Sputnik — ‘A Threat to Global Humanity’: For 70 Years, NATO Has Formed ‘Matrix’ of Imperialism

“We said that this gathering [the summit] should be seen as a threat to global humanity. It’s quite clear from its history - that is NATO’s history - that it is a structure that is used to maintain and advance Western global capitalist interest, and for that it should be seen as a threat. Most of the interventions by NATO have been beyond the pale of legality,” [Ajamu] Baraka, [national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace,] told hosts Eugene Puryear and Sean Blackmon.

“The very fact that this structure has the kind of respectability among Western forces is quite troubling and … reflects the current contradiction, which is a contradiction between the Western interests, Western powers, Western capitalist powers and the vast majority of global humanity,” he continued, also referring to NATO as a “very important instrument” used by the ruling elites to further their capitalist and white supremacist goals....

Not buying "spreading freedom and democracy."

Sputnik International
‘A Threat to Global Humanity’: For 70 Years, NATO Has Formed ‘Matrix’ of Imperialism

See also

Douglas Valentine is an investigator and author with a rare and tenacious approach toward research. His writing results in uniquely incisive and revealing books on the dark side of U.S. intelligence activities and the National Security State. His latest book, The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, draws parallels between CIA operations in Vietnam—as exposed in his well-known 1990 book, The Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam—and recent/current operations in Afghanistan, El Salvador, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere. In the following interview, Valentine reflects on a variety of issues including the Phoenix Program, plausible deniability, paramilitary wars, drug trafficking, sabotage, blackmail, propaganda, Operation GLADIO, class interests of the CIA establishment, Trump, the Mueller Report and the Bidens. —CAM Editors

Doug Valentine has written numerous books and articles on the CIA based largely on interviews with former CIA officers revealing how the CIA is not just an intelligence organization tasked with intelligence gathering and analysis, as many suppose it to be, but also it is also a paramilitary operational organization tasked with carrying out covert operations based on plausible deniability.

Internationalist 360º
Inside the Organized Crime Syndicate Known as the CIA: An Interview with Douglas Valentine

Heidi Boghosian and Michael Steven Smith

Global Giants: American Empire and Transnational Capital — Maximilian C. Forte

Review of Giants: The Global Power Elite by Peter Phillips (Introduction by William I. Robinson). New York: Seven Stories Press, 2018. LCCN 2018017493; ISBN 9781609808716 (pbk.); ISBN 9781609808723 (ebook); 353 pps.

Giants: The Global Power Elite, by Peter M. Phillips, Professor of Political Sociology at Sonoma State University, opens with a stated intention of following in the tradition C. Wright Mills’ The Power Elite. This book is clearly meant to be a contemporary update and expansion of Mills’ work, such that the “power elite” now becomes the global power elite (GPE) in Phillips’ volume—and central to the idea of a global power elite is the transnational capitalist class that was at the core of the theorization of Leslie Sklair. One of the most important features of this book, in my view, is that it overcomes the unproductive dichotomy that continues to silently inform many academic and political debates on this question: is the contemporary world order one dominated by US imperialism or transnational capital? Phillips’ answer is productive (even if I do not entirely agree): transnational capital has acquired US power and uses the power of the US state to further its aims, protect its interests, and enforce its agenda. Where I differ, the difference is a relatively slight matter of emphasis: Phillips’ model is largely correct, but it is also important to remember that the wealthiest, most numerous, and most powerful membership of the “transnational” capitalist class is in fact American.

This is the basis of neoliberalism, as neo-imperialism and neo-colonialism regarding the periphery and neo-feudalism in relation to the core, as a socio-political theory that is grounded in the dominance of economic liberalism understood as contemporary capitalism over social liberalism (equality before the law) and political liberalism (democracy as governance of, by and for the people.

The centrepiece of this work is its detailed exposition of the 389 individuals who constitute the core of “the policy planning nongovernmental networks that manage, facilitate, and protect the continued concentration of global capital” (p. 10).

Putting names and faces on the abstractions.

