political candidates for office, not even making noise about a labor party.

With a weakened empire, we would expect the US working people to be turning away from the two corporate parties and building our own labor party as an alternative. In 2016 the US electorate backed two “outsiders,” Bernie Sanders and Trump, in the primaries against the traditional Democratic and Republican candidates, but this movement was co-opted with little difficulty. That the two corporate-owned parties still wield the power to co-opt, if not extinguish, our working class movements, as with the mass anti-Iraq war movement, the Occupy movement, the Madison trade union protests, the pro-Bernie groundswells in 2016 and 2020, shows the empire’s continued vitality, not deterioration.

In 2020 most all liberals and lefts capitulated to the Democrats’ anti-Trumpism, under the guise of “fighting fascism.” The “resistance” became the “assistance.” The promising Black Lives Matter movement of summer 2020 became largely absorbed into the Biden campaign a few months later. If the corporate empire were declining, progressive forces and leftist groups would not have bowed to neoliberal politicians and the national security state by climbing on the elect-Biden bandwagon. The 2020 election brought out the highest percent of voters in over a century to vote for one or the other of two neoliberal politicians. This stunning victory for the US ruling class resulted from a stunning surrender by progressive forces. To speak of declining corporate US supremacy in this context is nonsense.

Likely Indicators of a Demise of US Supremacy

For all our political lives we have been reading reports of the impending decline of US global supremacy. If just a fraction of these reports were accurate, then surely the presidential executive orders that Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran, and Cuba are “unusual and extraordinary threats to the national security of the United States” would have some basis in reality.

If US corporate dominion were declining, we might see:

  • The long called for democratization of the United Nations and other international bodies with one nation, one vote
  • Social democratic welfare governments would again be supplanting neoliberal regimes
  • Replacement of World Bank, WTO, and IMF with international financial institutions independent of US control
  • Curtailing NATO and other imperialist military alliances
  • End of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency
  • Dismantling of US overseas military bases
  • Emergence of regional blocs independent of the US, replacing the current vassal organizations (e.g., European Union, OAS, Arab League, Organization of African Unity)
  • Nuclear disarmament rather than nuclear escalation
  • Working peoples of the world enforcing reductions in greenhouse gas emissions
  • A decline of the allure of US controlled world media culture (e.g., Disney, Hollywood)

Part 5: Conclusion:  US Decline looks like a Mirage

Proponents of US decline point to two key indicators: its diminished role in global production and ineffectiveness of the US ruler’s military as world cop. Yet, the US rulers, with the aid of those in the European Union and Japan, maintain world financial control and continue to keep both our country and the world under lock and key.

The US overlords represent the spokesperson and enforcer of the First World imperial system of looting, while compelling subservience from the other imperial nations. None dare pose as potential imperial rivals to the US, nor challenge it in any substantial manner.

It is misleading to compare China’s rise to the US alone, since the US represents a bloc of imperial states. To supplant US economic preeminence, China would have to supplant the economic power of this entire bloc. These countries still generate most world production with little prospect this will change. A China-Russia alliance scarcely equals this US controlled First World club.

To date, each capitalist crisis has only reinforced the US rulers’ dominion as the world financial hub. Just the first half of this year, world investors have poured $900 billion into the safe haven US assets, more than they put into funds in the rest of the world combined. So long as the US capitalists can export their economic downturns to other countries and onto the backs of its own working people, so long as the world turns to the US dollar as the safe haven, decline of US ruling class preeminence is not on the table.

The last period of imperial weakening occurred from the time of US defeat in Vietnam up to the reimposition of imperial diktat under Reagan and his sidekick, Margaret Thatcher. During this time, working peoples’ victories were achieved across the international stage: Afghanistan, Iran, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, and Grenada; Cuban military solidarity in Angola, Vietnam’s equivalent in Cambodia; revolution in Portugal and in its African colonies, in Zimbabwe, and seeming imminent victories in El Salvador and Guatemala. At home, a rising class struggle current arose in the working class, as in the Sadlowski Steelworkers Fight Back movement and the militant 110-day coal miners strike, which forced President Carter to back down. This worldwide upsurge against corporate rule ended about 40 years ago, as yet unmatched by new ones.

Proclamations of a waning US empire portray a wishful thinking bordering on empty bravado. Moreover, a crumbling empire will not lead to its final exit without a massive working peoples’ movement at home to overthrow it. Glen Ford observed that capitalism has lost its legitimacy, especially among the young: “But that doesn’t by itself bring down a system. It is simply a sign that people are not happy. Mass unhappiness may bring down an administration. But it doesn’t necessarily change a system one bit.”

Capitalism is wracked by crisis – inherent to the system, Marx explained. Yet, as the catastrophe of World War I and its aftermath showed, as the Great Depression showed, as Europe in chaos after World War II showed, capitalist crises are no harbinger of its collapse. The question is not how severe the crisis, but which class, capitalist or working class, takes advantage of it to advance their own interests.

A ruling class crisis allows us to seize the opportunity if our forces are willing to fight, are organized, and are well-led. As Lenin emphasized, “The proletariat has no other weapon in the fight for power except organization.” In regards to organization, we are unprepared. Contributing to our lack of effective anti-imperialist organization is our profound disbelief that a serious challenge at home to US ruling class control is even possible.

Whatever the indications of US deterioration as world superpower, recall that the Roman empire’s decay began around 177 AD. But it did not collapse in the West until 300 years later, in 476, and the eastern half did not collapse for 1000 years after that. Informing a Roman slave or plebe in 200 AD that the boot on their necks was faltering would fall on deaf ears. We are now in a similar situation. The empire will never collapse by itself, even with the engulfing climate catastrophe. Wishful thinking presents a dysfunctional substitute for actual organizing, for preparing people to seize the time when the opening arises.

  1. John Ross, “China and South-South Cooperation in the present global situation,” in China’s Great Road, p. 203.
  2. There is a continuous class struggle between popular forces demanding increased government resources and programs to serve their needs, against corporate power seeking to privatize in corporate hands all such government spending and authority. This unchecked corporate centralization of wealth and power is euphemistically called “neoliberalism.”  An anti-neoliberal revolution places popular forces in political control while economic power remains in the hands of the capitalist class.
The post Is the US Global Empire Actually in Decline? first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stansfield Smith and Roger D. Harris.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/23/is-the-us-global-empire-actually-in-decline/feed/ 0 236576 New York Times Advises China on Covid-19: Abandon Success, Try Failure https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/21/new-york-times-advises-china-on-covid-19-abandon-success-try-failure/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/21/new-york-times-advises-china-on-covid-19-abandon-success-try-failure/#respond Tue, 21 Sep 2021 13:16:01 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=121257 The recent outbreak of the Delta variant in China “shows that its strategy no longer fits. It is time for China to change tack.” So declared a lead essay atop the New York Times Opinion/Editorial section on September  7 by Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. The Delta outbreak that […]

The post New York Times Advises China on Covid-19: Abandon Success, Try Failure first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> The recent outbreak of the Delta variant in China “shows that its strategy no longer fits. It is time for China to change tack.”

So declared a lead essay atop the New York Times Opinion/Editorial section on September  7 by Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Delta outbreak that “changed the game” in Huang’s words emerged after an outbreak at Nanjing international airport in July traced to a flight from Russia.  Did this outbreak change anything, in fact?

Let’s do the numbers.

Let’s do something that Huang did not; let’s look at the numbers from July 1 until September 7, the date of the article, a period that brackets the Delta outbreak cited by Huang.

During that period China experienced 273 new cases, about 4 per day, and no new deaths. That hardly seems like a failure.

To get some perspective on these numbers, during that same July1-September 7 period, the US, a country one fourth China’s size, reported 6,560,588 new cases (96,479 per day) and 45,054 new deaths (662 per day).

The same contrast can be seen for the entire period of the pandemic.  From the pandemic’s initial Wuhan outbreak in January, 2020, until September 7, 2021:

China had a sum total of 95,512 cases and 4,629 deaths;

The US had 40,196,953 cases and 648,146 deaths.

There have been two previous outbreaks of the Delta variant in China, one in Guangdong and another in Yunnan near the Myanmar border before the one arising in Nanjing.  The Delta variant was contained in each case. None of the three has turned out to be a “game changer,” as Huang incorrectly maintains.

Perhaps it is the U.S. that needs “to change tack.”

To anticipate an objection that has largely faded but persists in some quarters, can we believe the case and mortality count China gives us?  There are now many first-hand accounts of what life has been like in China these days that make the official tallies quite reasonable.  And quantitative evidence supporting China’s data is available in a peer-reviewed study in the prestigious British Medical Journal; it is summarized and discussed here.   Carried out by groups at Oxford University and China’s CDC, the study compares excess deaths in Wuhan and also in the rest of China during the period of the lockdown, and it finds that the official counts are remarkably accurate.

Do China’s life-saving measures imperil its economy?

China would need a very good reason to abandon its public health measures of massive, rapid testing, tracing and, where necessary, quarantining.  Are there any such reasons?  Mr. Huang states that the life-saving measures now “threaten overall economic growth in China”.  Does this prognostication fit the facts?

China’s GDP grew more slowly in 2020, but still it grew by 2.27%, the only major economy in the world not to contract.  In contrast the US economy contracted by 3.51%.  (Even China’s slowed growth in 2020 matched the US economy in normal times, which grew at an average rate of 2.3% in the four pre-pandemic years, 2016-2019.)

What about the future?  Economies are set to rebound in 2021 from their 2020 lows, with recent projections giving China an 8.4% bounce before settling in to an average growth of 6% over the following 5 years. For comparison the US jump in 2021 is estimated to be 6.4%, dropping to a 1.9% average over the following 5 years.

In terms of the economy present and future, China’s policies appear to be doing quite well, better, in fact, than any other major economy.  Mr. Huang has advanced a thesis that is unencumbered by the facts.

Why is the media’s failure to report on China’s success a threat to our very lives?

At every step of the way, China’s successes with Covid-19 have been met in the U.S. media with silence, denigration or a prediction that the success cannot continue (FAIR provides a brief survey here).  As a result, China’s measures are not widely known or understood.

China’s success with its public health measures is important for us now, because the pandemic is far from over. We don’t know what surprises viral evolution will have in store for us.  If a new variant emerges that is resistant to existing vaccines, then we have only public health measures to protect us until we catch up.  That is also true for future pandemics which will surely come our way. For us to be kept in ignorance of those measures or to have them dismissed, as Yanzhong Huang does, poses a threat to our very lives.

We might also wonder what would happen if the people of the West, including the U.S., understood clearly that measures were possible which could have protected us from the millions of deaths we have suffered.  Governments have toppled from far less.  Mr. Huang, the New York Times and the mass media, whatever else they are doing, are certainly protecting our Establishment from a rage that might have most unpleasant consequences.

