The 'Last Hurrah' - Hillary Prevails But Neoliberalism Is The Real Winner

Hillary basks in her historical achievement - a win once again for Neoliberalism.

"The Republican and Democratic parties are both impediments to improving life for the average American. The parties exist only to further the fortunes of party politicians, their puppet masters and the wealthy elites who fund them."  - Commenter on The Financial Times yesterday.

"There's a difference between progressive morality, which is great, and the progressive mindset, which is half OK and half awful." - George Lakoff quoted in Jan. 31, 2014, UK Guardian article.

The above comments are germane as we learned late last night Hillary Rodham Clinton had locked up the Democratic nomination, thereby catapulting herself into American history: becoming the first woman nominee for a major political party. (N.B. The Green Party's Jill Stein is already that party's nominee - but the Greens are a minority party).

Hillary and her devout surrogates (including Sen. Barbara Boxer in an MSNBC spot last night before the election returns began) have maintained she is a "progressive", has a "progressive platform" and Bernie now needs to sign on to ensure a "progressive future". But the problem arises when one compares Hillary's actions, proposals to actual progressive principles. In each case, she doesn't measure up, for example embracing higher taxes as a way to move forward, in health care, infrastructure repair etc. - Hillary demurs, insisting on no tax increases for the middle class. Yet the middle class in poll after poll wants their benefits preserved, not cut.

Thus, to assert one is progressive without actually adhering to progressive actions or principles is an example of framing. In this case a core Neoliberal is using framing to appear as a progressive to secure a victory - first in the primaries, and now in the general election.

Lakoff in his book,  Communicating Our American Values and Vision, gives this summary: "Framing is not primarily about politics or political messaging or communication. It is far more fundamental than that: frames are the mental structures that allow human beings to understand reality – and sometimes to create what we take to be reality. But frames do have an enormous bearing on politics … they structure our ideas and concepts, they shape the way we reason … For the most part, our use of frames is unconscious and automatic."

So, basically, in saying the “progressive mindset is half OK and half awful” Lakoff is  asserting that mock progressives have seized the stage and prevented the genuine progressive from forging a coherent, unified mental structure from which to advance progressive platforms. . Why not? Because Neoliberals have been the ones to co-opt the progressive message, in terms of rhetoric and framing, not action. Neoliberalism last night -using the blinder of gender triumphalism - has again outfoxed millions into catapulting it into the catbird seat. Yes, now "women can do anything" and "little girls can dream big" (as per an HRC tweet) but make no mistake Neoliberalism secured the real triumph.

 Let's examine the basis in more depth including that most voters do not grasp what Neoliberalism is and hence are likely to confuse it with progressivism or genuine liberalism. So, unless they do the heavy lifting of comparing a candidate's rhetoric with actual proposals, actions and they will be "framed" into making the wrong choice: Voting for a Neoliberal when they think they are voting for a progressive.

It is, indeed,  arguable that even a diehard libertarian - who believes he or she is committed to firm libertarian principles- is actually parroting Neoliberal codswallop. The same can be said for modern Dems who fancy themselves classical liberals but are really Neoliberals. As for the Republicans, hell, they've been trapped in the Neoliberal orbit since Ronnie Raygun, given it also depends on military security and fomenting crises to make gains.

The problem with the Neoliberal, pro -free market idiom is that it denies the most basic security for the majority of citizens. In this way it feeds economic inequality while it rewards the speculator and banker class. These in turn help to corrupt the political class via unregulated campaign contributions and pouring in tons of money disguised as "speech". Ignoring all of this ignores why Hillary has become the Dem standard bearer instead of Bernie Sanders:  she is committed to the extension of Neoliberalism and its sister, American exceptionalism.  The Dem party in fact is all in for Neoliberalism so why would they have any more use at all for FDR or JFK-style classical liberalism?

But see, too many people allow their eyes to glaze or roll over when confronted by what they mistakenly believe is political jargon - whether "deep state", "deep politics",  "Neoliberalism" or "New world order". I'm convinced that at root this occurs because too many citizens lack a political ideology. They instead allow themselves to be buffeted this way and that by a corporate media that has no interest whatsoever in informing them concerning political issues and realities. It had more invested in framing and hence Lakoff's objections.

Salon.com writer Anis Shivani has pointed out in a recent piece: "this curious silence, this looking away from ideology, is exactly what has been happening for a quarter century, since neoliberalism, already under way since the early 1970s, got turbocharged by the Democratic party under the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and Bill Clinton. We live under an ideology that has not been widely named or defined!"

By contrast, a person with a core ideology (as I have) instantly recognizes Neoliberalism for what it is - as I have from when it first reared its ugly head.  I knew immediately it was emphatically not the same as classical liberalism and hence all efforts to ape liberalism or progressivism were doomed to fail - in my mind. Why are too many Americans mindfucked into voting for Neoliberals and against their own interests? Well, because it hasn't been defined or widely named so its framing has the ability to misdirect millions.  Citizens' perceptions thus become deformed before they're even aware what's happening. Jay Bookman aptly noted('The New World Disorder Evident Here, Abroad', in The Baltimore Sun, December 15, 1997):

"The global economy has been constructed on the premise that government guarantees of security and protection must be avoided at all costs, because they discourage personal initiative. In times of crisis, however, that premise cannot be sustained politically. In times of trouble it is human nature to seek security and protection and to be drawn toward those who promise to provide it. That is how men such as Adolf Hitler, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin came to power, with disastrous consequences."

