Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Monday, December 29, 2014
Rewarding the criminals: how global capitalism preys upon the poor
by Jiwan Kshetry
Corporations wiping out large chunks of biodiversity and killing people with impunity in Honduras and Brazil in collusion with the corrupt state machinery, are being rewarded for their contribution to 'clean development' as are those throwing hundreds into abject poverty and total unemployment in India. At the end, however, their projects are not 'clean' with no net gain for environment in terms of carbon emission. In its march from one triumph to another, global capitalism brutally preys upon the poorest, weakest and the most vulnerable.
We are an inclusive company that respects and celebrates the diversity and human rights of its employees, customers and communities. But we never stop trying to improve as a company, employer and member of the community.
A corporation concerned about the human rights of the employees, customers and communities, isn't that something we are desperately looking for?
That was how Miguel Facusse, arguably the most powerful businessman in Honduras responded to the news that he was being awarded with CEAL International Award by Business Council of Latin America (CEAL).
Now juxtapose the noble words of Facusse with these words from the 'unidentified' kidnappers who threatened the MUCA (Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán) journalist Karla Zelaya on 23 October 2012 after kidnapping her: "This time you’re lucky. We’re not going to kill you because you’re worth more to us alive than dead."
The association of these people to Facusse is the open secret in Honduras as is the collusion between the Facusse's militia and the state's security forces, particularly after the 2009 coup-de-tat that deposed the democratically elected president. According to the Front for Popular National Resistance (FNRP), this new act of violence happened after two more campesinos or peasant farmers were killed over the weekend and three more were found buried in Farallones, lands belonging to Miguel Facussé.
The news coming from Honduras over the past few months is equally horrifying as indicated by these two reports (here and here) from Amnesty International. After brutal murder of campesino leader Margarita Murilo on 27 August, another leader Juan Angel Lopez Miralda met with the same fate on 11 November this year.
After all, how long could have they tolerated Murilo—a survivor of twenty-two days of detention and torture in the 1980's and life-long fighter against the oppressive state—who dared say this after disappearance of her son in 2009: "If the army took my son to deter me, it was very poor judgment on their part. I've been in struggle for twenty-five years; I'm not going to abandon it."
Obviously, the state was forced to deter her by taking her life itself. Even though Facusse and his corporation are not mentioned in the AI reports, there is no doubt as to either the motive or the mechanism of her elimination.
With thousands of hectares of lands in Bazo Aguan region itself and more elsewhere, Facusse has every reason to eliminate anyone who advocates the rights of the creatures who claim to be the rightful owners of the same land. Himself having been the economic advisor for one of the Honduran past presidents and counting another past president as his own nephew, there is literally nothing Facusse cannot do in Honduras.
There is no dearth of people like Facusse in this world where capitalism rules the roost. If we look closely, every developing country and economy has its own shares of Facusses who not only decide who wins and who loses in elections but also can depose or oust those who refuse to play by their rule after gaining power. Indeed, these super-wealthy tycoons—with opaque business activities and capability to both make and break rules and governments—in the under-developed countries, are the equivalents of the wealthy and powerful multinational corporations in the developed countries and economies.
The neo-liberal theologians would like us to believe that these people who value their own wealth-gathering much more than lives of hundreds to thousands of paupers out in the communities are a transitory phenomenon before rule of law comes to fruition in these modernizing societies. In other words, we should bear with plutocracy and mass pauperization for the sake of capitalist economic development that will somehow lead us into more prosperous if not egalitarian societies.
Is that the truth, after all? Let's draw some similarities between Facusse's Dinant corporation and Vallourec & Mannesmann Tubes (V&M), a joint venture of French Vallourec Group (with more than 23,000 employees, sales of $5.3 billion in 2012, 78% generated outside Europe, according to Compay's site) and German Mannesmannrohren-Werke AG.
To start with, contempt and disregard for human rights is equally strong in both. As Facusse's militia shoot the peasants in Honduras point blank and leave them to rot in the fields before police can take their body, V&M poisons the lands to clear the natural vegetation in Brazil for its vast eucalyptus plantations. As the usual fruits—the means of livelihood—and the underground water sources disappear, people in small towns like Minas Grais are forced into hunger and misery all the same. Those who dare to raise a finger at V&M here are killed as mercilessly as those challenging Dinant in Honduras are.
The similarities, however, do not end there. Both the companies are now beneficiaries of a supposedly noble initiative from Kyoto protocol intended to reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emission. While Dinant's palm trees are used to produce supposedly 'renewable' bio-fuels, V&M's eucalyptus are used to make 'renewable' coal. They trade off their carbon credits to other big industrial polluters thereby receiving huge amount of money under the 'Clean Development Mechanism' of the UN and the World Bank. At the end however, both the biofuel and coal go on to be burnt thereby emitting the greenhouse gases.
Net outcome: as people keep being killed or stifled in Brazil and Honduras, profits for corporations like Dinant and V&M keep rising exponentially, the biodiversity being irrecoverably damaged in both the supposedly noble sources of clean development.
As Clive L Spash articulates in a well-researched article titled 'The brave new world of Carbon Trade':
That tells a lot about why the plight of indigenous people in Brazil, Honduras and elsewhere rarely makes it to the mainstream media even as the street protests against leaders like Brazil's Rousseff and Venezuela's Maduro receive a round-the-clock coverage.
But even as the mainstream media works day and night to manufacture consent for the neo-liberal economic order and the resulting political order thereby obfuscating the reality, not everybody has abandoned the poor and the downtrodden. Plight of these people in Brazil and Honduras has been retold vividly in the 2012 documentary 'The Carbon Rush' directed by social justice organizer and activist Amy Miller. The documentary was shown as the part of recently concluded Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival in Kathmandu (KIMFF), leaving the audience flabbergasted.
The documentary brilliantly captures the misfortune of the victims of some more projects under the so called clean development mechanism including the one in India which snatches the livelihood of the rag-pickers. As a big company moves on to produce energy from the garbage (the amount of energy produced being minimal as air pollution reaches intolerable levels with use of incinerators in residential areas) it is also bestowed with monopoly in recycling the recyclables from the garbage forcing the already poor people into a vicious cycle of abject poverty and total unemployment.
So, what is in the store for these people duped by their states and hounded by the wealthy? The smart and educated people in India may not have exactly petitioned the US president the way their Brazilian counterparts did but their attitude about the economic and social malaise of the society is also basically the same. The only solution to the crushing poverty and rampant unemployment is, for them, to let the wealthy corporations exploit the natural resources even faster—thereby transforming this planet into unlivable garbage dump even earlier than it would otherwise become—so that more jobs are created. The living conditions of the workers and the plight of the displaced people is the luxury that the state cannot afford to ponder over at this point of time.
It is then no wonder that after Narendra Modi came to power in India with a promise to 'development', his government is now going to depend on the 'utmost good faith' of the polluting industries to control pollution rather than strict laws enforced by the state.
So, when will this mad rush to seek solution of every problem in endless economic growth end? As the wealth gap widens between the rich and poor leaving the wealthy few increasingly beholden to the remainder of the rapidly depleting natural resources in the planet, how many more millions of people will have to suffer before the illusion of mankind's invincibility over the nature crashes?
Miguel Facusse is already over 90 and still wants to gather wealth at the cost of thousands of Honduran lives. But, will the fragile ecosystem of the planet survive for another 90 years without a major disruption? Even if it does not survive, Facusse will be long gone by then having left a disastrous track record of swallowing up entire genera and multiple species of flora and fauna in the South American continent for his palm plantations. Likely, the V&M's owners will also be gone by that time contributing to loss of an even large chunk of biodiversity in the planet for their eucalyptus plantations. But who can blame them? They are neither the biggest nor the last culprits in the whole sordid saga.
These people will be remembered especially for one reason though: as they tore through the ecosystem speeding the degradation of the most bio-diverse parts of planet earth, they were being paid for precisely the opposite of that, in other words, they were getting rewards instead of punishments for their crimes.
Author is a Kathmandu-based freelance writer who regularly blogs at South Asia and Beyond.
Corporations wiping out large chunks of biodiversity and killing people with impunity in Honduras and Brazil in collusion with the corrupt state machinery, are being rewarded for their contribution to 'clean development' as are those throwing hundreds into abject poverty and total unemployment in India. At the end, however, their projects are not 'clean' with no net gain for environment in terms of carbon emission. In its march from one triumph to another, global capitalism brutally preys upon the poorest, weakest and the most vulnerable.
We are an inclusive company that respects and celebrates the diversity and human rights of its employees, customers and communities. But we never stop trying to improve as a company, employer and member of the community.
A corporation concerned about the human rights of the employees, customers and communities, isn't that something we are desperately looking for?
That was how Miguel Facusse, arguably the most powerful businessman in Honduras responded to the news that he was being awarded with CEAL International Award by Business Council of Latin America (CEAL).
Now juxtapose the noble words of Facusse with these words from the 'unidentified' kidnappers who threatened the MUCA (Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán) journalist Karla Zelaya on 23 October 2012 after kidnapping her: "This time you’re lucky. We’re not going to kill you because you’re worth more to us alive than dead."
The association of these people to Facusse is the open secret in Honduras as is the collusion between the Facusse's militia and the state's security forces, particularly after the 2009 coup-de-tat that deposed the democratically elected president. According to the Front for Popular National Resistance (FNRP), this new act of violence happened after two more campesinos or peasant farmers were killed over the weekend and three more were found buried in Farallones, lands belonging to Miguel Facussé.
The news coming from Honduras over the past few months is equally horrifying as indicated by these two reports (here and here) from Amnesty International. After brutal murder of campesino leader Margarita Murilo on 27 August, another leader Juan Angel Lopez Miralda met with the same fate on 11 November this year.
After all, how long could have they tolerated Murilo—a survivor of twenty-two days of detention and torture in the 1980's and life-long fighter against the oppressive state—who dared say this after disappearance of her son in 2009: "If the army took my son to deter me, it was very poor judgment on their part. I've been in struggle for twenty-five years; I'm not going to abandon it."
Obviously, the state was forced to deter her by taking her life itself. Even though Facusse and his corporation are not mentioned in the AI reports, there is no doubt as to either the motive or the mechanism of her elimination.
With thousands of hectares of lands in Bazo Aguan region itself and more elsewhere, Facusse has every reason to eliminate anyone who advocates the rights of the creatures who claim to be the rightful owners of the same land. Himself having been the economic advisor for one of the Honduran past presidents and counting another past president as his own nephew, there is literally nothing Facusse cannot do in Honduras.
There is no dearth of people like Facusse in this world where capitalism rules the roost. If we look closely, every developing country and economy has its own shares of Facusses who not only decide who wins and who loses in elections but also can depose or oust those who refuse to play by their rule after gaining power. Indeed, these super-wealthy tycoons—with opaque business activities and capability to both make and break rules and governments—in the under-developed countries, are the equivalents of the wealthy and powerful multinational corporations in the developed countries and economies.
The neo-liberal theologians would like us to believe that these people who value their own wealth-gathering much more than lives of hundreds to thousands of paupers out in the communities are a transitory phenomenon before rule of law comes to fruition in these modernizing societies. In other words, we should bear with plutocracy and mass pauperization for the sake of capitalist economic development that will somehow lead us into more prosperous if not egalitarian societies.
Is that the truth, after all? Let's draw some similarities between Facusse's Dinant corporation and Vallourec & Mannesmann Tubes (V&M), a joint venture of French Vallourec Group (with more than 23,000 employees, sales of $5.3 billion in 2012, 78% generated outside Europe, according to Compay's site) and German Mannesmannrohren-Werke AG.
To start with, contempt and disregard for human rights is equally strong in both. As Facusse's militia shoot the peasants in Honduras point blank and leave them to rot in the fields before police can take their body, V&M poisons the lands to clear the natural vegetation in Brazil for its vast eucalyptus plantations. As the usual fruits—the means of livelihood—and the underground water sources disappear, people in small towns like Minas Grais are forced into hunger and misery all the same. Those who dare to raise a finger at V&M here are killed as mercilessly as those challenging Dinant in Honduras are.
The similarities, however, do not end there. Both the companies are now beneficiaries of a supposedly noble initiative from Kyoto protocol intended to reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emission. While Dinant's palm trees are used to produce supposedly 'renewable' bio-fuels, V&M's eucalyptus are used to make 'renewable' coal. They trade off their carbon credits to other big industrial polluters thereby receiving huge amount of money under the 'Clean Development Mechanism' of the UN and the World Bank. At the end however, both the biofuel and coal go on to be burnt thereby emitting the greenhouse gases.
Net outcome: as people keep being killed or stifled in Brazil and Honduras, profits for corporations like Dinant and V&M keep rising exponentially, the biodiversity being irrecoverably damaged in both the supposedly noble sources of clean development.