The post New York Times Advises China on Covid-19: Abandon Success, Try Failure first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John V. Walsh.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/21/new-york-times-advises-china-on-covid-19-abandon-success-try-failure/feed/ 0 235792 New York Times Advises China on Covid-19: Abandon Success, Try Failure https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/21/new-york-times-advises-china-on-covid-19-abandon-success-try-failure-2/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/21/new-york-times-advises-china-on-covid-19-abandon-success-try-failure-2/#respond Tue, 21 Sep 2021 13:16:01 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=121257 The recent outbreak of the Delta variant in China “shows that its strategy no longer fits. It is time for China to change tack.” So declared a lead essay atop the New York Times Opinion/Editorial section on September  7 by Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. The Delta outbreak that […]

The post New York Times Advises China on Covid-19: Abandon Success, Try Failure first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> The recent outbreak of the Delta variant in China “shows that its strategy no longer fits. It is time for China to change tack.”

So declared a lead essay atop the New York Times Opinion/Editorial section on September  7 by Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Delta outbreak that “changed the game” in Huang’s words emerged after an outbreak at Nanjing international airport in July traced to a flight from Russia.  Did this outbreak change anything, in fact?

Let’s do the numbers.

Let’s do something that Huang did not; let’s look at the numbers from July 1 until September 7, the date of the article, a period that brackets the Delta outbreak cited by Huang.

During that period China experienced 273 new cases, about 4 per day, and no new deaths. That hardly seems like a failure.

To get some perspective on these numbers, during that same July1-September 7 period, the US, a country one fourth China’s size, reported 6,560,588 new cases (96,479 per day) and 45,054 new deaths (662 per day).

The same contrast can be seen for the entire period of the pandemic.  From the pandemic’s initial Wuhan outbreak in January, 2020, until September 7, 2021:

China had a sum total of 95,512 cases and 4,629 deaths;

The US had 40,196,953 cases and 648,146 deaths.

There have been two previous outbreaks of the Delta variant in China, one in Guangdong and another in Yunnan near the Myanmar border before the one arising in Nanjing.  The Delta variant was contained in each case. None of the three has turned out to be a “game changer,” as Huang incorrectly maintains.

Perhaps it is the U.S. that needs “to change tack.”

To anticipate an objection that has largely faded but persists in some quarters, can we believe the case and mortality count China gives us?  There are now many first-hand accounts of what life has been like in China these days that make the official tallies quite reasonable.  And quantitative evidence supporting China’s data is available in a peer-reviewed study in the prestigious British Medical Journal; it is summarized and discussed here.   Carried out by groups at Oxford University and China’s CDC, the study compares excess deaths in Wuhan and also in the rest of China during the period of the lockdown, and it finds that the official counts are remarkably accurate.

Do China’s life-saving measures imperil its economy?

China would need a very good reason to abandon its public health measures of massive, rapid testing, tracing and, where necessary, quarantining.  Are there any such reasons?  Mr. Huang states that the life-saving measures now “threaten overall economic growth in China”.  Does this prognostication fit the facts?

China’s GDP grew more slowly in 2020, but still it grew by 2.27%, the only major economy in the world not to contract.  In contrast the US economy contracted by 3.51%.  (Even China’s slowed growth in 2020 matched the US economy in normal times, which grew at an average rate of 2.3% in the four pre-pandemic years, 2016-2019.)

What about the future?  Economies are set to rebound in 2021 from their 2020 lows, with recent projections giving China an 8.4% bounce before settling in to an average growth of 6% over the following 5 years. For comparison the US jump in 2021 is estimated to be 6.4%, dropping to a 1.9% average over the following 5 years.

In terms of the economy present and future, China’s policies appear to be doing quite well, better, in fact, than any other major economy.  Mr. Huang has advanced a thesis that is unencumbered by the facts.

Why is the media’s failure to report on China’s success a threat to our very lives?

At every step of the way, China’s successes with Covid-19 have been met in the U.S. media with silence, denigration or a prediction that the success cannot continue (FAIR provides a brief survey here).  As a result, China’s measures are not widely known or understood.

China’s success with its public health measures is important for us now, because the pandemic is far from over. We don’t know what surprises viral evolution will have in store for us.  If a new variant emerges that is resistant to existing vaccines, then we have only public health measures to protect us until we catch up.  That is also true for future pandemics which will surely come our way. For us to be kept in ignorance of those measures or to have them dismissed, as Yanzhong Huang does, poses a threat to our very lives.

We might also wonder what would happen if the people of the West, including the U.S., understood clearly that measures were possible which could have protected us from the millions of deaths we have suffered.  Governments have toppled from far less.  Mr. Huang, the New York Times and the mass media, whatever else they are doing, are certainly protecting our Establishment from a rage that might have most unpleasant consequences.

The post New York Times Advises China on Covid-19: Abandon Success, Try Failure first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John V. Walsh.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/21/new-york-times-advises-china-on-covid-19-abandon-success-try-failure-2/feed/ 0 235793 6 Reasons to Feel Grateful During Covid https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/21/6-reasons-to-feel-grateful-during-covid/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/21/6-reasons-to-feel-grateful-during-covid/#respond Tue, 21 Sep 2021 03:08:49 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=121235 A novel coronavirus, deadly and unnecessary lockdowns, civil unrest, political division, economic crises, a rise in mental health issues — the list goes on and on and on. Since March 2020, most of the world has suffered immensely in one way or another. But, amidst the madness, there is room for gratitude. More specifically, I’m […]

The post 6 Reasons to Feel Grateful During Covid first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]>

A novel coronavirus, deadly and unnecessary lockdowns, civil unrest, political division, economic crises, a rise in mental health issues — the list goes on and on and on. Since March 2020, most of the world has suffered immensely in one way or another. But, amidst the madness, there is room for gratitude. More specifically, I’m suggesting we should be grateful for who and what has been exposed over the past 18 months or so.

6 Reasons to Feel Grateful During Covid

1. EXPOSED: Science and Medicine

If you ever had a doubt that these two “institutions” were hotbeds of corruption and greed, the response to Covid-19 surely cleared things up for you. Everything — from social distancing to masks to vaccines to variants to other treatments being demonized and beyond — was a poorly constructed lie.

2. EXPOSED: Corporations

The biggest money grab in history, #woke opportunism, support for mandates, and so much more. All their rainbow flags and BLM banners can’t change who they are (and have always been).

3. EXPOSED: Government

It’s a well-worn script: A crisis unfolds and elected officials — across the ideological spectrum — exploit it to enhance their power. If you were unsure whether or not any politician could be trusted, you now have your answer.4. EXPOSED: The #woke Left

The same clowns who once marched against Monsanto are now shilling for Moderna. Plus: Censorship, support for mandates, hypocrisy, thought control, groupthink… need I go on?

5. EXPOSED: Media and Social Media

All media outlets and social media platforms — regardless of their ostensible “narrative” — are nothing more than AI-assisted stenographers to power.

6. EXPOSED: The General Population 

Before Covid, did you ever wonder how your friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, etc., would respond to a genuine (or manufactured) crisis? Well… take a good look around. Most of them, it seems, will follow orders and respect authority without question. They’ll willingly abdicate their autonomy, enthusiastically volunteer to be lab rats, and ruthlessly turn on anyone who doesn’t march in lockstep. They will embrace totalitarianism and surrender their freedoms in exchange for the illusion of safety. So, yeah… now you know.

I’m thankful that so many people and institutions in my life have clarified who they are and how they behave under duress. To connect with like-minded and open-minded comrades, you are required to move on from those seeking to harm you or, at least, hold you back. You know exactly who they are because they’ve openly exposed that they do not have your best interests at heart.

In order to move forward in a positive and powerful way, it’s essential to know where you stand in relation to others. If you wish to continue growing, learning, and evolving, you must be willing to see and accept what’s going on. Translation: You must reclaim the subversive pleasure of thinking for yourself. #gratitude.

The post 6 Reasons to Feel Grateful During Covid first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Mickey Z..

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/21/6-reasons-to-feel-grateful-during-covid/feed/ 0 235719 6 Reasons to Feel Grateful During Covid https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/21/6-reasons-to-feel-grateful-during-covid/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/21/6-reasons-to-feel-grateful-during-covid/#respond Tue, 21 Sep 2021 03:08:49 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=121235 A novel coronavirus, deadly and unnecessary lockdowns, civil unrest, political division, economic crises, a rise in mental health issues — the list goes on and on and on. Since March 2020, most of the world has suffered immensely in one way or another. But, amidst the madness, there is room for gratitude. More specifically, I’m […]

The post 6 Reasons to Feel Grateful During Covid first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]>

A novel coronavirus, deadly and unnecessary lockdowns, civil unrest, political division, economic crises, a rise in mental health issues — the list goes on and on and on. Since March 2020, most of the world has suffered immensely in one way or another. But, amidst the madness, there is room for gratitude. More specifically, I’m suggesting we should be grateful for who and what has been exposed over the past 18 months or so.

6 Reasons to Feel Grateful During Covid

1. EXPOSED: Science and Medicine

If you ever had a doubt that these two “institutions” were hotbeds of corruption and greed, the response to Covid-19 surely cleared things up for you. Everything — from social distancing to masks to vaccines to variants to other treatments being demonized and beyond — was a poorly constructed lie.

2. EXPOSED: Corporations

The biggest money grab in history, #woke opportunism, support for mandates, and so much more. All their rainbow flags and BLM banners can’t change who they are (and have always been).

3. EXPOSED: Government

It’s a well-worn script: A crisis unfolds and elected officials — across the ideological spectrum — exploit it to enhance their power. If you were unsure whether or not any politician could be trusted, you now have your answer.4. EXPOSED: The #woke Left

The same clowns who once marched against Monsanto are now shilling for Moderna. Plus: Censorship, support for mandates, hypocrisy, thought control, groupthink… need I go on?

5. EXPOSED: Media and Social Media

All media outlets and social media platforms — regardless of their ostensible “narrative” — are nothing more than AI-assisted stenographers to power.

6. EXPOSED: The General Population 

Before Covid, did you ever wonder how your friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, etc., would respond to a genuine (or manufactured) crisis? Well… take a good look around. Most of them, it seems, will follow orders and respect authority without question. They’ll willingly abdicate their autonomy, enthusiastically volunteer to be lab rats, and ruthlessly turn on anyone who doesn’t march in lockstep. They will embrace totalitarianism and surrender their freedoms in exchange for the illusion of safety. So, yeah… now you know.

I’m thankful that so many people and institutions in my life have clarified who they are and how they behave under duress. To connect with like-minded and open-minded comrades, you are required to move on from those seeking to harm you or, at least, hold you back. You know exactly who they are because they’ve openly exposed that they do not have your best interests at heart.

In order to move forward in a positive and powerful way, it’s essential to know where you stand in relation to others. If you wish to continue growing, learning, and evolving, you must be willing to see and accept what’s going on. Translation: You must reclaim the subversive pleasure of thinking for yourself. #gratitude.

The post 6 Reasons to Feel Grateful During Covid first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Mickey Z..

