Today's Brutish Imperialism

[Guest Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.]

The following report may come to be considered by some among the world's leading circles of today, as the most important political document you have read, or might have read, during your lifetime to date. Certainly, the strategic issues presented here provide what would have been heretofore the most important subject in the world's historical experience of modern European civilization.

 

You stand here and now, in this moment of world history, between the hope of Heaven and prospect of Hell, such as you have never even dreamed before.

 

However matters of that sort, with which we deal in this report, are to be seen, it were suitable that there be no harsh battle-cries, but that what must be said, is said in those quiet tones of deadly earnest used by the commanders of the troops on the early morning of the day the greatest war was to begin. It is not the wild passions of the drunken mob, but the chillingly quiet cadences with which the cavalry man steadies his mount, and commanders calm their charges at times when the unthinkable is, at last, finally, actually to begin.

 

Therefore, as I have just promised you that I would, I speak calmly of things which men should remember in the aftermath of the great battle now coming on. Read these words calmly, that you might read them with an open mind. For, if you can accept calmly the reality of what I report to you here, we were all more likely to make the decisions through which we survive this presently oncoming general breakdown-crisis of present society, world wide.

 

That celebrated daughter of the once-famous Bund, Rosa Luxemburg, was, without doubt, the most competent economist, scholarly or otherwise, among her socialist contemporaries: the best such, by far. Although she is almost forgotten in today's academic and political life, her uniquely original, and correct treatment of the subject of British imperialism, then, comes now to the surface of current world-crisis events, on the verge of the November 4th U.S. Presidential election, when our planet as a whole now careens, at accelerating speeds, into what threatens to become a world-wide plunge of the entire planet into a deeper new dark age than that of Europe's 14th Century.

 

The relevance of Rosa's Luxemburg's study of modern imperialism then, is to be presently located by us here as, in the fact, that, to understand the present crisis of world civilization, we must recognize two considerations. First, that this present world crisis is a product of a current influence exerted by the same British-imperialist enemies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and by Britain's own U.S. and other sympathizers which had been mobilized against Roosevelt beginning Summer 1944, by virtual enemies including Winston Churchill accomplice, and President Harry S Truman. Second, that succession of changes in U.S. policy made by British influence of variously corrupt, or stupid, leading U.S. figures since the death of Franklin Roosevelt, especially following the riotous Weatherman-terrorist events of the 1968-70 period. Those events reflect the changes which, have induced all U.S. Presidential administrations since 1971 to either promote, or lack the temper to resist, a state of affairs, inside the U.S.A. itself, in which the net physical output of the U.S. economy as a whole, has been shrinking at a generally accelerating net rate, between gains and losses, over the entire interval spanning U.S. fiscal year 1967-68 to the present date.

 

The relevance of Rosa Luxemburg's work for the times of today's crisis, is to be found in the result of those British-imperialist-directed attacks against the policies of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, which are expressed today as having been the careening of the economy of the entire planet into the present condition of a general breakdown-crisis of the entire world monetary and physical-economic systems. If that physical-economic situation were not to be turned around-very soon-the period following the November 4, 2008 U.S. general election could be the clarion for the collapse of the economies of all nations of the planet of a type similar to, but far, far worse than that which Europe experienced during that Fourteenth-Century New Dark Age, a New Dark Age during which the number of parishes of Europe shrank by half, the population of Europe was quickly reduced by one third, and the Black Death was the characteristic cultural feature of the decades following the official bankruptcy of the King of England. This time, if that dark age looming on your doorstep is actually unleashed, the result will be one far, far worse than what happened to Europe during that previous European New Dark Age.

 

On account of this issue of British imperialism today, Rosa Luxemburg stands out still, in fact, as apart from and above a presently reigning generation of both most economists, and the academics in the field of so- called "political science" and law generally, or the generality of leading political figures today. This includes nearly all recent or present candidates for U.S. President, none of whom has a grasp of the notion of history as a process, rather than merely a sequence of selected events whose outcomes might be bought and sold to the highest bidder today.

