US journalists and commentators, politicians and Sinologists spend considerable time and space speculating on the personality of China’s President Xi Jinping and his appointments to the leading bodies of the Chinese government, as if these were the most important aspects of the entire 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (October 18-24, 2017).1,
Prior to 2001 and the launch of the War on Terror, the US political elite adamantly denied (despite massive evidence to the contrary), that the United States was an empire rather than a republic. Because their sudden about face (i.e., acknowledgement and promotion of US imperialism) was so recent, there has been little opportunity for scholarly analysis of America’s effectiveness as an empire.
To understand the United States’ stratagem in the Pacific, and against North Korea in particular, one has to understand the fundamental changes that are underway in that region. China’s clout as an Asian superpower and as a global economic powerhouse has been growing at a rapid speed. The US’ belated ‘pivot to Asia’ to counter China’s rise has been, thus far, quite ineffectual.
The Green Party of England and Wales have just concluded their autumn conference, held this year in the pleasant Yorkshire town of Harrogate. One of the meetings I particularly wanted to take part in was titled “Universal Basic Income. Its time has come”. The main speaker was Guy Standing, someone who has apparently been promoting Basic Income for about thirty years. Although this gives him cause to claim some proprietorial rights for the idea, the Greens’ version of the same thing, known to us as Citizens Income (CI), has been a cornerstone policy for about forty years.
Revolution in society must begin with the inner, psychological revolution of the individual. Most of us want to see a radical transformation of the social structure…however radical that social revolution may be its nature is static if there is no inward revolution, no psychological transformation…However much and however wisely legislation may be promulgated, society is always in the process of decay because revolution must take place within, not merely outwardly.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti, The First and Last Freedom
About fifteen years ago I was a normal person. I had an average job, to help pay my average mortgage and average living costs. I was of average intelligence and had received an average education. I thought I pretty much understood how the world worked, because I followed the news every day on the BBC and frequently read The Times newspaper which, as everyone knew, was the best newspaper in the whole world. If anyone had suggested otherwise I would have been slightly offended, as if I’d been called stupid.
The New York Times Business Page recently featured a front page article about the annual conference In Jackson Hole, Wyoming hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. It contained this interesting opening:
In the decade since the financial crisis economic policymakers, professors and protestors have gathered here every August to argue about the best ways to return to faster economic growth. This year, they gave up…instead focused mostly on making sure things don’t get any worse.
They – those Clintonistas-Kissingeristas-Friedmanistas-Obamaistas-Romneyistas-Adelsonistas-Sorosistas-Trumpistas-Zbigniew Brzezinskistas — are the deplorables. Really, for 60 years on this planet, in this precarious walkabout, I have trudged through the sooty rain of capitalism plaguing the land, as the rich and the generals call to duty the soldiers of pain, yearning to be enforcers, witnesses to the dystopia of their dreams. Money changers, bureaucrats, oh they are Eichmann’s. Israeli Jews, many Little Eichmann’s all encapsulated in post-pre-future chrysalis of genocide.
There are very few inventions which are perfect at the moment of their creation, or which cannot be improved over time. The League of Nations was a new invention when it was first created after the First World War. It was the first attempt to form a global organisation whose main purpose was to prevent war through achieving disarmament and settling disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Like most new inventions, it wasn’t perfect. It failed, and World War Two followed.
I recently had an exchange that got me questioning the nature of Capitalism. What I’ve come to understand in my exploration of the topic is that it is not particularly well defined. I honestly think that’s by design; many of the behaviors that we attribute to natural cooperative exchange between entities is often claimed as Capitalist.
In my discourse, I was confronted with this definition of Capitalism. To paraphrase:
