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running out of hubris.....The West, with its decadence, its Democrats and Republicans, still lives in Rome’s savage shadow, where we are always at war with Eastasia and, thus, with ourselves. This article expands upon elements of Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova’s recent comment that “the Germans are rewarding the [NEO]-Nazi Zelensky for the fratricidal massacre, the abolition of everything Russian, the demolition of monuments to the winners of the Third Reich, the glorification of Nazi collaborators, the annihilation of Orthodoxy, the implementation of the thousand-year-old drang – the liberation of living space in the East [to build] a new Europe – not Judenfrei, but Russenfrei. And this concept includes all nationalities of multinational Russia”.
BY Declan HAYES
Although our focus is almost exclusively on the present, we must first acknowledge that Hitler’s ideological roots were very many, very varied, very intertwined and very deep-rooted. At the Nuremberg Trials, for example, Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher argued that his Der Stürmer paper had never alleged anything against the Jews which Martin Luther, the founder of German nationalism, had not already said at the time of the Reformation. German Romanticism, British Darwinism and America’s eugenics policy all played their parts in bringing us The Final Solution, where the collaboration of the Seventh day Adventists and the unspeakable sufferings and persecution of the Jehovah Witnesses by the Nazis must also be put into the frame, just as Zakharova is putting all Russians, including the Pope’s Buddhist and Muslim scapegoats, into hers. These two relatively minor German groups are mentioned to make the point that the Jews were not the only target of Herr Hitler, who was of the Austrian School, which saw the Reich’s main enemies as the Slavs, Europe’s largest ethno-linguistic group, who stretch from the German border all the way to Vladivostok. Although Russians comprise a core part of the Slavs, they are of the Slavs and cannot be divorced from the Slavs, their wider family. They, their names, their language, their customs and mannerisms are not something separate but are simply Russian manifestations of the greater Slavic culture, of which Russia and Russianness are integral, not separate parts. Thus, Zakharova’s Christian name is Syro-Aramaic, Lavrov’s is Roman and Putin’s can be traced back to Bulgaria. Although Slavic children should not have to live in fear of their lives because of the names they were assigned at birth, that is where we are. And where we have been. Because my own name is decidedly Irish, it remains a death sentence in parts of North Belfast, as do Roman names like Patrick, Hebrew ones like Michael or Greek ones like Timothy. I mention North Belfast as it was the scene of the Holy Cross Kindergarten outrage, where hordes of adult Protestant scum, for weeks on end, threw urine and human shit over Catholic kindergarten kids as they made their way to and from school. This same North Belfast area was the hunting grounds for Johnny Adair’s C Company, whose Any Taig Will Do maxim meant that all Catholics (Taigs) were legitimate targets for summary murder. The relevance of Adair, The Jackal, King Rat, the Glenanne gang and MI5’s other most notorious killers is that they gave MI5 the template they used in Iraq and that they are now using in Ukraine to hunt down Russian speakers and shoot them like pigs. Just as their 17 May 1974 bombings of Dublin and Monaghan still cannot be investigated lest MI5 feathers be ruffled, so also can the perpetrators of the more recent Nordstream terrorist outrage not be investigated for broadly similar reasons. Just think about that for a second. The British exploded bombs outside Vichy Ireland’s Dublin Parliament and we cannot even point the finger at the obvious MI5 mass murderers, lest we damage the Sopranos’ precious Peace Process (sic). The Norwegians and their American masters cause major ecological, economic and political damage in the North Sea and we are supposed to think that Joe and Hunter Biden are heroes, not sexual deviants and war criminals, who wallow in the destruction of Germany as much as they do in their Ukrainian war crimes. As for Holy Cross, the little girls the Protestants terrorised have now grown up and have their own children attending Holy Cross. But what of those mad savages attacking old women and infants attending Church in the heart of Zelensky’s rump Reich? Why should it be left to Zakharova and our own Stephen Karganovic to draw attention to this savagery? What is wrong with us? Here are these cretins turning a Church into a night club. And here is a petitionasking the German regime to allow Pink Floyd founder and all round hero Roger Waters perform in Germany. What is wrong with the Germans that they will fund the one and ban