We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

The failure of the Soviet economy and the global domination of the petrodollar

Click here to access article by Tobias Pfennig posted on Defend Democracy Press. (Note: this post is marred somewhat by the failure to raise reference numbers in the text. Thus, your attention may be distracted by such text as this: "Additionally, Northern America together with Europe controlled 91 percent of the global export market share2." and this: "In 2013 Oil exports together with gas made up more than 68%3 of the whole exports from the Russian Federation." The post was from a "Text of a speech delivered at the International Conference on Alternatives to Financial Capitalism, held in Chisinau, Moldova 12-13 December 2017", and obviously the numbers should have been raised because they referred to documentation which was left out of this post.")

I think the author has a very good grasp of the potential, and actual use, of economic weapons that have been used by the US-led Empire over the decades since WWII. Because the lethal applications of these weapons are never felt among ordinary people in the countries affiliated with the Empire, they are an ideal weapon of choice against independent countries in order to extend the Empire's (the transnational capitalists affiliated with the Empire) dominance of the world. The imposition of the US dollar on the rest of the world remains a major battlefield, and the entrance on this battlefield by Russia and China (in collaboration with smaller nations) in opposition to the dominance of the Empire looks very promising for the end of Empire dominance.