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https://consortiumnews.com/2024/10/20/watch-cn-live-brics-rising/

 

Vijay Prashad: A World Without Context

 

Providing an excess of information that comes without proper, democratic analysis and is almost entirely controlled by a small oligarchy is its own form of censorship. And it eliminates knowledge and wisdom.

 

By Vijay Prashad
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

 

 

Reading legacy Western media – which dominates the world information order – is painful. 

During the genocidal war against Palestinians, for instance, these media outlets (such as CNN, The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde and Bild) have been unable to bring themselves to describe the Israeli military’s attacks on Palestinians. At most, and when it suits them, they resort to passive voice (“Palestinians die”) or to a dangerous form of turning civilian areas into military targets (“Hezbollah village” or “Hamas command and control centre”).

A study of mainstream U.S. print media coverage during the first six weeks of the genocide in Gaza showed that “for every two Palestinian deaths, Palestinians are mentioned once. For every Israeli death, Israelis are mentioned eight times.” In other words, in mainstream media, an Israeli who dies will be mentioned 16 times more than a Palestinian who dies. 

This trend, which erases and dehumanises Palestinian casualties, seems to have accelerated as the number of Palestinians killed has increased exponentially, with an estimated 114,000 dead. 

There is no excuse for this abysmal coverage, which ignores the steady stream of information provided by the live reporting of a large number of Palestinian journalists and social media users in Gaza, at great risk to their lives, as well the deeper context for the U.S.-Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocidal war provided by a wide range of analysis.

Television programmes are worse, with any critic of the genocide forced to make an admission (“I condemn the 7 October attack by Hamas” or “I condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine”) before the conversation can proceed, and, since many critics do not want to frame the discussion around this condemnation, the conversation never proceeds. 

[See: AS`AD AbuKHALIL: Do You Condemn Israel?]

This ritual act of condemnation is not merely an entry ticket into a conversation but an ideological concession that narrows the space for a genuine debate about the facts of when conflicts and crises begin, how to understand the structure of a conflict, and how best to ascertain the paths forward based on this longer-term historical and structural assessment. 

This type of discussion is called a conjunctural analysis, which provides political and social movements with the materials to intervene to shape the future and grounds the work of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. This article will introduce you to four texts that are based on conjunctural analyses, but first I want to explain what such an analysis entails.

The problem with information these days is not only its content, but equally its form. The velocity of information is striking, making it near impossible for a concerned person to discern both what is significant and what is true.

Providing an excess of information that comes without proper, democratic analysis and is almost entirely controlled by a small oligarchy is its own form of censorship, exhausting the reader and viewer into submission. 

What is censored is not only information itself, although that does occur more than we admit, but also knowledge and wisdom. The news remains at the level of it happened, without explaining most of what happened at all: it does not explain why it happened, what caused it to happen, or its possible consequences. 

This form of reporting lies by omission, as events are neither static nor singular but part of a complex process.

Conjunctural analyses are an important tool for understanding that complexity, since they seek to explain the dynamic process of history at a certain point in time. Any given point in time is rooted in a past and a future: the past shapes the present, but the present also presages what may come in the future depending on how one intervenes now.

That is why conjunctural analyses, derived from a history of Marxist analysis and from the work of the political and social movements that conduct them, are rooted in four principles:

  • History. Since events do not take place in isolation but are part of a long-term process, there must be a distinction between incidental or occasional events and organic or structural events.

  • Totality. Events are interconnected. They are part of a complex structure that encompasses various possibilities.

  • Structure. Events take place within a lattice that includes economic, political, social and cultural aspects and within which people are organised into classes and power blocs that interact through institutions and ideas.

  • Politics. Events must be understood in an active way, which means asking how a political force will act to shape the future, rather than passively watching the future unfold. Answering this question requires a close analysis of the nature of class formation, the balance of political forces, and cultural traditions that could advance a certain political agenda.

Tricontinental’s Asia, Africa, and Latin America offices recently published four texts based on conjunctural analyses:

I will write about each of these texts at greater length in the coming months, as their depth and quality help us navigate beneath the superficiality and sensationalism that typically define analyses of the present.