Zero Anthropology
Global Giants: American Empire and Transnational Capital
Maximilian C. Forte

Trump’s Trade Threats are really Cold War 2.0 Michael Hudson

At stake is whether China will agree to do what Russia did in the 1990s: put a Yeltsin-like puppet of neoliberal planners in place to shift control of its economy from its government to the U.S. financial sector and its planners. So the fight really is over what kind of planning China and the rest of the world should have: by governments to raise prosperity, or by the financial sector to extract revenue and impose austerity.

U.S. diplomacy aims to make other countries dependent on its agricultural exports, its oil (or oil in countries that U.S. majors and allies control), information and military technology. This trade dependency will enable U.S. strategists to impose sanctions that would deprive economies of basic food, energy, communications and replacement parts if they resist U.S. demands.

The objective is to gain financial control of global resources and make trade “partners” pay interest, licensing fees and high prices for products in which the United States enjoys monopoly pricing “rights” for intellectual property. A trade war thus aims to make other countries dependent on U.S.-controlled food, oil, banking and finance, or high-technology goods whose disruption will cause austerity and suffering until the trade “partner” surrenders....

A good diplomat does not make demands to which the only answer can be “No.” There is no way that China will dismantle its mixed economy and turn it over to U.S. and other global investors....

Cold War 2 or WWIII?

Michael Hudson — On Finance, Real Estate And The Powers Of Neoliberalism
Trump’s Trade Threats are really Cold War 2.0
Michael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Guest Professor at Peking University

Zero Hedge — Trump Declares Trade War On India, Imposes New Tariffs

No surprise, actually. Same policy as toward China requiring "reform" allowing the US to compete equally in their domestic markets. India and China have no intention of allowing foreign entities control the commanding heights of their economies through "investment." It's a national security issue, just as the US approaches this domestically itself. This is basic to neoliberal globalization that effectively colonized the rest of the world. Nothing new here, either. It is typical of empires.

Under the decades-old program - known as the Generalized System of Preferences - Indian companies were able to avoid some $5.7 billion in duties back in 2017.
The new standards will take effect June 5.

"I have determined that India has not assured the United States that India will provide equitable and reasonable access to its markets," Trump said in a proclamation on Friday evening. "Accordingly, it is appropriate to terminate India’s designation as a beneficiary developing country effective June 5, 2019."

The decision isn't unexpected: The White House warned back in March that it could end India's preferential treatment if India didn't agree to certain reforms, but it decided to hold off so as to not hurt Modi politically during the run up to the election. According to Bloomberg, Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has become increasingly frustrated with India’s trade barriers and practices. The trade rep has taken issue with the country’s self-designation as a developing nation at the World Trade Organization....

Zero Hedge
Trump Declares Trade War On India, Imposes New Tariffs
Tyler Durden

New Cold War & looming threats — Jipson John and P. M. Jitheesh interview John Pilger

Must-read, especially for the cheerleaders of war.

The post is "bipartisan." For example, documents how the Obama-Clinton  team was worse than Bush II-Cheney by providing the numbers. 

Right now, there is only the War Party in US politics, with different factions vying for power. Moreover, the US economy is dependent on military spending, so a new cold war with China and Russia is perfectly rational from the economic POV.

Follow the money. At bottom, you will find the class struggle. “There's class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.” The neoliberal era began in earnest with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, in no small measure based on Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, which presented a black or white picture of political economy in terms of a choice between free market capitalism and socialistic communism. Echoing this, Thatcher claimed "there is no alternative." 

Neoliberalism is an extension of what used to be called monetarism, both of them exotic or extreme versions of the overarching “ism”—capitalism. In the West, led by [British Prime Minister] Margaret Thatcher and [U.S. President] Ronald Reagan and their European equivalents, a “two-thirds society” was declared. The top third would be enriched and pay minimal or no tax. The middle third would be “aspirational” with some of them “succeeding” in a ruthlessly competitive world and others falling irrevocably into debt. The bottom third would be abandoned or offered stable impoverishment in return for their obedience. The relationship between people and the state would change from benign to malign. A new buffer class of managers tutored in American corporatism, with its own “culture” and vocabulary, would supervise the conversion of social democracy to a corporate autocracy. Public “debate”, managed by a fully integrated media, would be dominated by “identity politics” with all notions of class banished as an “issue”. False foreign demons (led by Russia, closely followed by China) would be designated “necessary enemies”....