 

As the consistent decline of the U.S. physical economy since 1968 attests, only a few among us, internationally, and, chiefly, only of my generation or a relatively fewer of the immediately younger generation today, stand out as being, even rarely, exceptions to today's general rule of incompetence in the shaping of the economic policies of nations of the world today. Her 1913 Accumulation of Capital, whose English-language translation was published by Monthly Review back in 1951, is remarkable in that it provided the English-speaking reader a uniquely scientific approach to the subject of modern imperialism, relative to other European sources. It therefore deserves recognition today as a starting-point provided by a competently professional historian, Luxemburg herself, for the understanding of the origins of the general, global economic breakdown-crisis currently in progress, today.

 

So, let the following be said, and received as an appropriate introduction to the great, rapidly soaring crisis of world economy which we must address, with the highest degree of authority, now.

Her Crucial Part in History

 

Rosa Luxemburg was the socialist economist who proved that Russia's V.I. Lenin, as also the German Social-Democracy of that time, lacked comprehension of the real-life meaning of what is called modern imperialism. Her only rival in competence as a leading economist from among socialists, during her time, was France's Jaurès.

 

In my own personal experience, it was in my post-war engagement, as a U.S. soldier, in 1946 Calcutta, during the first half of that year, that a high density of initial meetings and repeated encounters with typical leaders and others of the political parties of India, afforded me a deep, well grounded insight into the cruelly, and mass-murderously raw nature of British imperialism, and my deep, justly existential quality of contempt for the British imperialist stooge back home, that Harry S Truman who succeeded our justly beloved, devoutly anti-imperialist President Franklin Roosevelt.

 

However, it was not until the U.S. State Department professional, Herbert Feis,[3] documented the case for this same argument on the subject of modern imperialism, by Rosa Luxemburg, that any well known economic historian had actually developed the publicly available, rounded, corroborative evidence, publicly, in depth, which showed that Rosa Luxemburg had been right, against her socialist rivals, and others, then, as now.

British Imperialism Today

 

Similarly, at present, the popular, but utterly incompetent notion, among professed socialists and others, that the U.S.A. "is the world's leading imperialism today," is not only an utterly wrong idea, but a belief which could be presently suicidal in actual practice for nations such as both the U.S.A. and Russia, and others, today. Nonetheless, that wrong idea is a belief among many leading economists and statesmen, throughout the world, who cling stubbornly to the notion of American imperialism, still today. Thus, the world is presently menaced by the effects upon the credulous, of that strategic delusion, the delusion that it is the U.S.A., rather than the British Empire's Anglo-Dutch Liberal system, which is, uniquely, the dominant, actually imperialist strategic force operating throughout the planet today. Indeed, each of the impassioned haters of the U.S.A. among even our citizens, and others abroad, even leading political figures, is a product of the fact that they are virtually, either unwtting, or more or less witting British agents against our United States, whether they are able to grasp that fact, or not. A similar delusion is met among many in Russia, still today.

 

As I indicate later in this present report, the term imperialism, competently employed, never corresponds to an extension of world-power by some particular nation-state. In reality, as distinct from the childish fairy-tales of the credulous, all empires are dynamically supranational, and the kingdoms or comparable states of that time are merely, in and of themselves, the subjects of some supranational, imperialist power, as that relationship is illustrated by the thrust toward the condition in western and central Europe under which the supra-national authority of supra-national government, such as "globalization" and "free trade" generally, or the World Trade Organization in particular, subordinates, or even replaces actual national sovereignties.

 

Fighting the wrong choice of enemy, especially in the wrong war, especially long wars according to designs tailored for the U.S.A. by London, or British agents-in-fact such as former President George H.W. Bush, the son of the Prescott Bush who moved funds to bail out Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party, most especially, perpetual wars, is the best way to get one's own nation destroyed, as we should recognize this factor in the effects of the long U.S. war in Vietnam, under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, then, or, now in Iraq, under Presidents Bush, father and son, since January 1989.

 

It is the legacy of that chief adversary of the present world's British imperialism, the constitutional United States, since the crucial historical break of the February 1763 Peace of Paris, and also the legacy of Massachusetts' Winthrops and Mathers, and their political heir Benjamin Franklin: that United States remains the most effective force so far, even despite the two U.S. Presidents Bush, to secure the true freedom of nations from so-called "British" imperialism of today.