the other? Have today’s Germans never heard of Jesus and Barabbas? And what is wrong with Pope Francis in Rome? In his (Latin) Easter message, the Pontiff asked Russians to reflect on their role in Ukraine. First off, Darya Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky are no longer in a position to muse on that as they have been murdered. Next off, Russians are thinking a lot about Kiev’s Kristallnacht because several hundred thousand of their fathers, sons, brothers and husbands stand ready to die for the right of Ukrainian grandmothers to go to Church without Nazi saluting scum berating them. Next off, and get this Your Holiness, Patriarch Kirill has spoken about Russia’s role in Ukraine and, as most Russians are Orthodox Christians, they should look to him, rather than to your good office which was complicit in the destruction of Yugoslavia, the land of the Southern Serbs, for pastoral guidance and reflection. And what is all this about Easter messages in any event? Today’s important Christian message, today’s practical, applied Christian message is Pentecostwhen, thanks to the intercession of no less a figure than the Holy Spirit himself, the Apostles got off their rumps, vacated their safe house, talked the talk, walked the walk and, like so many of today’s Russian, Serbian, Syrian and Palestinian Orthodox Christians, were martyred for their efforts. Blood of the martyrs and all that. If the Pope is to have any credibility in any of this, he should salute and support Zakharova, who can be seen here castigating Americans’ silence regarding this ongoing holocaust. Pope Peter’s three denials and the cock crowing cock a doodle doo, Your Holiness? After the cock crows, Pope Francis might like to sit down on equal terms with senior Orthodox clerics like Patriarch Kirill and put this filoque nonsense to bed once and for all so that NATO will not destroy European Christianity the way they and their Anglican side kicks destroyed the Chaldean and Assyrian Churches of Iraq. As Latin and allied Churches do not include the filoque when using Greek, this greatest of all theological fences should be done away with. But then, as many of the Holy Father’s Slavic brothers in Christ could attest, all of that has more to do with the supposed primacy of Rome over Byzantium, a fallacy embedded in sectarian bigot Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire where he downplays Rome’s eastern provinces, where its true power, wealth land prestige always lay. The West, with its decadence, its Democrats and Republicans, still lives in Rome’s savage shadow, where we are always at war with Eastasia and, thus, with ourselves. We have a situation where young Ukrainian Frankensteins, who are too cowardly to take on the Wagner Group, get their rocks off, Holy Cross style, by intimidating elderly Christians, priests and bishops, all while thinking they are tough and superior because these cretins imagine their apish grunts resemble the war cries the Vikings made a millennium and more ago. Like their einsatzgruppen heroes of 80 years ago, these lobotomised apes are too stupid to have a game plan or even to begin to understand the NATO one they are serving. That plan is to make everything between Moscow and the North Sea an economic and cultural wasteland, a place where only opiated apes can feel at home. Though Germany’s economic hara-kiri is evidence enough of that, just recall that one of the West’s biggest concerns over the Ukrainian war is that their supply chain for surrogate babies is being disrupted. God help those poor Ukrainian women, who must rent their wombs to decadent Westerners as their fathers, brothers and husbands are swallowed whole in the meat grinders of the Zelensky Reich’s Eastern Front. And God curse every Westerner and two bit fascist preacher who helped bring this calamity to Ukraine. I feel like Serenus Zeitblom, the liberal German narrator in Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus, who laments the Faustian pact and consequent loss of humanity Germany’s intellectuals made in the years of Hitler’s Reich. Or perhaps the composer Adrian Leverkühn, who is at the centre of this classic work and who becomes increasingly obsessed by the Reich’s blind adherence to Apocalypse and the duality of the Apollonian and Dionysian impulses, where brain dead Banderite Man plays at being both Brahma and Shiva. But then Socrates, Joseph Heller’s Picture This tells us, was also a great man for the navel gazing, except when it came to war, where he concentrated on killing and not being killed. Zakharova and all of Russia’s spokespeople know that is where they are, that every last one of them has a NATO target pinned to their backs and that so too do all things, including their Syro-Aramaic, Roman and Bulgarian names that can be even remotely associated with Russia. But none of this is in or of itself Russophobic as these human apes are too dumb to be