Tuesday, April 6, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Tuesday, April 6, 2021

  • Biden’s Infrastructure Plan by Jack Rasmus from Alternative Visions. (Note: Rasmus discusses the deceptions related to Biden's vaunted infrastructure plan in a 57:13m audio recording.)
  • Pepe Escobar Joins Jeff J. Brown for a Great Conversation about the US, EU, China, Russia, Iran and DPRK [North Korea], plus much more. This is posted on The Greanville Post. (Note: I especially recommend listening to Escobar's opening statement (first 20 and half minutes) regarding diplomatic efforts of the US vis-à-vis China and Russia. Brown, who has lived and worked in China for about 16 years, and Escobar are good friends. Brown, who is now retired, lives in Brussels. Escobar lives in Thailand. Escobar is, in my opinion, is one of the top geo-political journalists in the world. I recommend the rest of the conversation (the whole 1 hr 10m interview) for those who are well informed about international politics.
I agree with Crooke's argument that following the meeting at Anchorage between the USA and China, and that China no longer believes in a cooperative arrangement that can be obtained with the US or the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. However, I cannot agree with his following assertion:
 
Socialism versus capitalism? No, it is a long time since the U.S. was a capitalist economy; it’s hardly even a market economy today. It has become, more and more, a rentier economy since leaving the gold standard (in 1971). 
 
Capitalism, like all other systems, has stages that it goes through just like the old colonial relationships that Euro-Americans had prior to WWII with the relatively pre-industrialized countries of the world in contrast to the essentially neo-colonial relationships the former had with the latter since WWII. The post-WWII era saw the frequent use of financial weapons that was first exposed in the writings of John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
 
Similarly capitalism in the Empire has moved beyond industrialization to the financialization stage by their pursuit of neoliberalist policies which accumulate wealth with the less risky interest of loans from the IMF, World Bank, and international banks located in the Empire. Also, these finance capitalists use loans as weapons to pry open less advanced economies for exploitation by Empire corporations. Crooke is evidently too influenced by the writings of Michael Hudson who ignores the exploitation of American workers by "captains of industry" (to the chagrin of his Trotskyist parents) and champions the previous phase of capitalism--industrialization.
 
Now we, who reside within the Empire, increasingly witness the use of censorship and manipulation of information that has replaced to a considerable extent more authoritarian methods of old-fashioned fascism. We, who reside in the Empire, are now in a neo-fascist phase of capitalism where capitalist ruling classes rely much more heavily on the control of information that is allowed to ordinary people. (To be sure, if the latter methods fail, the ruling class uses police and soldiers to crush all opposition.) Those who reside outside of the Empire are frequently subject to subversive efforts by agents of the hyper-aggressive capitalist Empire.
  • Dealing With Demons by Larry Romanoff from "The Saker" weblog. My reaction: This is a very lengthy post, but also a very interesting one from an author who is probably Canadian (based on his spelling of "organisers" below), retired and living in Shanghai, China. His report refers to the city of Wuhan and a single province, Hebei, of China which, I believe, was the only province that had numerous temporary restrictions imposed on its citizens. See the province in the center of China on the map below:
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/d6/31/0f/d6310f7b860e46be5b26f24008263ef5.jpg

 
 I include two paragraphs from the article which offer some significant reasons why China dealt with the corona virus much more effectively than other Western countries including our own:
 
One reason the Chinese were able to deal with the epidemic while the UK and USA stumbled in the dark is that the Chinese think, with considerable justification, that they have been under biological attack, on and off since c.1950, and were therefore prepared with well-laid plans and competent organisers to respond to such an event. As soon as the central government learned the specific nature of the outbreak, it responded massively and to a very large extent the population understood the necessity of what was asked of them and cooperated.


The main objective of China’s Government is the rejuvenation of China, in part demonstrably evidenced by the determined efforts made for the betterment and the well-being of its population, which is reflected in the credibility and high level of trust the Chinese people place in their government. These concepts don’t exist in the west. In the US, the “world’s model for everything”, a virus epidemic is seen through lenses of profiteering by large corporations, sick people not being humans in need of assistance but merely a new lucrative “market” – for those with money to pay. An American hospital is not a place for healing the sick but a kind of barnyard filled with cash cows to milk. This is one fundamental reason underlying America’s chaotic and hopeless approach to dealing with the epidemic. The Trump administration failed to help itself and refused to help even its friends, on the one hand ignoring the suffering and extreme difficulties in China and wasting its time scoring cheap political points on the world stage, happy with the loss of life and the economic damage China was suffering.
 
 
I want to add only two fundamental reasons for the difference of outcomes. One, is that Americans have been lied to so often in the past 70 years (the assassinations, 9/11, invasion of Iraq, etc.) that many Americans no longer believe what the authorities and major media corporations tell me--whereas the Chinese completely trust their authorities and follow their instructions to the letter. Two, I believe that the ruling capitalist class has zero interest in the health of ordinary Americans. They see them as only sources of profit.