On 2 November 2008, the New York Times Magazine headlined “Questions for James K. Galbraith: The Populist,” which was an “Interview by Deborah Solomon” of the prominent liberal economist and son of John Kenneth Galbraith. She asked him, “There are at least 15,000 professional economists in this country, and you’re saying only two or three of them foresaw the mortgage crisis” which had brought on the second Great Depression?

He answered: “Ten or twelve would be closer than two or three.”

She very appropriately followed up immediately with “What does this say about the field of economics, which claims to be a science?”

He didn’t answer by straight-out saying that economics isn’t any more of a science than physics was before Galileo, or than biology was before Darwin. He didn’t proceed to explain that the very idea of a Nobel Prize in Economics was based upon a lie which alleged that economics was the first field to become scientific within all of the “social sciences,” when, in fact, there weren’t yet any social sciences, none yet at all. But he came close to admitting these things, when he said: “It’s an enormous blot on the reputation of the profession. There are thousands of economists. Most of them teach. And most of them teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless.” His term “useless” was a euphemism for false. His term “blot” was a euphemism for “nullification.”

On 9 January 2009, economist Jeff Madrick headlined at The Daily Beast, “How the Entire Economics Profession Failed,” and he opened:

At the annual meeting of American Economists, most everyone refused to admit their failures to prepare or warn about the second worst crisis of the century.

I could find no shame in the halls of the San Francisco Hilton, the location at the annual meeting of American economists. Mainstream economists from major universities dominate the meetings, and some of them are the anointed cream of the crop, including former Clinton, Bush and even Reagan advisers.

There was no session on the schedule about how the vast majority of economists should deal with their failure to anticipate or even seriously warn about the possibility that the second worst economic crisis of the last hundred years was imminent.

I heard no calls to reform educational curricula because of a crisis so threatening and surprising that it undermines, at least if the academicians were honest, the key assumptions of the economic theory currently being taught. …

I found no one fundamentally changing his or her mind about the value of economics, economists, or their work.”

He observed a scandalous profession of quacks who are satisfied to remain quacks. The public possesses faith in them because it possesses faith in the “invisible hand” of God, and everyone is taught to believe in that from the crib. In no way is it science.

In a science, when facts prove that the theory is false, the theory gets replaced, it’s no longer taught. In a scholarly field, however, that’s not so — proven-false theory continues being taught. In economics, the proven-false theory continued being taught, and still continues today to be taught. This demonstrates that economics is still a religion or some other type of philosophy, not yet any sort of science.

Mankind is still coming out of the Dark Ages. The Bible is still being viewed as history, not as myth (which it is), not as some sort of religious or even political propaganda. It makes a difference — a huge difference: the difference between truth and falsehood.

The Dutch economist Dirk J. Bezemer, at Groningen University, posted on 16 June 2009 a soon-classic paper, “‘No One Saw This Coming’: Understanding Financial Crisis Through Accounting Models,” in which he surveyed the work of 12 economists who did see it (the economic collapse of 2008) coming; and he found there that they had all used accounting or “Flow of Funds” models, instead of the standard microeconomic theory. (In other words: they accounted for, instead of ignored, debts.) From 2005 through 2007, these accounting-based economists had published specific and accurate predictions of what would happen: Dean Baker, Wynne Godley, Fred Harrison, Michael Hudson, Eric Janszen, Stephen (“Steve”) Keen, Jakob B. Madsen, Jens K. Sorensen, Kurt Richebaecher, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, and Robert Shiller.

