I read the Chas Freeman interview over the weekend at Brown Political Review because it was linked to at Moon of Alabama. One of the most straightforward excerpts and kind of his thesis on recent US-China relations was this paragraph:
"But there’s not much evidence of China wanting to replace us. They are displacing us in some spheres because they’re big and growing and successful. Do they want to take on our global dominion and hegemony role? No, but we assert that they do. We posit that China thinks and behaves like us: “We had Manifest Destiny and it took us across the Pacific to the Philippines. Therefore, China must have a Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny in mind.” This is wrong. Things don’t work like that. So I would argue that we have inhaled our own propaganda, and we are living in the appropriately stoned state that that produces. If we have sound policies, we can out-compete anyone. But we’re not looking at sound policies; we’re looking at pulling down our competitor. "
Some interesting excerpts concerning China and how the financialization of the US economy by cowboy capitalists intent on installing the same system everywhere mostly drives this push to a clash of civilizations:
"There was still a view, 50 years ago, that imperialism was purely economic, in the sense that there’s still a rivalry, for instance, between America and China, or America and Europe and other countries. But I think the world has changed so much in the last 50 years that what we have now is not really so much a conflict between America and China, or America and Russia, but between a financialized economy, run by financial planners allocating resources and government spending and money creation, and an economy run by governments democratic or less democratic, but certainly a mixed economy."
and
"If you look at the last 200 years of economic theory from Adam Smith and Marx, onward, everybody expected a mixed economy to become more and more productive, and to free itself from the landlords – and also to free itself from banking. The expectation was to make land a public utility, the tax base, and to make finance basically something public. Government would decide who gets the funding. hus, the idea of finance in the public sector was going to be pretty much what it is in China: You create a bank credit in order to finance capital investment in factories. It means the production of machinery, agricultural modernization, transport infrastructure of high-speed trains, ports and all of that.
But in the United States and England, you have finance becoming something completely different. Banks don’t lend money to build factories. They don’t create money to make means of production. They make money to take over existing assets. Some 80% of bank loans are mortgage loans to transfer the ownership of real estate."
and
"The fight against China, the fear of China is that you can’t do to China what you did to Russia. America would love for there to be a Yeltsin figure in China to say, let’s just give all of the railroads that we’ve built, the high-speed rail, let’s give all the factories to individuals and let them run everything. Then Americans will lend them the money or buy them out and thus control them financially. China’s not letting that happen. And Russia stopped that from happening. The fury in the West is that the American financial system is unable to take over foreign resources and foreign agriculture. It is left only with military means of grabbing them, as you are seeing in the Near East, and you’re seeing in Ukraine right now."
Those are just from Hudson's opening statement. Escobar gets into it as well. Highly recommended additional reading to go along with Chas Freeman's interview.
Thank you so much Yasha -- timely and truly alarming. Same for undying commitment to Ukraine army Nazi battalions.
And Biden administration has a new and major weapon. The Hi-Tech communication monopolies a la Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon are fully integrated in the huge US "security" apparatus and have been for years. Although these companies were identified as a big monopolistic threat by Congress several months ago -- they are unlikely to be broken up any time soon.
For example, endless fabrications about
-- "Uighur genocide in China" (spread by Falun Gong "religious" cult, German Adrian Zenz anti-Semitic evangelist extremist and domestic "born again" lunatics a la Mike Pompeo, Tom Cotton) and
-- against Syria (OPCW falsifications, "White Helmets" Al Qaeda humanitarians
-- heroic Ukrainian army Nazi battalions that will liberate Crimean peninsula that Khrushchev for some reason gave to Ukraine
Endless fabrications are tolerated and promoted since oligarchs of both parties promote identical foreign policy of their donors, that is, Biden and Trump foreign policy is nearly identical.
We (99%) in the US need to rebuild the anti-War movement before 1% of psychopaths push us into nuclear catastrophe -- all in the name of always profitable wars.
Corporate media "lives" (and serves US surveillance "security" gigantic apparatus) from advertising by corporate "donors" - arms, pharmaceutical, insurance industrial mafias.
1. We are now endlessly hearing, of course finally and correctly, about racism. Where are any articles about racism and apartheid in that most “democratic” allies Israel and Saudis – allies that are pushing us into war against Iran:
Two-State Delusion: Israel Is A Racist One State Nightmare - YouTube
2. Where are articles and actions of despicable UCLA professor Sarah T. Roberts on persecution and torture of the greatest publisher and free speech defender of our century - Julian Assange? Anything she published in corporate media?
