Explaining the difference between capitalism and it's psychopathic spawn, neoliberalism

Canada's Thomas Friedman, Doug Saunders, informs me today that "neoliberalism" and "cultural Marxism" do not exist.

As far as the latter is concerned, he may have a point. In my experience, the folks who invest in that concept tend to be one step or less distant from the "Obama is a communist" crowd, which is a crowd I generally consider too stupid to take seriously.

The neoliberalism thing is a different animal altogether, and since it's what Doug gets paid to shill for on a regular basis it's somewhat disingenuous of him to disclaim its existence.

Saunders may be somewhat close to the mark when he says the "very far left" uses the term as a synonym for capitalism. That's true insofar as we can acknowledge that there are different hues of capitalism at work in our world.

In the America that's been going downhill for fifty years and which recently put the cherry on that downward spiral with the election of Trump, capitalism manifests more or less as neoliberalism. It's a robust, manly, macho capitalism that says billionaires deserve their billions because they're smarter than you and they work harder.

That's a philosophy that translates into a particular suite of policy initiatives. Taxes are bad. The private sector can do everything more efficiently than government. Poor people are weak and stupid and deserve their fate...

And so on.


But there's a different capitalism in much of Europe, where the heirs of Karl Kautsky have nurtured a more effete version of capitalism. Ya, we'll have capitalism but we'll tax the shit out of the rich and make sure everybody has a roof and three squares a day.

That's still capitalism, but it is not neoliberalism.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is irrational, quixotic, dumb, and desperate

What you might have missed in the news, is that the same day that those claims were made in the New York Times International Weekly, a Russian rocket delivered a critical load of essential supplies to the International Space Station.

So while we're busy as can be vilifying Putin, he's busy greenlighting a space mission that will save an American vanity project. The last three American attempts at resupplying the ISS have ended in unscheduled fireworks.

I'm really thrilled to be able to get the New York Times International Weekly way up here in the Deep North.

I'm so glad that top US journos like Cohen and Friedman can clue me in to the perfidy of Putin.

Frankly, I think that's the sort of brazen propagandistic overreach that's going to lead to the demise of the Empire.

If a pot-addled hillbilly blogger in Bruce County can see through the bullshit, lots of other folks can too.

Putin against the Nations of Virtue

The New York Times International Weekly had a double dose of anti-Putin propaganda on view for us hicks in the sticks yesterday. Right there on page 14, two of America's most esteemed thinkers offer up the straight skinny on Bad Vlad.

Roger Cohen explains something he seems pleased to have just made up; "counterrevolutionary Putinism." This is the result of Mr. Putin having "decided to define his power in conflict with the West." This is extra scary because Putin is obviously "irrational and quixotic." Luckily for the prospects of peace on earth, Putin can be deterred...

All it will take is an increase of military spending in the West and the "permanent and significant deployment of heavy weapons in the region..."

Hmm... NATO already outstrips the Russian Federation in military spending by a factor of ten; does Mr. Cohen seriously believe spending more will change anything?

Thomas Friedman is also perplexed about what's gone wrong with our once-cosy relationship with Russia.

Where did it all go sour? At least Friedman has the decency to suggest an answer to his own rhetorical question; "we fired the first shot when we expanded NATO..."

Indeed!

Unfortunately, Friedman's prescription is every bit as frightening as Cohen's.

"... the most important source of stability in the world today is the health of the United States economy."

18 trillion dollars in accumulated debt, over 90 million Americans shut out of the job market, and Mr Friedman sees a healthy economy?

Almost enough to make a person despair over the state of public discourse in America, isn't it?

Showdown in the Foodland parking lot

As the half dozen or so regular readers already know, I'm a sucker for driving the Farm Manager to the Wiarton Foodland.

So this morning I was busying myself with the latest Thomas Friedman screed in that "International Edition" of the NYT that comes with my Toronto Star every Sunday, while the Farm Manager was busying herself with trying to decide whether to get the low pulp, regular, or extra pulp grapefruit juice, which takes about an hour and a half.

Mind you, we're well into the shoulder season in Wiarton now, the tourists are for the most part gone till next year, so I'm not sure why the parking lot was so busy.