He should have added several others. Paul Krugman, wrote a NYT column on 12 August 2005 headlined “Safe as Houses” and he said “Houses aren’t safe at all” and that they would likely decline in price. On 25 August 2006, he bannered “Housing Gets Ugly” and concluded “It’s hard to see how we can avoid a serious slowdown.” Bezemer should also have included Merrill Lynch’s Chief North American Economist, David A. Rosenberg, whose The Market Economist article “Rosie’s Housing Call August 2004” on 6 August 2004 already concluded, “The housing sector has entered a ‘bubble’ phase,” and who presented a series of graphs showing it. Bezemer should also have included Satyajit Das, about whom TheStreet had headlined on 21 September 21 2007, “The Credit Crisis Could Be Just Beginning.” He should certainly have included Ann Pettifor, whose 2003 The Real World Economic Outlook, and her masterpiece the 2006 The Coming First World Debt Crisis, predicted exactly what happened and why. Her next book, the 2009 The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Bankers, was almost a masterpiece, but it failed to present any alternative to the existing microeconomic theory — as if microeconomic theory isn’t a necessary part of economic theory. Another great economist he should have mentioned was Charles Hugh Smith, who had been accurately predicting since at least 2005 the sequence of events that culminated in the 2008 collapse. And Bezemer should especially have listed the BIS’s chief economist, William White, regarding whom Germany’s Spiegel headlined on 8 July 2009, “Global Banking Economist Warned of Coming Crisis.” (It is about but doesn’t mention nor link to https://www.bis.org/publ/work147.pdf.) White had been at war against the policies of America’s Fed chief Alan Greenspan ever since 1998, and especially since 2003, but the world’s aristocrats muzzled White’s view and promoted Greenspan’s instead. (The economics profession have always been propagandists for the super-rich.) Bezemer should also have listed Charles R. Morris, who in 2007 told his publisher Peter Osnos that the crash would start in Summer 2008, which was basically correct. Moreover, James K. Galbraith had written for years saying that a demand-led depression would result, such as in his American Prospect “How the Economists Got It Wrong,” 30 November 2002; and “Bankers Versus Base,” 15 April 2004, and culminating finally in his 2008 The Predator State, which blamed the aristocracy in the strongest possible terms for the maelstrom to come. Bezemer should also have listed Barry Ritholtz, who, in his “Recession Predictor,” on 18 August 2005, noted the optimistic view of establishment economists and then said, “I disagree … due to Psychology of consumers.” He noted “consumer debt, not as a percentage of GDP, but relative to net asset wealth,” and also declining “median personal income,” as pointing toward a crash from this mounting debt-overload. Then, on 31 May 2006, he headlined “Recent Housing Data: Charts & Analysis,” and opened: “It has long been our view that Real Estate is the prime driver of this economy, and its eventual cooling will be a major crimp in GDP, durable goods, and consumer spending.” Bezemer should also have listed both Paul Kasriel and Asha Bangalore at Northern Trust. Kasriel headlined on 22 May 2007, “US Economy May Wake Up Without Consumers’ Prodding?” and said it wouldn’t happen – and consumers were too much in debt. Then on 8 August 2007, he bannered: “US Economic Growth in Domestic Final Demand,” and said that “the housing recession is … spreading to other parts of the economy.” On 25 May 2006, Bangalore headlined “Housing Market Is Cooling Down, No Doubts About It.” and that was one of two Asha Bangalore articles which were central to Ritholtz’s 31 May 2006 article showing that all of the main indicators pointed to a plunge in house-prices that had started in March 2005; so, by May 2006, it was already clear from the relevant data, that a huge economic crash was comning soon. Another whom Bezemer should have listed was L. Randall Wray, whose 2005 Levy Economics Institute article, “The Ownership Society: Social Security Is Only the Beginning” asserted that it was being published “at the peak of what appears to be a real estate bubble.” Bezemer should also have listed Paul B. Farrell, columnist at marketwatch.com, who saw practically all the correct signs, in his 26 June 2005 “Global Megabubble? You Decide. Real Estate Is Only Tip of Iceberg; or Is It?”; and his 17 July 2005 “Best Strategies to Beat the Megabubble: Real Estate Bubble Could Trigger Global Economic Meltdown”; and his 9 January 2006 “Meltdown in 2006? Cast Your Vote”; and 15 May 2006 “Party Time (Until Real Estate Collapses)”; and his 21 August 2006 “Tipping Point Pops Bubble, Triggers Bear: Ten Warnings the Economy, Markets Have Pushed into Danger Zone”; and his 30 July 2007 “You Pick: Which of 20 Tipping Points Ignites Long Bear Market?” Farrell’s commentaries also highlighted the same reform-recommendations that most of the others did, such as Baker, Keen, Pettifor, Galbraith, Ritholtz, and Wray; such as break up the mega-banks, and stiffen regulation of financial institutions. However, the vast majority of academically respected economists disagreed with all of this and were wildly wrong in their predictions, and in their analyses. The Nobel Committee should have withdrawn their previous awards in economics to still-practicing economists (except to Krugman who did win a Nobel) and re-assigned them to these 25 economists, who showed that they had really deserved it.

And there was another: economicpredictions.org tracked four economists who predicted correctly the 2008 crash: Dean Baker, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, and Med Jones, the latter of whom had actually the best overall record regarding the predictions that were tracked there.

And still others should also be on the list: for example, Joe Weisenthal at Business Insider headlined on 21 November 2012, “The Genius Who Invented Economics Blogging Reveals How He Got Everything Right And What’s Coming Next” and he interviewed Bill McBride, who had started his calculated riskblog in January 2005. So I looked in the archives there at December 2005, and noticed December 28th, “Looking Forward: 2006 Top Economic Stories.” He started there with four trends that he expected everyone to think of, and then listed another five that weren’t so easy, including “Housing Slowdown. In my opinion, the Housing Bubble was the top economic story of 2005, but I expect the slowdown to be a form of Chinese water torture. Sales for both existing and new homes will probably fall next year from the records set in 2005. And median prices will probably increase slightly, with declines in the more ‘heated markets.’” McBride also had predicted that the economic rebound would start in 2009, and he was now, in 2012, predicting a strong 2013. Probably Joe Weisenthal was right in calling McBride a “Genius.”

And also, Mike Whitney at InformationClearinghouse.info and other sites, headlined on 20 November 2006, “Housing Bubble Smack-Down,” and he nailed the credit-boom and Fed easy-money policy as the cause of the housing bubble and the source of an imminent crash.