3. Or the latest almost unbelievable data on "reputable" mega-organizations -- BBC and Reuters engaging in exactly the same and actual crimes - that Obama/Biden administration invented in the still on-going Russia-gate scam of the century:
As leaks expose UK operation to 'weaken' Russia, Tweeter suppression of Grayzone reporting backfires. Feb 27, 2021 – One more proof, if anything is still needed, that DNC directly controls Tweeter and other HiTech digital monopolies (Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc.)
There is a fantastic book that I read recently called Immovable Object by A.B Abrams published by Clarity Press. It is a book About North Korean Relationship with the US and how North Korea managed to keep its Sovereignty, and also mentions a great deal about China too. It is is among the finest books that I read about the Korean Peninsula and it will completely change your perception about the country itself. It is also a great book for those interested about the current tense situation In Far East Asia as a whole and to understand it from its origins to these days.
Yasha's excellent Article reminded me once more that it's a great time to start reading that book and I certainly will do it again.
The Reactionary Comparison of the US to China is a sick joke, considering that the US itself was founded through Genocide and Slavery and therefore it has been founded on a colonial mindset. But I suppose that since the US's Idea of Freedom Revolves(only) around the Individual, in other words, the freedom to own property(a concept that obviously will create only Greed and Selfishness), the ruling elite is incapable of understanding the world outside that frame and will see only puppets or so called aggressors.
Yep. It was all over the Bernie Sanders' themed Facebook and IG pages during the primaries. Anyone who pointed out that much if not most of what Americans think they know about the USSR is false propaganda, not saying that they want to BE like the USSR, got accused of being a "tankie" - I feel like the people using that word as a term of abuse were plants or infiltrators from the Biden camp.
That's a very useful background. On the topic of embassy staff, I read this comment on another substack comment thread a while back and thought it made a lot of sense (it reads fairly legit to me, but you never know these days....):
"..As someone who has worked at DoD, in the intel community, FDIC and Comptroller of the Currency, FCC, FBI, USDA, SEC and in congress, [there is] a society of people with common interests who roll in and out of government from agencies to industry, from K street to congress, from Wall Street to the Treasury and SEC, from the Pentagon to Raytheon, from CIA to private security companies. It's not really the elected officials, though there are some of them. Its about political appointees, senior bureaucrats, the Washington press corp, think tanks and government contractors.
They all live in DC, Northern VA or MD. Places like Alexandria or Reston or Crystal City, they live in NW or in Arlington. They all make their livings by being IN government, lobbying government, being paid by vested interests to produce favorable research for government consumption or selling to the government. They ALL have an interest in federal power, federal budgets and in controlling what is seen and not seen about what goes on behind the scenes.
I once described to a friend how DC is. You go through and see a lot of impressive and beautiful buildings, but once inside, if you wander away from the executive suites, you find dreary and convoluted spaces filled by people largely doing make work. You find meetings where decisions are made based on protecting budgets and what to let congress know or not know or what they can get away with telling. You have young congressional staffers acting like bigwigs, jockeying for their first big posting and hoping that their party stays in power until they can line up the gig outside government that will pay them the big bucks.
You have a media that is ENTIRELY dependent on leaks and relationships to generate stories, stories are product, producing that product is what pays them. They marry and go to parties with the people they are covering.
You think Bezos bought the Wapo as a means of public charity? You think he did it because he had a sudden interest in journalism? OR...do you think he bought it to influence reporting in the capital city?..."
Nah man you're missing the real point. You say you've been to DC, and I believe you. But the main work has been outsourced to the government contractors that rake in billions per year and have their massive logos all over the 30-50 story skyscrapers in places like McLean and Alexandria and even Bethesda. THAT is where the nobody's do nothing for high salaries paid for by FED printed taxpayer dollars that could have been used for actual programs to benefit people instead of maintain not only the 800+ foreign military installations we have, but also the cost of our endless wars that amount to transfers of wealth from the commons to the D.C. elite. https://wtop.com/business-finance/2020/02/9-of-the-100-richest-places-are-in-the-washington-region/
Why does it feel like the comment I was replying to here got deleted? I am in full agreement with Antipodean. My response was a reply to someone that had replied to his/her post.