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/21/6-reasons-to-feel-grateful-during-covid/feed/ 0 235720 More Mandated Vaccinations Will Not Solve Economic Failure One Iota: May Even Make Things Worse https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/15/more-mandated-vaccinations-will-not-solve-economic-failure-one-iota-may-even-make-things-worse/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/15/more-mandated-vaccinations-will-not-solve-economic-failure-one-iota-may-even-make-things-worse/#respond Wed, 15 Sep 2021 18:56:44 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=121019 On September 9, 2021, President Joe Biden publicly issued sweeping statements and demands that make it clear that, whether they like or it, millions more people will have to get vaccinated or risk losing their livelihoods and security. His posture has been described by mainstream media as “aggressive.” Many alternative news and information sources describe […]

The post More Mandated Vaccinations Will Not Solve Economic Failure One Iota: May Even Make Things Worse first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> On September 9, 2021, President Joe Biden publicly issued sweeping statements and demands that make it clear that, whether they like or it, millions more people will have to get vaccinated or risk losing their livelihoods and security. His posture has been described by mainstream media as “aggressive.” Many alternative news and information sources describe Biden’s actions as righteous, arrogant, authoritarian, and incoherent. 1 Biden asserted that choice and freedoms are not the issue. He dismissed both in one breath. One’s right to consent to something was banished in three seconds. Many have also asserted that Biden does not have the legal authority to make and enforce such top-down mandates. Others claim that his White House speech on vaccinations is full of contradictions and disinformation.

Like Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and many other capital-centered ideologues and “leaders,” Biden keeps disinforming the polity with the worn-out dogma that economic recovery is largely dependent on getting everyone vaccinated. We are to believe that the broad and stubborn economic failure confronting everyone today is largely caused by the virus and that once the virus is “under control” through vaccines rush-produced by for-profit companies with a long record of malpractice, the economy will soar and flourish. A variety of mainstream news sources have been desperately reinforcing this disinformation for more than a year; they have no interest in economic science.

However, despite an enormous number of vaccinations issued worldwide, despite a large portion of humanity “taking the jab” already, the economy keeps declining and decaying; many serious economic distortions, problems, and uncertainties persist. Inflation, debt, inequality, homelessness, poverty, under-employment, and environmental destruction, for example, appear to be growing. More than one million people per month are still filing unemployment claims in the U.S. alone and job “creation” numbers are superficial and unimpressive. In addition, the U.S. labor force participation rate remains historically low and the number of long-term unemployed remains high. On top of all this, millions of employed workers are living pay-check to pay-check, which means that even full-time employment is no guarantee of security and prosperity. Various surveys also show that large majorities are not hopeful about the future and health of the economy.

It is no surprise that euphoric economic growth forecasts made just weeks or months ago by “leaders” and “experts” are already being revised downward—in some cases significantly. The ruling elite is always embracing magical thinking; they are not on good terms with reality.

It is also being said that large numbers of people will end up leaving their jobs—voluntarily or by being fired—rather than compromise their right to conscience and get vaccinated. This could mean even fewer workers taking available jobs and even more retailers, businesses, and services operating in dysfunctional, disruptive, and unreliable ways without employees. Thus, for example, many nurses, teachers, police officers, and other workers are choosing the right to conscience and unemployment over mandated vaccination. Thousands of businesses are already struggling to fill low-paying positions in the context of constantly-rising inflation and an uncertain future. The American Hospital Association said that Biden’s vaccination plan “may result in exacerbating the severe work force shortage problems that currently exist”. Not surprisingly, some organizations have already started to oppose Biden’s vaccination plan.

The economic depression confronting humanity at home and abroad will not be overcome by leaving major owners of capital in power while workers, the people who actually produce the wealth that society depends on, remain marginalized and disempowered. Economic collapse will not be reversed by funneling more socially-produced wealth to different monopolies and oligopolies, while leaving everyone else with less. Fostering policies, agendas, and arrangements that make the rich even richer is a recipe for deeper problems, not a promising path forward. To date, billions of vaccination shots at home and abroad have not stopped or slowed a range of serious economic problems.

Since the start of the never-ending “COVID Pandemic” more wealth has become concentrated in even fewer hands and more people have experienced more psychological, social, and economic problems. Inequality has soared over the past 18 months.

The current economic crisis started long before 2020 and is rooted in the same contradictions that produced big economic problems before 2020. Even if there were no covid virus mutations, the economy would still be declining because economic upheavals are endemic to the capitalist economic system. Depressions and recessions are not caused by external factors. To claim that the economic system is generally sound but runs into problems now and then because of exogenous forces is nothing more than a way to apologize for the outmoded economic system.

Without major changes, without vesting power in workers themselves, economic crises will keep recurring and deepening. The rich and their representatives have shown time and again that they are unable and unwilling to solve economic and health crises, let alone in a human-centered way.

  1. In December 2020 Biden publicly stated that the federal government should not or could not mandate vaccinations.
The post More Mandated Vaccinations Will Not Solve Economic Failure One Iota: May Even Make Things Worse first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Shawgi Tell.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/15/more-mandated-vaccinations-will-not-solve-economic-failure-one-iota-may-even-make-things-worse/feed/ 0 234451 Smashing The Heads of Farmers: A Global Struggle Against Tyranny https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/14/smashing-the-heads-of-farmers-a-global-struggle-against-tyranny/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/14/smashing-the-heads-of-farmers-a-global-struggle-against-tyranny/#respond Tue, 14 Sep 2021 16:10:33 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=120960 According to Reuters, more than 500,000 farmers attended a rally in the city of Muzaffarnagar in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh on 5 September. Hundreds of thousands more turned out for other rallies in the state. Rakesh Tikait, a prominent farmers’ leader, said this would breathe fresh life into the Indian farmers’ protest movement. […]

The post Smashing The Heads of Farmers: A Global Struggle Against Tyranny first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> According to Reuters, more than 500,000 farmers attended a rally in the city of Muzaffarnagar in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh on 5 September. Hundreds of thousands more turned out for other rallies in the state.

Rakesh Tikait, a prominent farmers’ leader, said this would breathe fresh life into the Indian farmers’ protest movement.

He added:

We will intensify our protest by going to every single city and town of Uttar Pradesh to convey the message that Modi’s government is anti-farmer.

Tikait is a leader of the protest movement and a spokesperson of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Indian Farmers’ Union).

Since November 2020, tens of thousands of farmers have been encamped on the outskirts of Delhi in protest against three new farm laws that will effectively hand over the agrifood sector to corporates and place India at the mercy of international commodity and financial markets for its food security.

Aside from the rallies in Uttar Pradesh, thousands more farmers recently gathered in Karnal in the state of Haryana to continue to pressurise the Modi-led government to repeal the laws. This particular protest was also in response to police violence during another demonstration, also in Karnal (200 km north of Delhi), during late August when farmers had been blocking a highway. The police Lathi-charged them and at least 10 people were injured and one person died from a heart attack a day later.

A video that appeared on social media showed Ayush Sinha, a top government official, encouraging officers to “smash the heads of farmers” if they broke through the barricades placed on the highway.

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar criticised the choice of words but said that “strictness had to be maintained to ensure law and order”.

But that is not quite true. “Strictness” – outright brutality – must be imposed to placate the scavengers abroad who are circling overhead with India’s agrifood sector firmly in their sights. As much as the authorities try to distance themselves from such language – ‘smashing heads’ is precisely what India’s rulers and the billionaire owners of foreign agrifood corporations require.

The government has to demonstrate to global agricapital that it is being tough on farmers in order to maintain ‘market confidence’ and attract foreign direct investment in the sector (aka the takeover of the sector).

The farmers’ protest in India represents a struggle for the heart and soul of the country: a conflict between the local and the global. Large-scale international agribusiness, retailers, traders and e-commerce companies are trying to displace small- and medium-size indigenous producers and enterprises and restructure the entire agrifood sector in their own image.

By capitulating to the needs of foreign agrifood conglomerates – which is what the three agriculture laws represent – India will be compelled to eradicate its buffer food stocks. It would then bid for them with borrowed funds on the open market or with its foreign reserves.

This approach is symptomatic of what has been happening since the 1990s, when India was compelled to embrace neoliberal economics. The country has become increasingly dependent on inflows of foreign capital. Policies are being governed by the drive to attract and retain foreign investment and maintain ‘market confidence’ by ceding to the demands of international capital which rides roughshod over democratic principles and the needs of hundreds of millions of ordinary people.

The authorities know they must be seen to be acting tough on farmers, thereby demonstrating a steely resolve to foreign agribusiness and investors in general.

The Indian government’s willingness to cede control of its agrifood sector would appear to represent a victory for US foreign policy.

Economist Prof Michael Hudson stated in 2014:

American foreign policy has almost always been based on agricultural exports… It’s by agriculture and control of the food supply that American diplomacy has been able to control most of the Third World. The World Bank’s geopolitical lending strategy has been to turn countries into food deficit areas by convincing them to grow cash crops – plantation export crops – not to feed themselves with their own food crops.

On the back of India’s foreign exchange crisis in the 1990s, the IMF and World Bank wanted India to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture. In return for up to more than $120 billion in loans at the time, India was directed to dismantle its state-owned seed supply system, reduce subsidies, run down public agriculture institutions and offer incentives for the growing of cash crops to earn foreign exchange.

The drive is to drastically dilute the role of the public sector in agriculture, reducing it to a facilitator of private capital and leading to the entrenchment of industrial farming and the replacement of small-scale farms.

Smashing protesters’ heads

A December 2020 photograph published by the Press Trust of India defines the Indian government’s approach to protesting farmers. It shows a security official in paramilitary garb raising a lathi. An elder from the Sikh farming community was about to feel its full force.

But “smashing the heads of farmers” is symbolic of how near-totalitarian ‘liberal democracies’ the world over now regard many within their own populations.

The right to protest and gather in public as well as the right of free speech has been suspended in Australia, which currently resembles a giant penal colony as officials pursue a nonsensical ‘zero-COVID’ policy. Across Europe and in the US and Israel, unnecessary and discriminatory ‘COVID passports’ are being rolled out to restrict freedom of movement and access to services. And those who protest against any of this are often confronted by a massive, intimidating police presence (or actual police violence) and media smear campaigns.

Again, governments must demonstrate resolve to their billionaire masters in Big Finance, the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations, the World Economic Forum and the entire gamut of forces in the military-financial industrial complex behind the ‘Great Reset’, ‘4th Industrial Revolution, ‘New Normal’ or whichever other benign-sounding term its political and media lackeys use to disguise the restructuring of capitalism and the brutal impacts on ordinary people.

This too, like the restructuring of Indian agriculture – which will affect India’s entire 1.3-billion-plus population – is also part of a US foreign policy agenda that serves the interests of the Anglo-US elite.

COVID has ensured that trillions of dollars have been handed over to elite interests, while lockdowns and restrictions have been imposed on ordinary people and small businesses. The winners have been the likes of Amazon, Big Pharma and the tech giants. The losers have been small enterprises and the bulk of the population, deprived of their right to work and the entire panoply of civil rights their ancestors struggled and often died for. If a masterplan is required to deliver a knockout blow to small enterprises for the benefit of global players, then this is it.

Professor Michel Cossudovsky of the Centre for Research on Globalization says:

The Global Money financial institutions are the ‘creditors’ of the real economy which is in crisis. The closure of the global economy has triggered a process of global indebtedness. Unprecedented in World history, a multi-trillion bonanza of dollar denominated debts is hitting simultaneously the national economies of 193 countries.

In August 2020, a report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) stated:

The COVID-19 crisis has severely disrupted economies and labour markets in all world regions, with estimated losses of working hours equivalent to nearly 400 million full-time jobs in the second quarter of 2020, most of which are in emerging and developing countries.

