The West is charging off into a new Cold War with Russia under banners of hypocrisy, from charges of “expansionism” to complaints about disrespect for individual rights. This lack of balance could have grave consequences for the world, says former British intelligence officer Annie Machon.…
AM: "…we are indeed facing a new Cold War, and this time it is clearly of America’s making. But Europe will bear the brunt, through trade sanctions, energy shortages and even, potentially, war. It is time we Europeans broke away from our American vassalage and looked to our own future."Consortium News
Can the World Avert a New Cold War?
Annie Machon | former intelligence officer in the UK’s MI5 Security Service and a British member of Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.
Also,
Der Spiegel
Interview Conducted By Juliane von Mittelstaedt and Erich Follath
We have political movements, like the progressive warmongering that tries to create an environment of distrust with rhetoric about grand strategic schemes.
ReplyDeleteIf all that were true, why would the US have shared communications, agricultural and resource technology with our adversaries.
The progressives are on a mission to turn back the clock on international cooperation because they think it is part of globalization and all that neoliberal stuff.
It is.
ReplyDelete>Adding unnecessary complexity at the cost of bigger waste & resource consumption.
>Destroying value (know how, skills, knowledge in general), to increase 'hoarding space' of very few.
>At the expense of households/corporations credit cards, which will have to bail out the very system that extracts wealth from them, when time comes due.
>All created by this TOTAL LACK OF CONTROL because of globalization. Nation state are powerless, and this is a perfect excuse for control frauds to proliferate: laws useless (except when further advancing this agenda).
Ryan, does this sound very sustainable to you? All this 'globalization success story', has no happy ending, it's not built on strong foundations of cooperation and trust.
I don't accept the paranoid progressive framing of the world. Their 'facts' like an impending world doom due to immediate climate destruction and resource contraints, a new cold war, a neoliberal plot, all the crap. They are just human policy foibles as we trundle through with imperfect systems.
ReplyDelete"Bigger waste and resource consumption? Unneccesary complexity?"
You have yours, while everyone else should stop? There are unlimited resources, all we have to do is reduce externalities from use (pollution, destruction...)
So lets leave the grand rhetoric about world ending out and discuss exactly how will a bigger wheat crop destroy the world? How does the US sharing agriculture technology hurt the world? How does China sharing industrial process technology with the US and Africa destroy the world? Chinese scientific or engineering research adding new ideas to the volumes of human knowledge? How is that a threat?
The onus is on progressives to justify their paranoia about a new world order. For decades the US, China and Russia have been working together quite well.
How will radio communication and technology like cell phones destroy the world?
"At the expense of households/corporations credit cards, which will have to bail out the very system that extracts wealth from them, when time comes due. "
You don't like credit? Don't use it. Ask your regulator to regulate it. All monetary systems, all credit systems expand and contract, it is up to government to decide how they want counter the cycle. Credit defaults hurt the creditor not the borrower. If a person takes out a credit card, buys stuff, then doesn't pay for it and the bank files bankruptcy, who was hurt? The borrower got real stuff for free, the creditor lost money. If the government bails out the borrower by subsidizing their income and encourages defaults there is moral hazard. If the government bails out the banks, the banks gives more money than they should to borrowers. You want revenge on the banks, take out a loan, don't pay it back. The government will reward you with a tax break on your windfall. The government will reward the lender with allowing them to take an expense against profit.
Putin leaving the G20 early because "The West" is ganging up on him.
ReplyDeleteWhen nice doesn't work, for Putin, it leaves the not-nice option.
Hello Ryan,
ReplyDeleteShould I point to, well... every previous deep systmic crisis and how it was "resolved"? History ain't worth nothing? This time is different? Who is talking about the world ending? Hey, I would love to be wrong, but it's not getting better!
I'm not against sharing of technology and cooperation, not even talking about that! The burdens are not on sharing technology. Even during WWII there were technological transfers between opposed power blocks (you can bet, oligarchs always work around those sort of problems).
"You have yours, while everyone else should stop? There are unlimited resources, all we have to do is reduce externalities from use (pollution, destruction...)"