This description of the New World Neoliberal Order is exactly why Neoliberalism must not be carelessly conflated with classical liberalism.The latter had at its root a belief that social protections and insurance had to exist for the most vulnerable, and markets must not be allowed to ride roughshod over basic human security needs.  Shivani, indeed, reinforces Bookman's take in writing:

"Neoliberalism believes that markets are self-sufficient unto themselves, that they do not need regulation, and that they are the best guarantors of human welfare. Everything that promotes the market, i.e., privatization, deregulation, mobility of finance and capital, abandonment of government-provided social welfare, and the reconception of human beings as human capital, needs to be encouraged, while everything that supposedly diminishes the market, i.e., government services, regulation, restrictions on finance and capital, and conceptualization of human beings in transcendent terms, is to be discouraged

Which, of course, is a veritable atrocity because humans - not just the richest-  yearn for security, starting with the economic. Why do you think most of the millions of refugees are fleeing into Europe? Yes many are seeking to escape political turmoil and war, but more than half are fleeing simply to secure an improvement in their economic status. By contrast to classical liberalism as Shivani has put it:

"Neoliberalism has been more successful than most past ideologies in redefining subjectivity, in making people alter their sense of themselves, their personhood, their identities, their hopes and expectations and dreams and idealizations."

Thus, deprived of basic security - even in their jobs - no surprise that so many Americans have now redefined themselves as gig artists running from one "gig" to another whether via Uber, Task Rabbit, or whatever their chosen gig umbrella may be. Totally temporary work, paying no benefits and having no profound ability to alter their lives economically. As Shivani adds, the resignation of being  a permanent temp, whether adjunct prof on food stamps, Task Rabbit jobber or Uber driver who can't even afford an AirBnB shack- leads to alteration of identity and permanent state of mind fuck. It also leads to ever higher rates of suicide in all age groups from 18-26 to 27-35, to 36- 49, to 50- 68,  69-74 as reported in the (June) AARP Bulletin, 'Suicide Rates Soar to 30-Year High After Financial Crisis', p. 4. . The Bulletin pins these increased rates on a "sense of financial despair and hopelessness" present since the 2008 financial crisis - which, of course, was triggered by Neoliberal market excess pertaining to credit default swaps and bundling them into securities  (mainly CDOs) rated 'AAA'.

Shivani adds:

"neoliberalism is the final completion of capitalism’s long-nascent project, in that the desire to transform everything—every object, every living thing, every fact on the planet—in its image had not been realized to the same extent by any preceding ideology"

Take the case of the Ukraine, where the unrest two years ago was fomented by U.S. Neoliberals and their neocon sidekicks,  driving NATO expansion to the east. The cover story sold was that the "people wanted freedom". Transl,:  being aligned with the EU and the West. The truth is that having gone that route they've become economic slaves to the Neoliberal  Economic Order and are now in a state of permanent debt to it. Indeed, the delivery of IMF and EU funds has seen as one of the first offsets the proposed cutting of all public pensions and abolition of all rigid price controls, as well as painful cuts to public subsidies. Those Ukrainians who pined for "freedom" would have been better served to have pondered FDR's famous words:

"Necessitous men cannot be free men."

Also no surprise when we visited Hungary last year, the tour guide (for a tour through Budapest) confided to me during our luncheon dining experience: "Yes, we threw off the yoke of communism, but we're now serving our capitalist masters. I have to work two tours a day seven days a  week just to make rent and food for my family."


And looked before they leaped into the Neoliberal Abyss (which they might have asked EU Sovereign debt victim Greece about). Perhaps the most impacting and relevant observation made by Shivani is:

"neoliberalism thrives on prompting crisis after crisis, and has proven more adept than previous ideologies at exploiting these crises to its benefit, which then makes the situation worse, so that each succeeding crisis only erodes the power of the working class and makes the wealthy wealthier. There is a certain self-fulfilling aura to neoliberalism, couched in the jargon of economic orthodoxy, that has remained immune from political criticism, because of the dogma that was perpetuated—by Margaret Thatcher and her acolytes—that There Is No Alternative (TINA)."

Why do you suppose Hillary, now Dem standard bearer, remains averse to disclosing her Wall Street speeches, e.g. to the Neolib speculators at Goldman Sachs? It's because these speculators are dedicated to the spread of market ideology and making the wealthy wealthier. How else can Neolib pols remain in power and keep getting money for campaigns? How else can the speculators gain favors from the pols once they're elected? It's a vicious cycle.  But make no mistake Hillary will play the 'first woman president in history" card to the hilt to blind followers and others to the Neoliberalisn underpinning her policies.

Nevertheless, Hillary still has to become first woman President to fulfill her ultimate aspirations and those of millions of women across the nation who vicariously identify with her struggle. But as an op-ed in yesterday's NY Times noted, to accomplish this she will almost certainly need Bernie's supporters. The op-ed maintains she will need to do the following to get most on board:

1- Come clean about her Wall Street speeches, releasing the full transcripts.

2- Cease being dodgy about her wrongdoing in respect to having a separate email server. Admit that she's wrong, instead of using the incessant, transparent excuses which sensible people (real progressives) can easily see through. 

In a way it's ludicrous to those of us who are classical liberals, because Hillary was among the first and most outspoken wanting to hang Ed Snowden out to dry for his "security transgressions"  and yet she appears ready to walk away from her own unscathed.

The Times doesn't mention a 3rd one, and it's kind of been in the undercurrents, but I'd also like to see warhawk Hill renounce using military force unless it's a case of genuine national security threat. No more Iraq -type invasions, say for Syria, Iran or the Crimea, in other words.

Do all that and she might, I say might, get Bernie's supporters to turn out and become 45th President of these United States.

But that will require Hillary cone clean and renounce the Neoliberal framing and obfuscation. A small price to pay for later success, but the question remains whether she can do it. Let us say time will tell and until then the 'jury is out".

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/henry-giroux/67565/anti-politics-and-the-plague-of-disorientation-welcome-to-the-age-of-trump

Trump More Likely To Start A Nuclear War? Not Necessarily!

Robert Parry - thinks Hillary is more likely to unleash a nuclear war than Trump.

Hillary's militaristic speech yesterday, basically a "mental health indictment" of Donald Trump, according to Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed on CBS Early show this morning. Goldberg, national correspondent for The Atlantic, also noted that it is unusual to "go nuclear" as Clinton did so early in the race. (He compared Hillary's speech to the 1964 'Daisy' ad run by LBJ showing a little girl picking daisies then a nuclear explosion in the background - attesting to why Barry Goldwater was unqualified to hold office).

But is Hillary's over the top indictment really true? I mean, not in the sense the Donald is 'all over the map' with his positions, but rather more likely than her to resort to punching in the nuclear codes.

Robert Parry, a blogger on smirkingchimp.com doesn't believe so, e.g.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/67484/the-bigger-nuclear-risk-trump-or-Clinton

As Parry notes:

"Hillary Clinton made a strong case for why handing the nuclear codes over to a President Donald Trump would be a scary idea, but there may be equal or even greater reason to fear turning them over to her. In perhaps the most likely area where nuclear war could break out – along Russia’s borders – Clinton comes across as the more belligerent of the two.

In Clinton’s world view, President Vladimir Putin, who has been elected multiple times and has approval ratings around 80 percent, is nothing more than a “dictator” who is engaged in “aggression” that threatens NATO following the U.S.-backed “regime change” in Ukraine.

“Moscow has taken aggressive military action in Ukraine, right on NATO’s doorstep,” she declared. But stop for a second and think about what Clinton said: she sees Russia responding to an unconstitutional coup in Ukraine – which installed a virulently anti-Russian regime on Russia’s border – as Moscow acting aggressively “on NATO’s doorstep.”

That’s the same NATO, whose job it was to protect Western Europe from the Soviet Union, that — following the Soviet Union’s collapse — added country after country right up to Russia’s border. In other words, NATO muscled its way into Russia’s face and has announced plans to incorporate Ukraine as well, but when Russia reacts, it’s the one doing the provoking.

Clinton’s neoconservative interpretation of what’s happening in Eastern Europe is so upside-down and inside-out that it could ultimately become the flashpoint for a nuclear war between Russia and the West.

While she sees Russia as the “aggressor” against NATO, the Russians see NATO moving troops up to its borders and watch the deployment of anti-ballistic-missile systems in Romania and Poland, thus making a first-strike nuclear attack against Russia more feasible. Russia has made clear that it views these military deployments, just kilometers from major Russian cities, as an existential threat."
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Readers can read the entire article at the above link, and may also wish to read my past posts on the State Dept. Neocons and their overthrow of Viktor Yanukovich in the Ukraine and all the problems ensuing (with HRC  neocon surrogate Victoria Nuland) in 2014:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/03/putin-is-acting-rationally-col-lawrence.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/03/news-from-outside-neoliberal-media.html


http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/03/obama-russia-is-regional-power-and.html


http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-game-theory-perspective-on-ukraine.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/03/chrystia-freeland-blows-it-on-russia.html


http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/03/geopolitical-chess-and-what-obama-and.html

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See also this Patrick L. Smith article:

http://www.salon.com/2016/06/04/we_cant_have_more_of_the_same_the_very_real_dangers_of_hillary_clintons_foreign_policy/

U.S. Nuclear Counterforce Option Against Russia A Boneheaded Idea

It appears that the U.S. Neocon warmongers still ensconced in Obama's administration have a new plan to teach those Russians a lesson. According to a Denver Post piece ('U.S. Pondering Tougher Responses to Russia', June 5, p. 13A):

"The Obama administration is weighing a range of aggressive responses to Russia's alleged violations of a Cold War -era nuclear treaty, including deploying land based missiles in Europe that could pre-emptively destroy the Russian weapons."

Seriously? Hold strain, you haven't seen the half of it. As the piece goes on:

"The options go so far as one implied- but not stated explicitly - that would improve the ability of U.S. nuclear weapons to destroy military targets on Russian territory."


So, in other words, start World War III. To rejuvenate memories again, let's recall that the Russians have retained a “limited use" nuclear doctrine by which they reserve the right to employ nukes if they feel overwhelmed by conventional outside forces, say NATO’s, see e.g.

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/russ-wellen/54873/russia-still-addresses-conventional-weapons-gap-with-u-s-via-nukes

As noted therein:

"On March 13, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ran a piece by Nikolai Sokov with the paradoxical title Why Russia calls a limited nuclear strike “de-escalation.” He writes, “In 1999, at a time when renewed war in Chechnya seemed imminent, Moscow watched with great concern as NATO waged a high-precision military campaign in Yugoslavia.” It became concerned both that “the United States would interfere within its borders” and that the “conventional capabilities that the United States and its allies demonstrated seemed far beyond Russia’s own capacities.”

In response, Russia

… issued a new military doctrine whose main innovation was the concept of “de-escalation”—the idea that, if Russia were faced with a large-scale conventional attack that exceeded its capacity for defense, it might respond with a limited nuclear strike.