able to differentiate between what is or what is not Russian. NATO’s objective is to destroy all resistance to its profit making schemes and, as Zakharova alludes, Russianness is a major hurdle in NATO’s way. Take ballet, where Slavic stars like Kamila Valieva and Olga Korbut first cut their baby teeth. Then check out the webpage for the soloists of the Bolshoi Balletafter first checking out the webpage of the Butler School of Dancing to see what an arduous road it is to make the cut as a dancer. Ignore their French, Syro-Aramaic, Hebrew and Slavic Christian names but wonder for even a millisecond at the sacrifices the Bolshoi soloists and their families have made to reach the global pinnacle of their chosen profession; if you need a comparator, you must go to Japan and think of the masters of ninja, samurai and a thousand other Japanese crafts that take a lifetime and more to master. Sacrifices like theirs are why music is rightly called the brandy of the damned; to paraphrase the Bible, which Kiev’s apes are probably busily burning along with the churches that house them, though the Bolshoi’s maestros have chosen the narrow path, millions of aspirants in both the civilised world and Europe would metaphorically give their right arms to see them perform and learn, if not at their feet, by watching their feet. Now meet Sophie Rebecca, who is 6’3” (191 cm), a transgender ballet aficionado, who was accepted into the prestigious Royal Academy of Dance, one of the world’s top ballet schools, back in 2017. Here is Sophia Rebecca going through his, er, paces. Here is a ten year old going through her paces. Here is Sophia Rebecca’s, er, paces juxtaposed with that of a genetic woman. Sophia Rebecca is enormous, he’s not even in demi-pointe, he has zero turnout, his passé is too low, his foot is sickled, he looks like he’s about to karate chop some unfortunate with his hand, he can’t pirouette or fouetté en pointe, which is probably why he’s holding onto the bar for dear life. Though Sophie Rebecca is not, in short, Bolshoi material, he has been featured by Vogue, and he has also secured a sponsorship deal with Nike, which also bankrolls the creepy Dylan Mulvaney. Sophia Rebecca admits he is not trying to emulate Baryshnikov, Fonteyn, Nureyev or Tallchief. However, he is part of the same game as Mulvaney, of entrepreneurial men Blackfacing the role of women and, in the process, making a mockery of all that is good and holy. God help anyone who has to do the Bluebird pas de deux with him as a slipped disk will be the least of their problems. But then individual members of the Bolshoi are not the primary targets here, just as they are not the primary targets in NATO’s Russenfrei campaign. Slavic culture, European culture, of which the Bolshoi and Russianness are integral and inseparable parts, is the real target and stock market diversity rules, as well as sponsorship deals for Sophia Rebecca and that Mulvaney oaf are, along with Kiev’s Adolf Eichmanns, the hammers to smash it beyond salvation. As the Bolshoi and the Butler School both equate to exacting standards, to blood, sweat and countless tears, there is no big, quick money in that for Nike and NATO’s other jackals. Best to remove all standards and turn us all into unthinking, unknowing, uncaring zombies, slobs who believe the Bolshoi dancers should gorge on fast food, knock back Mulvaney’s Bud Liteby the gallon, wear Mulvaney’s Nike and turn their theatre into Kensington Avenue by the Moskva. You don’t have to be Maria Zakharova to tell NATO where to go with that scenario. And nor do you have to be Clausewitz to see that Zelensky’s threats to “liberate” Crimea is the talk of a coked up madman, who is going to sacrifice tens of thousands more Ukrainians storming one of the world’s most heavily fortified regions. But, even though Zelensky was elected on a platform of making peace with Russia, it seems he and his inner circle cannot talk for five minutes without mimicking the Nazis and their Judenfrei policies. If you ever wondered what living in the Third Reich entailed, that is today’s reality for millions of Zelensky’s cowed citizens. Although Vadym Prystaiko, the rump Reich’s Ambassador to the Court of St James, has stressed the need to “fight to the last Ukrainian”, he has made sure that he and his sons, one of whom lives the good life in England and the other of whom is in the lap of luxury in Belgium, don’t have to risk a thing. As with Dick Cheney and other well-connected American parasites, dying is for others. Here is celebrity Ukrainian journalist Dmitry Gordon explaining why his three sons are also not in the firing line. No Pat Tilman in their ranks, it seems. But then, why should they die for what is only a money making exercise for Zelensky’s Ukrainian and NATO backers? Dying is, after all, for those they can conscript into being lemmings and those brave Ukrainian Orthodox Christians, whose only hope