For instance, Maskey’s intervention about the Nepali government’s acceptance of a U.S. government grant elucidates the dynamic structure of the U.S.-imposed New Cold War on Asia, while Hanna Eid’s assessment of the Alliance of Sahel States (Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger) enables us to understand the fight for sovereignty across West Africa as a whole. 

The report on the war on drugs provides a window into the pressures upon the government of President Gustavo Petro in Colombia, which requires an acknowledgment of the role of the lucrative international drug mafia in the country’s political establishment.

Years ago, I visited the Zacapa barracks, about two hours east of Guatemala City. The scene at the barracks was near-idyllic, its stone walls surrounded by green pastures, yet the sinister watch towers hinted of the bloodshed that took place here: this is where Nora Paiz Cárcamo (1944–1967), Otto René Castillo (1934–1967), other members of the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR), and about a dozen peasants were brutally tortured and burned alive. 

Both Nora and Otto were members of the communist movement that fought against the Guatemalan dictatorship; trained in the German Democratic Republic and Soviet Union, respectively; and joined the armed struggle in the Sierra de las Minas (named for the mines of jade, marble and asbestos), where they were killed in March 1967. 

Later, Nora’s mother, Clemencia Cárcamo Sandoval, told the truth commission that her daughter’s bloody, fractured corpse was found with clubs fused into it, a sign of how brutally she had been beaten. Two years before he was murdered alongside his comrades, Otto, whose beautiful poems were inspired by the El Salvadoran guerrilla poet Roque Dalton (1935–1975), wrote an elegy to “apolitical intellectuals”:

I

One day,
the apolitical
intellectuals
of my country
will be interrogated
by the humblest
of our people.

They will be asked
what they did
when
their homeland was slowly
extinguished,
like a sweet fire,
small and alone.

No one will ask them
about their suits,
or about their long
siestas
after lunch,
or about their sterile
battles with nothingness,
nor about
their ontological
way
of making money.
They won’t be questioned
about Greek mythology,
or about the self-disgust they felt
when someone, deep down,
accepted the fate of dying a coward’s death.
They’ll be asked nothing
about their absurd
justifications,
born in the shadow
of a total lie.

II

On that day
the humble people will come.
Those who had no place
in the books and poems
of the apolitical intellectuals,
yet, every day, brought them
their bread and milk,
their eggs and tortillas,
those who mended their clothes,
who drove their cars,
who cared for their dogs and tended their gardens,
who worked for them,
and they’ll ask:
‘What did you do when the poor
suffered, when the tenderness and life
was snuffed out of them?’.

III

Apolitical intellectuals
of my sweet country,
you will have nothing to say.

A vulture of silence
will devour your insides.
Your own misery
will gnaw at your soul.
And you will be silent,
ashamed of yourselves.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow atChongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations.  His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and, with Noam Chomsky, The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Fragility of U.S. Power.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/10/19/vijay-prashad-a-world-without-context/

 

 

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

 

precisely....

At least 87 killed or missing after Israeli strikes on north Gaza, Palestinian officials say

 

At least 87 people were killed or remain missing after Israeli strikes on northern Gaza overnight and on Sunday, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, which said that an additional 40 people were wounded in strikes on Beit Lahiya. The Israeli military said it had carried out a precise strike on a Hamas target in the town.

https://www.france24.com/en/

 

A day after French President Emmanuel Macron accused ministers, journalists and commentators for distorting remarks he made on Israel being created by the UN, he faced accusations of trying to squash reporting to a mere reproduction of the presidential palace's press releases.