As Clive L Spash articulates in a well-researched article titled 'The brave new world of Carbon Trade':
The pervasiveness of the greenhouse gas emissions, strong uncertainty and complexity combine to prevent economists from substantiating their theoretical claims of cost-effectiveness. Corporate power is shown to be a major force affecting emissions market operation and design. The potential for manipulation to achieve financial gain, while showing little regard for environmental and social consequences, is evident as markets have extended internationally and via trading offsets. (...) I conclude that the focus on such markets is creating a distraction from the need for changing human behavior, institutions and infrastructure.As fortunes of people like Facusse multiply overnight, the real sufferers of the whole fiasco live in abject poverty and increasing marginalization. As their fellow citizens face brutality of the forest rangers from V&M and other big companies, the Brazilian middle class is pre-occupied by something else. Apparently, the Rousseff administration's sellout to the corporations is too little for them: 142,000 of them recently signed a petition on the White House Website asking 'president Obama' to take a stand against the 'Bolivarian Communist expansion in Brazil promoted by the administration of Dilma Rousseff'.
That tells a lot about why the plight of indigenous people in Brazil, Honduras and elsewhere rarely makes it to the mainstream media even as the street protests against leaders like Brazil's Rousseff and Venezuela's Maduro receive a round-the-clock coverage.
But even as the mainstream media works day and night to manufacture consent for the neo-liberal economic order and the resulting political order thereby obfuscating the reality, not everybody has abandoned the poor and the downtrodden. Plight of these people in Brazil and Honduras has been retold vividly in the 2012 documentary 'The Carbon Rush' directed by social justice organizer and activist Amy Miller. The documentary was shown as the part of recently concluded Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival in Kathmandu (KIMFF), leaving the audience flabbergasted.
The documentary brilliantly captures the misfortune of the victims of some more projects under the so called clean development mechanism including the one in India which snatches the livelihood of the rag-pickers. As a big company moves on to produce energy from the garbage (the amount of energy produced being minimal as air pollution reaches intolerable levels with use of incinerators in residential areas) it is also bestowed with monopoly in recycling the recyclables from the garbage forcing the already poor people into a vicious cycle of abject poverty and total unemployment.
So, what is in the store for these people duped by their states and hounded by the wealthy? The smart and educated people in India may not have exactly petitioned the US president the way their Brazilian counterparts did but their attitude about the economic and social malaise of the society is also basically the same. The only solution to the crushing poverty and rampant unemployment is, for them, to let the wealthy corporations exploit the natural resources even faster—thereby transforming this planet into unlivable garbage dump even earlier than it would otherwise become—so that more jobs are created. The living conditions of the workers and the plight of the displaced people is the luxury that the state cannot afford to ponder over at this point of time.
It is then no wonder that after Narendra Modi came to power in India with a promise to 'development', his government is now going to depend on the 'utmost good faith' of the polluting industries to control pollution rather than strict laws enforced by the state.
So, when will this mad rush to seek solution of every problem in endless economic growth end? As the wealth gap widens between the rich and poor leaving the wealthy few increasingly beholden to the remainder of the rapidly depleting natural resources in the planet, how many more millions of people will have to suffer before the illusion of mankind's invincibility over the nature crashes?
Miguel Facusse is already over 90 and still wants to gather wealth at the cost of thousands of Honduran lives. But, will the fragile ecosystem of the planet survive for another 90 years without a major disruption? Even if it does not survive, Facusse will be long gone by then having left a disastrous track record of swallowing up entire genera and multiple species of flora and fauna in the South American continent for his palm plantations. Likely, the V&M's owners will also be gone by that time contributing to loss of an even large chunk of biodiversity in the planet for their eucalyptus plantations. But who can blame them? They are neither the biggest nor the last culprits in the whole sordid saga.
These people will be remembered especially for one reason though: as they tore through the ecosystem speeding the degradation of the most bio-diverse parts of planet earth, they were being paid for precisely the opposite of that, in other words, they were getting rewards instead of punishments for their crimes.
Author is a Kathmandu-based freelance writer who regularly blogs at South Asia and Beyond.
Europe Beware! – WWIII could destroy Europe for the third time in a Century
by Peter Koenig
Washington is hell-bent on a war with Russia. It is part of the PNAC (Plan for a New American Century) to take over the world. After Russia, China would follow. That’s the plan. China is being encircled as we speak. Never mind that Russia and China have recently concluded a pact, a close financial and military alliance – which to defeat will be next to impossible.
Unless – and here is the crux of the matter – unless Washington initiates an all-out nuclear war, destroying the planet, including itself – but foremost Europe.
Of NATO’s 28 member countries, 26 are in Europe, of which 12 in Eastern Europe, countries that used to be part of or ‘dependencies’ of the former Soviet Union. And this happened despite Washington’s promise at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, not to expand NATO eastward. A lie and sheer affront to Russia.
This provocation is exacerbated today by the US’s further arming the NATO bases of Poland and Latvia, and by NATO’s considering Ukraine’s urgent call – or rather, the call of the Washington installed Kiev Nazi thugs – for NATO protection and to become a NATO member as soon as possible.
Imagine, NATO at Moscow’s doorstep. Would the Kremlin just bow and accept it? – Hardly. With NATO bases in 26 European countries – Guess – who would be the logical center of the next war theatre?
Do the Obama stooges not realize this? – Do the vassals have no brains? Or would the coward leaders (sic) escape to Florida, while their people smolder to dust? – Wake up, Europe! Wake up! – People of Europe, take back your countries from the neoliberal puppets, from your spine and brainless coward leaders.
In fact, the West led by the naked emperor is currently waging war against Russia on several fronts: relentless anti-Russia, anti-Putin propaganda, by the Zionist-Anglo-Saxon controlled MSM; arming and equipping the Kiev war criminals that has led to at least 5,000 savagely killed Donbass inhabitants most of whom civilians, women and children, and more than a million homeless refugees into Russia; CIA inspired false flag operations, like the downing by Kiev’s air force of Malaysian Air MH17, killing 298 people; a salvo of countless economic sanctions which, albeit, hurt Europe more than Russia; and a currency war with an engineered fall of the ruble, combined with an ‘engineered’ drop of oil prices by conspiring with the Saudi clowns for overproduction, a stab not only at Russia, but also at the economies of others who refuse to bend to Washington’s dictum, like Iran and Venezuela.
Russia is taking all of it with calm. Vladimir Putin is a chess player par excellence, out-maneuvering the west at every move. In addition to Russia’s large foreign exchange reserves – estimated at close to half a trillion dollars equivalent – Ms. Elvira Nabiullina, President of Russia’s Central Bank, entered into a currency swap agreement with China, pitting their combined economies, constituting about 27% of the world’s GDP (2014 est. US$85 trillion) against the western economic aggressions.
A few days ago Russia’s Central Bank started buying back cheap, down-graded rubles with its excess foreign reserves. The Russian currency gained 10% alone on 17 December, last day of trading before the weekend. With the fall of the ruble, foreign shareholders of Russian corporations, especially in Europe and the US, were afraid of losing out under a ruble collapse. They shed their shares – which Russia quickly repatriated, thereby not only returning foreign holdings of Russian stock into Russian coffers, but also cashing in on the dividends of these stocks. According to some accounts (Spiegel Online), with this move alone Russia earned some 20 billion dollars.
It looks like the economic and propaganda war is being won by Russia. On the political western front things are crumbling too. Hungary’s government, a member of the EU and of NATO, has just declared an alliance with Russia against Washington. Turkey, once a contender to enter the EU, is disgusted with Europe and in instead aiming at membership in the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization). Turkey is a strategic key NATO member. Will others follow suit, as more and more are seeing the emperor’s nakedness and malignancy?
The veils are falling. Gradually. So-called allies of the empire are wary since long. Afraid of ‘sanctions’ or worse, of a possible take-over by the merciless killing machine, they have nodded and played along. But, as they see the implosion of the beast, they increasingly dare jumping ship.
Europe – be aware! The center of the next war might again be Europe. A dying beast knows no mercy. It rather destroys the universe and itself than leaving survivors behind. – Unless it’s poisonous and killing tentacles can be paralyzed – terminally, by economic isolation; by abandoning the dollar; by making this worthless currency irrelevant and obsolete. For good.
Europe – it’s not too late! Your economic future is in your autonomy; in an alliance of you, Europe, a coalition of sovereign nations, with the east – an alliance with the promising new Silk Road. Mr. Xi Jinping’s offer to Madame Merkel this past spring is still open. Neoliberal thinking is short-term thinking. Instant profit for instant debt.
Europe, take the lead. Break loose from the corrupt debt-ridden dollar casino scheme. A new ruble-yuan based monetary system is in the making. The basket may soon expand by other BRICS currencies – and, who knows, maybe the Euro? – Our children, grandchildren and their children deserve a future of peace and harmony and wellbeing.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, the Voice of Russia, now Ria Novosti, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe.
Washington is hell-bent on a war with Russia. It is part of the PNAC (Plan for a New American Century) to take over the world. After Russia, China would follow. That’s the plan. China is being encircled as we speak. Never mind that Russia and China have recently concluded a pact, a close financial and military alliance – which to defeat will be next to impossible.
Unless – and here is the crux of the matter – unless Washington initiates an all-out nuclear war, destroying the planet, including itself – but foremost Europe.
Of NATO’s 28 member countries, 26 are in Europe, of which 12 in Eastern Europe, countries that used to be part of or ‘dependencies’ of the former Soviet Union. And this happened despite Washington’s promise at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, not to expand NATO eastward. A lie and sheer affront to Russia.
This provocation is exacerbated today by the US’s further arming the NATO bases of Poland and Latvia, and by NATO’s considering Ukraine’s urgent call – or rather, the call of the Washington installed Kiev Nazi thugs – for NATO protection and to become a NATO member as soon as possible.
Imagine, NATO at Moscow’s doorstep. Would the Kremlin just bow and accept it? – Hardly. With NATO bases in 26 European countries – Guess – who would be the logical center of the next war theatre?
Do the Obama stooges not realize this? – Do the vassals have no brains? Or would the coward leaders (sic) escape to Florida, while their people smolder to dust? – Wake up, Europe! Wake up! – People of Europe, take back your countries from the neoliberal puppets, from your spine and brainless coward leaders.
In fact, the West led by the naked emperor is currently waging war against Russia on several fronts: relentless anti-Russia, anti-Putin propaganda, by the Zionist-Anglo-Saxon controlled MSM; arming and equipping the Kiev war criminals that has led to at least 5,000 savagely killed Donbass inhabitants most of whom civilians, women and children, and more than a million homeless refugees into Russia; CIA inspired false flag operations, like the downing by Kiev’s air force of Malaysian Air MH17, killing 298 people; a salvo of countless economic sanctions which, albeit, hurt Europe more than Russia; and a currency war with an engineered fall of the ruble, combined with an ‘engineered’ drop of oil prices by conspiring with the Saudi clowns for overproduction, a stab not only at Russia, but also at the economies of others who refuse to bend to Washington’s dictum, like Iran and Venezuela.
Russia is taking all of it with calm. Vladimir Putin is a chess player par excellence, out-maneuvering the west at every move. In addition to Russia’s large foreign exchange reserves – estimated at close to half a trillion dollars equivalent – Ms. Elvira Nabiullina, President of Russia’s Central Bank, entered into a currency swap agreement with China, pitting their combined economies, constituting about 27% of the world’s GDP (2014 est. US$85 trillion) against the western economic aggressions.
A few days ago Russia’s Central Bank started buying back cheap, down-graded rubles with its excess foreign reserves. The Russian currency gained 10% alone on 17 December, last day of trading before the weekend. With the fall of the ruble, foreign shareholders of Russian corporations, especially in Europe and the US, were afraid of losing out under a ruble collapse. They shed their shares – which Russia quickly repatriated, thereby not only returning foreign holdings of Russian stock into Russian coffers, but also cashing in on the dividends of these stocks. According to some accounts (Spiegel Online), with this move alone Russia earned some 20 billion dollars.
It looks like the economic and propaganda war is being won by Russia. On the political western front things are crumbling too. Hungary’s government, a member of the EU and of NATO, has just declared an alliance with Russia against Washington. Turkey, once a contender to enter the EU, is disgusted with Europe and in instead aiming at membership in the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization). Turkey is a strategic key NATO member. Will others follow suit, as more and more are seeing the emperor’s nakedness and malignancy?
The veils are falling. Gradually. So-called allies of the empire are wary since long. Afraid of ‘sanctions’ or worse, of a possible take-over by the merciless killing machine, they have nodded and played along. But, as they see the implosion of the beast, they increasingly dare jumping ship.