of deliverance lies in Gerasimov’s legions. Erudite though Zakharova undoubtedly is, given that Ukraine murders her own negotiators, one wonders if NATO is capable of listening and if that is why she and Lavrov, together with Russia Today, are conveniently brushed aside as Russian mis-information or some such rot. Here, for example, is Zakharova calling out NATO for their criminal silence over their Russenfrei pogroms in Ukraine. Yeah, yeah, Russian mis-information, Zakharova and all that. Which is why they had to ban Russia Today and give us their own state-controlled media instead. Though Lent is over for another year, you can self-flagellate by watching the BBC or any other NATO media outlet, whose reportage consists of uncontested statements from Zelensky and Ukraine’s other coke heads. The Kiev arrest ofVictoria Kokhanovskaya, the leader of the supporters of the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery by the SBU (Ukraine’s version of the Gestapo) is of no interest to them, despite Kokhanovskaya hailing from the west of Ukraine and that she speaks exclusively in Ukrainian. One wonders what Pope Francis’ Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has to say about that or if the Holy Spirit has them tongue-tied, rather than talking in tongues, Ukrainian and Russian included. We might never know as, outside of Zakharova and Karganovic, few will comment on these crimes, which implicate us all. Living, as I do, on NATO’s sufferance, I should really get with the programme and blame Putin, that Russian with the Bulgarian name, for all of this. Why, as Masha Gessen, writing in The New Yorker, tells us, Putin locks up journalists who get caught spying in Russia, folk like CIA spook and Wall Street Journal hack Evan Gershkovich, who was caught with a smoking gun in the form of confidential documents, in a military zone that was strictly off limits to civilians, CIA spooks moonlighting as saboteurs included. But, as Gessen is a transexual with a range of very serious medical problems and as he was for long “Russia’s leading LGBT rights activist”, as well as a long-standing ardent critic of Putin, to whom he seems to have an almost pathological hatred, neither he nor the New Yorker are reputable sources for any light into any or all things Russian. And neither is MI5’s state funded BBC, which is in hock to the tune of millions of pounds a year to The Foreign Office and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and whose BBC World Service is exempt from Ofcom oversight and regulation. The BBC can, in other words, safely parrot whatever MI5 commands them to prattle about Ukraine and Russia, all without suffering any consequences for lying through their teeth. Although Zakharova is likewise free to say whatever she likes about NATO making Europe Russenfrei, there is one huge, crucial difference between Zakharova and Ukraine’s Christians on the one hand and NATO outlets like the New Yorker, the BBC, the Guardian and the rest of them on the other, and it is this. NATO control the common discourse not only in NATOstan itself but also in countries like South Africa where shady NGOs like the Oppenheimer’s Brenthurst Foundation preach the benefits of being a NATO toady and not falling prey to the wiles of Russian-inspired populism, the modern equivalent of the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Before Zakharova starts wasting her time on arguing with a klutz like Oppenheimer, she might like to recall that NATO’s umbrella shelters a lot of coke heads, apologists and outright morons and that one cannot argue with every child in every one of the world’s kindergartens. As Elon Musk’s take down of this BBC cretin shows, there just ain’t enough time to bother with Oppenheimer’s hirelings. There is a saying in Gaelic games that one should take the points and the goals will come, that, if one keeps taking minor scores, the chances for bigger scores will arrive of their own volition. In the case of Ukraine, that means this unconscionable war will end in one of two ways. Either civilisation and the cold steel of the Russian Armed Forces, augmented by spokespersons like Zakharova, will prevail, in which case Ukraine’s talking apes, like Emperor Hirohito before them, will have to embrace defeat or, as in Downfall, Der Untergang, the great 2004 German film, the rump Reich will collapse and the Azovs, who are not in Belgium or England, will implode along with it. And yes, those two scenarios amount to the same dismal end for the rump Reich because it has the same fatal flaw Hitler’s original prototype possessed. That is, that their entire way of life is totally incompatible with any concept of Slavic, European or Asian civilisation. They don’t have to take my word for it. They can show the Bolshoi’s soloists a video of Sophia Rebecca in action. They can put their case to these 10,000 Japanese singing Beethoven’s Freude schöner Götterfunken. Or