The European Union is basically a cartel. There is no “free” trade. There are exclusivity rules set down and policed by the central banks, principally the German central bank, with concessionary benefits for the weaker members, namely the movement of labour across borders, though this is now in question. The central aim of the E.U. is the protection and reinforcement of the economic power of the strongest. Brussels is a centralised bureaucracy; democracy is minimal. The “European oneness” you refer to is propaganda, promoted by those who receive most from being in the E.U. The crushing of Greece is a lesson the majority of Britons appear to have understood....

Although Thatcher presented is a false choice that ignores the middle, it gained prominence among Western elites, where it still holds sway. It provides the foundation for neoliberal globalization (really transnational corporate totalitarianism) and unipolarism. G. W. Bush's, "You are either with us or against us," which was directed at the Global War on Terror, was extended to include all that that refuse being colonized or turned into vassal states. The choice is obedience or punishment.

This is wide-ranging post that covers the world and provides numbers to detail the assertions. Even those for war should know what is at stake.

Monthly Review
New Cold War & looming threats

Jipson John and P. M. Jitheesh interview John Pilger

See also

Counterpunch
Yemen: 85,000. Dead. Kids.

Charles Pierson

Reuters — Trump is shaping new 'liberal' order to block Russia, China, Iran, says Pompeo

"Neoliberal order." There, fixed it for you.

In a twist on Trump’s “America First” policy, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Trump was not abandoning its global leadership but instead reshaping the post-World War Two system on the basis of sovereign states, not multilateral institutions.

“In the finest traditions of our great democracy, we are rallying the noble nations to build a new liberal order that prevents war and achieves greater prosperity,” Pompeo told diplomats and officials in a foreign policy speech.

He actually said that and with a straight face.

Translation: America will no longer "lead from behind" though proxies, but directly as the imperial power.

Alluding to Trump’s policies in a speech on Monday in Cambridge, Massachusetts, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini warned of “the rule of the jungle” replacing the rule of law.

Maybe this explains Trump's hair. Does he think he is the lion king?

Reuters
Trump is shaping new 'liberal' order to block Russia, China, Iran, says Pompeo

Robin Emmott

See also at Reuters

“I am certain that, at some time in the future, President Xi and I, together with President Putin of Russia, will start talking about a meaningful halt to what has become a major and uncontrollable Arms Race. The U.S. spent 716 Billion Dollars this year. Crazy!” Trump wrote in a tweet, the day after he returned from the Group of 20 meeting in Argentina.

Trump to discuss 'arms race' with China, Russia some time in the future

James Pethokoukis — Republicans have a big new economic idea. It's terrible.

James Pethokoukis is has a master's degree in journalism and no credentials in economics. Perhaps this explains at least part of his failure to understand that globalization under neoliberal doctrine — "free markets, free trade, and free capital flows" results in the great leveling as capital flows where resources, including labor, as least expensive in order to be be competitive. This implies that wages and capital investment in developed countries, where resources are most costly, will fall as the emerging world rises. This will continue under such a system until an equilibrium level is reached.

Obviously, domestic workers in developed countries are disadvantaged by this policy and will continue to be unless government step in to soften the blow, or neoliberal globalization is ended.

The policy of the present administration is the latter.

But it is not the only policy available for addressing the issues that neoliberal globalization entails.

MMT economists recommend recognizing that receiving real resources from abroad is a real benefit domestically. Moreover, a currency sovereign has the ability to purchase the use of real resources to prevent their being idled. Such a government also has the capacity for improving the value of real resource use through public investment in education, health care, infrastructure, R & D, etc. while addressing temporary problems with welfare provision and an employer of last resort program funded by the currency issuer.

The Week
Republicans have a big new economic idea. It's terrible.