Europe – be aware! The center of the next war might again be Europe. A dying beast knows no mercy. It rather destroys the universe and itself than leaving survivors behind. – Unless it’s poisonous and killing tentacles can be paralyzed – terminally, by economic isolation; by abandoning the dollar; by making this worthless currency irrelevant and obsolete. For good.
Europe – it’s not too late! Your economic future is in your autonomy; in an alliance of you, Europe, a coalition of sovereign nations, with the east – an alliance with the promising new Silk Road. Mr. Xi Jinping’s offer to Madame Merkel this past spring is still open. Neoliberal thinking is short-term thinking. Instant profit for instant debt.
Europe, take the lead. Break loose from the corrupt debt-ridden dollar casino scheme. A new ruble-yuan based monetary system is in the making. The basket may soon expand by other BRICS currencies – and, who knows, maybe the Euro? – Our children, grandchildren and their children deserve a future of peace and harmony and wellbeing.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, the Voice of Russia, now Ria Novosti, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe.
Why America Can't Stop
by Mikhail Khazin
Translated by Roobit
Or an attempt to describe how US problems correlate with international security.
On several past occasions I have written that the United States is deliberately destroying the entire system of international security, the same system that they had built together with the USSR. Why did they start dismantling the international security system is also understandable, in the 1990s the generation of “victors” came to power in that country, these people are convinced that they had “defeated” the USSR (as our theory explains it is obviously not so, please refer to http://worldcrisis.ru/crisis/188291 ) and because they are “victors” they may do anything they please. They decided that collective security arrangements are onerous, and that they need their own security system, the one that only they will have control over.
If we were to evaluate rhetoric of individuals who were in charge of the states that were admitted as new NATO members in the last 20 years, then we can figure out the logic that stands behind the expansion (and perhaps a bit even farther still). “We are being threatened and the USA is our only possible protection, therefore we must all be integrated within a US-centered security structure.” This was all going on while Russia, as a matter of principle, was not participating in affairs of those countries (not even in those of the Ukraine, which was abandoned to its own devices, something that has to a great extent caused the recent events in that country), Russia was not a threat to anyone (and of course it is not a threat to anyone now), the point of this all was deliberate destruction of the old global security system, in which Russia used to play a key role.
Obviously constructing a new security system from scratch is an endeavor that is both expensive and slow, and that is the prime reason why on some issues (such as nuclear disarmament) the United States continued to talk with Russia although the background of those communications can be best expressed through a formula: we only talk about questions which we consider to be of interest to us, and the rest is not really your business. The trouble is that all those plans, which were developed in the 90s and which they began to implement during 2000s (quite possibly, the events of September 11, 2001 http://worldcrisis.ru/crisis/86502 were organized to launch the execution of those plans, same way as the Pearl Harbor was staged to extract the United States from its “embrace of isolationism”), so those plans had been based on the premise of continuous economic growth, itself founded upon the primacy of America's resources. Instead they ended up with a crisis, which has significantly reduced those available “resources.”
I must note that the period of capture of former Socialist Commonwealth's markets has indeed become “the golden age” of American economy, even their budget scored a surplus. But our work in 2001 in which we evaluated the balance between different branches of American economy in the 1998 showed that ( http://worldcrisis.ru/crisis/73174 ) already then the US economy was standing on the brink of abyss comparable to where it found itself in the early 1930s. Today's picture is far more frightening and what can be done about it unclear as well. The old security model has been destroyed. Trust cannot be restored, a new model does not exist, there are some elements of it here and there, but they function only if the US directly intervenes into the process. Intervention factually consists of allocating large sums of money to all participants in the process, and it is faulty: Palestine, ISIS, etc.
This is happening while the situation inside the US worsens. The problem is that for a long time they have a barrier in place that has separated the elite from the rest of the society, the barrier of the kind that's only being built here (in Russia). American educational system, and I mean educational system that prepares societal leaders, has been destroyed already back in the 1960s, an average citizen (the sheep in the parlance of the elite) has actually no chances of advancement to an upper “elite” level, the one from which the society is being governed. A successful marriage could serve as a theoretical exception, but this social advancement mechanism cannot be employed in a systemic fashion. However for those few who are born active, unless the punitive psychiatry destroys them at a tender age or they fall victim to juvenile justice, something that now gets written a lot about, for them there are still mechanisms for upward social mobility which could bring them up to the level of technocratic elite.
The trouble is that in the course of this half of a century they've had accumulated lots of people who are absolutely unprepared to tolerate a sharp decline in their standards of living. But along with the worsening of the economic crisis, in order to maintain their grip on power and their status the “actual” elites must most definitely reduce the living standard of these population strata of the American society. And that can push the system up onto the critical level of mutual contradictions. Because internal resources necessary for maintenance of the quality of life of this so called upper middle class are depleted, they need to find some substitute external resources. To phrase it differently: the United States can only preserve domestic social stability at the expense of someone else.
Here we stumble upon remnants of the old security system. The Bretton Woods system was based upon a premise that all assets of participating member states will be dollar denominated. So fresh dollars were printed along with introduction of new assets into the system, and the US elites could then work out how those dollars are to be shared with the elites of those new countries (or regions) that were about to be incorporated within this dollar zone. How those regional elites were going to split those dollars with their own population was their own concern. But there are no more assets to be brought into the system, consequently no new dollars are being printed, and worse than that, existing dollars are being redistributed for America's benefit through US controlled world dollar system. This makes internal conflicts in many of the world's countries all but unavoidable.
Some of those conflicts are at their beginning stage while others are already burning hot, but their essence is all he same, counter-elites, the ones who were not let into the proverbial dollar cookie jar now make claims upon existing elites demanding either to restore the scale of support they get (that means that the old elites must commence financing of the economy from their own pockets) or yield power and get out of the way. Most obvious that because those existing elites are all pro-American, the scenario is developing under accompaniment of increasingly anti-American rhetoric.
We would like to remind you that similar processes already took place in Latin America after the investment flows from the United States changed their direction in aftermath of the Second World War. There the finale was either a breakdown of the economy or emergence of new forces at the helm of the state, frequently personified by brutal dictators, and sometimes, like in Chile, both a combination of both developments. What is going to happen to the world's regions is an open question, but the choice of means to control the situation which remains at America’s disposal is shrinking dramatically.
The United States are obviously witnessing these processes and are impotent to do anything about them. From that standpoints, Obama's officials are no different from Putin, he might not like Nabiullina's policies but he cannot just fire her because giving her the boot would destroy the consensus of the elites (and he's too hesitant as doesn't venture to reign in the elites), likewise the administration team in the US is unable to go against their elites, which adamantly refuse considering anything that might somehow threaten their status. And that in turn means that rocking the boat is forbidden!
That can be defined as: sudden moves that can be interpreted as a game changer which in turn might alter the very rules that the United States has introduced in the decade of 2000 and such moves are not allowed. For example, you cannot just change borders. Possibly, if the United States could turn the clock back, then they might have left the Pandora's box safely closed and would not have amputated Kosovo from Serbia, but what's done is done, besides that all happened during prosperous 90s. But to permit the phenomenon of Crimea (or anything similar) is just impermissible. Because if we allow to change borders on a regional level, then entire Eastern Europe, the Middle East and many other areas will turn into serious war theaters.
Essentially we are the ones who understand that this is unavoidable, but American elites will never come to grips with that (and that's why our economic theory is something they would never agree with), this why they will do whatever it takes to postpone their own end, they'll drag it until the whole structure collapses upon them on its own. In that sense, it is implausible to expect that they would remove sanctions or that they will somehow agree to us acting independently. Perhaps they would be happy to but they are prisoners of their own system.
Translated by Roobit
Or an attempt to describe how US problems correlate with international security.
On several past occasions I have written that the United States is deliberately destroying the entire system of international security, the same system that they had built together with the USSR. Why did they start dismantling the international security system is also understandable, in the 1990s the generation of “victors” came to power in that country, these people are convinced that they had “defeated” the USSR (as our theory explains it is obviously not so, please refer to http://worldcrisis.ru/crisis/188291 ) and because they are “victors” they may do anything they please. They decided that collective security arrangements are onerous, and that they need their own security system, the one that only they will have control over.
If we were to evaluate rhetoric of individuals who were in charge of the states that were admitted as new NATO members in the last 20 years, then we can figure out the logic that stands behind the expansion (and perhaps a bit even farther still). “We are being threatened and the USA is our only possible protection, therefore we must all be integrated within a US-centered security structure.” This was all going on while Russia, as a matter of principle, was not participating in affairs of those countries (not even in those of the Ukraine, which was abandoned to its own devices, something that has to a great extent caused the recent events in that country), Russia was not a threat to anyone (and of course it is not a threat to anyone now), the point of this all was deliberate destruction of the old global security system, in which Russia used to play a key role.
Obviously constructing a new security system from scratch is an endeavor that is both expensive and slow, and that is the prime reason why on some issues (such as nuclear disarmament) the United States continued to talk with Russia although the background of those communications can be best expressed through a formula: we only talk about questions which we consider to be of interest to us, and the rest is not really your business. The trouble is that all those plans, which were developed in the 90s and which they began to implement during 2000s (quite possibly, the events of September 11, 2001 http://worldcrisis.ru/crisis/86502 were organized to launch the execution of those plans, same way as the Pearl Harbor was staged to extract the United States from its “embrace of isolationism”), so those plans had been based on the premise of continuous economic growth, itself founded upon the primacy of America's resources. Instead they ended up with a crisis, which has significantly reduced those available “resources.”
I must note that the period of capture of former Socialist Commonwealth's markets has indeed become “the golden age” of American economy, even their budget scored a surplus. But our work in 2001 in which we evaluated the balance between different branches of American economy in the 1998 showed that ( http://worldcrisis.ru/crisis/73174 ) already then the US economy was standing on the brink of abyss comparable to where it found itself in the early 1930s. Today's picture is far more frightening and what can be done about it unclear as well. The old security model has been destroyed. Trust cannot be restored, a new model does not exist, there are some elements of it here and there, but they function only if the US directly intervenes into the process. Intervention factually consists of allocating large sums of money to all participants in the process, and it is faulty: Palestine, ISIS, etc.
This is happening while the situation inside the US worsens. The problem is that for a long time they have a barrier in place that has separated the elite from the rest of the society, the barrier of the kind that's only being built here (in Russia). American educational system, and I mean educational system that prepares societal leaders, has been destroyed already back in the 1960s, an average citizen (the sheep in the parlance of the elite) has actually no chances of advancement to an upper “elite” level, the one from which the society is being governed. A successful marriage could serve as a theoretical exception, but this social advancement mechanism cannot be employed in a systemic fashion. However for those few who are born active, unless the punitive psychiatry destroys them at a tender age or they fall victim to juvenile justice, something that now gets written a lot about, for them there are still mechanisms for upward social mobility which could bring them up to the level of technocratic elite.
The trouble is that in the course of this half of a century they've had accumulated lots of people who are absolutely unprepared to tolerate a sharp decline in their standards of living. But along with the worsening of the economic crisis, in order to maintain their grip on power and their status the “actual” elites must most definitely reduce the living standard of these population strata of the American society. And that can push the system up onto the critical level of mutual contradictions. Because internal resources necessary for maintenance of the quality of life of this so called upper middle class are depleted, they need to find some substitute external resources. To phrase it differently: the United States can only preserve domestic social stability at the expense of someone else.
Here we stumble upon remnants of the old security system. The Bretton Woods system was based upon a premise that all assets of participating member states will be dollar denominated. So fresh dollars were printed along with introduction of new assets into the system, and the US elites could then work out how those dollars are to be shared with the elites of those new countries (or regions) that were about to be incorporated within this dollar zone. How those regional elites were going to split those dollars with their own population was their own concern. But there are no more assets to be brought into the system, consequently no new dollars are being printed, and worse than that, existing dollars are being redistributed for America's benefit through US controlled world dollar system. This makes internal conflicts in many of the world's countries all but unavoidable.
Some of those conflicts are at their beginning stage while others are already burning hot, but their essence is all he same, counter-elites, the ones who were not let into the proverbial dollar cookie jar now make claims upon existing elites demanding either to restore the scale of support they get (that means that the old elites must commence financing of the economy from their own pockets) or yield power and get out of the way. Most obvious that because those existing elites are all pro-American, the scenario is developing under accompaniment of increasingly anti-American rhetoric.
We would like to remind you that similar processes already took place in Latin America after the investment flows from the United States changed their direction in aftermath of the Second World War. There the finale was either a breakdown of the economy or emergence of new forces at the helm of the state, frequently personified by brutal dictators, and sometimes, like in Chile, both a combination of both developments. What is going to happen to the world's regions is an open question, but the choice of means to control the situation which remains at America’s disposal is shrinking dramatically.