Of course, such response would also occur  if there is any U.S. nuclear first strike, especially on Russian targets.  You can therefore take it to the bank that any such U.S. belligerent tomfoolery would be met with an all -out Russian nuclear strike on those nuclear weapons and the nations hosting them.


Now, the other side - because that's important. As the article notes (ibid.):

"Russia denies violating the treaty and has in turn claimed violations by the U.S. in erecting missile defenses."

Which is spot-on true as I have pointed out before, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/03/do-we-need-missile-defense-system-in-e.html

In an April 22, 2012, Wall Street Journal article ('Missile Gaffe Leaves European Unfazed', WSJ, today, p. A8) even Stefan Niesiolowski, chairman of the defense committee in the Polish Lower House of Parliament, noted such a missile system was not needed in Poland. Quoting him from the WSJ piece:

"There's no military threat and we haven't had a situation as secure as this in 300 years. The level of U.S. military engagement in Poland therefore is not of top importance."

WOW! No military threat? Then WHY do it? Obviously, to further antagonize the Russians,  having already dismissed Russia as a third rate nation after abusing a 1991 agreement in which NATO was not to have moved one millimeter further to the east if the Soviet Union was dissolved. Mikhail Gorbachev held up his end of the deal, the U.S. didn't. See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-game-theory-perspective-on-ukraine.html

The ultimate bellicose move, of course, was instigating the coup in the Ukraine, which lies right on Russia's geographical doorstep. Let us see how close:




Note Ukraine abuts Russia on its southwest border. Note it carefully!  Now, try to conceive a juxtaposition of events and conditions whereby Florida (on the U.S. SE coast) has somehow become a separate protectorate  - say like Puerto Rico - and is suddenly taken over by hundreds of thousands of Cuban Castro sympathizers.  They localize attention at Miami where they essentially take over and raise Cuban flags. All this on a state right next to Georgia.

In a  symmetrical situation  would the U.S. just sit back and let events unfold, especially if the commie Cubans were going around beating up upstanding citizens, defacing buildings, burning up synagogues or churches  etc.? In your dreams!  There'd be such a display of 'shock and awe' invasion it would make your head swim! So no one can prattle away nonsense and tell me the U.S. wouldn't do the very same thing Russia is now doing, if the situation were somehow reversed.

But see this is the problem with the Neoliberal Pax Americana meme: one standard for the U.S. and another for everyone else. And no other nation better dare try to extend hegemony outside its national borders.

According to the Post piece, quoting a Lt. Col. Joe Sowers:

"All the options under consideration are designed to ensure that Russia gains no significant military advantage from their violation."

Totally oblivious to the fact that it has been the U.S. trying to press such advantage. Indeed, Pentagon and White House officials are even considering admitting the Balkan nation of Montenegro into NATO - further arousing Russian ire (WSJ today, p. A5) .  Even Ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson agreed back in MARCH, 2014, that if he was Putin and faced the sort of belligerence and upheaval in the Ukraine instigated by U.S. neocons (like Victoria Nuland) , he'd have made the exact same responses. Including going into the Crimea.

So what is really behind all this U.S. huff and puff?  Most of it can be traced to the document known as NSC-68 prepared by Paul Nitze of the National Security Council – completed by 1950. The document essentially contained the blueprint for unending strife and undeclared wars, all of which would be invoked on the basis of a zero tolerance threshold for foreigners’ misbehavior. The putative basis? To enable U.S. agitation, overthrow (or assassination) of democratically-elected leaders, e.g. Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954,

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/ 

 and large and small occupations (ranging from the few thousand troops in the Dominican Republic in 1965, to more than 200,000 in Iraq by 2006.) 

The motivating force of the document was clear in this regard:

“a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere”

In other words, any place for which the U.S. even remotely construes a “defeat of free institutions” gives it license to intervene at will. This critical aspect is described thusly by Morris Berman[1]:

“Nitze emphasized the importance of perception, arguing that how we were seen was as crucial as how militarily secure we actually were. This rapidly expanded the number of interests deemed relevant to national security”.

In other words, it provided the formula for unending war, and the building of Empire. The problem for the U.S. now is that countries like Russia and China are no longer prepared to kowtow to the spread of the Neoliberal Empire based on this misbegotten Nitze doctrine. They are going to aggressively engage and protect their own spheres of influence as robustly as the U.S. would for its own.

Russia, for its part, and after the U.S. has moved its influence right up to its border, is not prepared to sit still and wait for hammers to fall.

Of course, Russian aggression will be a key topic in the G-7 summit tomorrow. But perhaps these misfits would be better served focusing on U.S. and NATO aggression provoking the Russians to react as they have. See :NATO's Warmongers:

  http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/brian-cloughley/54851/the-belligerent-alliance-natos-warmongers

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-boardman/62512/french-rap-us-and-nato-for-playing-russian-roulette-with-ukraine

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[1] Morris Berman: 2006, Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire, W.W. Norton, page 118.


 

NO - The U.S. Neolibs Will Not Start A WAR With China Over Spratly Islands!

Satellite image of Chinese islands under construction. Neoliberal globalists refer to the scene as "Mischief reef". (Obviously forgetting their own mischief with the TPP!)

Why is it that the U.S. Neoliberals are always out to teach other nations lessons? How about instead they plow through recent history and begin imparting lessons to themselves? Lessons about how too much secrecy (such as to do with full disclosure on the TPP, and JFK assassination files) impels distrust of the government. Lessons about how we already lost two "wars" and can't be serious about plowing more trillions down the drain when our bridges, roads are collapsing.  Lessons about how our educational system is becoming the laughingstock of the world - indicated by the fact most middle or even HS kids couldn't locate the Spratly Islands if their lives depended on it.