James Pethokoukis |Dewitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and editor of the AEIdeas blog

More illogic from The Week.

The author admits that this is no historical basis for Zionism but we should just pretend there is anyway, since Israel is already a nation state and failure to do so will encourage anti-Zionists to attack Israeli statehood, and that would be a bad thing. Huh?

Why Zionism should be untouchable

Damon Linker

Ramanan — Thomas Palley – Re-theorizing The Welfare State And The Political Economy Of Neoliberalism’s War Against It

Thomas Palley has a new paper:

The Case for Concerted Action

Thomas Palley – Re-theorizing The Welfare State And The Political Economy Of Neoliberalism’s War Against It

V. Ramanan

Reuters — Top US Treasury official slams China's 'non-market behavior'

• The U.S. Treasury's top diplomat accused Beijing of "patently non-market behavior" and said that the United States needed stronger responses to counter it. 
• David Malpass, Treasury's undersecretary for international affairs, said that market-oriented, democratic governments were awakening to the challenges posed by China's economic system, including from its state-owned banks and export credit agencies.
• He reiterated his view that China had stopped liberalizing its economy and was actually reversing these trends.

The US position is that only one system — neoliberalism — is allowable, the one it makes the rules for. (Neoliberalism is the system in which private business controls government.)

China is never going to buy into this, since it is tantamount to acknowledging the US as the actual "Middle Kingdom."

Collision course.

CNBC

Top US Treasury official slams China's 'non-market behavior'

Reuters

Also

Asia Times
China’s frosty reaction to alternative Belt and Road project

Gordon Watts

See also

World Economic Forum

Chart of the day: These are the world’s most spoken languages
Joe Myers

Paul Grenier — Russia, America, and the Courage to Converse

Despite its claims to “open-ness,” liberalism in its late modern Western form becomes self-contained to the point of closure. Allied with such power constructs as the “liberal world order,” globalization (a word that came into common usage only after the fall of the Soviet Union) tends towards the homogenization of political space and the radical constriction of pluralism.

Notice a trend toward closure? It's affected conventional economics in addition to politics. Plurism, the hallmark of liberalism, is over — dead and buried.

The American Conservative
Russia, America, and the Courage to Converse

Paul Grenier, founder of the Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy

David F. Ruccio — Global rentier capitalism

… as the authors of the new report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development have explained, there is a growing concern that

increasing market concentration in leading sectors of the global economy and the growing market and lobbying powers of dominant corporations are creating a new form of global rentier capitalism to the detriment of balanced and inclusive growth for the many.

And they’re not just talking about financial rentier incomes, which has been the focus of attention since the global meltdown provoked by Wall Street nine years ago. Their argument is that a defining feature of “hyperglobalization” is the proliferation of rent-seeking strategies, from technological innovations to mergers and acquisitions, within the non-financial corporate sector. The result is the growth of corporate rents or “surplus profits.”...

What happens when economists assume away asymmetry, especially of market power.

Occasional Links & Commentary
Global rentier capitalism
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics University of Notre Dame Notre Dame

Dean Baker — Why Is It So Hard for Intellectuals to Envision Alternative Forms of Globalization

When it comes to critics of globalization with standing in the mainstream of the economics profession, few are better than Dani Rodrik. Nonetheless when it comes to laying out the indictment of the path pursued over the last three decades in a Washington Post interview, even he largely accepts the story that the basic story that “globalization” has some specific direction attached to it.

The point here is that globalization, meaning the greater integration of economies across the world, could have been designed an infinite number of ways. The way it was designed was intended to redistribute income upward, with those at the top of the income distribution using their political power to make changes that enhanced their wealth and power. The upward redistribution was not an accidental outcome of a process of economic integration: it was the purpose of this process.…

The is is short definition of neoliberal globalization — using political power to impose economic liberalism where it favors capital with free cross-border competition, one hand, and, on the other hand, to use policy, law and regulation also to favor capital by erecting and enforcing cross-border property rights that restrict competition. Classical liberalism was based on the first, laissez-faire, while neoliberalism adds government intervention to favor capital.