The United States are obviously witnessing these processes and are impotent to do anything about them. From that standpoints, Obama's officials are no different from Putin, he might not like Nabiullina's policies but he cannot just fire her because giving her the boot would destroy the consensus of the elites (and he's too hesitant as doesn't venture to reign in the elites), likewise the administration team in the US is unable to go against their elites, which adamantly refuse considering anything that might somehow threaten their status. And that in turn means that rocking the boat is forbidden!
That can be defined as: sudden moves that can be interpreted as a game changer which in turn might alter the very rules that the United States has introduced in the decade of 2000 and such moves are not allowed. For example, you cannot just change borders. Possibly, if the United States could turn the clock back, then they might have left the Pandora's box safely closed and would not have amputated Kosovo from Serbia, but what's done is done, besides that all happened during prosperous 90s. But to permit the phenomenon of Crimea (or anything similar) is just impermissible. Because if we allow to change borders on a regional level, then entire Eastern Europe, the Middle East and many other areas will turn into serious war theaters.
Essentially we are the ones who understand that this is unavoidable, but American elites will never come to grips with that (and that's why our economic theory is something they would never agree with), this why they will do whatever it takes to postpone their own end, they'll drag it until the whole structure collapses upon them on its own. In that sense, it is implausible to expect that they would remove sanctions or that they will somehow agree to us acting independently. Perhaps they would be happy to but they are prisoners of their own system.
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Blog news update: short break, BIG plans for 2015 and a small request
Dear friends,
Over the next couple of days I am going to try to "life the foot off the gas pedal" and only concentrate on one thing: an "end of year report" combined with an assessment of possible events in 2015. Other then that, I will not post anything written by me.
I have high hopes that by the Orthodox Nativity (January 7th) the "new new blog" or "new blog v 2.0" shall be ready.
I also have good hopes that the Serbian blog will restart its activities, this time with a completely different team.
Finally, I have some very sweet news to announce. I am working on a Muslim Saker Blog whose main goal will be to include a Muslim voice into the already diverse Saker community of blogs by presenting a traditional Muslim view on current events and issues and to report on the struggle against Wahabism and the AngloZionist propaganda about Islam. The members of the Muslim Saker blog will include both Shia and Sunni Muslims (including a Salafi imam). Finally, I am absolutely delighted to announce that the famous Islamic scholar Sheikh Imran N. Hosein has agreed to participate to the work of the Muslim Saker Blog. To have the full support of personality of this stature is truly a privilege.
Still, I strongly feel that once voice will be missing: the one of a Russian Muslim, ideally a Chechen or Dagestani one. So here is my request: if you are a Russian Muslim, especially a Chechen or Dagestani, and if you know enough English to work with an English-language team, please contact me at vineyardsaker@gmail.com. Alternatively If you have a friend or contact who might be interested, please pass on this request to him/her. The West knows nothing about the kind of traditional Islam which is now dynamically growing in Russia, especially in the Russian Caucasus, and I think that it is a crying shame. All you hear is slander against Ramzan Kadyrov, but never an explanation of his views or policies. Nor do you ever hear a non-Wahabi Russian Muslim voice. I want to change that.
Ukrainian Nazism and Wahabism are two expressions of the same hate-filled worldview, two tools of the same Empire, to demonic ideologies financed, organized, federated and directed by the same Powers: the AngloZionist 1%er Empire and they are now both targeted at Russia, Orthodoxy and Islam. Muslims are on the frontline in this battle against the Empire's truly satanic legions, be that in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Kazakhstan, the Caucasus or the Donbass and their voice is an absolutely crucial one in the worldwide Resistance against Empire.
This is why the Empire wants to separate us. And This is why I want us to unite.
Finally, I have a small request. I have recently posted articles by Dagmar Henn and Andreja Vrazalic which both contained controversial political opinions. I want to continue that and even make the "re-thinking politics" a regular feature of this blog. This means that I will ask people with all sorts of very different political opinions to share their ideas with us. By definition some of those ideas will be very different from the ones we hold. But let's please keep it civil, let's not resort to name-calling, ad hominems and ugly attacks on the authors, okay? If you disagree, fine. Post a comment supported by facts and logical analyses. Even better, write your own essay which I will gladly post. But let's keep an impeccably polite and courteous tone towards each other and especially towards our guest authors!
That's it for now. I am going to work on my report which I hope to post here in a couple of days.
Kind regards to all and, for those of you who celebrate the new year on January 1st, happy celebrations and all the best for 2015 (God knows it will be a dangerous one!).
Cheers and kind regards,
The Saker
Over the next couple of days I am going to try to "life the foot off the gas pedal" and only concentrate on one thing: an "end of year report" combined with an assessment of possible events in 2015. Other then that, I will not post anything written by me.
I have high hopes that by the Orthodox Nativity (January 7th) the "new new blog" or "new blog v 2.0" shall be ready.
I also have good hopes that the Serbian blog will restart its activities, this time with a completely different team.
Finally, I have some very sweet news to announce. I am working on a Muslim Saker Blog whose main goal will be to include a Muslim voice into the already diverse Saker community of blogs by presenting a traditional Muslim view on current events and issues and to report on the struggle against Wahabism and the AngloZionist propaganda about Islam. The members of the Muslim Saker blog will include both Shia and Sunni Muslims (including a Salafi imam). Finally, I am absolutely delighted to announce that the famous Islamic scholar Sheikh Imran N. Hosein has agreed to participate to the work of the Muslim Saker Blog. To have the full support of personality of this stature is truly a privilege.
Still, I strongly feel that once voice will be missing: the one of a Russian Muslim, ideally a Chechen or Dagestani one. So here is my request: if you are a Russian Muslim, especially a Chechen or Dagestani, and if you know enough English to work with an English-language team, please contact me at vineyardsaker@gmail.com. Alternatively If you have a friend or contact who might be interested, please pass on this request to him/her. The West knows nothing about the kind of traditional Islam which is now dynamically growing in Russia, especially in the Russian Caucasus, and I think that it is a crying shame. All you hear is slander against Ramzan Kadyrov, but never an explanation of his views or policies. Nor do you ever hear a non-Wahabi Russian Muslim voice. I want to change that.
Ukrainian Nazism and Wahabism are two expressions of the same hate-filled worldview, two tools of the same Empire, to demonic ideologies financed, organized, federated and directed by the same Powers: the AngloZionist 1%er Empire and they are now both targeted at Russia, Orthodoxy and Islam. Muslims are on the frontline in this battle against the Empire's truly satanic legions, be that in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Kazakhstan, the Caucasus or the Donbass and their voice is an absolutely crucial one in the worldwide Resistance against Empire.
This is why the Empire wants to separate us. And This is why I want us to unite.
Finally, I have a small request. I have recently posted articles by Dagmar Henn and Andreja Vrazalic which both contained controversial political opinions. I want to continue that and even make the "re-thinking politics" a regular feature of this blog. This means that I will ask people with all sorts of very different political opinions to share their ideas with us. By definition some of those ideas will be very different from the ones we hold. But let's please keep it civil, let's not resort to name-calling, ad hominems and ugly attacks on the authors, okay? If you disagree, fine. Post a comment supported by facts and logical analyses. Even better, write your own essay which I will gladly post. But let's keep an impeccably polite and courteous tone towards each other and especially towards our guest authors!
That's it for now. I am going to work on my report which I hope to post here in a couple of days.
Kind regards to all and, for those of you who celebrate the new year on January 1st, happy celebrations and all the best for 2015 (God knows it will be a dangerous one!).
Cheers and kind regards,
The Saker
Rethinking Politics: The Irresistible Lure Of Socialism
Dear friends,
Today I am posting a first article in what I hope will become a series about "re-thinking politics". By that I mean the following: we are told that communism is dead. I am not so sure at all, but maybe. I would argue that what we think of as "European social-democracy" has died this year after a long and painful agony. The US is only a republic or a democracy in name, in reality it is a fascist oligarchy. Chavez in Venezuela spoke of "Bolivarian Socialism". Arundhati Roy in India seems to think that democracy is dead and that Maoist guerrillas might have the answer to a lot of questions. One thing is sure, Fukuyama got in wrong and history has not ended (unless some crazy idiot in the White House launches an attack on Russia then yes, history will end).
I will never forget the day in 1992 or 1993 when during a session of the UN Conference on Disarmament a Pakistani Ambassador said something which I shall remember forever. He looked at the western delegations and said: "you think that your capitalism has defeated communism? You are wrong! What really happened is the internal contradictions of communism have caught up with communism before the internal contradictions of capitalism will catch up with capitalism". Twenty years later it is pretty undeniable that he was absolutely correct. And no wonder that this realization first came from a Muslim as Islam today clearly offers at least two alternatives to all western ideologies: in Saudi Arabia a medieval and deeply reactionary one and in Iran a modern and very progressive one.
I think that it is high time to re-think our politics, our political categories, our certitudes about what is worse and what is better and all our assumptions about recent history. Most of us live in the so-called "West" and what thing is undeniable: our social order is dying, totally discredited and despised by the rest of the planet, our politicians simply seem unable to articulate anything remotely connected to the truth, and the world badly, badly, needs new ideas.
With this series "Rethinking Politics" I want to start with a tabula rasa in which we can re-examine it all and try to see if we can at least identify a few facts or ideas which would help us to think outside the iron "box" imposed on us all by our stupidifying societies. They key will not be finding the right answers, but asking the right questions.
This series begins today with Andreja Vrazalic asking a few very basic and important questions about what socialism is (which, of course, depends on who you ask). I am very happy with this first contribution and my gratitude goes to Vrazalic for launching what I hope will be a long and productive discussion involving many more contributions from very different authors with very different views.
The Saker
-------
The Irresistible Lure Of Socialism
by Andreja Vrazalic
A quarter of a century has passed since socialism was officially pronounced dead. Unmourned except by a few, such as the Yugoslav nostalgics, which could travel abroad, and were young, and so remember Tito's socialist regime as something grand. They represent a small minority – so much so in fact, that a communist party transformed its country to capitalism, with excellent results – they recently became the first economy of the world.
Socialism, or communism, is completely discredited as an idea. There are some social-democratic parties, and they talk a little bit more about the working man, and that’s it. Even today, with the full-blown crisis of the „free“ market (that is a separate story), hardly anyone seriously entertains the thought of going over to socialism. That is not strange – socialism used to promise heaven on earth that somehow often tended to become hell. Even the hard-core Tito fans that gloss over the mass executions and dispossession he was guilty of do not approve of the Cambodian genocide or Stalin’s terror. Additionally, socialism did not establish equality. Far from it: there was a deep chasm between a "comrade Party member" and an ordinary citizen. And do not be so foolish to mess with your employer – there is only one, the State. With regard to the swift economic growth, well, somehow results were lacking even in that department; the Soviet Union even collapsed after an economic crisis. There are good reason for that failure, and they have to do with the inability of the State to replace the „Invisible Hand“, meaning the inability of one authority to pass decisions that millions of people pass every day. One participant in the market means no competition, etc., etc... In short, socialism, as a system, has betrayed all expectations.
All?
I am not sure, that, for instance, the Vietnamese would agree with that. They defeated the world’s premiere superpower under the red flag. The Russians defeated one of the best war-machines the world has ever seen, and became the world’s second superpower, all under the same flag. We have to remember that, when we look at socialism, we look at it from a perspective of wealthy Europe or North America. When we Serbs look at socialism, we see Tito, and all the mines that he has laid for us, and that continually blow up in our faces for the last 25 years. The same would go for all Eastern European nations, including the Russians (communist borders, anyone?). We need to be objective, or as objective as possible. An objective observer will clearly define the terms and analyze the alternatives a little bit. The results can be interesting.
What is socialism?
When I talk of socialism, I am referring to the economic and political system most people know as communism. However, Yugoslavia and USSR were socialist by name. The thing that we today know as socialism is social-democracy, an ideology that belongs to the capitalist-democratic system, and that has only a few elements of socialism.
Socialism in practice entails dictatorship and state-run economy. In that regard, it is most often compared with its main rival, the Western System which is described as democratic and capitalist, or free-market. However, the fact that such a comparison is made in the first place represents such a masterful propaganda coup that we can only sit back and admire it.
Comparing apples and oranges
Comparing socialism with democracy and the free market is as sensible as comparing a real thing with an imaginary one – it doesn’t make sense. The Western block has, by imposing this comparison, scored (one of the many) ingenious propaganda coups: it has made a glossy, polished and imaginary picture of itself: propaganda Photoshop so to speak. It has imposed a story about a fight for freedom and democracy, as if it actually respects freedom and democracy.