Among the most vulnerable are the 1.6 billion informal economy workers, representing half of the global workforce, who are working in sectors experiencing major job losses or have seen their incomes seriously affected by lockdowns. Most of the workers affected (1.25 billion) are in retail, accommodation and food services and manufacturing. And most of these are self-employed and in low-income jobs in the informal sector.

India was especially affected in this respect when the government imposed a lockdown. The policy ended up pushing 230 million into poverty and wrecked the lives and livelihoods of many. A May 2021 report prepared by the Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University (APU) has highlighted how employment and income had not recovered to pre-pandemic levels even by late 2020.

The report, ‘State of Working India 2021 – One year of Covid-19’ highlights how almost half of formal salaried workers moved into the informal sector and that 230 million people fell below the national minimum wage poverty line.

Even before COVID, India was experiencing its longest economic slowdown since 1991 with weak employment generation, uneven development and a largely informal economy. A recent article by the Research Unit for Political Economy highlights the structural weaknesses of the economy and the often desperate plight of ordinary people.

To survive Modi’s lockdown, the poorest 25% of households borrowed 3.8 times their median income, as against 1.4 times for the top 25%. The study noted the implications for debt traps.

Six months later, it was also noted that food intake was still at lockdown levels for 20% of vulnerable households.

Meanwhile, the rich were well taken care of. According to Left Voice:

The Modi government has handled the pandemic by prioritising the profits of big business and protecting the fortunes of billionaires over protecting the lives and livelihoods of workers.

Michel Chossudovsky says that governments are now under the control of global creditors and that the post-Covid era will see massive austerity measures, including the cancellation of workers’ benefits and social safety nets. An unpayable multi-trillion dollar public debt is unfolding: the creditors of the state are Big Money, which calls the shots in a process that will lead to the privatisation of the state.

Between April and July 2020, the total wealth held by billionaires around the world has grown from $8 trillion to more than $10 trillion. Chossudovsky says a new generation of billionaire innovators looks set to play a critical role in repairing the damage by using the growing repertoire of emerging technologies. He adds that tomorrow’s innovators will digitise, refresh and revolutionise the economy: but, as he notes, let us be under no illusions these corrupt billionaires are impoverishers.

With this in mind, a recent piece on the US Right To Know website exposes the Gates-led agenda for the future of food based on the programming of biology to produce synthetic and genetically engineered substances. The thinking reflects the programming of computers in the information economy. Of course, Gates and his ilk have patented, or are patenting, the processes and products involved.

For example, Ginkgo Bioworks, a Gates-backed start-up that makes ‘custom organisms’, recently went public in a $17.5 billion deal. It uses ‘cell programming’ technology to genetically engineer flavours and scents into commercial strains of engineered yeast and bacteria to create ‘natural’ ingredients, including vitamins, amino acids, enzymes and flavours for ultra-processed foods.

Ginkgo plans to create up to 20,000 engineered ‘cell programs’ (it now has five) for food products and many other uses. It plans to charge customers to use its ‘biological platform’. Its customers are not consumers or farmers but the world’s largest chemical, food and pharmaceutical companies.

Gates pushes fake food by way of his greenwash agenda. If he really is interested in avoiding ‘climate catastrophe’, helping farmers or producing enough food, instead of cementing the power and the control of corporations over our food, he should be facilitating community-based and lead agroecological approaches.

But he will not because there is no scope for patents, external proprietary inputs, commodification and dependency on global corporations which Gates sees as the answer to all of humanity’s problems in his quest to bypass democratic processes and roll out his agenda.

India should take heed because this is the future of ‘food’. If the farmers fail to get the farm bills repealed, India will again become dependent on food imports or on foreign food manufacturers and lab-made ‘food’. Fake food will displace traditional diets and cultivation methods will be driven by drones, genetically engineered seeds and farms without farmers, devastating the livelihoods (and health) of hundreds of millions.

This is a vision of the future courtesy of Klaus Schwab’s (of the elitist World Economic Forum) dystopic transhumanism and the Rockefellers’ 2010 lockstep scenario: genetically engineered food and genetically engineered people controlled by a technocratic elite whose plans are implemented through tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership.

Since March 2020, we have seen the structural adjustment of the global capitalist system and labour’s relationship to it and an attempted adjustment of people’s thinking via endless government and media propaganda.

Whether it involves India’s farmers or the frequent rallies and marches against restrictions and COVID passports across the world, there is a common enemy. And there is also a common goal: liberty.

The post Smashing The Heads of Farmers: A Global Struggle Against Tyranny first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Colin Todhunter.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/14/smashing-the-heads-of-farmers-a-global-struggle-against-tyranny/feed/ 0 234103 Seven Theories of Politics: The Rehabilitation of a Loaded Vice Word https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/13/seven-theories-of-politics-the-rehabilitation-of-a-loaded-vice-word-2/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/13/seven-theories-of-politics-the-rehabilitation-of-a-loaded-vice-word-2/#respond Mon, 13 Sep 2021 06:54:24 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=120879 The reason I wrote this article is to get people excited about the explanatory power of the word “politics” and to make sense of the world and how to change it. In Part I of this article, I brought up some of major confusions over how the word “politics” is used to describe actions as […]

The post Seven Theories of Politics: The Rehabilitation of a Loaded Vice Word first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]>

The reason I wrote this article is to get people excited about the explanatory power of the word “politics” and to make sense of the world and how to change it. In Part I of this article, I brought up some of major confusions over how the word “politics” is used to describe actions as well as to define the word theoretically. I then posed 12 questions that any political theory would have to answer. The questions were:

  • Temporal reach: How far back into history does politics go?
  • Cross-species scope: Is politics an activity which is confined to the human species?
  • Spatial reach: Where is the arena in which politics takes place?
  • Political agency: Who does politics? Professionals or everyone?
  • Political action: How is politics different from strategies?
  • Interpersonal processes: How is politics different from convincing and persuading?
  • What is the relationship between politics and power? Does politics drive power or does power drive politics?
  • What is the relationship between politics and force or coercion? Are they interchangeable? Are they opposites?
  • Interdisciplinary span? To what extent is politics influenced by economics, technology, history?
  • What are the forces that shape politics?
  • What is the relationship between theories of politics and theories of political sociology?
  • What is the relationship between theories of politics and political ideologies?

Lastly, I identified seven political theories. In Part I, I focused on three political theories that occupy the centrist portion of the political spectrum: old institutionalists (mainstream political science), civil republicans and Weberian political economy. In Part II I discuss the remaining four theories: radical feminism and Marxism on the left and Rational Choice Theory and Bio-Evolutionary on the right. At the end of this article, there is a table which summarizes how each of the seven theories answers the twelve questions above.

Marxist political economy

Contradictory nature of politics in Marx

Marx’s notion about politics is contradictory. In some places he lumps together politics with religion, morals, laws and contrasts this to the economic “base”. However, in his more political writing on France, he seems to give politics more importance than in the first formulation above. In a formal sense, Marx thought that politics was a product of class conflict. In this sense, he saw the state as the concentration of political struggle. In a narrow sense, this would exclude egalitarian societies from politics because they didn’t have any classes. Yet Marx was very interested in lack of private property and in the decision-making processes of these societies. But he implies that decisions about property relations and deciding whether or not to move to a new location are not political.

Politics is inseparable from economics

In Part I, we saw institutionalists and civic republicans both accept the separation of politics from economics, and institutionalists think what they are doing is “political science”. We also saw Weberians will not make this separation, claiming that what they are doing is “political economy”.  Yet they will come down more on the side of the importance of politics. When Marx talked about economics, most explicitly in Das Kapital, Grundrisse, and in other works, he also did so out of a tradition called political economy. People like Adam Smith and David Ricardo would never separate economics from the politics of the day. Despite all these qualifications, we can safely say that for Marx there was no such thing as politics without economics. Marx would have heaped scorn on the disciplines of “political science” for ignoring the economy and the economists who pretend there is no politics in economics.

Historical sweep: politics as relative

Marx had the second broadest historical sweep of the evolution of politics because he points to changes from the relations of property going all the way back  from communal, to slave, to feudal, to capitalist property. This broad sweep of politics enabled Marx to see the relativity of politics in a way that institutionalists, civic republicans and even Weberians do not. For Marx, tribal societies practiced no politics because there were no social classes. At the visionary end of Marx’s social vision, under communism there would be no politics because the existence of social classes would be abolished. Unlike any other theoretician of politics Marx believed politics emerged at a certain, relatively recent point in human history and it would wither away at a later point. Marx’s perspective was not only historically depthful but his interdisciplinary reach included not only economics and world history, but also anthropology and sociology.

The state as passive

Both institutionalists and Weberians think that the state is very important for enacting politics, though for very different reasons. With civic republicans, Marx did not think the state was very powerful in its political activity. Marx saw the state as a relatively passive instrument of the capitalist class, its executive committee and its representative bodies as the “talking shop of the bourgeoisie”.

Place of violence in politics

Marx understood all class conflict as violent because there was a struggle between two classes for control over the natural resources, tools, finished products and power settings. The extraction of surplus value from the working class by the capitalist class with state backing gives rise to class struggle. So for Marx, as for Weber, all politics was violent, either using force explicitly or implicitly. At the same time, the forces that shaped politics were the various contradictions within capitalism.  The electoral politics of institutionalists or the civic debates in public of civic republicans do not give a voice to the working class. With Weberians, real politics takes place behind the scenes and these scenes will never include the working class. Political conflicts cannot be resolved democratically because the economic contradictions that underlie the capitalist system are not addressed.

Political sociology and political ideology

In political sociology, there are ‘functional” Marxists who do not make as much of class struggle in the area of politics as they make in trying to understand the economic contradictions of capitalism – its problems of accumulation. Yet there are others who emphasise the importance of how the class struggle impacts the accumulation process and how the contradictions under capitalism cannot be understood without taking this into account. In terms of political ideology, Marxists are all socialists – social democrats, Leninists and council communists – and all claim Marx’s writings though they differ bitterly over the interpretation of his work.

Rational Choice Theory

Neo-classical economics on the prowl of politics

We said earlier that both Institutionalism and civic republicanism accepts the separation of politics and economics as opposed to the Weberian and Marxian claim that they cannot be separated. Rational choice theory:

  1. first separates economic behavior from politics; and,
  2. takes its theory of economic exchanges and projects it onto politics. There is a kind of political unconscious.

The political realm is a kind of economic market place in which politicians pursue their interests to maximize their benefits and minimize their costs under circumstances where their resources are scarce and wants are many. Rational and collective choice understandings of politics are rooted in neoclassical micro-economics, except they are applied to non-market situations. Gary Becker even tried to apply microeconomic principles of traditional economics to families and human sexual life. He wanted to counter the moralistic, idealistic and romantic beliefs that family and sexual life are supposedly beyond economic calculations.

Unlike institutionalism and republicanism, rational choice theory argues that economically people are self-interested maximizers in their economic exchanges and this is not just a product of capitalism. Rather, they say a desire to “truck, barter and exchange” goes all the way back to hunter-gatherers.