Furthermore, Ian Welsh headlined on 28 November 2007, “Looking Forward At the Consequences of This Bubble Bursting,” and listed 10 features of the crash to come, of which 7 actually happened.

In addition, Gail Tverberg, an actuary, headlined on 9 January 2008 “Peak Oil and the Financial Markets: A Forecast for 2008,” and provided the most detailed of all the prescient descriptions of the collapse that would happen that year.

Furthermore, Gary Shilling’s January 2007 Insight newsletter listed “12 investment themes” which described perfectly what subsequently happened, starting with “The housing bubble has burst.”

And the individual investing blogger Jesse Colombo started noticing the housing bubble even as early as 6 September 2004, blogging at his stock-market-crash.net “The Housing Bubble” and documenting that it would happen (“Here is the evidence that we are in a massive housing bubble:”) and what the economic impact was going to be. Then on 7 February 2006 he headlined “The Coming Crash!” and said “Based on today’s overvalued housing prices, a 20 percent crash is certainly in the cards.”

Also: Stephanie Pomboy of MacroMavens issued an analysis and appropriate graphs on 7 December 2007, headlined “When Animals Attack” and predicting imminently a huge economic crash.

In alphabetical order, they are: Dean Baker, Asha Bangalore, Jesse Colombo, Satyajit Das, Paul B. Farrell, James K. Galbraith, Wynne Godley, Fred Harrison, Michael Hudson, Eric Janszen, Med Jones, Paul Kasriel, Steve Keen, Paul Krugman, Jakob B. Madsen, Bill McBride, Charles R. Morris, Ann Pettifor, Stehanie Pomboy, Kurt Richebaeker, Barry Ritholtz, David A. Rosenberg, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, Robert Shiller, Gary Shilling, Charles Hugh Smith, Jens K. Sorensen, Gail Tverberg, Ian Welsh, William White, Mike Whitney, L. Randall Wray.

Thus, at least 33 economists were contenders as having been worth their salt as economic professionals. One can say that only 33 economists predicted the 2008 collapse, or that only 33 economists predicted accurately or reasonably accurately the collapse. However, some of those 33 were’t actually professional economists. So, some of the world’s 33 best economists aren’t even professional economists, as accepted in that rotten profession.

So, the few honest and open-eyed economists (these 33, at least) tried to warn the world. Did the economics profession honor them for their having foretold the 2008 collapse? Did President Barack Obama hire them, and fire the incompetents he had previously hired for his Council of Economic Advisers? Did the Nobel Committee acknowledge that it had given Nobel Economics Prizes to the wrong people, including people such as the conservative Milton Friedman whose works were instrumental in causing the 2008 crash? Also complicit in causing the 2008 crash was the multiple-award-winning liberal economist Lawrence Summers, who largely agreed with Friedman but was nonetheless called a liberal. Evidently, the world was too corrupt for any of these 33 to reach such heights of power or of authority. Like Galbraith had said at the close of his 2002 “How the Economists Got It Wrong“: “Being right doesn’t count for much in this club.” If anything, being right means being excluded from such posts. In an authentically scientific field, the performance of one’s predictions (their accuracy) is the chief (if not SOLE) determinant of one’s reputation and honor amongst the profession, but that’s actually not the way things yet are in any of the social “sciences,” including economics; they’re all just witch-doctory, not yet real science. The fraudulence of these fields is just ghastly. In fact, as Steve Keen scandalously noted in Chapter 7 of his 2001 Debunking Economics: “As this book shows, economics [theory] is replete with logical inconsistencies.” In any science, illogic is the surest sign of non-science, but it is common and accepted in the social ‘sciences’, including economics. The economics profession itself is garbage, a bad joke, instead of any science at all.

These 33 were actually only candidates for being scientific economists, but I have found the predictions of some of them to have been very wrong on some subsequent matters of economic performance. For example, the best-known of the 33, Paul Krugman, is a “military Keynesian” — a liberal neoconservative (and military Keynesianism is empirically VERY discredited: false worldwide, and false even in the country that champions it, the U.S.) — and he is unfavorable toward the poor, and favorable toward the rich; so, he is acceptable to the Establishment.) Perhaps a few of these 33 economists (perhaps half of whom aren’t even members of the economics profession) ARE scientific (in their underlying economic beliefs — their operating economic theory) if a scientific economics means that it’s based upon a scientific theory of economics — a theory that is derived not from any opinions but only from the relevant empirical data. Although virtually all of the 33 are basically some sort of Keynesian, even that (Keynes’s theory) isn’t a full-fledged theory of economics (it has many vagaries, and it has no microeconomics). The economics profession is still a field of philosophy, instead of a field of science.