how about the Great Chinese State Circus performing Swan Lake? Or, if that is not to the liking of these muck savages, here is Swan Lake by the Guangdong Acrobatic Troupe and, for good measure, by the National Ballet of China, which can be compared and contrasted with that of the National Ballet of Japan, who also do justice to Russia’s The Nutcracker. So, go head, you Church burning bishop bashers. Raze all that is good in Ukraine to the ground, curse Pushkin, Putin and the Bolshoi Ballet to your heart’s content. But know, that far beyond the Urals in the Land of the Rising Sun and continental China contiguous to it, and much further still beyond the limits of your stilted minds, in the hearts and souls of billions of souls across the world’s great land masses, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and all they inspire shine more brightly than a thousand suns and, no matter what damage you contemptible knuckle draggers do, you and your nihilistic church-burning will never be a part of that. But don’t take my word for it as General Gerasimov’s troops will soon explain it in short, shrill syllables even you dipsticks will understand.
READ MORE: https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/04/18/western-bloc-1943-2023-from-judenfrei-to-russenfrei/
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hypotheticals.....
This is What Will Happen After Australia And New Zealand Betray The West And Join THE BRICS
In this thought-provoking video, we explore a hypothetical scenario where Australia and New Zealand decide to leave their traditional Western alliances and join the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).
We'll discuss the potential reasons behind such a move, the implications for the West, and the possible outcomes for global politics and economics. Join us as we delve into this intriguing scenario and analyze the ripple effects of Australia and New Zealand's decision to align with the BRICS nations. Don't miss this fascinating exploration of the ever-changing landscape of international relations.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq0goRopK9A
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FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....
of US debt.....
April 20, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen gave a speech at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where she emphasized the importance of strengthening the economic relationship between the US and China while safeguarding their own interests.
Yellen stressed that the US and China, being the two largest economies in the world, should compete on a level playing field and that any divergence between them could have disastrous consequences. Yellen also urged China to cooperate with the US on issues such as global debt, which would be mutually beneficial for both countries.
The US federal debt has reached $31.7 trillion, which is 120% of the US GDP as of April 21. This highlights the fact that the US's recent material wealth has largely been achieved through borrowing globally. The growing economic divide in the US has led to increasing differences between Congress and the White House on the debt ceiling issue. Yellen has repeatedly warned of the catastrophic consequences of default, including economic losses and concerns from the international community about the US's trust and creditworthiness.
On April 19, Republicans proposed a bill in the House of Representatives that would cut federal spending and cancel part of the White House's policy agenda as a condition for raising the national debt ceiling. The deadline for raising the debt ceiling is March 2024 or until the national debt of the US reaches $32.9 trillion, whichever comes first. However, with the federal debt increasing by $300 billion in just three months, meeting either of these deadlines appears to be challenging. The US government's budget deficit in March was $378 billion, twice that of the same period last year.
In the first three months of this year, the US federal deficit has reached $1.1 trillion, a 65% increase over the same period last year. The proposal to reduce US federal spending by raising the debt ceiling is unlikely to be accepted by the Senate and most Democrats, which will exacerbate the US debt divide. As of April 19, the US Treasury's cash reserve account (TGA) had fallen to its lowest level of $36.5 billion, indicating that the US economy is facing serious problems, and the debt crisis is quietly spreading.
The market's concerns about a short-term US debt default are further intensifying, as the five-year credit default swap spread for the US has widened to 50 basis points, more than twice the level in January. The cost of providing one-year default insurance for US debt is over 100 basis points, far higher than the level in 2011 when the debt ceiling deadlock led to the US government's first credit rating downgrade.