Politics as the management of public goods

For rational choice theorists, the practice of politics is not about the process of governmental goal-setting, decision-making, and monitoring (institutionalists). Neither is it about public debate and compromise to achieve a virtuous outcome (Civic Republicans). Politics is bartering and haggling involving the public, not in a reasoned debate striving towards a collective good, but occurs under very specific public conditions. Based on a Lockean notion of social contract theory, when people are in small groups they behave rationally as individuals. But around issues that involve large groups, there is a danger of collective irrationality. What might those conditions be?

Situations that involve the management of public goods is the arena for politics. This means goods from whose benefits people cannot be excluded, such as clear air, or the conservation of resources. What differentiates political behavior from economic transactions is that in political behavior participants must be far-sighted. What to do about pubic goods does not dissolve after an immediate market exchange. It goes on indefinitely. This requires the presence of institutions and networks. Politics is a kind of market place for regulating the messy collective consequences of trading where the rate of profit is low and the long-term consequences accumulate.

Politicians are like commodities governed by the supply and demands of voting

Rational choice theorists treat politicians as if they were commodities in a market. Just as supply and demand expectations of consumers control the price of commodities, the supply and demand of people’s voting preferences drives the competition between politicians who are driven into and out of office. Rational choice theory believes in liberal democracy not in a political sense, the way the institutionalists do. Rather they believe in an economic democracy where political competition for votes leads to democratic results, just as Adam Smith believed that economic competition leads to social good.

All interpersonal processes like convincing or persuading are really economic exchanges. What would make them political is the presence of public goods. Rational choice theorists do not pay a great deal of attention to political power, because they tend to see political actions as subject to a democratic process of supply and demand. This theory pays little attention to the predominant place collective and cooperative activity – building a bridge, working on a ship – has in human social life.

Politics takes place at the point of exchange

Neoclassical economists claim that capitalists’ profits take place at the point of exchange between capitalist competitors and between individual capitalists and the marketplace. Marxian political economics argue that the most important place where profits are made is at the point of production. This means that it is in the exploitation of the worker. According to Marx, the worker produces far more social wealth – surplus value – than she receives as a wage.

Rational choice theorists ignore political processes that occur before the moment of exchange. That would be in the policy settings of think tanks, upper class social clubs, foundations, and congressional hearings which take place long before voting,  Just as they see economic profits being made at the point of exchange, rather than as Marxists do as at the point of production, so too, they see politics taking place at the point of exchange rather than at the point of political production.  The school of political sociology which fits snugly with rational choice theories are political pluralists. In terms of political ideology, rational choice theory goes best with right-wing libertarians.

Radical Feminist

Critique of the public-private separation of politics from the non-political

Radical feminism goes the furthest of any political theory in how far it carries politics into other areas of human social life. Feminists argue when institutionalists limit politics to the state and its institutions, these accepted boundaries for the arena of politics are not natural self-evident boundaries. Rather, they are the product of past political struggles which resulted in a public-private dichotomy in the first place. For them politics takes place in private settings, such as in families.

Limitations of individualist self

The liberal institutionalists have as its foundation a separate, autonomous, rational and self-subsisting self. This self is not simply describing and reflecting individual-social relations under capitalism, but it appears to be prescribing and structuring relations as if this were the only possible self. Institutionalists ignore the research that in non-capitalist societies, the self is better understood as “collectivist”.

Social contract theory

Once the individualist self is granted, the stage is set for social contract theory. Whether it be Hobbes, Locke or Rousseau, social contract theory starts with the premise that individuals really could subsist in a state of nature but as a calculating rational act, they agree that they would be even better off under social relations than in a “state of nature”. This social contract is required to create both civil society and the state. But even further back into archaic states, radical feminists argued it required sexual contract whereby domestic relations were not understood as political but private.

Capitalist state exploitation of women

Politics has been more exclusively limited to men and more self-consciously masculine than any other social practice. Given that women have conventionally been defined in terms of their relation to what is domestic, this has marginalized women as political actors. The unacknowledged foundation of male public politics is autonomous individuals. Meanwhile, what is ignored is the support and care received from women at home which is a) unpaid, and b) seen as not political. At the same time, the state denies their responsibility to intervene in family disputes. Until recently, it has excluded domestic violence as a category outside its political jurisdiction.

The socio-construction of humanity

Radical feminists reject all social contract theory, and along with Marxists, claim that human beings are social long before we become individuals. Without society, most fundamentally the relationship between mothers and their siblings, there could be no individuality. In fact, there is no such thing as an individual separate from society. It is society that transforms a biological organism – first into a human being and then into an individual. All social relations are political whenever there are resources at stake. Politics is the process by which people organize the production, distribution and use of resources to produce and reproduce their lives.

Gender is political

While agreeing with Weberian and Marxism claims that politics must include economics and history, radical feminist theory insists that the domestic politics of the family and sexuality not be excluded. It is not just in formal settings such as elections or civic debate that politics takes place, but in informal settings as well. The process by which a family decides whether to redecorate the kitchen or go on a vacation is political. When a man takes up two seats on a train with one seat occupied by his bag, and a woman standing up nearby does or does not tell the man to move his bag so she can sit down, that’s politics. When men whistle at women as they go by and women look the other way, that’s politics. Politics is embedded in language. When women end their statements as if they were questions when they are speaking in front of men, that’s politics. When women do emotional work not to appear too smart on a date to keep the man interested, that’s politics.

Power with vs power over people

Unlike all political theory, with the possible exception of Marxism, all power is not hierarchical. There can be power with people, as in egalitarian pre-state societies. There is also power over people as comes is developed in rank and stratified societies.

Power as the process

Generally, feminists are reluctant to make a separation between politics and power as means and end. An egalitarian political process has a good chance of leading to power with people. What feminists are very sensitive to is when a political process over the production, distribution and use of resources and is not egalitarian. When this is the case, it makes power vertical, power over people, no matter how noble the ends. So, when Marxist-Leninists ignore what the working class actually say it needs, when it suppresses the collective creativity of workers self-organizing attempts, its power is always vertical no matter what Leninists say about speaking for the working class.

All strategies are political

While there may be a fine line between strategizing and politics, radical feminists are likely to say it is a safer bet to assume that all strategies are political. Why? Because the cost of assuming some interaction is political when it is really strategic is not nearly as high as mistaking a move someone makes is strategic when it is really political. The same is true with any kind of influence. Convincing, persuading, and negotiating are better understood as a form of subtle politics with bribery, or force at the other extreme. For too long, women have been lulled into what appeared to be cooperative endeavors but were really manipulations of sorts. It is better to assume assertion or even aggression is the norm and then be pleasantly surprised if it turns out otherwise.

Political sociology and political ideology

In terms of political sociology, no school fits it exactly, but the political class model probably comes the closest. When it comes to political ideology, radical feminism is likely to be either social democratic or anarchist.

Biological Evolutionary

Most political theories deny politics exist among non-human species

Up until now, we haven’t addressed the question of the extent to which politics exists outside the human species. Both institutionalism and civic republicanism would explicitly deny that is possible because a) only in state societies can politics exist, or b) politics require reasoned debate which is beyond the reach of any other species. For Weberians, politics requires a state and a monopoly over the use of force which is beyond other animals. For Marxists, since animals do not have social classes (the examples of hierarchies among some of the other animals would not be deemed of the same order as social classes) there would be no politics. Rational choice theory would dismiss the possibility of politics among other animals because the whole basis of politics involves weighing the pros and cons of choices and imagining long-term consequences.

Being a social species with cooperation and sharing makes you a political species

According to Tiger and Fox (Imperial Animal), in order for politics to occur in material production, traveling together in herds and mothers taking care of their young is not enough for politics to take place. There has to be:

  1. a) a division of labor and cooperation in the process of providing food, building shelters and providing defense against attack; and,
  2. b) sharing of resources.

Since there is little or no division of labor in provisioning in other animal societies, there is no economic sphere in which to ask the question about politics’ relationship to economics.

Politics occurs in the cross-fire where genetics, socio-culture and individual learning conflict

Roger Masters takes it further, arguing that politics is the mechanism by which the human species reconciles conflicts between genetic, socio-cultural and individual learning loyalties. He points out that in any situation there are opportunities:

  • to be selfish and only consider yourself, making enemies along the way;
  • to look out for your relatives, which is kin selection and which results in nepotism;
  • to look out for your friends and forming alliances based on reciprocity; and,
  • to look out for strangers regardless of what they give back in return – altruism.

Power is not just about control over material production and control over policy but control over sexual reproduction

What all theories of politics have in common is that it is either a means to power or synonymous with power. Most, if not all, theories of power argue that power has a great deal to do with control over the provisioning of material resources: economics such as food, land, tools, commodities. Most political sciences connect power to control of social policy in the future, and maintaining it practically within its judicial system and police.

However, feminists rightly point out that resources are not just material production. They also include control over sexual resources of reproduction. If we consider that politics is the means of gaining power over the forces of production (economics) and public decision-making and reproduction, then biological evolutionary theory of sexual selection has a great deal to teach us about the  sexual politics of reproduction.

Sex and politics are traditionally separated

What is normally termed “sex” and “politics” are two sides of the same evolutionary coin. Yet what textbook on sexual behavior treats it as a political process? What primer on political science recognized that its subject matter is a derivative of a biological theme as fundamental as the struggle for reproductive success? What politician sees his own compulsive energy as fired by the ancient impulses of sexual competition? What lover sees his sexual process as pride being part of the necessary comportment of the successful mammalian politician? Sex and dominance, reproduction and power are so intimately linked that it is hard to disentangle one from the other when considering sex in its social setting.

Political economy and domestic economy

Unlike other theories of politics, for bioevolutionary politics involves two processes, a political economy and a domestic economy. Political economy involves material provisioning of natural resources to a society. It involves social production. The domestic economy involves sexual provisioning for mating and raising its children. It involves social reproduction.

The beginnings of a domestic economy

For the biological evolutionary perspective, the central political process is the process of sexual selection and sexual selection is based on bonding. A species can get by without much bonding. Flocks, herds, and schools of fish are notable for the interchangeability of their members. But like breeding systems with asexual reproduction, without bonding they restrict their options and reduce the amount of variety on which sexual selection can work. A true social system begins when animals respond differentially to other members of the species as individuals. They begin to select other members for specific kinds of relatively permanent interaction.

Before mammals were political about material resources, they were political about sexual resources. Sexual politics carries into all social species, most completely among chimps (Frans B. M. De Waal), dolphins and to a lesser extent among elephants. When animals form groups, they must organize themselves in terms of mating practices. As a result of fighting, posturing, cooperating, forming alliances and coalitions, males and females organize themselves into hierarchies. These hierarchies have built into them ground rules as to who can and can’t mate with who and under what conditions.

The domestic economy is about genetics, not sex.  While all males get a chance to copulate, only the more dominant get a chance to breed. The more powerful animal gets a better chance to perpetuate himself genetically. The dominate male is more or less sexually indifferent and will often let inferior males mount the females. Everyone copulates, but only dominates propagate. The dominant animal moves more freely, eats better, gets more attention, lives longer, is healthier and less anxious. On the other hand, the death rate among peripheral males at puberty is very high.