Dean Baker points out this was a choice. It did not have to be this way.

Beat the Press
Why Is It So Hard for Intellectuals to Envision Alternative Forms of Globalization
Dean Baker | Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C

David F. Ruccio — Globalization—how did they get it so wrong?

There is perhaps no more cherished an idea within mainstream economics than that everyone benefits from free trade and, more generally, globalization. They represent the solution to the problem of scarcity for the world as a whole, much as free markets are celebrated as the best way of allocating scarce resources within nations. And any exceptions to free markets, whether national or international, need to be criticized and opposed at every turn.

That celebration of capitalist globalization, as Nikil Saval explains, has been the common sense that mainstream economists, both liberal and conservative, have adhered to and disseminated, in their research, teaching, and policy advice, for many decades.

Today, of course, that common sense has been challenged—during the Second Great Depression, in the Brexit vote, during the course of the electoral campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump—and economic elites, establishment politicians, and mainstream economists have been quick to issue dire warnings about the perils of disrupting the forces of globalization.

I have my own criticisms of Saval’s discussion of the rise and fall of the idea of globalization, especially his complete overlooking of the long tradition of globalization critics, especially on the Left, who have emphasized the dirty, violent, unequalizing underside of colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism.

However, as a survey of the role of globalization within mainstream economics, Saval’s essay is well worth a careful read....

Occasional Links & Commentary
Globalization—how did they get it so wrong?
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

Jon Rappoport — Globalists interviewed: they admitted they controlled the government

The origin of "free trade" agreements as a key piece of neoliberal globalization?

Jon Rappoport's Blog

Globalists interviewed: they admitted they controlled the government
Jon Rappoport

Ramanan — Glenn Greenwald On The New Yorker‘s Admission

It was the effects of neoliberal globalization that disadvantaged the middle class economically while enriching the top of town rather than "Russian hacking" or RT propaganda. This is what brought Hillary Clinton down, drove Brexit, and is stoking the resurgence of formerly right and left European fringe parties into the mainstream. Immigration is a stub context to that as citizens see immigration as imported completion for employment along with the labor embedded in imports and exported factories. Even the refugee crisis is the result of neoliberal globalization's siblings, neo-imperialism and neocolonialism, whose parents are economic liberalism and transnational corporate capitalism.

The Case for Concerted Action
Glenn Greenwald On The New Yorker‘s Admission
V. Ramanan

Matthew Allen — Declassified CIA Memo Shows How US Has Been Plotting Syrian Regime Change For Decades

It's public knowledge that Washington has been plotting against Syria since the days of Eisenhower.

But thanks to a newly declassified CIA memo, we can now read Washington's heavily-redacted strategy for creating "favorable conditions" in Syria.

Even back in the 1980s, it was clear that provoking a Sunni insurgency fueled by ethnic and religious hatred was the easiest way to topple the government.
As the memo notes:

Sunnis make up 60 percent of the Syrian officer corps but are concentrated in junior officer ranks; enlisted men are predominantly Sunni conscripts. We believe that a renewal of communal violence between Alawis and Sunnis could inspire Sunnis in the military to turn against the regime.

The ultimate goal? Creating a new, "moderate" Sunni regime that would serve U.S. business interests. (Surprise!)….

Russia Insider
Declassified CIA Memo Shows How US Has Been Plotting Syrian Regime Change For Decades
Matthew Allen

Heiko Khoo — Collapse of Anglo-US model highlight of 2016

It was a dramatic year in world politics. After a long period of slowly-accumulating social and economic contradictions, a new and tumultuous era has opened up, heralding a time of sudden transformations, social and cultural upheavals, and ideological flux.

In June 2016, the British people voted to leave the European Union, thus reversing the trend towards globalization. Similarly, the election of Donald Trump as U.S. President signals the end of American-backed multilateralism. In consequence, the Anglo-U.S. model of Neoliberal Capitalism is dead.