The last chapter of my America’s Empire of Evil presents what I believe to be the first-ever scientific theory of economics, a theory that replaces all of microeconomic theory (including a micro that’s integrated with its macro) and is consistent with Keynes in macroeconomic theory; and all of which theory is derived and documented from only the relevant empirical economic data — NOT from anyone’s opinions. The economics profession think that replacing existing economic theory isn’t necessary after the crash of 2008, but I think it clearly IS necessary (because — as that chapter of my book shows — all of the relevant empirical economic data CONTRADICT the existing economic theory, ESPECIALLY the existing microeconomic theory).

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

This somewhat crude summation only does some justice to JJM’s thought process.  But it does provide an interesting backdrop to the recent revelations regarding the Ukraine conflict, one that is falling into a horrendous, bleeding stalemate.

In his Foreign Affairs assessment of 2014 on the Ukraine-Russian conflict, Mearsheimer throws in the usual grenades. “US and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border.”  He noted the pernicious, meddling roles played by such characters as US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, Victoria Nuland, who revealed in 2013 how the US had invested more than $5 billion since 1991 to aid Ukraine achieve “the future it deserves.”  This involved the spearheading efforts of the National Endowment for Democracy.

As Russian tanks moved into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Mearsheimer proved unrelenting: Russia had been needlessly provoked into “a preventive war”.  While not permissible in just war theory, “Russian leaders certainly saw the invasion as ‘just’, because they were convinced that Ukraine joining NATO was an existential threat that had to be eliminated.”  The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was so enthusiastic at the views of the realistic scholar, it endorsed his 2014 Foreign Affairs contribution.

For taking such a stance, dreamy liberal humanitarians and neoconservative provocateurs came to detest Mearsheimer.  The New Statesman would suggest that he became, as a consequence “the world’s most hated thinker.”  Anne Applebaum, in her usual neoconservative biliousness, wondered “if the Russians didn’t actually get their narrative from Mearshimer [sic] et al.  Moscow needed to say West was responsible for Russian invasions (Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Ukraine), and not their own greed and imperialism.”

Mearsheimer was already representative of a field filled with foreboding assessments about what an eastern strategic expansion against Russia would do, warmed by the almost throwaway assurances from US Secretary of State James Baker to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990.  At that point, the still extant Soviet Union had 380,000 troops stationed in East Germany.  Baker’s suggestion: Why not remove those troops if NATO did “not shift one inch eastwards from its position”?

The following day, Baker repeated the formula to West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl via letter: “Would you prefer to see a unified Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no US forces, or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastwards from its present position?”  Kohl had preferred to directly inform Gorbachev of his own assurance that no NATO bases would be established in the former East Germany.

In October 1990, the US State Department concluded in an analysis that “it is not in the best interest of NATO or the US that these states be granted full NATO membership” warning against “an anti-Soviet coalition whose frontier is the Soviet border.”

George F. Kennan’s observations seven years later are also prickly with concern.  As the father of Cold War Soviet containment, he could only see trouble brewing on the horizon were a now diminished Russia provoked.  The decision to expand NATO “may be expected to inflame nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”

That same year, the current US President noted that, irrespective of the merits of the countries keen to participate in the alliance, an enlarged NATO would constitute the “tipping point” for Russia. His reference point then was the various Baltic States.

A number of former US ambassadors to Moscow have also warned, at stages, about the dangers.  In 1997, it was Jack Matlock, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  At the time, the Clinton administration’s recommendation to enlarge NATO membership was considered “misguided.  If it should be approved by the United States Senate, it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War.”

Eight years later, William J. Burns, then still ambassador to Russia and currently director of the CIA, shot a number of flares on the issue: “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).”

In a February 2008 memorandum published by WikiLeaks, the assessment by Burns is stark: “NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains ‘an emotional and neuralgic’ issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia.”  Such strategic policy considerations included, among other things, a fear that the country could be “split in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.”  Concerns also abounded regarding the “impact on Russia’s defense industry, Russian-Ukrainian family connections, and bilateral relations generally.”

What then made September 2023 special in this overview was an unusually frank admission from the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in remarks made to the joint meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) and the Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE).

That admission concerned Putin’s unequivocal intentions to invade Ukraine were NATO to be further enlarged: “The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement.  That was what he sent us.  And was a pre-condition to not invade Ukraine.  Of course, we didn’t sign that.”

Stoltenberg went on to pour scorn on this revealing point.  Putin demanded the “removal of our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership.  We rejected that.”  The conclusion is then indefatigably clear: “So [Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.”

In such statements, the lines between explanation, justification and wilful blindness are not always demarcated. But here we have a stunning confession that should be minted in every historical overview of a calamitous conflict that may eventually result, in some form or rather, in the very same de facto arrangements Putin demanded in 2021.  Russia will have to contend with its own problems and nightmares regarding the Ukraine War, but as such, Stoltenberg, NATO and the US imperium deserve a withering stare from history’s muse.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) held its annual summit on 11–12 July in Vilnius, Lithuania. The communiqué released after the first day’s proceedings claimed that ‘NATO is a defensive alliance’, a statement that encapsulates why many struggle to grasp its true essence. A look at the latest military spending figures shows, to the contrary, that NATO countries, and countries closely allied to NATO, account for nearly three-quarters of the total annual global expenditure on weapons. Many of these countries possess state-of-the-art weapons systems, which are qualitatively more destructive than those held by the militaries of most non-NATO countries. Over the past quarter century, NATO has used its military might to destroy several states, such as Afghanistan (2001) and Libya (2011), shattering societies with the raw muscle of its aggressive alliance, and end the status of Yugoslavia (1999) as a unified state. It is difficult, given this record, to sustain the view that NATO is a ‘defensive alliance’.