Hierarchies are biologically constituted

Bio-evolutionary theory agrees with feminism that family and sexual life is very political. But where most feminists take the existence of these hierarchies as socially and historically constructed and hope one day to abolish them, bio-evolutionary political theory would argue that these hierarchies are not simply products of society but are rooted in biology. The presence of gender stratification may enhance and amplify these hierarchies, but it doesn’t create them.

Furthermore, in response to Marxism, the creation of a communist society with social gender equality may reduce hierarchies but it wouldn’t abolish them, at least for the foreseeable future. Based on dominance hierarchies, the highest in the hierarchies would have access to the best food and the most comfortable nesting. However, that is not the same thing as having control over production. Darwinian political theory would say all social species are doing some kind of political jockeying come mating season.

What is the relationship between politics and natural selection?

There is, of course, competition for resources between species, but that is not political. Politics can only occur within a species in which fight or flight are not fruitful strategies.

The emergence of the state as an unusual problem to be explained

For neo-Darwinian politics, the emergence of the state is not the starting point of politics, but a problem that neither the traditional mechanisms of kin selection theory or reciprocity solves. What ecological, demographic, economic and technological problems arise that make it in the self-interest of most people to accept the subjugation, the asymmetrical production and distribution of resources that the state involves? Roger Masters offers a rational choice answer to the question. He argues that once collective goods emerge there is trade-off most members of society are willing to make between the benefits of irrigation systems, roads, trade, and the end of feuding that makes the subjection and increased alienation worth it.

Political agency, persuasion

There are no professional politicians in the non-human animal kingdom as far as I know, although De Waal makes some amusing cases for some chimps being more political than others. De Waal makes some interesting points about the power of body language to impact others, although sometimes it might be persuasion and sometimes force or the threat of force. I suspect bio-evolutionary politics would define politics as the strategy within a species to mate and maximize genes across generations.

Bio-evolutionary theory in political sociology and political ideology

It is difficult to place biological politics in the field of political sociology. Political managerial might be closest. A knee-jerk reaction of feminists and Marxists would be quickly to tar-and-feather any biological theory as the political ideology of fascists because of the legacy of social Darwinism. But modern bio-evolutionary theorists are generally hip to its past, and are sensitive to the racial and sexual implications it may have. A friend of mine did a survey among evolutionary psychologists to find out what their leanings are in terms of political ideology. In general, they were liberal. There are also a significant number of women in the field of evolutionary psychology who identify themselves as feminists.

Conclusion: Grand Definition of politics

In making a living, we are co-producers. At the very heart of our social existence has always been a wide range of conscious and planned activities involving the purposive use and production of resources for given ends. People in groups could more easily fell trees, and place them across gullies or streams, deploy hunting nets and chase animals into them if they planned together. In the process of planning there are disputes and debates about what policy to follow and how to achieve their aims.

Politics is:

  1. as an activity that consists of the process of social goal-setting, decision-making and monitoring activities which produce cooperation, negotiation and conflict; and,
  2. as an analysis, politics consists of the study of the provenance, origins, forms, resource allocation (human skills, animate sources of energy, inanimate sources of energy), distribution, and control and consequences of power.

Please see Table A which compares the seven theories of politics across twelve categories of questions. The table closes with each theory’s definition of politics.

• First published at Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism

The post Seven Theories of Politics: The Rehabilitation of a Loaded Vice Word first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bruce Lerro.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/13/seven-theories-of-politics-the-rehabilitation-of-a-loaded-vice-word-2/feed/ 0 233695 Economic Collapse Not Caused By COVID And Won’t Improve With Vaccines https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/03/economic-collapse-not-caused-by-covid-and-wont-improve-with-vaccines/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/03/economic-collapse-not-caused-by-covid-and-wont-improve-with-vaccines/#respond Fri, 03 Sep 2021 18:30:13 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=120651 For major owners of capital, the “COVID Pandemic” has been a perfect pretext and scapegoat for an obsolete economy failing due to its own intrinsic logic and dynamics. COVID has been a convenient and timely cover for the ongoing global economic decline that started well before the “COVID Pandemic.” It is much easier to blame […]

The post Economic Collapse Not Caused By COVID And Won’t Improve With Vaccines first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> For major owners of capital, the “COVID Pandemic” has been a perfect pretext and scapegoat for an obsolete economy failing due to its own intrinsic logic and dynamics. COVID has been a convenient and timely cover for the ongoing global economic decline that started well before the “COVID Pandemic.” It is much easier to blame the failure of the economic system on extenuating circumstances or external factors like a virus rather than the internal operation of the anachronistic economic system itself. This is especially true given the never-ending series of virus variants that keep appearing. In other words, deep economic problems will persist and worsen in the coming months and years.

It is well-known that the capitalist economic system goes through endless crises, “booms and busts,” recessions, “corrections,” and depressions. Stability, security, harmony, peace, and prosperity for all are absent under such an outmoded system. It is impossible for such an economic system to develop in a balanced way where all sectors operate in a mutually conditioning manner and are not distorted all the time. Advanced commodity production means there is no unity in production and consumption, no conscious organization of the economy for the benefit of society and its members. Modern nation-building is not possible under such conditions.

The notion that capital-centered politicians and policy makers can or will fix things is irrational. No major problems have been solved in decades. Every day there are new reports on how numerous conditions are deteriorating at home and abroad. Unemployment, under-employment, debt, poverty, and inequality are pervasive under capitalism.

All of this is taking place despite that fact that hundreds of millions of people have been vaccinated. Vaccines have simply not “stabilized the economy.” The economy remains uneven and distorted in numerous ways.

The rich and their political and media representatives cannot find a way out of the current crisis. They never overcame the 2008 crisis or the effects of previous crises. Their policies and agendas just keep making things worse. Even if every individual on the planet were vaccinated 11 times, economic and social decay would persist. To date, no amount of fiscal or monetary policy has stabilized the economy and made it work for everyone. Instead, the economy keeps lurching from problem to problem and crisis to crisis while the rich get richer and everyone is left with a sinking feeling about what lies ahead. The big topic right now is runaway inflation. The price of dozens of products and items keeps climbing (e.g., food, gas, housing, cars) while wages and salaries stagnate or fall behind, which means that the majority are simply not getting ahead.

Equally dangerous in this fractured and unstable context are the contradictions that arise from the unwillingness and inability of the rich and their state to solve any problems. Such a situation actually makes things worse for large sections of the rich themselves. In other words, the rich are increasingly operating in ways that are self-sabotaging because they are so short-sighted, greedy, pragmatic, and egocentric. This, in turn, leads to even more wrecking activity and tragedies for more people. Humanity cannot afford such chaos, anarchy, and violence.

To solve the problems plaguing the economy, as well as the health crisis that is upon us with Covid, it is necessary for people themselves to control, decide, and direct all the affairs of society. Power must be wielded by those who actually have an investment in a bright future, the very people who actually produce the wealth needed to run society. This means ending all types of pay-the-rich schemes (e.g., “Public-Private-Partnerships”) and making major investments in social programs instead. The rich and their cheerleaders, especially their political parties, have proven time and again that they are unable and unwilling to solve serious problems, especially in a meaningful and lasting way. They can come up with quick short-term band-aids here and there that provide some with temporary relief but they will not take any action to end the marginalization of people and engender sustainable human-centered arrangements.

The post Economic Collapse Not Caused By COVID And Won’t Improve With Vaccines first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Shawgi Tell.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/09/03/economic-collapse-not-caused-by-covid-and-wont-improve-with-vaccines/feed/ 0 231530 Afghan Crisis Must End America’s Empire of War, Corruption and Poverty https://www.radiofree.org/2021/08/30/afghan-crisis-must-end-americas-empire-of-war-corruption-and-poverty-2/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/08/30/afghan-crisis-must-end-americas-empire-of-war-corruption-and-poverty-2/#respond Mon, 30 Aug 2021 14:08:45 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=120518 Millions of Afghans have been displaced by the war.  Photo: MikrofonNews Americans have been shocked by videos of thousands of Afghans risking their lives to flee the Taliban’s return to power in their country – and then by an Islamic State suicide bombing and ensuing massacre by U.S. forces that together killed at least 170 […]

The post Afghan Crisis Must End America’s Empire of War, Corruption and Poverty first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> Millions of Afghans have been displaced by the war.  Photo: MikrofonNews

Americans have been shocked by videos of thousands of Afghans risking their lives to flee the Taliban’s return to power in their country – and then by an Islamic State suicide bombing and ensuing massacre by U.S. forces that together killed at least 170 people, including 13 U.S. troops.

Even as UN agencies warn of an impending humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the U.S. Treasury has frozen nearly all of the Afghan Central Bank’s $9.4 billion in foreign currency reserves, depriving the new government of funds that it will desperately need in the coming months to feed its people and provide basic services.

Under pressure from the Biden administration, the International Monetary Fund decided not to release $450 million in funds that were scheduled to be sent to Afghanistan to help the country cope with the coronavirus pandemic.

The U.S. and other Western countries have also halted humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. After chairing a G7 summit on Afghanistan on August 24, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that withholding aid and recognition gave them “very considerable leverage – economic, diplomatic and political” over the Taliban.

Western politicians couch this leverage in terms of human rights, but they are clearly trying to ensure that their Afghan allies retain some power in the new government, and that Western influence and interests in Afghanistan do not end with the Taliban’s return. This leverage is being exercised in dollars, pounds and euros, but it will be paid for in Afghan lives.

To read or listen to Western analysts, one would think that the United States and its allies’ 20-year war was a benign and beneficial effort to modernize the country, liberate Afghan women and provide healthcare, education and good jobs, and that this has all now been swept away by capitulation to the Taliban.

The reality is quite different, and not so hard to understand. The United States spent $2.26 trillion on its war in Afghanistan. Spending that kind of money in any country should have lifted most people out of poverty. But the vast bulk of those funds, about $1.5 trillion, went to absurd, stratospheric military spending to maintain the U.S. military occupation, drop over 80,000 bombs and missiles on Afghans, pay private contractors, and transport troops, weapons and military equipment back and forth around the world for 20 years.

Since the United States fought this war with borrowed money, it has also cost half a trillion dollars in interest payments alone, which will continue far into the future. Medical and disability costs for U.S. soldiers wounded in Afghanistan already amount to over $175 billion, and they will likewise keep mounting as the soldiers age. Medical and disability costs for the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could eventually top a trillion dollars.

So what about “rebuilding Afghanistan”? Congress appropriated $144 billion for reconstruction in Afghanistan since 2001, but $88 billion of that was spent to recruit, arm, train and pay the Afghan “security forces” that have now disintegrated, with soldiers returning to their villages or joining the Taliban. Another $15.5 billion spent between 2008 and 2017 was documented as “waste, fraud and abuse” by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

The crumbs left over, less than 2% of total U.S. spending on Afghanistan, amount to about $40 billion, which should have provided some benefit to the Afghan people in economic development, healthcare, education, infrastructure and humanitarian aid.

But, as in Iraq, the government the U.S installed in Afghanistan was notoriously corrupt, and its corruption only became more entrenched and systemic over time. Transparency International (TI) has consistently ranked U.S.-occupied Afghanistan as among the most corrupt countries in the world.

Western readers may think that this corruption is a long-standing problem in Afghanistan, as opposed to a particular feature of the U.S. occupation, but this is not the case. TI notes that ”it is widely recognized that the scale of corruption in the post-2001 period has increased over previous levels.” A 2009 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned that “corruption has soared to levels not seen in previous administrations.”