How can we talk about democracy when we know that in the premier country of that democracy a president can be elected even if he loses the popular vote, where referendums are nonexistent, and where two same parties alternate at the helm for the last 150 years??? It’s even worse in its client democracies: there is an old adage that says that democracy is possible only in the US, because it does not have an US embassy. And let’s not even mention the all-pervasive spying – Staling would go green with envy.
It would look as if the Western System would fare better on the question of free market. The State does not interfere too much in the functioning of the market, and people generally go about their transactions freely. But only on the micro-level. At the macro-level, the story of the freedom of the market barely holds water. It is true that the State does not interfere too much. But the State is not the only big player – there are corporations of all kinds, those that we know and those that we can glimpse at. The Federal Reserve System is run by private bankers; then and again an American billionaire does something somehow exactly in line with US national interests; and we will not even go into discussion on the American media - they are old acquaintances of us Serbs. Their lying would make Milosevic’s propagandists blush. How is it that the US tycoons, US media and the US government speak the same language and think with the same head? How is it that we have such smooth transfers from the Big Business to Big Government and back? What was that Military-Industrial Complex Eisenhower talked about?
If we did look at the Western System objectively we would not need to ask such questions, because we would not be surprised. The Western System exited long ago, in Rome. Rome had elections, an assembly, trade was free, private property was respected (people being private property is a minor detail). Almost a capitalist democracy. But now, two thousand years later, we can take an objective look at the Roman Republic and say that it was an oligarchic republic, where all strings of power and wealth were pulled by a few Senate families. Furthermore, they had an interesting recipe: since senators could not officially engage in trade, they did it through other men, with their money becoming invisible. Rome had another thing in common with the US of today: it was an empire.
Imperialism
Wealth, serious wealth, mind you, is simply a wonderful thing: you have the material angle covered, and people also start to think highly of you – that you are smarter, more capable, etc… They maybe envy you, but as someone said it, envy is something like a sincerest form of flattery.
In short, you are credited with attributes and powers that you may not have, and why not, you use it. If they ask you about your first million, you explain at great length how you worked day and night, chose your partners and employees carefully, and you tend to not mention that wee deal with the local politician in charge of construction. The same goes with great nations: they wax poetic about the workings of the free market, invisible hand and division of labor, and somehow neglect to mention plundering India, or land taken from natives. It is human to forget things. Especially those that make you look bad.
Simply, when we talk of wealth, we must have in mind that it (at the level of nations) can be obtained in two ways: by work or by plunder. Furthermore, we have to have in mind that those categories are not so far apart: even individuals can obtain money through both work and crime, nations even more so. It is even connected in a way: the prerequisite for both is strength.
Wealth: prerequisites
Let’s not get into marathon discussions if it is better to live in Norway or the US; it is relatively similar, and let’s ignore the extreme cases or small or micro nations like Switzerland or Singapore. Let’s concentrate on the essentials. We should look at the large countries or continents, and ask ourselves: where is wealth concentrated?
It somehow turns out that the greatest wealth is with the greatest powers. USSR was much poorer than the USA, but was far richer than China, India or Africa of its time. We can track this in history too: just look at the wealth of the British Empire or Rome: as they began to acquire colonies, so their wealth grew. There was plunder, of course, but their industry was blooming – in fact, Britain is the birth place of the Industrial Revolution, the cause of the unparalleled standard of living today.
As Adam Smith ingenuously put it: the prerequisites of wealth are peace, low (easy) taxes and tolerable administration of justice.
And now specifically: who can guarantee peace, if he is not a power? We are not talking about peace as in absence of wars: God, no. Victoria’s Britain or the modern US are permanently engaged in wars, campaigns, interventions, preparations for a coup, etc., etc… When we say peace, we mean peace at home. They had that. And that is the prerequisite for people to relax, to work and produce, and not to worry all the time if they are packed and ready to flee.
Destroy the competition
Wealth is a relative thing: people discuss all the time whether it is better to live in Norway or Sweden than in the US. To be honest, I don’t have a clue. It is not important for this story: neither Norway nor Sweden are in any competition with the US. The whole of Africa or Latin America could be. The wealth of the US is relative: the US simply has more than X country or continent, and hence, the US is wealthy, while X is poor. There is no specific measure of goods or money that the US has to have to be considered “wealthy” – simply having more than others will suffice. If the US does not have more than others it is not “wealthy”. And if it is not wealthy, well, than it maybe isn’t the Fountain of All Knowledge, Promised Land and the undisputed Ruler of the Planet. And that would not be nice.
That status can be maintained in two ways: by economic advancement, and by undermining/destroying the competition. It somehow goes hand in hand: when you destroy the competition, your economy can spread its wings. You can destroy the competition by protectionism – kicking them out from your market – but only the greatest powers can try this, like the 19th century US or Germany. According to free market theory, protectionism is nonsense, in effect tax on domestic consumers that leads to economic inefficiency. However, we have to remember that the market is not “really” free, and that foreign states and corporations occasionally intertwine, and that sometimes they are one and the same thing. They did not come to your country to improve it; they came to make a profit –this way or the other way. More often the other way. Kicking them out from your market is not necessarily a sin towards the consumers. Lastly, if they are doing you service, why are they trying so hard to come to you? Why would Austria-Hungary try so hard to prohibit Serbian import tariffs for industry goods, if the export of such goods was such a great service to Serbia? Why is there a term “conquer the market”?
If you not open your markets, there is always the good old option of occupation.
The colonies
Colonialism is simply a wondrous thing: you move into someone else’s country with a nebulous explanation that they are savages or something, and that you simply must civilize them, introduce them to God and soap, and prevent them from killing each other. And that somehow flies. Never mind that it was okay to say that in the 19th century, when mass media were not exactly on the spot in the heart of Africa to catch you not being entirely honest, it is okay today when Americans are making a mess from the Middle East, all under the excuse of bringing democracy.
It is truly wonderful that these Western countries put so much effort in civilizing natives, and in a such unselfish way. Yes, there were a few minor perks and benefits, such as gold and other minerals, timber, land, slaves, oil, etc., but it was beside the point. The important thing was to civilize the savages. That was the “White Man’s Burden” as Rudyard Kipling put it. The White Man applied himself so wholeheartedly to the business of civilizing, that for instance in Congo, at the moment of attaining independence after some hundred years of Belgian occupation, there where were as much as fifteen college graduates.
Liberation, or why socialism is not for the rich?
The ungrateful natives at some point decided they had enough of such care, and managed to kick out the colonizers. It is interesting to note that such anti-colonial movements usually had some form of leftist ideology, and that they somehow naturally gravitated toward the Soviet Union.
This was not quite in line with the original socialist theory, where communism was supposed to win in societies such as the English or German, where the bourgeoisie and industrial workers we dominant, and where workers would triumph in the end. Contrary to that, communism won in relatively poor countries. If communism was a complete nonsense, it would not be applied anywhere, except maybe in Cambodia led by Pol Pot. If communism was truly a genial idea, everyone would adopt it. There is a fact that some elements of socialism are present in every modern society, in the form of some workers’ rights. But those are elements, and not the essence. Social-democrats essentially support capitalism – otherwise they would be asking for nationalization of factories, and not privatization. On the other hand we have Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia where even today socialist ideas persist, or even advance, and even the Chinese communist party, that has embraced capitalism, has not embraced democracy.
So, it seems by almost a default that wealthy societies do not want socialism, while poor societies tend to implement it. What did the poor see in it, that the rich did not see? Economics-wise, it is not especially efficient system. In real-socialism the State runs the economy, and it is notorious as inefficient (let’s not even go into the communist theory, where there would be no money, which really does not fly). The societies of real socialism cannot be called just by any criteria: the bourgeoisie is robbed when communists come into power, thereafter a caste system is adopted, dividing people into “comrade members” and mere mortals.
Socialism establishes control of the economy from one place. Such a unified control is inefficient and unjust, and will not establish a society superior to a “capitalist” one. However, the socialist society can direct its energies more easily towards one goal, and will be more resistant to outside influence. If you are poor, socialism may be just the solution for you. You will not live better, but you are anyway poorer than the wealthy ones, regardless if you are capitalist or socialist. But you will be able to fight the wealthy ones, because your energies will be focused, and their soft power over you diminished.
How can you otherwise explain that the Cold War rivals were the US, without question the richest country in the world since 1919, and a Russia/USSR, just one of the European powers, devastated by two world wars and a revolution, and which anyway managed to send the first man into space? How can you explain the victory of little Vietnam over the great US? If Vietnam was not socialist, it could not do everything to win. Capitalism is notorious for its tycoons/oligarchs – the US would bribe a few, and Vietnam would fall like a ripe fruit.
There are no oligarchs in socialism – the political and economic power is connected at the party level, and not on the individual level. The Party presents a unified front to the foreigners – and unity is one of the prerequisites for a victory in a war.
A war is not only “hot”, it is also “cold”, where foreign powers want to obtain economic dominion over a country and turn it into a (neo)colony. That country has two possibilities: to be let itself be conquered, and become, for all intents and purposes, a colony, or to fight for its freedom. The choice is between two evils: a colony is exploited, and cruelly punished if it tries to regain its freedom, while freedom is expensive, and not so free, because hierarchy will exist anyway. It will be less rigid – the difference between a communist Vietnamese and ordinary Vietnamese is not made in stone. The difference between a Frenchman and a Vietnamese is.
In short, socialism is a system geared for war. Just ask the Spartans.
Two sides of the same coin: crimes
Socialism, or communism, is reproached for being inherently criminal, and is even equated with fascism. The communist crimes are without doubt. From Tito, whose easily forgotten victims range into tens or hundreds of thousands, Stalin, Mao, to Pol Pot, that killed most of his people, there were a number of communist regimes up to their knees in blood. Their victims were documented and numerous. Maybe more numerous than the victims of fascists.
The victims of the West are somehow always forgotten. From the “Final Solution” to the Indian problem, through Belgian Congo, a thousand and one bloody massacre of the natives we never even heard of, Hiroshima and Dresden, to the latest victories for democracy, it cannot be said that the Western System is lily-white. On the contrary, it may be good to count the victims of that system.
Reproaching socialism, or communism, for its special criminal nature is simply not realistic. Comparing communist Czechoslovakia and communist Cambodia, fascist Argentina and fascist Croatia, democratic Denmark and democratic Belgium or US tells us that every system has its share of criminals and non-criminals (ok, lesser criminals).
Instead of the end
I understand that some people search for a more just society, a society where everyone would live in peace in prosperity. Some saw socialism as that society. They were wrong.
However, as the examples of Sparta or Ancient Egypt tell us, socialism is not inherently new. It is a system of state control over resources. That system has existed since the dawn of time, and its recent defeat does not mean that it will disappear forever. On the contrary, history tells us that things tend to go in waves, and that this victory of the system called liberal capitalism, which it is not, will not be permanent. Socialism will again come into vogue at some point, probably under a different name, but with the same essence.
It is important for us to know what socialism is, what it can, and what it cannot do. Please do not tell me about the more just distribution of goods socialism will bring. It won’t. It has nothing to do with it. Human nature is such, people gravitate toward hierarchy, and those on top will be better off than those bellow. In any system. But it is slightly different if those on top are of different skin color, or just strangers. The difference is then greater, and exploitation more cruel. If you want to talk to me about socialism as a tool against imperialism, feel free. I’m listening.
Today I am posting a first article in what I hope will become a series about "re-thinking politics". By that I mean the following: we are told that communism is dead. I am not so sure at all, but maybe. I would argue that what we think of as "European social-democracy" has died this year after a long and painful agony. The US is only a republic or a democracy in name, in reality it is a fascist oligarchy. Chavez in Venezuela spoke of "Bolivarian Socialism". Arundhati Roy in India seems to think that democracy is dead and that Maoist guerrillas might have the answer to a lot of questions. One thing is sure, Fukuyama got in wrong and history has not ended (unless some crazy idiot in the White House launches an attack on Russia then yes, history will end).
I will never forget the day in 1992 or 1993 when during a session of the UN Conference on Disarmament a Pakistani Ambassador said something which I shall remember forever. He looked at the western delegations and said: "you think that your capitalism has defeated communism? You are wrong! What really happened is the internal contradictions of communism have caught up with communism before the internal contradictions of capitalism will catch up with capitalism". Twenty years later it is pretty undeniable that he was absolutely correct. And no wonder that this realization first came from a Muslim as Islam today clearly offers at least two alternatives to all western ideologies: in Saudi Arabia a medieval and deeply reactionary one and in Iran a modern and very progressive one.
I think that it is high time to re-think our politics, our political categories, our certitudes about what is worse and what is better and all our assumptions about recent history. Most of us live in the so-called "West" and what thing is undeniable: our social order is dying, totally discredited and despised by the rest of the planet, our politicians simply seem unable to articulate anything remotely connected to the truth, and the world badly, badly, needs new ideas.