Currently, NATO has thirty-one member states, the most recent addition being Finland, which joined in April 2023. Its membership has more than doubled since its twelve founding members, all countries in Europe and North America that had been part of the war against the Axis powers, signed its founding treaty (the Washington Treaty or the North Atlantic Treaty) on 4 April 1949. It is telling that one of these original members – Portugal – remained under a fascist dictatorship at the time, known as Estado Novo (in place from 1933 until 1974).

Article 10 of this treaty declares that NATO members – ‘by unanimous agreement’ – can ‘invite any other European state’ to join the military alliance. Based on that principle, NATO welcomed Greece and Turkey (1952), West Germany (1955), and Spain (1982), expanding its membership at the time to include sixteen countries. The disintegration of the USSR and communist states in Eastern Europe – the purported threat that compelled the need for NATO to begin with – did not put an end to the need for the alliance. Instead, NATO’s increasing membership has doubled down on its ambition to use its military power, through Article 5, to subdue anyone who challenges the ‘Atlantic Alliance’.

Nino Morbedadze (Georgia), Strolling Couple, 2017.

The ‘Atlantic Alliance’, a phrase that is part of NATO’s name, was part of a wider network of military treaties secured by the US against the USSR and, after October 1949, against the People’s Republic of China. This network included the Manila Pact of September 1954, which created the Southeast Asian Treaty Organisation (SEATO), and the Baghdad Pact of February 1955, which created the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO). Turkey and Pakistan signed a military agreement in April 1954 which brought them together in an alliance against the USSR and anchored this network through NATO’s southernmost member (Turkey) and SEATO’s westernmost member (Pakistan). The US signed a military deal with each of the members of CENTO and SEATO and ensured that it had a seat at the table in these structures.

At the Asian-African Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia in April 1955, India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru reacted strongly to the creation of these military alliances, which exported tensions between the US and the USSR across Asia. The concept of NATO, he said, ‘has extended itself in two ways’: first, NATO ‘has gone far away from the Atlantic and has reached other oceans and seas’ and second, ‘NATO today is one of the most powerful protectors of colonialism’. As an example, Nehru pointed to Goa, which was still held by fascist Portugal and whose grip had been validated by NATO members – an act, Nehru said, of ‘gross impertinence’. This characterisation of NATO as a global belligerent and defender of colonialism remains intact, with some modifications.

Slobodan Trajković (Yugoslavia), The Flag, 1983.

SEATO was disbanded in 1977, partly due to the defeat of the US in Vietnam, and CENTO was shuttered in 1979, precisely due to the Iranian Revolution that year. US military strategy shifted its focus from wielding these kinds of pacts to establishing a direct military presence with the founding of US Central Command in 1983 and the revitalisation of the US Pacific Command that same year. The US expanded the power of its own global military footprint, including its ability to strike anywhere on the planet due to its structure of military bases and armed flotillas (which were no longer restricted once the 1930 Second London Naval Treaty expired in 1939). Although NATO has always had global ambitions, the alliance was given material reality through the US military’s force projection and its creation of new structures that further tied allied states into its orbit (with programmes such as ‘Partnership for Peace’, set up in 1994, and concepts such as ‘global NATO partner’ and ‘non-NATO ally’, as exemplified by Japan and South Korea). In its 1991 Strategic Concept, NATO wrote that it would ‘contribute to global stability and peace by providing forces for United Nations missions’, which was realised with deadly force in Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2003), and Libya (2011).

By the Riga Summit (2006), NATO was confident that it operated ‘from Afghanistan to the Balkans and from the Mediterranean Sea to Darfur’. Nehru’s focus on colonialism might seem anachronistic now, but, in fact, NATO has become an instrument to blunt the global majority’s desire for sovereignty and dignity, two key anti-colonial concepts. Any popular project that exerts these two concepts finds itself at the end of a NATO weapons system.

Shefa Salem al-Baraesi (Libya), Kaska, Dance of War, 2020.

The collapse of the USSR and the Eastern European communist state system transformed Europe’s reality. NATO quickly ignored the ‘ironclad guarantees’ offered by US Secretary of State James Baker to Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in Moscow on 9 February 1990 that NATO’s ‘forces would not move eastward’ of the German border. Several states that bordered the NATO zone suffered greatly in the immediate period after the fall of the Berlin Wall, with economies in the doldrums as privatisation eclipsed the possibility for their populations to live with dignity. Many states in Eastern Europe, desperate to enter the European Union (EU), which at least promised access to the common market, understood that entry into NATO was the price of admission. In 1999, Czechia, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO, followed in 2004 by the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, and Slovakia. Eager for investments and markets, by 2004 many of these countries waltzed into the Atlantic Alliance of NATO and the EU.