Last year, of course, it was all about teaching those terrible, brutal Russkies lessons after they went in and took the Crimea - which they had every right to do after the U.S. and its NATO puppets instigated a coup in the Ukraine - deposing Viktor Yanukovych and installing a fascist -neo-Nazi gov't.  See e .g.
http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-us-intelligence-russia-ukraine-20140303,0,4657644.story#axzz2uy8lfu8m

Even as recently as a few weeks ago, the NATO Neoliberal Imperium was antagonizing the Russians with their jets when the former were simply probing NATO's expanding airspace. (As any nation would do - even the U.S.  -  if its sphere of influence was being undermined and usurped.  Say with Russian-made anti-missile batteries installed in Cuba.) And please recall here, for those with short memories, that the deal (in 1991) was NO NATO expansion to the east in return for dissolution of the Soviet Union. But within two nanoseconds Bush Sr. broke that promise to Mikhail Gorbachev.

Now China has become the new "bad boy"  to whom the big 'cop of the world' wants to teach lessons concerning geopolitical overreach (a hoot in itself, given U.S. actions in the Ukraine and deposing Yanukovych).  Mind you - China is also the nation that holds or controls one -third of our debt, via bonds held. DO we really want to piss these guys off?

To show Chinese leaders “who’s the boss”,  Defense  Secretary Ash Carter has threatened to deploy US warships and surveillance aircraft to within twelve miles of the islands that China claims are within their territorial waters. But here's the ironic kicker:  the US is challenging China under the provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, a document the US has stubbornly refused to ratify.

The inquiring mind must ask why all the huff and puff? Why does Washington care so much about a few miserable acres of sand piled up on reefs in the South China Sea? What danger does that pose to US national security? For a point of reference, haven’t Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines all engaged in similar “land reclamation” activities without raising hackles in DC? So why the visceral reaction to the Chinese?

Another interesting twist: While the U.S. has warned it will intervene in an East China Sea conflict if necessary - Washington has made no similar pledges to partners in the region including: the Philippines. So what gives? What's the reason for this inchoate rhetoric and saber rattling?

Well, because China is an actual rival  power as well as a threat to the current Neoliberal unipolar world order (just as Russia is).   You see, the Neoliberals want world domination - all nations living under one mega-market 'jackboot' and with corporations (actually multinational corporations) at the helm. And the passage of the Trans Pacific Partnership would be the nail in the coffin after NAFTA.  SO no, China cannot be allowed to impose its own hegemony in the area - never mind that is its sphere of influence - just as the Caribbean Sea is for the U.S.

Strip away the fact the U.S. hasn't ratified the Sea treaty under which it purports to act, and the underlying Neoliberal dynamics, and the whole thing becomes  a joke. In a symmetrical perspective,  Carter’s claim that he’s defending the lofty principal of “freedom of navigation” is a joke. Why? China has never blocked shipping lanes or seized boats sailing in international waters. Never. The same cannot be said of the United States that just recently blocked an Iranian ship loaded with humanitarian relief–food, water and critical medical supplies–headed to starving refugees in Yemen. Of course, when the US does it, it’s okay.

Again, a double standard in the world - one for the Neoliberal superpower- the other for any nations bold or ballsy enough to challenge its perceived planetary dominion, whether the Russians or the Chinese.

The reality is that, leaving out the fulsome rhetoric,  Washington doesn’t give two shits or an ounce of shinola about the Spratly Islands; it’s just a pretext to slap China around and show them who’s running the show in their own backyard. Carter even admitted as much in a statement when he insisted that the US plans to be “the principal security power in the Asia-Pacific for decades to come.”

Seriously? That's not even your goddamned territory! Check the map! That's China's domain, Roscoe! Are you really going to try to bully -boy the primary nation holding U.S. bond notes? Which if they wanted - could call them in and reduce this whole country to beggary without firing a freaking shot! (Besides, where do you suppose the money is coming from to spend on our defense, whether the F-35 or new aircraft carriers?)

 Whether China or Russia, or everyone in between  - we all  know how this bellicose stance of the unipolar order translates: “This is our planet, so you’d better shape up or you’re going to find yourself in a world of hurt.”

 But let us recall that it was John F. Kennedy who warned, in his June 1963 speech at American University, that the U.S. cannot and must not seek to be the cop of the entire world, imposing its will with American weapons of war. In that memorable speech, Kennedy proclaimed:

"What kind of peace do I mean and what kind "of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children -- not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time"

Most poignant, Kennedy's words rejecting unipolar orders:

"Let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal."

And then:

Our primary long-range interest is general and complete disarmament- designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms.

Doubtless, most of the eyes and ears of the then U.S. military establishment either disbelieved Kennedy’s words or thought he was simply playing to the audience of young, graduating Catholic idealists. However, barely two months later their cynical clocks were cleaned when Kennedy announced the agreement on the Nuclear Test Ban treaty with Nikita Khrushchev.  This was also the final straw that most American conservatives couldn't take - and so began a 50+ years long media and PR war to try to denigrate Kennedy's achievements, or make him into one of them (the 'cold warrior' myth).  Not to mention deflecting attention away from the national security state that conservatives like John McAdams prize - hence to peddle the "lone nut" myth ad infinitum.