With this series "Rethinking Politics" I want to start with a tabula rasa in which we can re-examine it all and try to see if we can at least identify a few facts or ideas which would help us to think outside the iron "box" imposed on us all by our stupidifying societies. They key will not be finding the right answers, but asking the right questions.
This series begins today with Andreja Vrazalic asking a few very basic and important questions about what socialism is (which, of course, depends on who you ask). I am very happy with this first contribution and my gratitude goes to Vrazalic for launching what I hope will be a long and productive discussion involving many more contributions from very different authors with very different views.
The Saker
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The Irresistible Lure Of Socialism
by Andreja Vrazalic
A quarter of a century has passed since socialism was officially pronounced dead. Unmourned except by a few, such as the Yugoslav nostalgics, which could travel abroad, and were young, and so remember Tito's socialist regime as something grand. They represent a small minority – so much so in fact, that a communist party transformed its country to capitalism, with excellent results – they recently became the first economy of the world.
Socialism, or communism, is completely discredited as an idea. There are some social-democratic parties, and they talk a little bit more about the working man, and that’s it. Even today, with the full-blown crisis of the „free“ market (that is a separate story), hardly anyone seriously entertains the thought of going over to socialism. That is not strange – socialism used to promise heaven on earth that somehow often tended to become hell. Even the hard-core Tito fans that gloss over the mass executions and dispossession he was guilty of do not approve of the Cambodian genocide or Stalin’s terror. Additionally, socialism did not establish equality. Far from it: there was a deep chasm between a "comrade Party member" and an ordinary citizen. And do not be so foolish to mess with your employer – there is only one, the State. With regard to the swift economic growth, well, somehow results were lacking even in that department; the Soviet Union even collapsed after an economic crisis. There are good reason for that failure, and they have to do with the inability of the State to replace the „Invisible Hand“, meaning the inability of one authority to pass decisions that millions of people pass every day. One participant in the market means no competition, etc., etc... In short, socialism, as a system, has betrayed all expectations.
All?
I am not sure, that, for instance, the Vietnamese would agree with that. They defeated the world’s premiere superpower under the red flag. The Russians defeated one of the best war-machines the world has ever seen, and became the world’s second superpower, all under the same flag. We have to remember that, when we look at socialism, we look at it from a perspective of wealthy Europe or North America. When we Serbs look at socialism, we see Tito, and all the mines that he has laid for us, and that continually blow up in our faces for the last 25 years. The same would go for all Eastern European nations, including the Russians (communist borders, anyone?). We need to be objective, or as objective as possible. An objective observer will clearly define the terms and analyze the alternatives a little bit. The results can be interesting.
What is socialism?
When I talk of socialism, I am referring to the economic and political system most people know as communism. However, Yugoslavia and USSR were socialist by name. The thing that we today know as socialism is social-democracy, an ideology that belongs to the capitalist-democratic system, and that has only a few elements of socialism.
Socialism in practice entails dictatorship and state-run economy. In that regard, it is most often compared with its main rival, the Western System which is described as democratic and capitalist, or free-market. However, the fact that such a comparison is made in the first place represents such a masterful propaganda coup that we can only sit back and admire it.
Comparing apples and oranges
Comparing socialism with democracy and the free market is as sensible as comparing a real thing with an imaginary one – it doesn’t make sense. The Western block has, by imposing this comparison, scored (one of the many) ingenious propaganda coups: it has made a glossy, polished and imaginary picture of itself: propaganda Photoshop so to speak. It has imposed a story about a fight for freedom and democracy, as if it actually respects freedom and democracy.
How can we talk about democracy when we know that in the premier country of that democracy a president can be elected even if he loses the popular vote, where referendums are nonexistent, and where two same parties alternate at the helm for the last 150 years??? It’s even worse in its client democracies: there is an old adage that says that democracy is possible only in the US, because it does not have an US embassy. And let’s not even mention the all-pervasive spying – Staling would go green with envy.
It would look as if the Western System would fare better on the question of free market. The State does not interfere too much in the functioning of the market, and people generally go about their transactions freely. But only on the micro-level. At the macro-level, the story of the freedom of the market barely holds water. It is true that the State does not interfere too much. But the State is not the only big player – there are corporations of all kinds, those that we know and those that we can glimpse at. The Federal Reserve System is run by private bankers; then and again an American billionaire does something somehow exactly in line with US national interests; and we will not even go into discussion on the American media - they are old acquaintances of us Serbs. Their lying would make Milosevic’s propagandists blush. How is it that the US tycoons, US media and the US government speak the same language and think with the same head? How is it that we have such smooth transfers from the Big Business to Big Government and back? What was that Military-Industrial Complex Eisenhower talked about?
If we did look at the Western System objectively we would not need to ask such questions, because we would not be surprised. The Western System exited long ago, in Rome. Rome had elections, an assembly, trade was free, private property was respected (people being private property is a minor detail). Almost a capitalist democracy. But now, two thousand years later, we can take an objective look at the Roman Republic and say that it was an oligarchic republic, where all strings of power and wealth were pulled by a few Senate families. Furthermore, they had an interesting recipe: since senators could not officially engage in trade, they did it through other men, with their money becoming invisible. Rome had another thing in common with the US of today: it was an empire.
Imperialism
Wealth, serious wealth, mind you, is simply a wonderful thing: you have the material angle covered, and people also start to think highly of you – that you are smarter, more capable, etc… They maybe envy you, but as someone said it, envy is something like a sincerest form of flattery.
In short, you are credited with attributes and powers that you may not have, and why not, you use it. If they ask you about your first million, you explain at great length how you worked day and night, chose your partners and employees carefully, and you tend to not mention that wee deal with the local politician in charge of construction. The same goes with great nations: they wax poetic about the workings of the free market, invisible hand and division of labor, and somehow neglect to mention plundering India, or land taken from natives. It is human to forget things. Especially those that make you look bad.
Simply, when we talk of wealth, we must have in mind that it (at the level of nations) can be obtained in two ways: by work or by plunder. Furthermore, we have to have in mind that those categories are not so far apart: even individuals can obtain money through both work and crime, nations even more so. It is even connected in a way: the prerequisite for both is strength.
Wealth: prerequisites
Let’s not get into marathon discussions if it is better to live in Norway or the US; it is relatively similar, and let’s ignore the extreme cases or small or micro nations like Switzerland or Singapore. Let’s concentrate on the essentials. We should look at the large countries or continents, and ask ourselves: where is wealth concentrated?
It somehow turns out that the greatest wealth is with the greatest powers. USSR was much poorer than the USA, but was far richer than China, India or Africa of its time. We can track this in history too: just look at the wealth of the British Empire or Rome: as they began to acquire colonies, so their wealth grew. There was plunder, of course, but their industry was blooming – in fact, Britain is the birth place of the Industrial Revolution, the cause of the unparalleled standard of living today.
As Adam Smith ingenuously put it: the prerequisites of wealth are peace, low (easy) taxes and tolerable administration of justice.
And now specifically: who can guarantee peace, if he is not a power? We are not talking about peace as in absence of wars: God, no. Victoria’s Britain or the modern US are permanently engaged in wars, campaigns, interventions, preparations for a coup, etc., etc… When we say peace, we mean peace at home. They had that. And that is the prerequisite for people to relax, to work and produce, and not to worry all the time if they are packed and ready to flee.
Destroy the competition
Wealth is a relative thing: people discuss all the time whether it is better to live in Norway or Sweden than in the US. To be honest, I don’t have a clue. It is not important for this story: neither Norway nor Sweden are in any competition with the US. The whole of Africa or Latin America could be. The wealth of the US is relative: the US simply has more than X country or continent, and hence, the US is wealthy, while X is poor. There is no specific measure of goods or money that the US has to have to be considered “wealthy” – simply having more than others will suffice. If the US does not have more than others it is not “wealthy”. And if it is not wealthy, well, than it maybe isn’t the Fountain of All Knowledge, Promised Land and the undisputed Ruler of the Planet. And that would not be nice.
That status can be maintained in two ways: by economic advancement, and by undermining/destroying the competition. It somehow goes hand in hand: when you destroy the competition, your economy can spread its wings. You can destroy the competition by protectionism – kicking them out from your market – but only the greatest powers can try this, like the 19th century US or Germany. According to free market theory, protectionism is nonsense, in effect tax on domestic consumers that leads to economic inefficiency. However, we have to remember that the market is not “really” free, and that foreign states and corporations occasionally intertwine, and that sometimes they are one and the same thing. They did not come to your country to improve it; they came to make a profit –this way or the other way. More often the other way. Kicking them out from your market is not necessarily a sin towards the consumers. Lastly, if they are doing you service, why are they trying so hard to come to you? Why would Austria-Hungary try so hard to prohibit Serbian import tariffs for industry goods, if the export of such goods was such a great service to Serbia? Why is there a term “conquer the market”?
If you not open your markets, there is always the good old option of occupation.
The colonies
Colonialism is simply a wondrous thing: you move into someone else’s country with a nebulous explanation that they are savages or something, and that you simply must civilize them, introduce them to God and soap, and prevent them from killing each other. And that somehow flies. Never mind that it was okay to say that in the 19th century, when mass media were not exactly on the spot in the heart of Africa to catch you not being entirely honest, it is okay today when Americans are making a mess from the Middle East, all under the excuse of bringing democracy.
It is truly wonderful that these Western countries put so much effort in civilizing natives, and in a such unselfish way. Yes, there were a few minor perks and benefits, such as gold and other minerals, timber, land, slaves, oil, etc., but it was beside the point. The important thing was to civilize the savages. That was the “White Man’s Burden” as Rudyard Kipling put it. The White Man applied himself so wholeheartedly to the business of civilizing, that for instance in Congo, at the moment of attaining independence after some hundred years of Belgian occupation, there where were as much as fifteen college graduates.
Liberation, or why socialism is not for the rich?
The ungrateful natives at some point decided they had enough of such care, and managed to kick out the colonizers. It is interesting to note that such anti-colonial movements usually had some form of leftist ideology, and that they somehow naturally gravitated toward the Soviet Union.
This was not quite in line with the original socialist theory, where communism was supposed to win in societies such as the English or German, where the bourgeoisie and industrial workers we dominant, and where workers would triumph in the end. Contrary to that, communism won in relatively poor countries. If communism was a complete nonsense, it would not be applied anywhere, except maybe in Cambodia led by Pol Pot. If communism was truly a genial idea, everyone would adopt it. There is a fact that some elements of socialism are present in every modern society, in the form of some workers’ rights. But those are elements, and not the essence. Social-democrats essentially support capitalism – otherwise they would be asking for nationalization of factories, and not privatization. On the other hand we have Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia where even today socialist ideas persist, or even advance, and even the Chinese communist party, that has embraced capitalism, has not embraced democracy.
So, it seems by almost a default that wealthy societies do not want socialism, while poor societies tend to implement it. What did the poor see in it, that the rich did not see? Economics-wise, it is not especially efficient system. In real-socialism the State runs the economy, and it is notorious as inefficient (let’s not even go into the communist theory, where there would be no money, which really does not fly). The societies of real socialism cannot be called just by any criteria: the bourgeoisie is robbed when communists come into power, thereafter a caste system is adopted, dividing people into “comrade members” and mere mortals.
Socialism establishes control of the economy from one place. Such a unified control is inefficient and unjust, and will not establish a society superior to a “capitalist” one. However, the socialist society can direct its energies more easily towards one goal, and will be more resistant to outside influence. If you are poor, socialism may be just the solution for you. You will not live better, but you are anyway poorer than the wealthy ones, regardless if you are capitalist or socialist. But you will be able to fight the wealthy ones, because your energies will be focused, and their soft power over you diminished.
How can you otherwise explain that the Cold War rivals were the US, without question the richest country in the world since 1919, and a Russia/USSR, just one of the European powers, devastated by two world wars and a revolution, and which anyway managed to send the first man into space? How can you explain the victory of little Vietnam over the great US? If Vietnam was not socialist, it could not do everything to win. Capitalism is notorious for its tycoons/oligarchs – the US would bribe a few, and Vietnam would fall like a ripe fruit.
There are no oligarchs in socialism – the political and economic power is connected at the party level, and not on the individual level. The Party presents a unified front to the foreigners – and unity is one of the prerequisites for a victory in a war.
A war is not only “hot”, it is also “cold”, where foreign powers want to obtain economic dominion over a country and turn it into a (neo)colony. That country has two possibilities: to be let itself be conquered, and become, for all intents and purposes, a colony, or to fight for its freedom. The choice is between two evils: a colony is exploited, and cruelly punished if it tries to regain its freedom, while freedom is expensive, and not so free, because hierarchy will exist anyway. It will be less rigid – the difference between a communist Vietnamese and ordinary Vietnamese is not made in stone. The difference between a Frenchman and a Vietnamese is.