In addition, the three-month US Treasury bill yield, which is most sensitive to debt ceiling debates, has reached a 22-year high of 5.318%. These data indicate that investors are accelerating the sale of US bonds.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLFsny2wilA
REMIND ME WHY CHINA SHOULD HELP THE USA OUT OF THEIR OWN CACA, WHEN THE USA ARE THREATENING CHINA (WITH OUR SILLY AUSSIE GOVERNMENT PISSING IN THE US POCKETS, FOR FAVOURS) AT THE SAME TIME...?
YELLEN, LIKE A SECOND GRADE ACCOUNTING ASSISTANT, IS OUT OF HER DEPTH, BUT WHO CARES.... THE US HAS MORE GUNS THAN ANYONE ELSE... MEANWHILE, WE, THE LITTLE BOURGEOIS AND SUBURBIAN YOBO-BUMS CARRY ON ENJOYING LIFE WITHOUT NOTICING THAT THE CHAIR WE ARE SITTING ON IS ROTTEN. IT WILL SNAP SUDDENLY, AS WE LAZILY REST BACKWARDS.... AND OF COURSE WE WILL BLAME THE RUSSIANS, WHEN WE HAVE DONE THE DAMAGE OURSELVES BY BECOMING DEBT-OBESE... BEWARE, WW3 IS ONLY A SHORT STICK AWAY FROM THE CORNERED BIDEN HYPOCRISY... AND THE US MILITARY IS ON FULL ALERT, WITH RAINBOW HAIRDRESSERS AND NAIL-SALONS ON DECK....
SEE ALSO:
https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/23/chris-hedges-the-united-states-of-paralysis/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADJi5J0A-kM
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....
running out of money....
A failure by the US to raise its debt ceiling would lead to an economic and financial crisis in the country, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has cautioned, urging lawmakers to act and not wait “until the last minute.”
The debt ceiling is the maximum amount the US government is legally authorized to borrow to meet its obligations.
Yellen warned during a meeting with business executives from California on Tuesday that a default would result in job losses and push household payments on mortgages and credit cards higher.
The Treasury secretary insisted it was a “basic responsibility” of Congress to increase or suspend the $31.4 trillion borrowing cap.
“A default on our debt would produce an economic and financial catastrophe,” she said, adding: “A default would raise the cost of borrowing into perpetuity. Future investments would become substantially more costly.”
According to Yellen, US businesses would face deteriorating credit markets and the government would likely be unable to issue payments to military families and seniors who rely on Social Security.
“Congress must vote to raise or suspend the debt limit. It should do so without conditions. And it should not wait until the last minute,” she urged.
The warning comes as the White House and Republicans in Congress are at an impasse over raising the debt ceiling.
READ MORE:
https://www.rt.com/business/575352-us-debt-default-yellen/
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LET THE USA GO BROKE!!!!!
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web of toads....
by Kim Scipes (more by Countercurrents)
In mid-March 2023, David Swanson published a very interesting article: “Iraq and 15 Lessons We Never Learned.” There were some things in there I agreed with, some I disagreed with, others I might want to debate. Still, I appreciated his effort to pull together ideas from these experiences.
However, there’s one thing that he did not put out (although he hinted toward it near the end of this article), but I want to put front and center: the U.S. Left (however defined) still does not get that the United States is not just another country; it is an Empire
Now, the U.S. Empire differs from the Roman Empire and even the British Empire (and I assume all other preceding empires) in one key way: it is not based primarily on territorial acquisition. Now, I’m not saying the U.S. has never conquered countries—ask the Filipinos, Puerto Ricans, Guamanians, and Samoans (and a few others) about that!—and I’m certainly aware of its history of invading countries, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, but that has not been its primary mode of operation.
What U.S. leaders have learned over the centuries is that key to maintaining (and possibly expanding) an empire is economic and political control over foreign lands, not “owning” them; they don’t need “boots on the ground.” In fact, that focuses too much attention on their shenanigans; for some strange reason, Americans generally are concerned about the well-being of their troops, even if they’re carrying out terrible violence and destruction against other peoples. However, even better, is to have foreign nationals running their respective country (and other people’s) on the empire’s behalf. This is known as neo-colonialism. By giving political “independence” to former colonies, but continuing economic domination, the empire gets the benefit of stealing raw materials (gold, silver), natural resources (timber, agricultural land for exports), and sometimes even people (migrant labor) with unfavorable terms of trade so as to benefit the home country, even though it is appropriated incredibly unequally at home. [That is why U.S. leaders are so pissed off at Cuba and Venezuela, along with China and Russia, who seek political and economic independence, and a post-colonial world.]