Here’s the skinny: Washington has abandoned its China policy of “containment” and moved on to Plan B: Isolation, intimidation and confrontation. In the opinion of one blogger (Mike Whitney), this is why the powerbrokers (mainly neocons) behind Obama dumped Hagel:

"Hagel just wasn’t hawkish enough for the job. They wanted a died-in-the-wool, warmongering neocon, like Carter, who is, quite likely, the most dangerous man in the world."

I don't know about that "most dangerous" aspect, but parsed through the prism of Kennedy's words in his Pax Americana speech, he could be. Kennedy wasn't shy about nuclear weapons being the most serious threat to humanity - so any words, actions that increase the threat indicate maximal danger.

Whitney goes on with his surmise:

"Carter’s assignment is to implement the belligerent new policy of incitement and conflict. His actions will prove to the skeptics that Washington is no longer interested in integrating China into the US-led system. Rather, China has become the biggest threat to Washington’s plan to pivot to Asia."

To reinforce that take, he cites  an Obama quote lifted up from blogger Tom Engelhardt’s post, “Superpower in Distress”:


“After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood and treasure, the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia Pacific region….As we end today’s wars, I have directed my national security team to make our presence and mission in the Asia Pacific a top priority.”

Whitney adds that the so called pivot is Washington’s “top priority”, which means that China’s unprecedented ascendency must be slowed and its regional influence curtailed. Thus, the dust up over the Spratly Islands

I would also add that this is why Obama is so recklessly pushing the TPP which nearly his entire party is opposed to. The TPP not only leaves China out (in many ways explainable since there's already massive trade with it) but more importantly to build up trade with partners in the region outside of China - which may also include funneling of military aid, such as the deals in eastern Europe that allowed NATO to expand.

Seen in a geopolitical sense, in terms of the Neoliberal imperative, all these moves make collective sense. For the Neoliberal idiom to rule the world all non-cooperative nation states must be subdued and brought to heel.  Kennedy himself, if alive today, would be aghast, not only that his warnings about Pax Americana were ignored - but that the appeal to diversity was being ground under the ubiquitous Neoliberal  jackboot. And he'd be turning over in his grave now on learning a "progressive" President has essentially torpedoed a treaty for nuclear non-proliferation.

See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/chris-floyd/62471/progressive-apocalypse-obama-opens-door-to-nuclear-nightmare

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/russ-wellen/62465/the-nuclear-non-proliferation-treaty-review-conference-goes-down-in-flames

Obama's Grades At The 6-Year Mark

Obama after his election in 2008. All things were possible then including straight A's

Time now to assess President Barack Obama's grades at the crucial 6-year mark. These assessments are based on examining his performance and decisions on multiple fronts, from peace diplomacy, to national security, defense of civil liberties, speech craft, environment, transparency, and executive leadership. Brief explanations will be given after each mark, and a lengthier one will follow the lone 'F' earned, for transparency. These objective assessments are more important than ever after watching some of the clips on Chris Hayes' 'All In' last night, featuring right wing crazies at public meetings with Rick Santorum yelping hysterically about Obama "gone crazy" and "destroying our country". Of course, any such jabber disqualifies these knuckle draggers from having any opinion worth consideration!

Now the marks:

Speech craft:   A minus

Based not only on his 'State of the Union' speeches but others given at various venues in the past six years.


Economy: A

Unemployment now down to 5.5 % and stock market at all time highs. What more can be said?


National Security:   A minus

Obama has done everything one can rationally expect on multiple threat fronts, from ISIS, to Iran. Only the crazies are dissatisfied with his approaches and want more wars- expending blood and treasure we cannot afford.

Environment:  B minus

His veto of the Keystone XL pipeline has gained many kudos from enviros, but this still hasn't damped disappointment with his support of fracking, intentions to do offshore drilling (off the east coast) and the export of low grade fossil fuels elsewhere (cf. The Denver Post, 'U.S. Exports Pollution, Offsets Advances' Dec. 9, p. 15A)

Peace Diplomacy:  B

Good, and again would be better if it hadn't been for the fact that he needed Russian help to ensure we didn't get into a Syrian debacle two years ago. Never mind, he seems to have found a backbone against neocon pressure for wars, for now. We need him to be especially alert he doesn't make any missteps by courting the neocons and assisting them against Russia in the Ukraine.


Executive Leadership:  B

While Obama began as a tepid leader, he's now become a "ball buster" with his executive orders and actions, including on immigration, health care and the environment. It gives the repukes fits but it warms the cockles of liberal hearts!


Defense of civil liberties: D

Let's see: his refusal to oust CIA head John Brennan after the CIA was busted for spying on the Senate, his pursuit and prosecution of whistle blowers under the 1917 "Espionage Act", his refusal to come to the defense of Edward Snowden when he exposed the NSA's awful overreach in the mass snatching of data - violating the Fourth Amendment. The only reason he avoided an 'F' is that he did (eventually) propose a review board for the NSA programs.


Transparency: F

Obama promised full transparency on his election and then promptly dropped the ball....or never wanted it in the first place. His going after gov't whistleblowers has already been noted, but the real wake up call for me was the failure to deliver archival records  (mainly from the CIA) on the JFK assassination in the 50th anniversary year of that event, e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/06/national-archives-to-jfk-file-seekers.html

Those of us in the JFK assassination research community were severely disappointed given how many doors had already been opened under President Clinton's watch (when the JFK Records Act was passed.). By comparison it was a giant step backward under Obama.   We suspected that the CIA had notified Obama that they didn't want their 1960s "tradecraft" exposed, but really...seriously, that wouldn't be used any more anyway, including techniques such as: splicing the head of a patsy onto another's body (with a rifle), poison pens to kill witnesses, aerial imaging photography, i.e. frame by frame projection of a film to the rear of a glass screen with minute traces of paint added, then re-shot - which would have been used to alter specific frames in the Zapruder film.