Not even wrong, ceteris paribus, constantly moving around of production and transportion of goods from one extreme of the globe to the other, to where ever you can extract the next best tax benefits or new lower labour costs, is not added unnecessary complexity and waste? BTW, "you have yours", no not really lol, the developed nations are the ones which are importing the resources from the other nations, for each USD junkie, there is an oil junkie in the west. So is not the case of the west giving them freely exactly.
"Ask your regulator to regulate it."
Good one! So what bargaining power do you have to do this? To even 'ask' (don't tell me, vote each 4 years, very useful: vote A, vote B, A = B). As an individual, or as a group?
Soon the people that gets to dictate the laws in reality in the West will have most of their income coming from other place than where they are incorporated. Even if you got an honest and knowledgeable body of politicians governing, you would have a hard time passing legislation. And yes, this is a by product of nation states losing power over globalization of capital.
The majority of the population has no bargaining power over political and, by extension, the economic system. The other things you mention are not even worth considering because they are dependent on context, and not quite how it works in most places/circumstances.
Seems to me that you have an axe to grind, and not arguing about facts either!
"The majority of the population has no bargaining power over political and, by extension, the economic system."
ReplyDeleteMost countries in the western hemisphere vote to resolve political differences. The majority pretty much always wins.
Well, judging by the recent mid-terms, the majority no longer bother to vote.
ReplyDeleteRyan, there is a lot of truth to what you say, but I don't understand exactly what you are saying about "progressive warmongering" and some other things. Most people in the world see the USA as the primary threat to world peace because of the USA's tyrannical, murderous & thuggish behavior, currently led by the the "awesomely evil" Obama.
ReplyDeleteNot much to do directly with globalization per se, conceptually, which like free trade is of course intrinsically a good thing. And of course as you say represent very important cooperation and success stories.
The MMT academics, the Kansas City school self-identify as progressives. But what you are saying is mostly closer to them than (imho absurd) anti-MMT statements like "Nation state[s] are powerless" - because of the "globalization of capital".
Most countries in the western hemisphere vote to resolve political differences. The majority pretty much always wins.
Yes, true, but note the whole story. As Noam Chomsky rightly likes to point out, for many decades, US polls show that extremely stable, overwhelming majorities favor basically New Deal "progressive" polices. That the governments they elect do not carry them out, but replace them with corrupt thuggery show there is a serious problem with our democracy.
To me, the New Deal, Chomsky, MMT, Andre Vltchek are the real progressives. True, there are many others who are either confused or false ones.
Yet you can't relate this:
ReplyDelete"than (imho absurd) anti-MMT statements like "Nation state[s] are powerless" - because of the "globalization of capital"."
to this:
"That the governments they elect do not carry them out, but replace them with corrupt thuggery show there is a serious problem with our democracy."
Hey guys, wake up! It's not anti-MMT (?!?) rabble, unless you rework the current form of globalization you won't get MMT-for-the-people (just for the elites).
You can have international cooperation and trade, that has nothing to do with neoliberal globalization. Wake up please... don't expect things "to get better... just because".
Democracy is not 'voting each 4 years', the more civil initiatives and unofficial institutions that work besides/around/with the official institutions the more prosperous and democratic will be a nation for the majority, not just for a few.
ReplyDeleteThe states in the west have transitioned to a self-serving apparatus for the top of the power structure. States are very powerful, yes, but only to carry out the agenda of an economic elite. The nation-state as a vehicle for the prosperity of the people in the west have been undermined for 40 years, precisely, by the current form of globalization. Precisely because every democratic institution and civil initiative has lost bargaining power over the political system and the power share of labour has been collapsing.
Adding to the offence, the most prosperous developing nations have been those who have been conducting merchantilistic-like policies (like China), like those of USA in the XIX century, and protecting their own national interests, using international trade as a mean not an end.
You can wait until the rest of the world 'catches up' and hope that the system will 'rework itself' (that's if, the 2nd law of thermodynamics allows us to, but let's ignore that for the sake of simplicity) just because; or maybe try to challenge the current order instead of embracing it because you know, people in charge is not gonna give up by themselves.