Towards the end of World War II (circa 1943), U.S. political and economic elites began working with British elites so the U.S. would dominate the world after the end of the war, at least outside of the Soviet Empire. They were challenged by the existence of the Soviet Union, and they knew that a number of countries would be seeking “independence” or, more correctly, decolonization. How could they maintain control?
One way was militarily. At the end of the war, the U.S. had the greatest navy and air forces in this history of the world—the Soviet Red Army was more powerful on land—plus it had nuclear weapons and had shown the world it had the will to use them (even after Japan had begun reaching out for peace terms). Twice. Added to this arsenal was the creation of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) in 1947, which was used “quietly” to enforce the demands of the empire.
Another way was economically. The U.S. emerged as the only industrialized country that had emerged basically unscathed from the war. By the early 1950s, the U.S. produced 50% of all the goods and services in the world; that meant we produced more than all of the other countries in the world combined. That gave it unequaled economic power.
Yet the U.S. wanted to ensure that the global economy would not undermine its ambitions, so it established the Bretton Woods institutions—the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and later, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)—to keep other countries’ economic houses in order. Serving as the “banker to the world” was another incredible source of power.
And over time, the U.S. elites utilized the cultural power of the United States to help establish cultural domination across the world; movies, in particular, “showed” everyone how wonderful was the U.S., and basically said that if you accept our values, our standards, our norms, you too can be prosperous, have an upper-middle class lifestyle, without a care in the world.
As the U.S. became more sophisticated—and as they realized they didn’t have to dominate every people, but only needed to gain ideological hegemony over their elites to maintain a level of control—they developed their rhetoric, their language of control; U.S. domination didn’t grate as much on peoples who recognized U.S. hegemony.
The thing, however, that backed U.S. hegemony—and this always must be remembered—was the U.S. military, with its extensive capability to inflict death and destruction on any chosen target.
Tying all of this together ideologically is the idea “the best defense is an aggressive offense,” which provides an “understandable justification” for the U.S. acting anywhere in the world; after all, if we don’t fight in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan (ad nauseum), we’ll have to fight on the beaches of California!
Think I’m joking: why all of the propaganda and military build-up, supposedly to ensure that China or Russia won’t invade the United States? First of all, there’s the sheer idiocy of the idea: the greatest invasion in world history was the 1944 invasion of Normandy, France—D Day—that took place over the 20-mile wide English Channel. And it almost failed. In fact, General Eisenhower had a resignation letter that he carried in his jacket during the invasion, which he was prepared to submit had it failed. Twenty miles! And the Chinese or Russians are going to invade over thousands of miles, through waters dominated by the greatest and most powerful sea-going force in the history of the world? Give me a frigging break!
Second, even if they did something like this, they would be landing in a country where there are more guns than people, and the U.S. people have shown repeatedly shown they will carry out and support the highest level of violence in “defense” of the U.S. Plus, we have a long history of fear that has been developed against the “yellow peril” and/or “communism,” and the Chinese get both!
So, the chances of either an invasion by foreigners and especially a successful conquering of the United States, make a snowball’s chance in hell a fantastically good proposition!
No, the U.S. has an empire, and it wants to maintain it. In fact, the U.S. political and economic elites desire this so much that they are willing to gut the domestic political economy and social order (jobs, homelessness, lack of health care, economic inequality, racial divide, refusal to address climate change, etc., etc.)—shitting on all of us—to continually accumulate the resources to maintain the empire.
Let me give a couple of examples to concretize this, using the national debt and military spending.
