neoliberalism

The Empire’s European castle of vassals is crumbling. Right in front of our eyes. But Nobody seems to see it. The European Union (EU), the conglomerate of vassals. Trump calls them irrelevant, and he doesn’t care what they think about him, they deserve to be collapsing. They, the ‘vassalic’ EU, a group of 28 countries, some 500 million people, with a combined economy of a projected 19 trillion US-dollar equivalent, about the same as the US, have submitted themselves to the dictate of Washington in just about every important aspect of life.

You don’t have to control everything to be in total control.
In the modern world this seeming paradox is a systemic reality.
In the past, classic totalitarian governments sought to literally control every aspect of biopower.
As it turned out, this was a very inefficient and self-defeating way to maintain and increase scientific knowledge and technology, capital accumulation, and total effective power over the long term.

The European Union is under numerous existential threats.

So, we have a coalescing of white male repressions projecting outward by way of a latent Puritanical reflex, one that must keep someone in the stocks, with an insidious white nationalism out to create hierarchies within hierarchies regarding passports and citizenship —  in the interest of controlling surplus populations, and a neo left anti-communism made up of a structural Ayn Randian Capitalism, with equal parts Lyndon LaRouche, and Hannah Arendt by way of Noam Chomsky.

As humans, we have evolved with the natural environment over millennia. We have learned what to eat and what not to eat, what to grow and how to grow it and our diets have developed accordingly. We have hunted, gathered, planted and harvested. Our overall survival as a species has been based on gradual, emerging relationships with the seasons, insects, soil, animals, trees and seeds.

How low can a country governed by an unbridled greed, a notorious lack of morals and ubiquitous servility to its neo-colonialist masters, really sink?
And how can people tolerate lies, the naked cynicism and fanatical incompetence of the rulers? Can the regime in Indonesia, which was created in 1965, and then nurtured by the West, really get away with absolutely everything, even, literally, murder?

The New York Times wrote Christmas Day that an 8-year old Guatemalan boy died in US Border Control custody. The circumstances are not clear, or are simply not reported. A month earlier, a 7-year old girl, also from Guatemala, died also in US Border Control custody. Here too, the circumstances are not revealed. How many more children, not mentioned by any media, or any statistics have already perished, trying to make their way to a better future?

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was one of the most prescient philosophers, whose influence is felt even today. It could be said about him that he is read wherever printed literature or optical fiber has reached. But what does Marx mean to us today? How do we interpret Marx for our changed times? I remember that by 2005-2006, most people would mockingly remind me that Marx had become outdated and therefore his proper place was his London cemetery. But then, out of the blue came the 2008-2012 economic meltdown.

The “Gilets Jaunes” will not let go. Not even – or especially not – after Macron‘s half-hearted, rather cynical and grandstanding concessions of “too little and too late” which, when analyzed, constitute a new lie, especially regarding the increase of the minimum wage. It was clear from his face, these concessions, of a President who campaigned on the basis of “never make any concessions”, were fake, as fake as his fake attitude of an apologist could be. Even without listening to his words, his body language of arrogance gives him away.

Former US President Barack Obama admitted that the neoliberal capitalist policies he and his predecessors supported fostered the rise of…
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