 

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20241018-angry-macron-blasts-media-over-reporting-of-israel-comments

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

live!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC437lLnxx

 

SEE ALSO:

 

What political and economic influence of the “collective West” will the BRICS countries and the Global South have to face?by Dr sci. Alexander Kouzminov, New Zealand* 

The BRICS group of major emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – was founded as an informal club in 2009 to provide a platform for its members to challenge a world order dominated by the United States and its Western allies. Its creation was initiated by Russia.
   BRICS is not a formal multilateral organisation like the United Nations, World Bank or the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The heads of state and government of the member nations convene annually with each nation taking up a one-year rotating chairmanship of the group. The founding members of BRICS are Brazil, Russia, India and China. Together the countries account for more than 40 percent of the world population and a quarter of the global economy. Apart from geopolitics, the group’s focus includes economic cooperation and increasing multilateral trade and development.
    The bloc operates by consensus. All the BRICS countries are part of the Group of 20 (G20) of major economies.
    Over 40 countries have expressed interest in joining the forum.
    They view BRICS as an alternative to global bodies viewed as dominated by the traditional Western powers and hope membership will unlock benefits including development finance, and increased trade and investment.

Key objective aspects of the global
influence of the “collective West”

In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about the “decline” of the Western civilisation, and the end of the centuries-old political and economic dominance of the “collective West” in the world. However, there are a number of reasons why Western civilisation still retains an enormous global political and economic influence.
    Let’s consider five key objective aspects of the global influence of the “collective West” that the BRICS countries and the Global South will have to face.

The first aspect: Capitalisation
of the Western economy

The volume of Western money supply1 is still larger than from any other part of the world (except China). Capitalisation allows the “collective West” to remain a real dominant in global political and economic relations, covering the entire world with its influence.

    Volume of money supply (M2) (as at the end of 2023):

  • M2 of the G7 countries, the EU, Australia and a number of their allies is more than 50 trillion USD, making the West the largest virtual bank in the world.
  • The M2 of all BRICS countries is approximately 45 trillion USD.
  • China ranks first in the world in terms of M2 volume – 41.8 trillion USD.
  • M2 in the US – 20.9 trillion USD.
  • M2 in Russia – 1.1 trillion USD.

    Total gross domestic product per capita (GDP) (as at the end of 2023):

  • The GDP of the BRICS countries exceeds the combined total GDP of the G7, and the trend towards BRICS separation from the G7 continues.
  • BRICS formed more than 32 pertcent of the world economy, but the G7 countries – about 30 percent.
  • The possible expansion of BRICS will make the global leadership of BRICS undeniable.

The difference in the volumes of M2 and GDP of the “collective West” and the BRICS countries may not seem too significant. This circumstance should not be misleading. If we add to the M2 of the Western countries – the international reserves using dollars, euros, pounds, yen and other currencies (which are still significant), then the superiority of the Western financial world is still impressive.

Second aspect: Military power of the West and its exceptional military-technical development

Inciting military conflicts is still West’s favourite way to weaken competitors, and thereby increase its political and economic status. The US armed forces are currently considered one of the most combat-ready in the world. At the moment, only Russia and China can compete with the military-political and military-technical power of the United States.

Third aspect: Science, innovation, technology and education (based on results from 2023)

The “collective West” has significant advantages in almost all areas noted. Various international rankings of world universities clearly show Western leadership. Let us evaluate the advantages of the Shanghai Academic Ranking of the best universities in the world, assuming its impartiality and lack of bias.

Shanghai rating:

  • The top 20 universities in the world includes 15 American universities (led by Harvard), 3 British, one each from France and Switzerland.
  • There are 10 universities from China in the top one hundred.
  • There were no Russian higher educational institutions in either the top 20 or the top 100 in 2023.         
  • Among a thousand of leading universities in the world, there are only 9 universities included that are from Russia, – led by Lomonosov Moscow State University, which moved up to the top 100 rank of universities in the world.

Fourth aspect international institutions and international organisations

The fourth aspect relates to the organisational (and often ideological) leadership of the West in international institutions and international organisations of various types, such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the “university ratings”, the Arctic Council, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and others.
    An excellent tool for combating Western domination can be the formation of independent international institutions.

Examples:

  • BRICS expansion. The BRICS association consists of 10 countries. 28 countries submitted applications to join BRICS (data as of July 2024).
  • Reformatting of the Arctic Council. Now the majority of NATO member countries have formed the Council. It is necessary to create our own Arctic Council with the participation of the BRICS member countries, many of which have their own distinct Arctic ambitions.