NATO continued to expand, absorbing Albania and Croatia in 2009, Montenegro in 2017, and North Macedonia in 2020. However, the breakdown of some US banks, the waning attraction of the US as the market of last resort, and the entry of the Atlantic world into a relentless economic depression after 2007 changed the context. No longer were Atlantic states reliable as investors or as markets. After 2008, infrastructure investment in the EU declined by 75% due to reduced public spending, and the European Investment Bank warned that government investment would hit a twenty-five-year low.

ArtLords (including Kabir Mokamel, Abdul Hakim Maqsodi, Meher Agha Sultani, Omaid Sharifi, Yama Farhard, Negina Azimi, Enayat Hikmat, Zahid Amini, Ali Hashimi, Mohammad Razeq Meherpour, Abdul Razaq Hashemi, and Nadima Rustam), The Unseen Afghanistan, 2021.

The arrival of Chinese investment and the possibility of integration with the Chinese economy began to reorient many economies, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, away from the Atlantic. In 2012, the first summit between China and central and eastern European countries (China–CEEC summit) was held in Warsaw (Poland), with sixteen countries in the region participating. The process eventually drew in fifteen NATO members, including Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (in 2021 and 2022, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania withdrew from the initiative). In March 2015, six then-EU member states – France, Germany, Italy, Luxemburg, Sweden, and the UK – joined the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Four years later, Italy became the first G7 country to join the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Two-thirds of EU member states are now part of the BRI, and the EU concluded the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment in 2020.

These manoeuvres towards China threatened to weaken the Atlantic Alliance, with the US describing the country as a ‘strategic competitor’ in its 2018 National Defense Strategy – a phrase indicative of its shifting focus on the so-called threat of China. Nonetheless, as recently as November 2019, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that ‘there [are] no plans, no proposal, no intention to move NATO into, for instance, the South China Sea’. However, by 2020, the mood had changed: a mere seven months later, Stoltenberg said, ‘NATO does not see China as the new enemy or an adversary. But what we see is that the rise of China is fundamentally changing the global balance of power’. NATO’s response has been to work with its partners – including Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea – ‘to address… the security consequences of the rise of China’, Stoltenberg continued. The talk of a global NATO and an Asian NATO is front and centre in these deliberations, with Stoltenberg stating in Vilnius that the idea of a liaison office in Japan is ‘on the table’.

The war in Ukraine provided new life to the Atlantic Alliance, driving several hesitant European countries – such as Sweden – into its ranks. Yet, even amongst people living within NATO countries there are groups who are sceptical of the alliance’s aims, with the Vilnius summit marked by anti-NATO protests. The Vilnius Summit Communiqué underlined Ukraine’s path into NATO and sharpened NATO’s self-defined universalism. The communiqué declares, for instance, that China challenges ‘our interests, security, and values’, with the word ‘our’ claiming to represent not only NATO countries but the entire international order. Slowly, NATO is positioning itself as a substitute for the UN, suggesting that it – and not the actual international community – is the arbiter and guardian of the world’s ‘interests, security, and values’. This view is contested by the vast majority of the world’s peoples, seven billion of whom do not even reside in NATO’s member countries (whose total population is less than one billion). Those billions wonder why it is that NATO wants to supplant the United Nations.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

As we have noted before, a systemic feature of state-corporate media is propaganda by omission. Missing out salient facts, informed commentary and context about the machinations of government and big business means that the public is less able to:

1. Understand the world around us;
2. Challenge state-corporate power; and
3. Bring about the fundamental changes in society that have never been more necessary.

Current examples are legion, as we will see in the selection that follows.

1. Journalists Pushing For Less Transparency

Last week, 21-year-old US airman Jack Texeira was arrested following, as BBC News put it: ‘[a] leak of highly classified military documents about the Ukraine war and other national security issues.’

Former UK diplomat Craig Murray pointed to a disturbing aspect of the case, namely, that Texeira was:

‘tracked down by UK secret service front Bellingcat in conjunction with the New York Times and in parallel with the Washington Post, not to help him escape or help him publish or tell people his motives, but to help the state arrest him.’

Bellingcat has been examined by, among others, Kit Klarenberg of the Grayzone who reported that the supposedly ‘independent, open-source investigations’ website has ‘accepted enormous sums from Western intelligence contractors’.

As for the New York Times and Washington Post, US journalist Glenn Greenwald noted:

‘It is indescribably shocking and sickening that the nation’s two largest media outlets were the ones who did the FBI’s work and hunted for the leaker and outed him.’

Almost as bad, he said, was that rather than press the government during a Pentagon press conference about the content of the leaked documents, journalists actually pushed for greater clampdowns on security leaks.