 

The legacy of Benjamin Franklin's leading role in crafting the constitutional U.S. republic in its essential character, remains, still, the leading, constitutional adversary of the world's only true empire of today, the Anglo-Dutch Liberal empire sprung from the tradition of Paolo Sarpi. At the least, this is true of our United States to the degree it has, repeatedly, represented, as under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the rallying-point of peoples of the world against what has been the leading traditional opponent, British imperialism, since February 1763.

 

Our United States has never been an imperialist nation in its national character, and has seldom acted in a way even resembling an imperialist power, except when the U.S. government was controlled by British influences such as our own American Tory party descended from such as that outright traitor and British Foreign Office agent U.S. Vice-President Aaron Burr, or, as under avowed virtual agent of British influence, President Harry S Truman, or was confronted by a multi-national adversary, such as, most frequently, the allies and agents of our republic's principal adversary in fact, the British empire itself.

 

Today, the United States alone could not win the battle for its freedom from Anglo-Dutch Liberal imperialism. Since the death of President Franklin Roosevelt, and the ascendancy of that wretched defender of British colonialism, President Harry Truman, the power and practiced principle of our United States has been spoiled, that to such a degree that long since the accession of Truman, the U.S.A. has been chiefly self-ruined by a rarely interrupted succession of phases marked by the accession of Truman, the assassination of President John Kennedy, the break-up of the Bretton Woods system sought by London (on the initiative of the accomplices of British subversion of the U.S. administration of President Richard Nixon), and by those predatory, treasonous hordes of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission, the which were deployed in service of the same, pro-genocidal green fascism of the pro-genocidal World Wildlife Fund of Britain's Duke of Edinburgh (Prince Philip) and his leading, recently deceased partner, Nazi-SS veteran Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.

 

That much said on background for the following report as a whole, turn, now, to the preface and, then, the main body of the report itself.

 

Continue essay here...

[Guest American for Progress]

Recently, the right wing has seized on Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) admission that he wants to "spread the wealth around" as evidence that his tax policies are somehow socialist, communist, or Marxist. Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) compared Obama's policies to those of Cuba, saying, "Where I come from, where I was raised, they tried wealth redistribution. We don't need that here, that's called Socialism, Communism, not Americanism." House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said, "You want to talk about socialism. You put these people in office, it's batten down the hatches and watch out." The media have also piled on, with WFTV Orlando's Barbara West asking Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) during an interview, "How is Sen. Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?" Fox News' Sean Hannity said Obama has "doubled down on socialism for America," while Bill O'Reilly admitted that he "wouldn't have said the Marxism thing" but that Obama nevertheless espouses "quasi-socialism." All of these conservatives, however, are distorting the Obama plan, which simply makes the American tax system slightly more progressive -- an idea that the American public solidly supports.

[Guest Doug Cupertino]

The fascist Fox News of Rupert Murdoch has been whipping up a mania and false fear against socialism, Marxism and “spreading the wealth” But it is protecting only its own tax evasion and the speculative profit, predatory lending and price-gouging of Wall Street and Big Oil.

 

Led by rabid fascists Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, Fox News is conjuring up a false phobia and paranoia against socialism and Marxism. Frothing in the mouth, Fox right-wing commentators are spreading the false fear that socialism and Marxism will grab income from the working-class and middle-class.

 

What these fascists hide is that it is the big greed-driven giant capitalist corporations like Fox News, Citicorp and ExxonMobil that have been fleecing Main Street with monopoly prices, predatory lending and media hyping the speculative bubbles.

 

It is big-time speculative profit and the luring of homeowners into a debt trap perpetrated by Wall Street, Big Oil and Fox News that has been pushing working-class and middle-class Americans into a million foreclosures in 2008 alone and spiking gas prices. It is the drive to hype up speculative capitalist profit that has been pushing corporations to downsize workers by over 70,000 per month.

 

While the Republican party of Wall Street and Big Oil, McCain and Palin pose as the champion of the middle class by opposing tax hikes, what they really want to protect is Wall Street and the top 500, including Big Oil which got a hell of a lot of tax breaks from George Bush and the Republicans.