In truth, the only reason NOT to disclose this antiquated tradecraft would have been to protect those actually involved in the conspiracy to kill JFK. After all, if the pertinent documents were released exposing it, then all and sundry would know it COULD be done and those knotheads that howl about "tin foil" hats and an implicit chuckle factor would be put down once and for all.

But while some may believe this National Archives' misstep to be unique, it's actually turned out to be part of a pattern. According to an article in yesterday's Denver Post ('Administration Sets Record For Withholding Documents', p. 11A):

"The Obama Administration set a record again for censoring government files or outright denying access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by the Associated Press."

The article also noted:

- The gov't took longer to turn over files when it provided any

- More regularly stated it couldn't find any documents at all

-Refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be newsworthy

- Acknowledged in nearly 1 of 3 cases the initial decision to withhold or censor records was illegal

Worse yet, the backlog of unanswered requests grew by nearly 55% by year's end.  This despite citizens, journalists, businesses and others having made nearly 714, 231 requests for information.

While some may respond with rolling eyes and smug smiles at the seriousness with which files are pursued by some citizens, they really do not get it. They don't get that alert citizens have a responsibility to hold their government (and President) to account. And if they fail to do that - irrespective of whether the issue is the assassination of a past President, drone kills, or NSA secret programs - they don't merit being called citizens.

Obama, fortunately, still has time to pick up the two low grades, but like a student far behind in Calculus or Physics, it will take a lot of sincere effort and plain old hard work.  I for one am confident he can do it - assuming he really wants to!

The "Neoliberalism Frankenstein" - If You're Against It You Should Be Rooting for Greece and Russia!

Is it true as salon.com author Patrick L. Smith opines in a recent piece,

http://www.salon.com/2015/02/12/neoliberalism_is_our_frankenstein_greece_and_ukraine_are_the_hot_spots_of_a_new_war_for_supremacy/

 that we Americans have all become supine and surrendered to the mind -fucking U.S. media, and so are unable to discern truth from propaganda any more? Smith observes:

"Americans have by now surrendered to a blitz of propaganda wherein Russia and its leadership are cast as Siberian beasts, accepting as truth tales the National Enquirer would be embarrassed to run"

 It seems so, as polls disclose too many of us are siding with the Neoliberal media machine in two of the last arenas where Neoliberal world supremacy is at stake: Greece and the Ukraine. In the former a 'gun' is being held to the country's head to pay up all its owed debts despite the fact most level-headed people familiar with the structuring know it can't work. Putting the Greeks and their new PM in a hopeless, losing wicket position.   As Smith points out:

"At writing, Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s imaginative new finance minister, has just made his first formal effort to present European counterparts with new ideas to get foreign debts of €240 billion ($271 billion) off the books and the Greek economy back in motion. These ideas can work. Even creditor institutions acknowledge that Greece cannot pay its debts as they are now structured. But at a session in Brussels Wednesday, the European Union’s arms remained folded."

Why the obstinacy? Because if Greece is allowed to restructure so will Spain and likely Portugal too. This the Neoliberal debt mongers cannot afford to allow. (And let's note that Barbados too is under the neolib gun, after the most recent credit downgrade, as the vultures of the IMF circle getting ready to pick the country's bones.  In Bim's case, of course, it was a profligate gov't that allowed the situation to get out of control.)

Meanwhile, in the Ukraine - the West's Neoliberals have handed PM Petro Poroshenko an "offer he can't refuse" - a la the Godfather when he had his hit men chop that thoroughbred's head off and place it in the bed of the movie mogul who refused to cooperate (giving the Godfather's godson a movie role.) The West, featuring the EU and its U.S. ally as well as NATO puppets, want that Ukraine gem in their Neoliberal constellation - backed up right against Russia's border.  They refuse to allow it to be a buffer state  - which is exactly what's needed now.  Smith again:

"Also at writing, the Poroshenko government in Ukraine appears to have recommitted to a cease-fire signed last September in Minsk and promptly broken. It is not surprising given Kiev’s very evident desperation on all fronts. But neither would it be if Poroshenko once again reneges. There is a sensible solution on the table now, but these are not people who have so far been given to one."

Again, why not accept the sensible solution? Because that is not what Neoliberal supremacy is all about. Like a Frankenstein monster created by economic dimwits who believe in the deus ex machina of markets with humans as its cogs, they are all about absolutism. Solutions must therefore be all or none, with the 'none' being no Russian input that can be respected. Ukraine is therefore dictated to be a satellite in the greater NATO conglomerate and subject to Neoliberal debt rules.

Smith in his essay rightly puts it thus:

"There is something tragically irrational driving both of these crises. The genesis of each, at least nominally, is the question of whether markets serve society or it is the other way around. Economic conflict, then, has been transformed into humanitarian disasters. This is what Greece and Ukraine have most fundamentally in common.
 

It is in search of a logical explanation of the illogic at work in these two crises that something else, something larger, emerges to bring them into a coherent whole. Washington has so many wars going now, none declared, one can hardly keep the list current. But the most sustained and havoc-wreaking of them is unreported. This is the war for neoliberal supremacy across the planet. Greece and Ukraine are best viewed as two hot fronts in this war, a sort of World War III none of us ever imagined."