Murray added:

‘I am not at all surprised by Bellingcat, which is plainly a spook organisation. I hope this enables more people to see through them. But the behaviour of the New York Times and Washington Post is truly shocking. They now see their mission as to serve the security state, not public knowledge.’

He also observed that, over the past week or so, ‘nothing has been published [from the leaked material] that does not serve US propaganda narratives.’

Very little, if anything, has been reliably presented about Texeira’s motives in releasing these state documents. Murray warned readers to be sceptical of attempts to portray him as simply a ‘rampant Trump supporter’ or ‘inadequate jock’ trying ‘to boast to fellow gaming nerds.’

Murray concluded:

‘We should remain suspicious of attempts to characterise him: I am acutely aware of media portrayals of Julian Assange which are entirely untrue.’

2.  Cancelling Julian Assange

April 11 marked four years since Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, was forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London and imprisoned in the high security Belmarsh prison. He and his lawyers have been fighting the prolonged threat of extradition to the US, where he would likely spend the rest of his life in a ‘Supermax’ prison. His ‘crime’ has been to expose the nefarious activities, including serious war crimes, of the US and its allies.

As Alex Nunns, author and former speechwriter for Jeremy Corbyn, noted:

‘Probably the world’s most significant and famous journalist has been in prison for four years today for his work – not in Egypt or China or Russia, but in Britain, a country that lectures others on free speech. His imprisonment is entirely political. He should be free.’

Media Lens has documented the grotesque smears and mischaracterisations of Assange over many years, not least by the Guardian, as well as the dearth of coverage of his plight and what that means for real journalism, freedom of speech and democracy.

In a piece for international media organisation Peoples Dispatch, political writer Amish R M summarised key facts that state-corporate media have buried about Assange. These include:

• The CIA plan to kidnap and assassinate Assange in London.
• The US prosecution is based on fabricated testimony from a repeat offender, currently serving a prison sentence for sexual abuse crimes in Iceland, and described as a ‘sociopath’ by court-ordered psychologists.
• The US spied on Assange while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy.

Earlier this month, Reporters Without Borders Secretary-General Christophe Deloire and Director of Operations Rebecca Vincent were barred access to visit Assange in Belmarsh prison, despite receiving confirmation that a visit would be permitted.

In a sane world, with responsible national media outlets, the above facts would be headline news. Both BBC and ITV News at Ten would devote significant coverage to Assange’s plight and there would be extensive follow-up reporting and commentary on the parlous consequences for journalism and society. Instead, there is virtual silence.

But there is space to document the plight of Russian journalists who contradict the Kremlin’s narratives. What about journalists in this country who might try to contradict the narratives of the White House and Downing Street? Have they, in fact, already been ‘purged’ from so-called ‘mainstream’ media outlets: the word used by John Pilger to describe his treatment by the Guardian? Where is the outrage about the dumping of dissenting voices in the ‘free’ western media?

BBC News would rather direct attention to: ‘The talk-show hosts telling Russians what to believe.’ Of course, you would never see a major feature by the famously ‘impartial’ BBC News on: ‘The talk-show hosts telling Britons what to believe’ on the war in Ukraine, or anything else for that matter.

Australian writer Caitlin Johnstone describes Assange as ‘the greatest journalist of all time’. She wrote recently:

‘Assange began his journalism career by revolutionizing source protection for the digital age, then proceeded to break some of the biggest stories of the century. There’s no one who can hold a candle to him, living or dead.

‘And now he’s in a maximum security prison, solely and exclusively because he was better at doing the best kind of journalism than anyone else in the world. That is the kind of civilization you live in. The kind that imprisons the best journalist of all time for doing journalism.’

3.  Nord Stream: ‘It May Be In No One’s Interest To Reveal More’

We have previously written about the blanket of silence over attempts to get to the truth of the September 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines that supplied Russian gas to Germany. US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s report pointing to the US as the most likely perpetrator of this terrorist act have been blanked, or summarily dismissed, by state-corporate media.

Following Seymour’s report, US officials released an assessment based on ‘new intelligence’, faithfully relayed by the media, that a ‘pro-Ukrainian group’ carried out the pipeline attack. Der Spiegel then carried a news report, echoed in coverage around the world, claiming that divers used a German chartered yacht to sabotage the pipelines. There was a modicum of scepticism; journalists are not totally inept or subservient to state narratives.

But media coverage still steered clear of examining the most likely explanation of US involvement; not least given that President Joe Biden had boasted in February 2022 that the US would ‘bring an end to it [Nord Stream]’ if Russia invaded Ukraine. As Reuters reported:

‘”If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the … border of Ukraine again, then there will be … no longer a Nord Stream 2. We, we will bring an end to it,’ Biden said. Asked how, given the project is in German control, Biden said: “I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.”’

Glenn Greenwald observed recently:

‘The NYT — after feeding the public several bullshit versions about who blew up Nord Stream (an environmentally devastating act of industrial terrorism) — now announces: “it may be in no one’s interest to reveal more.”

‘Maybe there’s a clue in the article’s last 2 paragraphs?’