Such developments hide a broader and deeper malaise affecting world capitalism. In order to balance the books and restore "economic credibility" many countries adopted draconian austerity measures following the Great Recession of 2008-9.

In the advanced capitalist countries of Europe and the United States, overall living standards have fallen. Many poor and middle-income countries experienced catastrophic social consequences.

This is leading to a revolt at the ballot box, against what is often called "the political class" or "the establishment."

It also exposes the falseness in four long-promoted "commonsense" myths: that enriching the few eventually benefits the many; that countries will increasingly integrate and collaborate; that wealthy capitalist democracies assist poor countries to develop; and that these same wealthy countries are international guarantors of peace, justice and human rights....

Western soft power had a tough year.

One thing is certain, none of the central problems in society will be resolved by the solutions proposed by the present rulers of Europe or the U.S. And this is because of the structural foundations of the system.

Politics is like a theatrical performance whose function, at root, is to help the biggest companies maximize their profits. Control over the political script and the performance on stage is normally guaranteed.

Deeply entrenched economic interests dominate politics. In this system - no matter what shade of government is in power - the interests of the largest privately-owned profit-seeking companies, shape the contours of the world's economy....

 Pretty good analysis and commentary "with Chinese characteristics." Definitely nowhere near as crude as it was years ago. And it's informative to see how others see you.

China.org.cn
Collapse of Anglo-US model highlight of 2016
Heiko Khoo, columnist with China.org.cn

Jenny Tue Anh Nguyen — The Case Against the Universal Liberalisation Model for Economic Growth

For years, policy-makers have used the United Nations’ country classification, based on per capita gross national income, as the measurement of their country’s development. The aspiration to move up the scale assumes that: 1) economic growth is the international standard measurement of development; and 2) the more one produces, the better one’s quality of life will be. The history of political movements and economic policies has witnessed both successful and failed attempts to move up the scale. The countries that have accelerated their economic growth have been celebrated worldwide and the general perception is that the people in these countries now enjoy a more resourceful life. This attitude towards economic growth has created a presumption that pro-growth policies observed in more developed countries and actively promoted by international institutions could be applicable in other developing countries. Can this classification ever be misleading?

Per capita GDP ignores distributional effects. Conventional economists ignore distributional effects, assuming trickle down, which often doesn't happen, at least sufficiently to make a difference to many people and some made worse off.

Developing Economics

The Case Against the Universal Liberalisation Model for Economic Growth

Jenny Tue Anh Nguyen, a PhD student in Economics at the University of Greenwich

Thomas Piketty — We must rethink globalization, or Trumpism will prevail

Let it be said at once: Trump’s victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive governments to deal with this.…

Judging from Piketty's analysis and proposals, Trumpism gonna win.  Economic liberalism is not going to bridle itself and neither are government that have been captured by it.

The Guardian
We must rethink globalization, or Trumpism will prevail
Thomas Piketty | professor (directeur d'études) at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), associate chair at the Paris School of Economics and Centennial professor at the London School of Economics new International Inequalities Institute

Chris Dillow — Is globalization to blame?

No, "globalization" is not to blame. It's what is inevitably happening owing to technological innovation.

The problem is neoliberal globalization. 

The chief difference between classical economic liberalism, aka laissez-faire, and neoliberalism is that neoliberals realized that government is not a cause of friction to be removed as classical economic liberals assumed, but rather a key player that must be captured, controlled, and directed toward promoting elite interests. This involved how and to whom the surplus over production costs would be distributed.

This is a conflict between first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court John Jay's "Those who own the country should rule the country" and Abraham Lincoln's "government of the people, for the people, and by the people."

The world is becoming more connected through transportation and communications technology and that is a good thing. Fair trade is also a good thing that can benefit everyone.

Net importers benefit in real terms of trade at full employment. Governments that are sovereign in their currency have the policy space to ensure full employment. Net exporters benefit in financial terms of trade at full employment but the benefit depends on distribution. 

Stumbling and Mumbling
Is globalization to blame?
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

Also

Fabius Maximus
Stratfor: Manufacturing Is A Campaign Promise That Trump Cannot Keep