Those administrations would include the Taliban government that U.S. invasion forces removed from power in 2001, and the Soviet-allied socialist governments that were overthrown by the U.S.-deployed precursors of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the 1980s, destroying the substantial progress they had made in education, healthcare and women’s rights.

A 2010 report by former Reagan Pentagon official Anthony H. Cordesman, entitled “How America Corrupted Afghanistan”, chastised the U.S. government for throwing gobs of money into that country with virtually no accountability.

The New York Times reported in 2013 that every month for a decade, the CIA had been dropping off suitcases, backpacks and even plastic shopping bags stuffed with U.S. dollars for the Afghan president to bribe warlords and politicians.

Corruption also undermined the very areas that Western politicians now hold up as the successes of the occupation, like education and healthcare. The education system has been riddled with schools, teachers, and students that exist only on paper. Afghan pharmacies are stocked with fake, expired or low quality medicines, many smuggled in from neighboring Pakistan. At the personal level, corruption was fueled by civil servants like teachers earning only one-tenth the salaries of better-connected Afghans working for foreign NGOs and contractors.

Rooting out corruption and improving Afghan lives has always been secondary to the primary U.S. goal of fighting the Taliban and maintaining or extending its puppet government’s control. As TI reported, “The U.S. has intentionally paid different armed groups and Afghan civil servants to ensure cooperation and/or information, and cooperated with governors regardless of how corrupt they were… Corruption has undermined the U.S. mission in Afghanistan by fuelling grievances against the Afghan government and channelling material support to the insurgency.”

The endless violence of the U.S. occupation and the corruption of the U.S.-backed government boosted popular support for the Taliban, especially in rural areas where three quarters of Afghans live. The intractable poverty of occupied Afghanistan also contributed to the Taliban victory, as people naturally questioned how their occupation by wealthy countries like the United States and its Western allies could leave them in such abject poverty.

Well before the current crisis, the number of Afghans reporting that they were struggling to live on their current income increased from 60% in 2008 to 90% by 2018. A 2018 Gallup poll found the lowest levels of self-reported “well-being” that Gallup has ever recorded anywhere in the world. Afghans not only reported record levels of misery but also unprecedented hopelessness about their future.

Despite some gains in education for girls, only a third of Afghan girls attended primary school in 2019 and only 37% of adolescent Afghan girls were literate. One reason that so few children go to school in Afghanistan is that more than two million children between the ages of 6 and 14 have to work to support their poverty-stricken families.

Yet instead of atoning for our role in keeping most Afghans mired in poverty, Western leaders are now cutting off desperately needed economic and humanitarian aid that was funding three quarters of Afghanistan’s public sector and made up 40% of its total GDP.

In effect, the United States and its allies are responding to losing the war by threatening the Taliban and the people of Afghanistan with a second, economic war. If the new Afghan government does not give in to their “leverage” and meet their demands, our leaders will starve their people and then blame the Taliban for the ensuing famine and humanitarian crisis, just as they demonize and blame other victims of U.S. economic warfare, from Cuba to Iran.

After pouring trillions of dollars into endless war in Afghanistan, America’s main duty now is to help the 40 million Afghans who have not fled their country, as they try to recover from the terrible wounds and trauma of the war America inflicted on them, as well as a massive drought that devastated 40% of their crops this year and a crippling third wave of covid-19.

The U.S. should release the $9.4 billion in Afghan funds held in U.S. banks. It should shift the $6 billion allocated for the now defunct Afghan armed forces to humanitarian aid, instead of diverting it to other forms of wasteful military spending. It should encourage European allies and the IMF not to withhold funds. Instead, they should fully fund the UN 2021 appeal for $1.3 billion in emergency aid, which as of late August was less than 40% funded.

Once upon a time, the United States helped its British and Soviet allies to defeat Germany and Japan, and then helped to rebuild them as healthy, peaceful and prosperous countries. For all America’s serious faults – its racism, its crimes against humanity in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and its neocolonial relations with poorer countries – America held up a promise of prosperity that people in many countries around the world were ready to follow.

If all the United States has to offer other countries today is the war, corruption and poverty it brought to Afghanistan, then the world is wise to be moving on and looking at new models to follow: new experiments in popular and social democracy; renewed emphasis on national sovereignty and international law; alternatives to the use of military force to resolve international problems; and more equitable ways of organizing internationally to tackle global crises like the Covid pandemic and the climate disaster.

The United States can either stumble on in its fruitless attempt to control the world through militarism and coercion, or it can use this opportunity to rethink its place in the world. Americans should be ready to turn the page on our fading role as global hegemon and see how we can make a meaningful, cooperative contribution to a future that we will never again be able to dominate, but which we must help to build.

The post Afghan Crisis Must End America’s Empire of War, Corruption and Poverty first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/08/30/afghan-crisis-must-end-americas-empire-of-war-corruption-and-poverty-2/feed/ 0 230145 “Green New Deal” Means More PPPs and More Economic and Social Destruction https://www.radiofree.org/2021/08/26/green-new-deal-means-more-ppps-and-more-economic-and-social-destruction/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/08/26/green-new-deal-means-more-ppps-and-more-economic-and-social-destruction/#respond Thu, 26 Aug 2021 02:53:37 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=120123 These days there is no shortage of hype surrounding the “Green New Deal” (GND). The “Green New Deal” has become a major buzz-phrase that has ensnared many along the way. Like so many top-down schemes, the GND is being promoted by many world leaders in unison. This alone should be worrisome. History shows that this […]

The post “Green New Deal” Means More PPPs and More Economic and Social Destruction first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> These days there is no shortage of hype surrounding the “Green New Deal” (GND). The “Green New Deal” has become a major buzz-phrase that has ensnared many along the way.

Like so many top-down schemes, the GND is being promoted by many world leaders in unison. This alone should be worrisome. History shows that this is usually a red flag. Few pro-social things come out of movements that are not real grass-roots movements. These world leaders are the main representatives of the international financial oligarchy—a tiny ruling elite obsessed with maximizing private profit no matter the damage to society and the environment. These are the same forces responsible for tragedies such as high levels of inequality, poverty, unemployment, under-employment, inflation, debt, homelessness, hunger, racism, war, occupation, pollution, de-forestation, anxiety, despair, alienation, depression, and suicide worldwide.

The GND is being presented by the rich and their political and media representatives as something great for society and humanity; everyone is under pressure to “just embrace it.”

The GND uses the “New Deal” language of the 1930s and ostensibly addresses climate change, inequality, energy efficiency, job creation, labor rights, racial injustice, and other social aims. This includes a GND for public schools, healthcare, and housing as well.

The GND is supposed to improve conditions for humanity and help us all “build back better”—a major slogan of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which is dominated by millionaires and billionaires. Alongside this disinformation, the WEF is also promoting disinformation about “reinventing capitalism” to fool the gullible. The GND is supposedly rooted in the principles of economic justice, puts the planet ahead of profits, and provides a “blueprint for change.” It is said that Green Projects will cost hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

Europe has its own version of the GND. “Variations of the [“Green New Deal”] proposal have been around for years,” says the New York Times. The so-called Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was introduced more than 20 years ago, for example. In 2007, the imperialist journalist, Thomas Friedman, wrote the following in the New York Times:

If you have put a windmill in your yard or some solar panels on your roof, bless your heart. But we will only green the world when we change the very nature of the electricity grid – moving it away from dirty coal or oil to clean coal and renewables. And that is a huge industrial project – much bigger than anyone has told you. Finally, like the New Deal, if we undertake the green version, it has the potential to create a whole new clean power industry to spur our economy into the 21st century.

Pollution, inequality, and 50 other problems have worsened since this observation was made 14 years ago. The quote rejects economic science and fails to help workers, youth, students, women, and others make sense of the economy in a way that favors their interests.

GND Means More PPPs and Tragedies

“Green New Deal” goals are to be attained through “joint” public sector and private sector “investments.” The disinformation from the rich is that the public can’t achieve the lofty goals of the GND on its own and that “investors” from the so-called “efficient,” “entrepreneurial,” “innovative,” and “smart” private sector are needed to achieve these big goals. It is by working “together” that “we” will supposedly achieve what the GND sets out to do. “New Deals” are purportedly too big for either sector to pull off alone and thus some sort of “partnership” or “alliance” is “needed.”

In reality, private competing owners of capital are unwilling and often unable to pay for major infrastructure projects and want the government to guarantee them big investments and returns using the public purse. PPPs essentially guarantee risk-free profits for various monopolies and further diminish control of the economy by workers and the public. PPPs enable major owners of capital to seize more of the added-value produced by workers through “infrastructure projects” guaranteed by the state at public expense. This further enriches a handful of people, intensifies inequality, and leaves workers and the public with less wealth and less control over the economy.

This is not how “partners” work. This is how an unequal relationship works.

Terms such as “alliance” or “partnership” are designed to fool the gullible and hide the enormous financial gain made by a handful of billionaires through PPPs that purport to advance the goals of the GND. In this, way the door is nonchalantly and pragmatically opened to imposing private alien claims on the wealth produced collectively by workers. The rich are given greater access to public funds and resources that belong to the public, all in the name of “partnership.” We are to believe that without a “Public-Private-Partnership” the GND will not become reality, meaning that the GND is possible only if the ultra-rich pocket more public wealth and resources. This is cynically called a “win-win.”

“Public-Private-Partnerships” promote the illusion that the public sector and the private sector can harmonize their philosophies, interests, aims, operations, activities, and results when in fact PPPs are antisocial, antiworker, and undercut a modern nation-building project.

The public and private sectors cannot be partners; they rest on different foundations, goals, world outlooks, operations, and legal frameworks; they are different categories and phenomena with different properties and characteristics. These differences are not trivial and cannot be reconciled or harmonized. Don’t believe neoliberals and privatizers whey they self-servingly claim that the two distinct spheres can “work together.”

Public and private are antonyms; they mean the opposite of each other; they are not synonymous. Public refers to everyone, non-competition, transparency, the common good, and society as whole (e.g., public parks, beaches, and roads). The public is pro-social and human-centered. It approaches life and relations with a big modern vision. Private refers to exclusivity, for a few, not for everyone, and usually involves rivalry and hierarchy. Private is also often associated with secrecy, not transparency, especially in business. The private sector pertains to relations between private citizens, whereas the public sector has to do with relations between individuals and the state. This distinction is critical. These spheres represent two profoundly different domains. The rights belonging to each sector are different.

Blurring the critical distinction between public and private should be avoided at all costs. It is irresponsible and self-serving to treat the public and private as being synonymous and easy to harmonize without big disadvantages for the public. The public does not benefit from blurring this distinction. The public suffers when the dissimilarity between public and private is obscured and not grasped in its depth.

PPPs conceal harsh irreconcilable class differences and interests in society. They reinforce a “no-class” outlook of society and, in doing so, distort reality at the ideological level, leaving many disoriented, unclear, and confused about their interests, which makes them vulnerable to disinformation from the rich and their media. In the world of PPPs, everyone is merely a “stakeholder.” There are no workers or owners of capital. There are no antagonistic irreconcilable social class interests. There are no classes and class struggle. There are no millionaires and billionaires on one side and workers on the other side who produce all the wealth of society.