It was busy like July.

The International Edition of the New York Times is just chock full of stuff I read on-line a week or two ago. Thomas, bless his soul, has discovered, much too late in the day, the ephemeral "two state solution" to the Israel-Palestine mystery...

While I'm reading this happy news, out of the corner of my eye I'm seeing a blue car backing out of the parking space in front of me... out of the other corner of my eye there's a red car backing out of the space beside me... oh my God!...

Crash!

Two cars trying to occupy the same real estate... hmm.. this could get interesting. I pretend I'm still reading Friedman, but really I'm wondering what's going down next...

This is hunting country, and deer season opens tomorrow. Damn near every other person over the age of 12 has a fully loaded deer rifle in the trunk of their car, ready to go.

Blue car Buddy gets out of his car first. Older white dude, looks like he coulda been in a bar-room brawl or two in his day, and held his own. Steps back and surveys the damage to his car... then he moves for the trunk.

Red car Buddy gets out. Big fat biker type with a cigarette hanging off his lip. Must have just put his Harley away for the winter. Out of the other side steps biker mama, a plump tattooed woman who would make very short work of me in a arm rassle. Red car Buddy heads for the trunk of his car...

Oh my God!

This could make the headline news!

I slouch down real low in my seat, still pretending to read the paper. At least any of the deer rounds that are gonna be flying in a few seconds will be slowed by sheet metal...


Buddy and other Buddy by-pass their trunks and head to one another's cars.

I'm sorry!

No, I'm sorry!

I checked my mirrors...

Ya, I checked my mirrors too!

I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry.

Sorrysorrymyfaultsorrysorry...

I'm expecting a shoot-out in the Foodland parking lot and these guys are seeing who can out-apologize the other!

For fuck's sakes! It might be a bunch of hillbillies in the hood, but are they ever civilized! They recognized within 30 seconds that they were more or less equally culpable and more or less equally wounded.

Nobody called the police and nobody called a lawyer.

Whew!...

Now, back to Friedman...

Drone on; Illusionist-in-Chief unveils imaginary new directions in US foreign policy

President Obama's speech at West Point today made it clear that American Exceptionalism remains an article of faith in the White House.

"America must always lead on the world stage."

Speaking of the Ukraine situation he claimed, "Our ability to shape world opinion helped isolate Russia right away." That claim echoes the delusional analysis offered by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times yesterday, "Putin Blinked", in which Friedman makes a stout defence of Obama's "new" diplomacy the day before the West Point speech.

You'd almost think he had an advance copy...

Putin didn't blink unless you believed all the nonsense about how he was planning to seize the entirety of the Ukraine and possibly the Baltic states too. That nonsense originated with Beltway think-tanks and Western media, not with Putin.

Putin did what he had to do and nothing more. It is far more important to Russia to have a stable Ukraine next door than it is to the Western pundits commenting from half way around the world. Whereas the US and certain other NATO nations were loudly clamouring for war, it was Putin who continuously reiterated Russia's determination to resolve the crisis peacefully.

Both Friedman and Obama cling to the belief that America still leads the world. America leads the NATO gang and a few client states. Beyond that, most of the world's population now lives in states that no longer look to the US for leadership. What they look for in America is a nation that plays by the same rules as everyone else and treats other nations, large and small, with the same respect it demands for itself.

When they hear Obama's grandiose claims of leadership on the world stage and look at the international drone war and the incessant meddling in countries around the world, they know that day is a long way off.

Is Putin isolated? Hardly. Major NATO partners are more than keen to maintain good relations with Moscow. Putin is meeting Hollande in Paris next week and you can bet it's not to be harangued about imaginary Russian expansion in eastern Europe. Increasingly, developing countries world-wide are looking for alternatives to the EU/IMF/USA extortion and protection rackets that have failed them for the past fifty years.

It is not Putin's Russia that is becoming isolated; it's the USA.

Weekend propaganda barrage

Even though keeping up with the news is a matter of clicking a couple of keys on a laptop any time, anywhere, there's nothing like settling into a favourite chair with the weekend papers and a pot of coffee at hand.