Every year, the U.S. government proposes a budget for the coming year, and afterwards, declares a surplus or deficit for the year. Either one is placed into a cumulative account with all the other surpluses and budgets since 1789, when the U.S. became an independent country, and that is known as the national debt. Between 1789-1980 (beginning of George Washington’s administration to the end of Jimmy Carter’s), the U.S. national debt was $ .909 trillion dollars (or $909 billion). This meant that after paying off the expenses from the War of 1812, the Civil War, the wars against the Native peoples on the Plains, the Spanish-American War (including the Philippine-American War), World War I, World War II, wars in Korea and Vietnam, as well as the Tennessee Valley Authority (that brought electrification to the U.S. South), the Interstate Highway System, and the space program to that date, U.S. national debt was $ .9 trillion. In just over 40 years since then, since 1981 when Reagan entered the White House, the national debt grew another $30 trillion under both Democrats and Republicans! (Total is over $31 trillion today.) And it is projected to increase another $19 trillion by 2033. [The ratio of national debt to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product—the total value of all goods and services produced for the market in a year—has grown from approximately 32.5% in 1980 to approximately 120% today!]
And besides the sheer insanity of this country being bankrupt, and every central banker in the world knowing this, should the world be taken off the dollar standard, the U.S. economy will be in very deep do-do and possibly collapse!
Over this 40+ year period, U.S. military spending alone from the beginning of Reagan’s administration to the end of Trump’s totaled $18.216 trillion. (I’m almost certain this is only direct spending that did not include other costs of war, such as taking care of U.S. veterans through the Veteran’s Administration, nor interest on this part of the national debt.) And this was before the U.S. responded to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
And let’s put this into even more context: in 2021, again before Ukraine, the U.S. military spending was $800.67 billion for one year. Let’s compare that with 10 U.S. allies for the same year: UK ($68.37 billion), France ($56.65 billion), Germany ($56.02 billion), Saudia Arabia ($55.56 billion), Japan ($54.12 billion), South Korea ($50.23 billion), Italy ($32.01 billion), Australia ($31.75 billion), Canada ($26.45 billion), and Israel ($34.34 billion). Add them up, and you see the 10 U.S. allies collectively spent $455.5 billion, or a little over half of what the U.S. spent! [This data is from the Macrotrends, LLC website, “US Military Spending/Defense Budget, 1960-2023” at https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget (accessed April 19, 2023).]
And money spent on the U.S. war machine is money that cannot be used for education, national heath care, combating homelessness, fixing infrastructure, adapting to climate change and weather-related damages, paying off the national debt, etc., etc.
The point of all this is that despite what U.S. political and economic elites say, they really do not give a shit about any Americans below the top 1% (Occupy was not wrong on that!), and especially those who are of color. They are interested in preserving the U.S. Empire (protecting their wealth and their power), and they are willing to use poor and working folks to go into the U.S. military and then be willing to kill and destroy upon command. (As I learned from serving in the USMC from 1969-73!)
So, I argue, that any political-economic analysis that does not take the U.S. Empire into consideration is doomed from its beginning. Period.
Tying this back to Swanson’s article; it’s too limited, in my opinion. The biggest mistake the U.S. Left has made is that we have failed to recognize that we are living in the heartland of the most powerful empire and war machine in human history. (I think Che had something to say about this!)
Accordingly, and from that, I’d argue that we have not understood that we, the left (again, however defined) are not powerful enough to end that. The only way we have a chance is by winning the majority of the American public to our side. And, to date—at least from about 1973—we have failed to do this. We have done some good things, and things would be much worse without our efforts, but we have failed to win the American public to our side.
The point is not to bemoan our failure, but to recognize this, and to directly work to overcome this failure. Standing on our political principles, like anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-imperialism, etc., I’m confident we can win their support on a principled basis; and I’m certain that if we don’t try, we will continue to fail the peoples of the world, including those in this country.
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Kim Scipes, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Purdue University Northwest in Westville, Indiana. A former Sergeant in the USMC, he “turned around” on active duty, and has been a political and labor activist for over 50 years. He has published four books and over 250 articles in the U.S. and in 11 different countries. His writings, many with direct links to the original article, can be found on-line at https://www.pnw.edu/faculty/kim-scipes-ph-d/publications/; his latest book is Building Global Labor Solidarity: Lessons from the Philippines, South Africa, Northwestern Europe, and the United States (Lexington Books, 2021, 2022 paperback).
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