Not surprisingly, PPPs form a big part of the antisocial “Great Reset” agenda of the world’s billionaires, which has been publicly articulated by the main leaders of the World Economic Forum such as Klaus Schwab. Many prime ministers, presidents, and prominent state leaders around the world continue to parrot the same tired slogans of the “Great Reset” agenda.

In practice, PPPs use the neoliberal state to funnel more public funds than ever to the private sector under the banner of “partnerships” and “making the world better for everyone.”

This funneling of more public funds to narrow private interests will not only solve no problems, it will intensify many problems that are already serious. The existing all-sided crisis will keep deepening under such a set-up.

As a main form of privatization, the “Green New Deal” will significantly intensify inequality, increase costs for everyone, reduce efficiency and quality, lessen accountability and transparency, increase corruption, and diminish the voice and wealth of workers and the public. It will not enhance democracy or improve the environment in any way because it will further concentrate greater economic and political power in even fewer hands, if that is even possible at this point in history. Funneling more public funds, assets, and authority to competing private interests in a highly monopolized economy is a disaster for the social and natural environment. It is the claims of workers, the public, and society that must be expanded and affirmed, not the narrow claims of competing owners of capital obsessed with maximizing their own profits at the expense of everyone and everything else.

The “Green New Deal” will not challenge the entrenched class privilege of the rich. It will not increase the power of workers or give them greater control of the wealth they produce. It will not make the economy more pro-social, balanced, diverse, and self-reliant. Pollution and de-forestation will still persist under the GND. Experience has repeatedly borne out that capital-centered environmental plans and activities ensure that things keep going from bad to worse.

A 2016 United Nations report highlights many ways that PPPs undermine the public interest and produce more problems. Global Policy Forum states that:

PPPs are used to conceal public borrowing, while providing long-term state guarantees for profits to private companies. Private sector corporations must maximize profits if they are to survive. This is fundamentally incompatible with protecting the environment and ensuring universal access to quality public services.

Public and private simply do not go together. The organization In The Public Interest offers many reports, articles, and documents that expose how PPPs harm the public interest and benefit major owners of capital at the public expense. Numerous other organizations around the world have also described and explained how PPPs make things worse for the public while enriching a handful of people.

In the context of a continually failing economy, competing owners of capital have no choice but to cloak their egocentric drive to maximize private profit by seizing public funds from the state as a “win-win” for everyone, as something great for the natural and social environment. The neoliberal state is increasingly being used to divert public funds and assets to major owners of capital as they compete with each other for domination of the economy in an increasingly unstable and dangerous environment. The old ways of profit-taking are no longer as lucrative as before, so the rich have to use PPPs to seize public funds for private financial gain under the banner of “working together” to “build back better.”

As always, the rich will not brook any opposition to their narrow private interests. They will not support anything that places a greater portion of the social wealth in the hands of those who actually produce the wealth of society: workers. They will continue to act like they have a natural right to the wealth produced collectively by workers.

Major owners of capital have no human-centered interest in improving the environment or social conditions. They pragmatically strive for what will best serve their narrow private interests and class privilege without any consideration for the well-being of all sectors of the economy as a whole. Modern nation-building cannot take place in such a context. The human-centered resolution of social, economic, and environmental problems requires confronting powerful private interests and their outdated economic system if humanity is to have a bright future.

To fix the economy and to reverse social and environmental problems requires a public authority worthy of the name. There is no reason why a real public authority cannot use the wealth and resources produced by workers to improve the social and natural environment for the nation. Planned public investment for the public and for modern nation-building is not possible under the direction and influence of competing owners of capital obsessed with maximizing private profit. Such forces are only looking out for their narrow interests, not the needs of a balanced self-reliant crisis-free economy that consistently and responsibly raises the material and cultural well-being of all.

There is no need to involve powerful private interests in social programs, social investments, or green projects. The rich are not only the cause of many problems the GND ostensibly seeks to remedy, they also have no valid and legitimate claim to any public funds, resources, and assets. The rich mainly seize and control the wealth produced by workers; they themselves do not produce the wealth of society.

The rich are a historically superfluous and exhausted force blocking social progress. Without the rich, their entourage, and their outdated political and economic system, the social product could be wielded by people themselves for the benefit of the natural and social environment. The impact of this shift and change on time and space would be monumental.

The post “Green New Deal” Means More PPPs and More Economic and Social Destruction first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Shawgi Tell.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/08/26/green-new-deal-means-more-ppps-and-more-economic-and-social-destruction/feed/ 0 229075 Lesser Evil Politics Assure Greater Evil Economics https://www.radiofree.org/2021/08/23/lesser-evil-politics-assure-greater-evil-economics/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/08/23/lesser-evil-politics-assure-greater-evil-economics/#respond Mon, 23 Aug 2021 03:46:59 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=120241 A new American president is presenting a program for renewal of human values in the marketplace unheard of since the 1930s but still projecting American military domination and environmental destruction far beyond the awareness of most Americans. Continued insistence that Russia and China are major global threats to everyone and not just American monopoly capitalists […]

The post Lesser Evil Politics Assure Greater Evil Economics first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> A new American president is presenting a program for renewal of human values in the marketplace unheard of since the 1930s but still projecting American military domination and environmental destruction far beyond the awareness of most Americans. Continued insistence that Russia and China are major global threats to everyone and not just American monopoly capitalists resonate not only in the cosmic void between the ears of our mentally disabled foreign policy experts but echo in the minds of innocent Americans since that’s all they get from major, and all too often minor media.

The charge that China is conducting genocide on its Islamic people coming from the butchers of hundreds of thousands of Islamic people in the middle east would be a dreadful sick joke if not so incredibly evil, but poor souls condemned to network media remain stuck in a misinformation chamber amplifying our ruling power’s message day in and day out. The fact that growing majorities have little or no faith in government or media is a hopeful sign but until we totally clean out the sewage system much of corporate news has become, the stench that wafts up remains a carrier of the information pandemic.

While alleged economic threats from China actually do offer market competition to the empire – and market competition is supposed to be good, according to the theology preached by the priest-rabbi-therapists of the church of capital – and China is under the control of communists who at least try, not always with success, to force it to work for the common good and not just the minority of Chinese capitalists, why and how and to whom is that a threat? Only to America where majorities exist in numbers of those in debt but never those who vote nationally. This is called  “our” democracy by many wishful thinkers still unaware that the political process is owned and operated by the wealthiest minority, which spends billions to maintain political control by purchase and rental of candidates and office holders. Citizens innocently proclaiming this hustle as “our” democracy are like past slaves referring to “our” plantation. If they were the minority house negroes of the time they could afford such fantasy but the overwhelming majority who toiled in the fields and suffered the most brutal treatment had no such luxury.

And as if the treatment of these two powerful nations didn’t show enough imperial idiocy, that of a nearly helpless tiny nation currently, as usual, under assault, is greater indication of lunacy bordering on stark raving insanity.

After 60 years of a murderous attempted strangulation of the Cuban political economy, that tiny nation survives with the support of the overwhelming majority of governments on earth. Recently at the United Nations 184 countries voted to end the filthy American embargo with only Murder Inc. headquartered in the USA and Israel still, as always out of step with the overwhelming majority while spouting humanitarian rhetoric and practicing murderous brutality. This still finds well meaning people waving flags and quoting bibles and constitutions as though these fabled symbols clean up the reality of degenerate social practice as hypocritical as a rapist claiming victims only to assure they do not suffer sexual frustration.

The anti-Cuban lobby, second only to that of Israel in its control of American foreign policy, was originally a creature of the Cuban upper classes who escaped to Miami from the revolution that was working to spread education, jobs, health care and other necessities of life to the greatest number of people who had long been denied by American partnership with Cuban ruling power. They loom large in the current scenario of an alleged uprising against the terror and horror of millions of people eating, going to school and getting health care despite the ugly embargo and other violent attempts to smother the island of 11 million so that capital might again profit from gambling and drugs, as it did before 1960.

Meanwhile, another bloody lie in Afghanistan has ended with the Taliban, the group we were allegedly protecting poor afghans from, has taken over the government of their own country. This after billions have been spent and hundreds of thousands murdered in pursuit of profits while good people here have been fed stories about emancipating women and educating Afghans to the joys of democracy like ours, where hundreds of thousands of Americans live in the street while we spend trillions to kill people and billions to care for pets.

And far beyond wretched national policies looms the global curse of what private profit industrial and war marketing are doing to the environment shared by humanity and not just one or anther national identity group often claiming super status with a special connection to deities ranging from Santa Claus to the Easter bunny for all they are worth in the material world. Words about democracy are not balanced by deeds of mass murder, oppression and absolute support for rich minority rule that assures continued profit making from exploitation of workers whether they clean toilets, drive buses, pilot airplanes or walk dogs. Like the sex workers who use their private parts to create private profits for their entrepreneurial pimps, those who create, package and deliver the consumer goods that are the foundation of the economy are doing it for the benefit of owners and investors rather than their own which would be far better served if they owned and ran the businesses they form the foundation for while others get rich on their labor.

Facing horrible news at what the future of humanity looks like under the environmental stress called climate change, more people than ever are working to end foul methods of economics that assure disaster for humanity but trying to do so while maintaining market rules of private profit assures further destruction or worse, simply throwing people out of work they do only to survive and thus destroy hope of survival. The future must be to keep people alive by assuring the public good before any pursuit of private profit. We do not need professional economists to explain that capitalism is the only answer to social problems all the while collecting fat salaries and investment opportunities while society fails more quickly under their rule.

In truth, if workers are doing dirty work that affords them salaries so they can pay their rent, mortgages and other life supports, but it costs society billions to have to clean up the mess they create, we would all best be served by paying them to not go to work. We’d be saving the billions we’d have to spend to clean up the mess they created in service to private profiteers and assure their survival by using those mammoth savings to help them learn and get better jobs for them and everyone else, that serve all of us and not simply minority investors. As the world grows more threatened and conditions become more dangerous with the USA holding several hundred military bases in foreign countries and surrounding Russia and China with troops and war ships, immediate action must be taken to both confront environmental conditions that threaten us all and war like preparations that are profitable to a criminal minority while threatening the planet and all its people.

In short, we need global democratic communism before anti-social capitalism destroys us all.

The post Lesser Evil Politics Assure Greater Evil Economics first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Frank Scott.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2021/08/23/lesser-evil-politics-assure-greater-evil-economics/feed/ 0 228231 Covid End of US Empire? https://www.radiofree.org/2021/08/18/covid-end-of-us-empire/ https://www.radiofree.org/2021/08/18/covid-end-of-us-empire/#respond Wed, 18 Aug 2021 04:15:23 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=119967 The United States is facing perfect storm conditions for the grueling continuation of the Covid-19 pandemic. The long-term economic impact could hasten the end of its global power as we know it. Infections, hospitalizations and deaths are on the rise again – as they are in other capitalist states. But the outlook for the U.S. […]

The post Covid End of US Empire? first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]>

The United States is facing perfect storm conditions for the grueling continuation of the Covid-19 pandemic. The long-term economic impact could hasten the end of its global power as we know it.