It is important to understand that you cannot win when playing by the rules of Western countries. There are two circumstances, when it comes to the advantages of Western civilisation in manipulating international institutions:
    Firstly, the “collective West” always acts as a “united front” (dissent or dissenting opinions are unacceptable in the “democratic” West);
    Secondly, the “collective West” has accumulated enormous experience and skills in organising pressure on neutral countries and countries of the Global South.
    However, not everything is clear here, either. A simple example: the signing of the final declaration of the so-called “peace summit” which was held Switzerland on 15-16 June of this year.  Of the 76 countries that ultimately left their signatures on this “document,” 50 states are countries of the “collective West” and only 26 countries are states of the Global South that succumbed to pressure from Washington, London and Brussels. That is, the “collective West” began to lose unity and support in other parts of the world (e. g. the Global South).

Fifth aspect:
The appeal of western lifestyle

The fifth aspect relates to the continuing appeal of the Western lifestyle with the much-advertised illusion that in the Western world – “everyone can achieve everything on their own.”
    This is facilitated by Hollywood, Western pop culture, commercial sports and other methods of influence through media and entertainment.
    Therefore, all countries seeking to escape the influence of the “collective West”, have something to think about. The key here is to support and promote their own national culture.
    The BRICS association is ideologically built on respect for the identity and uniqueness of each nation, its culture, traditions and historical path. Here Russia plays a special role. The national culture of Russia is deeply humanistic, it is this that has shaped Russian civilisation, and this is what makes it globally attractive. Russia recognises and respects the values ​​of every people and does not allow interference in the internal affairs of any sovereign state.
    “Develop yourself and give others the opportunity to develop” – this is the principle of sovereign modernisation. 

  • The “collective West” does not accept such an approach. 
  • For the West, there are “friends” and “strangers,” people of the “first class” and people of the “second class,” “masters” and “slaves.” 
  • The “collective West” uses force and blackmail to maintain dominance in the world.

Conclusions

One, the possibilities of the “collective West” to exert a significant (and often decisive) influence on global political and economic processes are still significant, which BRICS and the Global South must take into account.
    Two, the “collective West” still has significant “trump cards”, both through the use of the aspects noted above, and through working with the elites of the countries of the Global South, whose representatives still want to see themselves as part of the “golden billion”.
    Three, the aspects outlined above do not make the “collective West” invulnerable in the global political and economic space. There is nothing exceptional about its “exceptionalism.” But the “collective West” should not be underestimated. It’s still going strong in many ways. But understanding the strength of the other, is the first step towards his/her containment.
    Four, the modern world order is in the process of restructuring. This “perestroika” should reflect the real balance of power in the world.   •

1   The money supply is the amount of money (cash and money in bank accounts) in the hands of non-banks (e. g. private individuals, companies). All cash holdings that are not in the banking system are counted as part of the money supply M0. Money that is readily available is assigned to the M1 group. In addition to the cash from the M0 group, it also includes money that can be withdrawn from accounts on a daily basis (demand deposits such as overnight money). M2 includes the money supply M1 plus deposits with an agreed term of up to two years (time deposits) and deposits with an agreed notice period of up to three months (savings deposits). The money supply M3 includes the money supply M2 plus shares in money market funds and other money market securities, as well as repurchase agreements and bonds with an original term of up to two years. [Editor’s note]

*   Dr sci. Alexander Kouzminov is a former officer of the Soviet/Russian foreign intelligence service (KGB-SVR). He is the author of “Biological Espionage: Special Operations of the Soviet and Russian Foreign Intelligence Services in the West” (Greenhill Books, London, 2005). The main topic of the book is the secret development of biological weapons in the West. Kouzminov is a Doctor of Philosophy, PhD, and has a degree in biophysics, both from Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia. He also holds postgraduate degrees in environmental law and environmental science from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is currently pursuing a doctorate in International and Comparative Environmental Law at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.