I read the Chas Freeman interview over the weekend at Brown Political Review because it was linked to at Moon of Alabama. One of the most straightforward excerpts and kind of his thesis on recent US-China relations was this paragraph:
"But there’s not much evidence of China wanting to replace us. They are displacing us in some spheres because they’re big and growing and successful. Do they want to take on our global dominion and hegemony role? No, but we assert that they do. We posit that China thinks and behaves like us: “We had Manifest Destiny and it took us across the Pacific to the Philippines. Therefore, China must have a Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny in mind.” This is wrong. Things don’t work like that. So I would argue that we have inhaled our own propaganda, and we are living in the appropriately stoned state that that produces. If we have sound policies, we can out-compete anyone. But we’re not looking at sound policies; we’re looking at pulling down our competitor. "
I also read another article which was the transcript of a talk between Pepe Escobar and Michael Hudson, here: https://michael-hudson.com/2021/03/what-flavour-oligarchy/
Some interesting excerpts concerning China and how the financialization of the US economy by cowboy capitalists intent on installing the same system everywhere mostly drives this push to a clash of civilizations:
"There was still a view, 50 years ago, that imperialism was purely economic, in the sense that there’s still a rivalry, for instance, between America and China, or America and Europe and other countries. But I think the world has changed so much in the last 50 years that what we have now is not really so much a conflict between America and China, or America and Russia, but between a financialized economy, run by financial planners allocating resources and government spending and money creation, and an economy run by governments democratic or less democratic, but certainly a mixed economy."
and
"If you look at the last 200 years of economic theory from Adam Smith and Marx, onward, everybody expected a mixed economy to become more and more productive, and to free itself from the landlords – and also to free itself from banking. The expectation was to make land a public utility, the tax base, and to make finance basically something public. Government would decide who gets the funding. hus, the idea of finance in the public sector was going to be pretty much what it is in China: You create a bank credit in order to finance capital investment in factories. It means the production of machinery, agricultural modernization, transport infrastructure of high-speed trains, ports and all of that.
But in the United States and England, you have finance becoming something completely different. Banks don’t lend money to build factories. They don’t create money to make means of production. They make money to take over existing assets. Some 80% of bank loans are mortgage loans to transfer the ownership of real estate."
and
"The fight against China, the fear of China is that you can’t do to China what you did to Russia. America would love for there to be a Yeltsin figure in China to say, let’s just give all of the railroads that we’ve built, the high-speed rail, let’s give all the factories to individuals and let them run everything. Then Americans will lend them the money or buy them out and thus control them financially. China’s not letting that happen. And Russia stopped that from happening. The fury in the West is that the American financial system is unable to take over foreign resources and foreign agriculture. It is left only with military means of grabbing them, as you are seeing in the Near East, and you’re seeing in Ukraine right now."
Those are just from Hudson's opening statement. Escobar gets into it as well. Highly recommended additional reading to go along with Chas Freeman's interview.
👍 Great stuff Yasha...many thanks for the link.
Thank you so much Yasha -- timely and truly alarming. Same for undying commitment to Ukraine army Nazi battalions.
And Biden administration has a new and major weapon. The Hi-Tech communication monopolies a la Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon are fully integrated in the huge US "security" apparatus and have been for years. Although these companies were identified as a big monopolistic threat by Congress several months ago -- they are unlikely to be broken up any time soon.
For example, endless fabrications about
-- "Uighur genocide in China" (spread by Falun Gong "religious" cult, German Adrian Zenz anti-Semitic evangelist extremist and domestic "born again" lunatics a la Mike Pompeo, Tom Cotton) and
-- against Syria (OPCW falsifications, "White Helmets" Al Qaeda humanitarians
-- heroic Ukrainian army Nazi battalions that will liberate Crimean peninsula that Khrushchev for some reason gave to Ukraine
Endless fabrications are tolerated and promoted since oligarchs of both parties promote identical foreign policy of their donors, that is, Biden and Trump foreign policy is nearly identical.
We (99%) in the US need to rebuild the anti-War movement before 1% of psychopaths push us into nuclear catastrophe -- all in the name of always profitable wars.
Corporate media "lives" (and serves US surveillance "security" gigantic apparatus) from advertising by corporate "donors" - arms, pharmaceutical, insurance industrial mafias.
1. We are now endlessly hearing, of course finally and correctly, about racism. Where are any articles about racism and apartheid in that most “democratic” allies Israel and Saudis – allies that are pushing us into war against Iran:
Two-State Delusion: Israel Is A Racist One State Nightmare - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-4ak3XhHH4&feature=push-sd&attr_tag=AyyxI_73mDCDIzs6%3A6
2. Where are articles and actions of despicable UCLA professor Sarah T. Roberts on persecution and torture of the greatest publisher and free speech defender of our century - Julian Assange? Anything she published in corporate media?