 

Under the cloak of financial deregulation and bank secrecy, Wall Street is hiding and keeping its wealth away from the government coffers with massive tax evasion. Many of their companies and hedge funds have been stashing and money-laundering profits in tax havens in the Caribbean, Switzerland and Luxembourg.

 

And guess what? Who’s into this tax evasion rip-off? Wikipedia has this bit of information on its article on Rupert Murdoch, the tycoon lording over Fox News Corp and Wall Street Journal, and his businesses like Newscorp:

 

“In 1999, The Economist reported that Newscorp Investments had made £1.4 billion ($2.1 billion) in profits over the previous 11 years but had paid no net corporation tax. It further reported, after an examination of what was available of the accounts, that Newscorp would normally have expected to pay a corporate tax of approximately $350 million. The article explained that the corporation's complex structure, international scope and use of offshore havens allowed News Corporation to avoid taxation.”

 

Investigate and run after the tax-evasion profits of the fascist Fox News and Murdoch! Time to spread the obscene and ill-gotten capitalist wealth of Wall Street, Big Oil and Fox to Main Street!

[Guest Stephanie Schorow]

Financier, philanthropist and political activist George Soros told an MIT audience Tuesday that the current financial crisis underscored the need for regulation, even while he warned of the pitfalls of regulation and insisted on the impossibility of predicting the economic future.

 

"The prevailing perception of the market actually affects the so-called fundamentals that market prices are supposed to impact," Soros said during a wide-ranging conversation moderated by Ricardo Caballero, the Ford International Professor of Economics and head of the Department of Economics. "That is the nature of financial systems. Bubbles are a particular manifestation of this."

 

Because financial markets are not a "natural" but a "human" phenomenon, "the idea that you should be able to predict the future is nonsense," he told a packed audience in Kresge Auditorium.

 

"I don't get the market right," admitted Soros, later adding, "The reason I do well is I learn from my mistakes."

 

Soros said the recent meltdown of global financial markets -- something the former hedge fund manager described in dire terms -- undercut the pervasive belief that markets could be entirely self-regulating. That misconception arose, ironically, from the resolution of past financial crises with regulatory interventions: "These periodic financial crises served as successful tests of the misconception of market fundamentals," he said.

 

The burst of the housing bubble in the United States was, Soros said, a relatively small event but it was a "detonator that set off a much bigger explosion. And that super bubble has been growing for at least 25 years."

 

Soros, whose new book is titled "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets," criticized former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan for keeping interest rates "too low for too long" and, more fundamentally, for holding fast to the idea that it was better to "pick up the pieces" rather than impose regulations on the market.

 

Caballero also asked the question that was on the mind of many in the audience: "How do we fix the system?"

 

Certainly, financial markets will always undergo bubbles and bursts, but "unless the United States leads an international effort to stabilize the system, the system will not continue," Soros asserted.

 

However, while, "I argue that the ideology that markets are perfect is wrong, regulations are also imperfect, in fact they are more imperfect than the market … you don't want to regulate more than you have to. But I think you have to regulate credit as well as money."

 

During an audience question and answer session, Soros was questioned about his financial past as well as his analysis. MIT Sloan School of Management student Gary Cao asked Soros about his role during "Black Wednesday" in 1992, when the financier made $1 billion as the British pound collapsed.

 

"I played by the rules. I was a key member of the market. I was doing what other people in the market were doing, with no negative moral implications," Soros replied. "At the time, as a citizen, I was concerned about making the rules better. And I'm still concerned."

 

Another questioner noted that Soros had written previous books predicting economic doom. Yes, Soros said amid laughter, he made such predictions in 1987 and 1997 and "the third time the wolf came."

 

In response to a question about the impact of the financial crises on nascent democracies in volatile areas of the world, Soros sounded a hopeful note, saying that the United States could play a positive role but "for that we have to change fundamentally what we stand for and recognize that … we have an obligation to the world which we have absolutely abandoned."

 

Yet Soros also said that the United States would cease to be the world's undisputed dominant force. "The veto power that we have in the International Monetary Fund will disappear. We will be downsized. At the same time, hopefully, we will have a better working system and opponents will be more downsized than we will."