And he nails it right there! "World War III" going on right now,  yet most of us are somnolent, or better, comatose under the haze of Neoliberal puppet media propaganda. The barrage on the nightly news has been so effective, the poorly informed are left with their mouths agape as those brutal Russians (backing the separatists)  emerge with pretty well the same "evil" aura as ISIS.  No surprise that like the brainwashed denizens of Oceania - in the scene where the uber villain Goldstein is depicted on the giant theater screen - they go nuts clamoring for blood and action.  DO they not know that action more fully ensnares them as complicit bait in their future slavery and destitution  in a perpetual war state? Frankly, they no longer care. Having lost the ability to critically and logically think, thanks to the bastardized vocabulary of Newspeak, their brains have now been colonized by "Big Brother" to his own ends.

The people of Oceania were no longer authentic beings in their own right but mere extensions of Big Brother and his will to power, to keep grinding their bodies and state resources up in a never-ending war to attain global domination. SO it is with the "Neoliberal Frankenstein" and how it now seeks to grind Greece and Ukraine into more fodder for its misbegotten global ends.

Smith asserts that "Neoliberalism is our Frankenstein" and also says "it is profoundly undemocratic, never mind that the English and American variants of democracy are the mulch from which it arises." He also adds:  "It is also unrelentingly absolutist because it is intimately related to the myth of America’s providential exception, neoliberalism can tolerate no alternative".  His definition (formal) starts out:

"Neoliberalism denotes the revival since the 1970s, plus or minus, of English liberalism as expounded by Locke in the 17th century and numerous others in the 18th—Adam Smith and his “invisible hand,” most famously. John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, the utilitarian, are notable among 19th century apostles."

But then goes into a lengthy discourse comparing early and 18th century forms of  liberalism to the neo-mutant. Let's just cut to the chase here and give Smith's core definition:

"Classical liberalism in its neo phase denotes not thought but belief, ideological conviction. It is the ideology of radical deregulation, radical corporatization, radical privatization—prisons? water? kindergartens? human health?—maximal profit without regard to consequences, and the radical devaluation of any serious consciousness of the communities in which all individuals are suspended."

I would add to this columnist Jay Bookman's insight from a 1998 Baltimore Sun piece ('The New World Disorder Evident Here, Abroad'):

“The global economy has been constructed on the premise that government guarantees of security and protection must be avoided at all costs, because they discourage personal initiative."

And there is Henry Giroux's insight on Neoliberalism:

"As an ideology, it casts all dimensions of life in terms of market rationality, construes profit-making as the arbiter and essence of democracy, consuming as the only operable form of citizenship, and upholds the irrational belief that the market can both solve all problems and serve as a model for structuring all social relations. "
 

Thus we see where the yen to cut social insurance arises, and why profit is amplified for the richest, and  also how  the wealthier nations  especially benefit by placing newcomer additions in regimes of adversely structured debt. This is exactly why the West's Neolibs are determined to make Ukraine part of the Neoliberal imperative and orbit. It follows from this that the true liberal must inveigh against this mission and that means siding with Russia. At least to the extent that the Ukraine outcome ends essentially in a draw - translated to mean neither in the West's orbit or Russia's but a separate buffer state. (This was advocated by Ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson two years ago.)

But this may be difficult given as Smith writes:
 

"I was astonished many times as a correspondent to see how readily foreign leaders and their finance ministries drank the Anglo-American Kool-Aid. Here I single out Continental Europe as especially disappointing. A long social-democratic tradition notwithstanding, almost all European leaders—and every last technocrat in Brussels—went down like sticks of butter when neoliberals at State, Treasury and in the think tanks launched the post-Berlin Wall campaign."

Thus, the Europeans have now become puppets of the U.S. which let's face it, is the primary force bearer - the 'cop of the world' there to enforce Neolib standards. Hence, the threat to send lethal weapons to the Ukrainians - who will then get to actively fight for their own Neoliberal debt enslavement.

They may never have heard of FDR's famous words that "Necessitous men cannot be free men" but who knows, they may instead buy into the old Nazi saw "Arbeit Macht Frei" - the sign hanging over Auschwitz.

The same applies to the case of Greece, as Smith observes:
 

"It is preposterous. Greek debt can be efficiently restructured so that losses are minimized and properly shared. This is a European crisis in the final analysis, not Greece’s alone; behind every incautious borrower is an incautious lender. Yet there is no hint of open minds among Europe’s leaders, notably the Germans. What, we have to ask, is this all about?"

Again, what it's about is the Neoliberal imperative. The ability to structure debt in the most adverse way possible to convert nations into debt slavery states and their citizens into slaves for the Neoliberals.  How accomplished? Well, via the draconian conditions required by the EU and the IMF: the privatization of numerous state-held assets, including airports, rails and the entire port of Piraeus. Also,  divestment of the most profitable of these first.  Leaving the gov't impecunious and a beggar beholden to the Neoliberal empire.

If you consider yourself to have any skin at all in this ongoing war, you need to back Greece and Russia as bulwarks against Neoliberal advance. If not, then you are part of the problem not the solution and if the whole world turns into a slave state for the richest, you must share the blame.
 

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-zuesse/60991/gallup-americans-fear-of-russia-soars

and:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/dean-baker/60995/greece-does-battle-with-creationist-economics-can-germany-be-brought-into-the-21st-century

and:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-margolis/60987/putin-heads-off-a-us-russia-war

and:

http://www.salon.com/2015/02/16/ukraine_is_the_new_iraq_why_history_is_repeating_itself_in_eastern_europe_partner/