3. Or the latest almost unbelievable data on "reputable" mega-organizations -- BBC and Reuters engaging in exactly the same and actual crimes - that Obama/Biden administration invented in the still on-going Russia-gate scam of the century:
As leaks expose UK operation to 'weaken' Russia, Tweeter suppression of Grayzone reporting backfires. Feb 27, 2021 – One more proof, if anything is still needed, that DNC directly controls Tweeter and other HiTech digital monopolies (Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc.)
https://youtu.be/vtQthwrWhqI
Once again 00 THANK you for your efforts !!
There is a fantastic book that I read recently called Immovable Object by A.B Abrams published by Clarity Press. It is a book About North Korean Relationship with the US and how North Korea managed to keep its Sovereignty, and also mentions a great deal about China too. It is is among the finest books that I read about the Korean Peninsula and it will completely change your perception about the country itself. It is also a great book for those interested about the current tense situation In Far East Asia as a whole and to understand it from its origins to these days.
Yasha's excellent Article reminded me once more that it's a great time to start reading that book and I certainly will do it again.
The Reactionary Comparison of the US to China is a sick joke, considering that the US itself was founded through Genocide and Slavery and therefore it has been founded on a colonial mindset. But I suppose that since the US's Idea of Freedom Revolves(only) around the Individual, in other words, the freedom to own property(a concept that obviously will create only Greed and Selfishness), the ruling elite is incapable of understanding the world outside that frame and will see only puppets or so called aggressors.
Yep. It was all over the Bernie Sanders' themed Facebook and IG pages during the primaries. Anyone who pointed out that much if not most of what Americans think they know about the USSR is false propaganda, not saying that they want to BE like the USSR, got accused of being a "tankie" - I feel like the people using that word as a term of abuse were plants or infiltrators from the Biden camp.
Oh for sure. What countries were you in?
That's a very useful background. On the topic of embassy staff, I read this comment on another substack comment thread a while back and thought it made a lot of sense (it reads fairly legit to me, but you never know these days....):
"..As someone who has worked at DoD, in the intel community, FDIC and Comptroller of the Currency, FCC, FBI, USDA, SEC and in congress, [there is] a society of people with common interests who roll in and out of government from agencies to industry, from K street to congress, from Wall Street to the Treasury and SEC, from the Pentagon to Raytheon, from CIA to private security companies. It's not really the elected officials, though there are some of them. Its about political appointees, senior bureaucrats, the Washington press corp, think tanks and government contractors.
They all live in DC, Northern VA or MD. Places like Alexandria or Reston or Crystal City, they live in NW or in Arlington. They all make their livings by being IN government, lobbying government, being paid by vested interests to produce favorable research for government consumption or selling to the government. They ALL have an interest in federal power, federal budgets and in controlling what is seen and not seen about what goes on behind the scenes.
I once described to a friend how DC is. You go through and see a lot of impressive and beautiful buildings, but once inside, if you wander away from the executive suites, you find dreary and convoluted spaces filled by people largely doing make work. You find meetings where decisions are made based on protecting budgets and what to let congress know or not know or what they can get away with telling. You have young congressional staffers acting like bigwigs, jockeying for their first big posting and hoping that their party stays in power until they can line up the gig outside government that will pay them the big bucks.
You have a media that is ENTIRELY dependent on leaks and relationships to generate stories, stories are product, producing that product is what pays them. They marry and go to parties with the people they are covering.
You think Bezos bought the Wapo as a means of public charity? You think he did it because he had a sudden interest in journalism? OR...do you think he bought it to influence reporting in the capital city?..."
Nah man you're missing the real point. You say you've been to DC, and I believe you. But the main work has been outsourced to the government contractors that rake in billions per year and have their massive logos all over the 30-50 story skyscrapers in places like McLean and Alexandria and even Bethesda. THAT is where the nobody's do nothing for high salaries paid for by FED printed taxpayer dollars that could have been used for actual programs to benefit people instead of maintain not only the 800+ foreign military installations we have, but also the cost of our endless wars that amount to transfers of wealth from the commons to the D.C. elite. https://wtop.com/business-finance/2020/02/9-of-the-100-richest-places-are-in-the-washington-region/
Why does it feel like the comment I was replying to here got deleted? I am in full agreement with Antipodean. My response was a reply to someone that had replied to his/her post.
Many if not most of them were also likely CIA spooks.