In short, socialism is a system geared for war. Just ask the Spartans.
Two sides of the same coin: crimes
Socialism, or communism, is reproached for being inherently criminal, and is even equated with fascism. The communist crimes are without doubt. From Tito, whose easily forgotten victims range into tens or hundreds of thousands, Stalin, Mao, to Pol Pot, that killed most of his people, there were a number of communist regimes up to their knees in blood. Their victims were documented and numerous. Maybe more numerous than the victims of fascists.
The victims of the West are somehow always forgotten. From the “Final Solution” to the Indian problem, through Belgian Congo, a thousand and one bloody massacre of the natives we never even heard of, Hiroshima and Dresden, to the latest victories for democracy, it cannot be said that the Western System is lily-white. On the contrary, it may be good to count the victims of that system.
Reproaching socialism, or communism, for its special criminal nature is simply not realistic. Comparing communist Czechoslovakia and communist Cambodia, fascist Argentina and fascist Croatia, democratic Denmark and democratic Belgium or US tells us that every system has its share of criminals and non-criminals (ok, lesser criminals).
Instead of the end
I understand that some people search for a more just society, a society where everyone would live in peace in prosperity. Some saw socialism as that society. They were wrong.
However, as the examples of Sparta or Ancient Egypt tell us, socialism is not inherently new. It is a system of state control over resources. That system has existed since the dawn of time, and its recent defeat does not mean that it will disappear forever. On the contrary, history tells us that things tend to go in waves, and that this victory of the system called liberal capitalism, which it is not, will not be permanent. Socialism will again come into vogue at some point, probably under a different name, but with the same essence.
It is important for us to know what socialism is, what it can, and what it cannot do. Please do not tell me about the more just distribution of goods socialism will bring. It won’t. It has nothing to do with it. Human nature is such, people gravitate toward hierarchy, and those on top will be better off than those bellow. In any system. But it is slightly different if those on top are of different skin color, or just strangers. The difference is then greater, and exploitation more cruel. If you want to talk to me about socialism as a tool against imperialism, feel free. I’m listening.
Saturday, December 27, 2014
Is Russia the ideal enemy for western capitalists?
by Dagmar Henn
Most people look at geopolitical interests and at the military-industrial complex, when they think about the economy of war. This might be right for the small ones, but it underestimates the impact of the big ones. Whole industrial empires rose from the profits of war, and not necessary in the areas of weapons production. The Quandt dynasty in Germany (they own f.e. BMW) started from selling uniforms in WWI and continued benefiting from slave labor in WWII. Bertelsmann, one of the biggest global media companies, turned from a tiny publisher of Christian literature to a big publishing house through selling 20 million books to the Wehrmacht. And when the big chemical corporation IG Farben was broken up after WWII, each of the three companies created out of it, BASF, Bayer and Hoechst, was as big as IG Farben itself before the war. They made a handsome profit from synthesized petrol... (not to mention a more gruesome product called Zyklon B).
For an industry desperately looking for demand this is the ultimate Keynesian kick. A big war is programmed obsolescence on speed – products intended for destruction, on a market free of competition, paid for by the customer of last resort, the state, who in his turn posts a bet upon refinancing the cost through plunder. If the bet goes wrong and the war is lost – well, that´s what Swiss bank accounts were invented for...
The present economic crisis is not a financial one. Finance is just the surface. The wave of deindustrialisation sweeping over most of the Western economies during the last decades tells another story. Industry became too efficient; it doesn´t generate enough jobs, therefore it doesn´t hand out wages sufficient to pay for all the products produced. For some time this problem could be covered up by credit-financed consumption and the roving circus of low-cost-country production, but finally it came back to roost. Industrial production recovered nearly nowhere to it´s pre-2008 level; so even if there were a beneficial wizard who took all the states debts out of the system, and all the fictive capital called derivatives or MBS or what-so-ever, it still would be dead-end-street.
Source: querschuesse.de
But who wants to relinquish power? Concede that the famous invisible hand turned rheumatic, leave those beautiful mansions with well-cultivated lawns and share an ordinary life? Unimaginable. As long as there is a single card left inside the sleeve the gamble continues. And this last card is called war. On a large scale.
Now, let´s look at it from an economic perspective. There is an enormous need for demand; all those peripheral conflicts simply don´t size up to answer it. They generate profits for small, specialized segments of industry, but they don´t require enough material to set the whole industrial machinery back in motion. They don´t destroy a sufficient quantity of real values, which would also create a need for reconstruction – which values are left over to destroy in Afghanistan?
So what would be the criteria for the ideal enemy? There should be enough bounty, so that the whole enterprise can be refinanced by resources to be stolen. Cross out all countries that lack natural resources. The area that is fought over should contain a sufficient quantity of real values. Scratch out all non-industrial countries The enemy should be able to resist, because time equals demand. Scratch out all countries with weak armies. This seriously limits the choice. Adding the point that it´s not really advantageous to start an attack from the see, you can have a look at the globe and you will end up with one single option. Russia.
Oops. They got nuclear bombs. Isn´t it absolutely insane to risk a nuclear confrontation? It is, but – there are two points to consider.
The first one has to do with human memory. After a certain period, historic research talks about more or less eighty years, an event moves into the realm of legend; as soon as there are too few living persons around that have experienced it themselves. A few weeks ago this split in perception got very visible in German politics – the people who signed the appeal for reasonable politics towards Russia simply belong to an older generation, for them the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still real. The politicians who lead at the moment know them only from tales; this is a weak argument against an economic collapse they can see and feel and taste.
The second point is the mindset of the ruling classes themselves. There can be no doubt they are better informed about the real state of capitalism than we are, and even we can read the writing on the wall. So why shouldn´t they play their last card? Just because there is a risk of total oblivion?That doesn´t change much from their point of view. Novels of the 18th and 19th century are full of aristocrats that prefer death over a loss of status. The character-masks of capital pass their lives considering the rest of humankind some type of cattle. And not because they lack brains or suffer from a faulty character; it´s a necessity for their self-legitimation. They couldn´t stand to be what they are and do what they do if they saw the world from a normal perspective. What seems completely irrational therefore turns into a rational choice. A peaceful continuation of collapse will definitely end in them losing their status. A bet on war might end in them losing their lives. And it might not. Marie Antoinette for sure would have turned the planet into a radioactive ashtray without hesitation, if she had the possibility.
It is our tiny problem that we don´t just share the same planet with these people; we still accept their rule.
The quote above is from Brecht´s "Mother Courage".
'Taint evry day we have a war, I got to get stirring'
Most people look at geopolitical interests and at the military-industrial complex, when they think about the economy of war. This might be right for the small ones, but it underestimates the impact of the big ones. Whole industrial empires rose from the profits of war, and not necessary in the areas of weapons production. The Quandt dynasty in Germany (they own f.e. BMW) started from selling uniforms in WWI and continued benefiting from slave labor in WWII. Bertelsmann, one of the biggest global media companies, turned from a tiny publisher of Christian literature to a big publishing house through selling 20 million books to the Wehrmacht. And when the big chemical corporation IG Farben was broken up after WWII, each of the three companies created out of it, BASF, Bayer and Hoechst, was as big as IG Farben itself before the war. They made a handsome profit from synthesized petrol... (not to mention a more gruesome product called Zyklon B).
For an industry desperately looking for demand this is the ultimate Keynesian kick. A big war is programmed obsolescence on speed – products intended for destruction, on a market free of competition, paid for by the customer of last resort, the state, who in his turn posts a bet upon refinancing the cost through plunder. If the bet goes wrong and the war is lost – well, that´s what Swiss bank accounts were invented for...
The present economic crisis is not a financial one. Finance is just the surface. The wave of deindustrialisation sweeping over most of the Western economies during the last decades tells another story. Industry became too efficient; it doesn´t generate enough jobs, therefore it doesn´t hand out wages sufficient to pay for all the products produced. For some time this problem could be covered up by credit-financed consumption and the roving circus of low-cost-country production, but finally it came back to roost. Industrial production recovered nearly nowhere to it´s pre-2008 level; so even if there were a beneficial wizard who took all the states debts out of the system, and all the fictive capital called derivatives or MBS or what-so-ever, it still would be dead-end-street.
Source: querschuesse.de
But who wants to relinquish power? Concede that the famous invisible hand turned rheumatic, leave those beautiful mansions with well-cultivated lawns and share an ordinary life? Unimaginable. As long as there is a single card left inside the sleeve the gamble continues. And this last card is called war. On a large scale.
Now, let´s look at it from an economic perspective. There is an enormous need for demand; all those peripheral conflicts simply don´t size up to answer it. They generate profits for small, specialized segments of industry, but they don´t require enough material to set the whole industrial machinery back in motion. They don´t destroy a sufficient quantity of real values, which would also create a need for reconstruction – which values are left over to destroy in Afghanistan?
So what would be the criteria for the ideal enemy? There should be enough bounty, so that the whole enterprise can be refinanced by resources to be stolen. Cross out all countries that lack natural resources. The area that is fought over should contain a sufficient quantity of real values. Scratch out all non-industrial countries The enemy should be able to resist, because time equals demand. Scratch out all countries with weak armies. This seriously limits the choice. Adding the point that it´s not really advantageous to start an attack from the see, you can have a look at the globe and you will end up with one single option. Russia.
Oops. They got nuclear bombs. Isn´t it absolutely insane to risk a nuclear confrontation? It is, but – there are two points to consider.
The first one has to do with human memory. After a certain period, historic research talks about more or less eighty years, an event moves into the realm of legend; as soon as there are too few living persons around that have experienced it themselves. A few weeks ago this split in perception got very visible in German politics – the people who signed the appeal for reasonable politics towards Russia simply belong to an older generation, for them the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still real. The politicians who lead at the moment know them only from tales; this is a weak argument against an economic collapse they can see and feel and taste.
The second point is the mindset of the ruling classes themselves. There can be no doubt they are better informed about the real state of capitalism than we are, and even we can read the writing on the wall. So why shouldn´t they play their last card? Just because there is a risk of total oblivion?That doesn´t change much from their point of view. Novels of the 18th and 19th century are full of aristocrats that prefer death over a loss of status. The character-masks of capital pass their lives considering the rest of humankind some type of cattle. And not because they lack brains or suffer from a faulty character; it´s a necessity for their self-legitimation. They couldn´t stand to be what they are and do what they do if they saw the world from a normal perspective. What seems completely irrational therefore turns into a rational choice. A peaceful continuation of collapse will definitely end in them losing their status. A bet on war might end in them losing their lives. And it might not. Marie Antoinette for sure would have turned the planet into a radioactive ashtray without hesitation, if she had the possibility.
It is our tiny problem that we don´t just share the same planet with these people; we still accept their rule.
The quote above is from Brecht´s "Mother Courage".
Thursday, December 25, 2014
Short update about the Ruble and a great interview of Michael Hudson
The Ruble is slowly climbing back up and is already treading at a much more reasonable rate (with probably more readjustment ahead). See for yourself:
But his happened at a great cost. See ZeroHedge about this: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-25/ruble-rallies-34-after-biggest-russian-intervention-5-years
Also, I would like to highly recommend the analysis of my favorite American economist, Michael Hudson who does a superb job explaining the Russian strategy for the Real News Network: http://michael-hudson.com/2014/12/russian-pivot/
Cheers,
The Saker
But his happened at a great cost. See ZeroHedge about this: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-25/ruble-rallies-34-after-biggest-russian-intervention-5-years
Also, I would like to highly recommend the analysis of my favorite American economist, Michael Hudson who does a superb job explaining the Russian strategy for the Real News Network: http://michael-hudson.com/2014/12/russian-pivot/
Cheers,
The Saker
Fourth Saker Podcast now available for download and streaming
Dear friends,
I invite you to go to the (temporary) Saker Podcast page:
https://sites.google.com/site/sakerpodcast/home
where you download the transcripts of the first two podcasts and then to the Fourth Saker Podcast page:
https://sites.google.com/site/sakerpodcast/home/saker-podcast-4
where you can download the fourth and last Saker podcast of the year. I will record the next podcast sometime after the Orthodox Nativity (January 7th). This is also the planned time for the launching of the "2nd new blog" about which I will post all the details before that date.
Please let me know if you want any specific changes in the podcasts next year: shall we continue with the Q&A? Do you like the format? Any specific desires or complaints? If yes, please let me know.
Finally, if you appreciate these podcasts please remember to donate, especially in this end of year (i.e. "bills paying") time of the year.