Here are those last two paragraphs in question:

‘And naming a Western nation or operatives could trigger deep mistrust when the West is struggling to maintain a united front [over the war in Ukraine].

‘“Is there any interest from the authorities to come out and say who did this? There are strategic reasons for not revealing who did it,” said Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen, a Danish naval commander and military expert at the University of Copenhagen. “As long as they don’t come out with anything substantial, then we are left in the dark on all this — as it should be.”’

The NYT even emphasised the point in its tweet highlighting their article:

‘Intelligence leaks surrounding who blew up most of the Russian-backed Nord Stream pipelines last September have provided more questions than answers. It may be in no one’s interest to reveal more.’

So, if you still harbour the illusion that ‘mainstream’ journalism can be relied upon to report the truth to the public, rather than covering it up, you may have to reconsider what even the ‘best’ news media, including the NYT, the BBC and the Guardian, do routinely.

4. Propaganda Operations That Remain Hidden

One of the central tenets of western political ideology is that ‘we’ have free access to information, and that only ‘the other side’ does propaganda, a dirty word that we are not supposed to discuss; except, when it does get mentioned in polite company, it is termed ‘counter-disinformation’. In other words, it is information that is intended to ‘counter’ the ‘misleading’ narratives spun by ‘official enemies’.

Last month, the UK government announced ‘emergency funding’ of £4.1 million ‘to fight Russian disinformation’. The press release stated that this large sum would help the BBC World Service continue to bring:

‘independent, impartial and accurate news to people in Ukraine and Russia in the face of increased propaganda from the Russian state.’

Of course, we are expected to swallow the myth that we in the West already enjoy ‘independent, impartial and accurate news’ from the BBC.

But, as John McEvoy and Mark Curtis of the Declassified UK website recently highlighted:

‘Britain’s media routinely takes information from private groups countering Russian and other disinformation without saying these organisations are funded by the UK government and directed by people linked to the UK or US foreign policy establishment.’

The same authors reported earlier this month that the UK Foreign Office has given over £25 million since January 2018 to organisations targeting ‘disinformation’. Four of these organisations are directed by former members of the British and US foreign policy establishment and are focused overwhelmingly on ‘official enemies’.

McEvoy and Curtis observed:

‘These organisations tend to focus on Russian war crimes and information operations, particularly in Ukraine, while failing to conduct comparable investigations into Britain, the US or NATO.

‘Much of these groups’ research is thus unidirectional, presenting malign information operations as the sole domain of enemies identified by the UK government. The impact is likely to be one-sided information entering the public news arena.’

Indeed, unsuspecting members of the public will have no idea that analysis from supposedly ‘independent’ experts commenting on the war in Ukraine often comes from Foreign Office-funded organisations.

In particular, Declassified UK noted of two such organisations:

• 25 Guardian and Observer articles referenced the Atlantic Council Digital Forensic Research Lab, none of which mention its funding by the UK and US governments.
• The Centre for Information Resilience were referenced 29 times in the UK media, with only one article mentioning its UK government funding.

Also buried by state-corporate media is the extent and nature of the UK’s global militarism since 1945. Curtis reported earlier this year that:

‘Britain has deployed its armed forces for combat over 80 times in 47 countries since the end of the Second World War, in episodes ranging from brutal colonial wars and covert operations to efforts to prop up favoured governments or to deter civil unrest.’

Faithful consumers of British media over this period, right up to the present day, are meant to believe that successive UK governments have been acting out of benign intent in such foreign ‘interventions’. To unearth the reality requires digging deeper and further than the tightly-restricted domain overseen by state-corporate media.

Concluding Remarks

The above sections are but a taste of the systematic blanking, sidelining and even smearing of those who present facts and perspectives that challenge state-corporate policies and pronouncements. In an era of volatile international tensions, threat of nuclear conflict, class warfare against the majority of the population, inhumanity towards refugees, and the overarching spectre of the climate crisis, the propaganda system needs to be exposed and replaced by genuine public-interest media.

Do you think electing establishment stooge Sir Keir Starmer is a solution to any of this? Or do you see that his promotion by establishment media, not least the Guardian, is how the establishment seeks to perpetuate its own interests?

Alex Nunns, mentioned earlier, recently noted that when Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader it ‘gave the Labour right the fright of their lives’. Nunns explained:

‘Suddenly the right saw the left as an existential threat. Whatever electoral benefits there were to having the left in the tent were outweighed by the risk of the Labour right permanently losing the party they saw as their property.’

Starmer and his supporters in the party are determined to ensure that the prospects of a left-wing Labour leadership are permanently crushed. Banning Corbyn from standing for Labour in the next General Election is:

‘about sending a message, first to the left, and second to the establishment, that they have nothing to fear from a tamed Labour Party. They want to prove that the insurgent, radical leftism that Corbyn represented will never be repeated.’

In this very real sense, the current Labour Party is part of the established interests that are determined to suppress grassroots opposition to endless war, class exploitation and the steps required to avert the worst of the onrushing climate catastrophe.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.