Many thanks and kind regards,
The Saker
I invite you to go to the (temporary) Saker Podcast page:https://sites.google.com/site/sakerpodcast/home
where you download the transcripts of the first two podcasts and then to the Fourth Saker Podcast page:
https://sites.google.com/site/sakerpodcast/home/saker-podcast-4
where you can download the fourth and last Saker podcast of the year. I will record the next podcast sometime after the Orthodox Nativity (January 7th). This is also the planned time for the launching of the "2nd new blog" about which I will post all the details before that date.
Please let me know if you want any specific changes in the podcasts next year: shall we continue with the Q&A? Do you like the format? Any specific desires or complaints? If yes, please let me know.
Finally, if you appreciate these podcasts please remember to donate, especially in this end of year (i.e. "bills paying") time of the year.
Many thanks and kind regards,
The Saker
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
The 2014 "Saker's Man of the Year": the Russian soldier
It's this time of the year again when the corporate media engages in the silly "man of the year" exercise and when I offer my own nominations just as a small sign of defiance towards the Imperial propaganda. Last year, I decided that the title of "Saker man of the year" should go to the Syrian solider without whom neither Russia, nor Iran, nor Hezbollah would have been able to save Syria from the NATO-Wahabi aggression. I also listed Vladimir Putin as a "runner up" and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as honored by a "special distinction". Looking back, I would say that these were very good nominations and I hope that this year I will get it right again. So here we go.
The 2014 Saker man of the year nomination goes to the masked Russian solider: the "Polite Men in Green" and the Novorussian volunteer.
I decided that, if anybody, the Polite Man in Green deserved this honor because of the absolutely brilliant way he liberated Crimea and protected the Crimean people during the referendum while the Novorussian volunteer deserved the distinction because of the no less brilliant way he defeated a much larger Ukrainian force.
The Polite Man in Green:
It is often forgotten that the Ukrainians had a very large force on the Crimean Peninsula composed of their best trained and equipped units. The operation to disarm them all with a minimum of violence was far from being risk free. Of course, the Ukrainians had no chance to prevail against the Russian Special Forces, but they sure had the manpower and resources to give them a very good fight. What prevented them from doing so what the lightening speed of the Russian operation as well as the overwhelming force clearly represented by a large number of fully equipped Spetsnaz operators. Simply put - the Ukrainians understood that they had no chance, none at all, against such a formidable enemy. The calm but very self-confident behavior of these Polite Man in Green psychologically crushed the Ukrainian will to resist.
But that is not why I wanted to honor these man. There are, after all, plenty of skill soldiers worldwide. No, main the reason why I felt that these men deserved to be recognized is because they were truly liberators in the most noble sense of the world. The AngloZionist Empire and the Nazi junta leader in Kiev had already decided that Crimea was theirs, the USN even had plans to built special facilities on the peninsula and they were all sure that there was nothing the locals could do about it, that they were irrelevant. The Polite Man in Green proved them wrong: they liberated them and gave them a chance to freely decide their future themselves, they gave them back a dignity which had been taken away from them by Nikita Khrushchev.
The Novorussian volunteer:
Here again I am honoring a collective "man", all those who did not wait for an order from above or for somebody else to do the right thing and who decided that I will not stand by and I will fight against the Nazi regime which is trying to oppress my people.
Unlike the Polite Man in Green, the Novorussian Volunteer had all the odds staked against him and even his hope that the Russian Federation would do for Novorussia what she had done for Crimea was soon proven wrong: no Polite Man in Green were sent to Novorussia (or very few). The Nazis had an overwhelming advantage in firepower, in armor, in artillery, in heavy weapons and they had a total control of the skies, yet - unlike the Ukrainian soldiers in Crimea - the Novorussian volunteer did not let his will to resist be crushed, he fought on, very skillfully, and not only defeated his enemy but even launched a highly successful counter-offensive which was stopped on political grounds but which could have been sustained much further (though probably not as far as some believe it could have).
Together, the Polite Man in Green and the Novorussian volunteer stand against the Empire and its Nazi allies just as the Syrian soldier stood against the Empire and his Wahabi allies. All of them have proven, yet again, that the most powerful weapon in any conflict still remains the fighting spirit and the individual courage of the fighting man.
The runner up(s): Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinpin
For a second time I am going to chose Vladimir Putin as the runner up for "2014 Saker Man of the Year", but this time with Xi Jinpin. Together these two man have taken the unprecedented step for creating something much more complex than just a strategic alliance: they have decided to integrate their two nations in a symbiotic relationship which will truly turn them into a type of "Siamese twins" except that they will share most of their "vital organs" while keeping to separate "heads". Through a series of huge multi-billion contracts in such key areas as energy and defense (along many more comparatively smaller ones), the Russian and the Chinese leaders have basically decided to "marry" their two nations for a common future. Not only that, but by not following the US model of hegemonic and planetary full-spectrum dominance Russia and China are now offering a new model of international relations one in which multi-polarity is actively sought, in which security is viewed as collective and in which the sovereignization, not subjugation, of the rest of the world promoted. Thanks to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinpin, we will probably end up with a new world order, but most definitely not the one envisioned by AngloZionist imperialists and for that I think that they most definitely deserved to be recognized.
Special distinction: Ramzan Kadyrov
For many years already Ramzan Kadyrov has been the driving force behind the Chechen miracle. Let's remember what Chechnia looked like in 2000: Grozny was in such ruins that many seriously advocated completely abandoning the city and relocating the capital of Chechnia elsewhere. All the western "experts" predicted that the Chechen insurgency would never be defeated. Most importantly, it sure looked like Russians and Chechens hated each other with a dark and burning passion. Fifteen years later, Grozny has turned into a superb city, with the lowest crime rate in Russia, the Wahabi insurgency has been comprehensively defeated, and traditional Sunni Islam is triumphant over Wahabism which has been completely eradicated. As for the terrorist threat, it has become so low that when in the recent incident a group of Wahabi terrorists penetrated deep inside Grozny the world found out that the city did not even have checkpoints or roadblocks because they had been removed by the authorities a long time ago.
Furthermore, Ramzan Kadyrov fully took on the role of "protector of the Russian people" not only politically, but by getting personally involved in the conflict in Novorussia: many know that Chechen volunteers are fighting against the Nazi forces, but most people ignore that Chechnia is also accepting many Ukrainian refugees who are finding a safe heaven and, for many, a new home in the small republic.
And through this Ramzan Kadyrov arguably achieved his most amazing miracle: whereas by 2000 the Russian people hated and despised the Chechens whom they saw as vicious and evil enemies, nowadays Russian see Chechen as their most courageous and faithful allies. It is not an exaggeration to say that Ramzan Kadyrov has restored the honor of the Chechen people in a dramatically short period of time.
Needless to say, it is precisely for all these reasons that Kadyrov is absolutely hated by the Empire and its propaganda machine and Kadyrov is presented as a bloodthirsty thug. Truth be told, Kadyrov certainly did display some very thug-like behavior, especially in the past, but there is a lot more to the man than his natural swagger: he is a deeply principled, religious and patriotic leader who has shown in many difficult circumstances that he as fully inherited his father' wisdom and personal courage.
Now it is your turn. Who are your men/women of the year 2014?
Cheers,
The Saker
The 2014 Saker man of the year nomination goes to the masked Russian solider: the "Polite Men in Green" and the Novorussian volunteer.
I decided that, if anybody, the Polite Man in Green deserved this honor because of the absolutely brilliant way he liberated Crimea and protected the Crimean people during the referendum while the Novorussian volunteer deserved the distinction because of the no less brilliant way he defeated a much larger Ukrainian force.
 |
| The Polite Man in Green |
It is often forgotten that the Ukrainians had a very large force on the Crimean Peninsula composed of their best trained and equipped units. The operation to disarm them all with a minimum of violence was far from being risk free. Of course, the Ukrainians had no chance to prevail against the Russian Special Forces, but they sure had the manpower and resources to give them a very good fight. What prevented them from doing so what the lightening speed of the Russian operation as well as the overwhelming force clearly represented by a large number of fully equipped Spetsnaz operators. Simply put - the Ukrainians understood that they had no chance, none at all, against such a formidable enemy. The calm but very self-confident behavior of these Polite Man in Green psychologically crushed the Ukrainian will to resist.
But that is not why I wanted to honor these man. There are, after all, plenty of skill soldiers worldwide. No, main the reason why I felt that these men deserved to be recognized is because they were truly liberators in the most noble sense of the world. The AngloZionist Empire and the Nazi junta leader in Kiev had already decided that Crimea was theirs, the USN even had plans to built special facilities on the peninsula and they were all sure that there was nothing the locals could do about it, that they were irrelevant. The Polite Man in Green proved them wrong: they liberated them and gave them a chance to freely decide their future themselves, they gave them back a dignity which had been taken away from them by Nikita Khrushchev.
 |
| The Novorussian volunteer |
Here again I am honoring a collective "man", all those who did not wait for an order from above or for somebody else to do the right thing and who decided that I will not stand by and I will fight against the Nazi regime which is trying to oppress my people.
Unlike the Polite Man in Green, the Novorussian Volunteer had all the odds staked against him and even his hope that the Russian Federation would do for Novorussia what she had done for Crimea was soon proven wrong: no Polite Man in Green were sent to Novorussia (or very few). The Nazis had an overwhelming advantage in firepower, in armor, in artillery, in heavy weapons and they had a total control of the skies, yet - unlike the Ukrainian soldiers in Crimea - the Novorussian volunteer did not let his will to resist be crushed, he fought on, very skillfully, and not only defeated his enemy but even launched a highly successful counter-offensive which was stopped on political grounds but which could have been sustained much further (though probably not as far as some believe it could have).
Together, the Polite Man in Green and the Novorussian volunteer stand against the Empire and its Nazi allies just as the Syrian soldier stood against the Empire and his Wahabi allies. All of them have proven, yet again, that the most powerful weapon in any conflict still remains the fighting spirit and the individual courage of the fighting man.
 |
| Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinpin |
For a second time I am going to chose Vladimir Putin as the runner up for "2014 Saker Man of the Year", but this time with Xi Jinpin. Together these two man have taken the unprecedented step for creating something much more complex than just a strategic alliance: they have decided to integrate their two nations in a symbiotic relationship which will truly turn them into a type of "Siamese twins" except that they will share most of their "vital organs" while keeping to separate "heads". Through a series of huge multi-billion contracts in such key areas as energy and defense (along many more comparatively smaller ones), the Russian and the Chinese leaders have basically decided to "marry" their two nations for a common future. Not only that, but by not following the US model of hegemonic and planetary full-spectrum dominance Russia and China are now offering a new model of international relations one in which multi-polarity is actively sought, in which security is viewed as collective and in which the sovereignization, not subjugation, of the rest of the world promoted. Thanks to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinpin, we will probably end up with a new world order, but most definitely not the one envisioned by AngloZionist imperialists and for that I think that they most definitely deserved to be recognized.
 |
| Ramzan Kadyrov |
For many years already Ramzan Kadyrov has been the driving force behind the Chechen miracle. Let's remember what Chechnia looked like in 2000: Grozny was in such ruins that many seriously advocated completely abandoning the city and relocating the capital of Chechnia elsewhere. All the western "experts" predicted that the Chechen insurgency would never be defeated. Most importantly, it sure looked like Russians and Chechens hated each other with a dark and burning passion. Fifteen years later, Grozny has turned into a superb city, with the lowest crime rate in Russia, the Wahabi insurgency has been comprehensively defeated, and traditional Sunni Islam is triumphant over Wahabism which has been completely eradicated. As for the terrorist threat, it has become so low that when in the recent incident a group of Wahabi terrorists penetrated deep inside Grozny the world found out that the city did not even have checkpoints or roadblocks because they had been removed by the authorities a long time ago.
Furthermore, Ramzan Kadyrov fully took on the role of "protector of the Russian people" not only politically, but by getting personally involved in the conflict in Novorussia: many know that Chechen volunteers are fighting against the Nazi forces, but most people ignore that Chechnia is also accepting many Ukrainian refugees who are finding a safe heaven and, for many, a new home in the small republic.
And through this Ramzan Kadyrov arguably achieved his most amazing miracle: whereas by 2000 the Russian people hated and despised the Chechens whom they saw as vicious and evil enemies, nowadays Russian see Chechen as their most courageous and faithful allies. It is not an exaggeration to say that Ramzan Kadyrov has restored the honor of the Chechen people in a dramatically short period of time.
Needless to say, it is precisely for all these reasons that Kadyrov is absolutely hated by the Empire and its propaganda machine and Kadyrov is presented as a bloodthirsty thug. Truth be told, Kadyrov certainly did display some very thug-like behavior, especially in the past, but there is a lot more to the man than his natural swagger: he is a deeply principled, religious and patriotic leader who has shown in many difficult circumstances that he as fully inherited his father' wisdom and personal courage.
Now it is your turn. Who are your men/women of the year 2014?
Cheers,
The Saker
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