There is an embarrassing bounty of bullshit to shovel through this weekend.

Try this scoop by "international children's rights activist" turned journalist Craig Kielburger, who honoured Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf at the We Day his NGO put on a couple of weeks ago and managed to get an interview out of the occasion, an interview featured in the Globe and Mail this weekend.

Here's Kielburger's backgrounder to the story;

A decade ago, Liberia emerged from 14 years of civil war to become a relatively stable democracy.

Wow! Just like that!

Despite starting five years late, it has already achieved three of the eight Millenium Development Goals set by the United Nations in 2000; gender equality, combating HIV and AIDS, and building partnerships.

Well that's certainly good news, but one might ask what is meant by "already achieved"? Is Craig telling us Liberia has achieved gender equality? The softballs lobbed at Sirleaf touch briefly on corruption while tactfully steering clear of the corruption scandals that have involved her allies and immediate family, and assure us that President Sirleaf must be a great leader because Hillary Clinton gave her a nutcracker.

Get it?

First female African pres gets a nutcracker from Hillary?... oh, we've got the patriarchy on the run now!

The Globe also has a multi-page feature on the latest iteration of the White Man's Burden, Bangladeshi garment workers, titled "The true cost of a T-shirt." Ironically, the article never gets around to clarifying what that cost might be, but we do get to meet Canadian entrepreneur extraordinaire Bruce Rockowitz, who has made himself a billionaire by climbing to the pinnacle of the mountain of middlemen who stand between the $38/month garment worker in Dhaka and the shops in your local mall.

Not one to let the Globe and Mail out-guilt them, the Sunday Star piles on with a front page story on the plight of Bangladeshi garment workers that ends with this plea from one of the $38/month folks; I just wish people in the north paid a bit more for your clothing... maybe if you paid just a bit more, we could have a good life here.

Well maybe, but maybe not. There's a reason why "globalization" and "free trade" have evolved a virtual army of brokers and sub-brokers and middlemen between the producer and the consumer, and that is to blur the lines of responsibility when ugly stories inevitably leak out. Without wholesale reform of the supply chain, any increase in the price of Bangladeshi garments will end up in the already bulging pockets of the Bruce Rockowitz types, not in the pockets of the $38 a month people.

If Dov Charney can bypass this entire architecture of exploitation and make clothes in America while paying workers more in a day than what they get in two months in Bangladesh, others can too.

And of course Malala is in the news. By now everyone knows Malala's story, how she parlayed a bullet in the head into A-list status across the developed world. It's a story we love because it throws into such stark relief the profound darkness of the primitive Taliban when contrasted to the freedoms and democracy we revel in here in the Nations of Virtue.

While she is a compelling story, I think comparisons to Malcolm X and Mandela are wildly premature. Sort of like Obama's Nobel Prize.

Then again, look at the company Alice Munro finds herself in after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here's Pam Belluck writing in my New York Times International Weekly, the sixteen page supplement that the Sunday Star tosses our way to give us backwoods bumpkins a taste of World Class journalism; ...Chekhov or Alice Munro will help you navigate new social territory...

At 82 Alice Munro has become an overnight sensation, claiming her place in the canon right there alongside Anton Chekhov, and it's all thanks to that Nobel selection committee.

Those writers at the NYT have some other good stuff for us. Friedman's got some timely ruminations on Iran, speculating that "it can't keep it's people isolated forever."

That's odd. Junior is working at a restaurant owned by an Iranian family. They travel back and forth regularly. Just this week there's half a dozen of the extended family over on a visit. They send money out of Iran and money back. They are no more isolated than the tens of thousands of Iranian students who are studying at universities across the western world.

The view of Iranians as oppressed and isolated is of course far more comforting for the narrative Friedman and the NYT want to maintain. Facts can be so darned inconvenient.

I'm also treated to a curious story by Rod Nordland titled "Exhibit on Atrocities Awakens Afghans."
I was momentarily taken aback that the NYT would open a discussion about our atrocities in the country, but not to worry; the story is about Soviet atrocities back in the 1970s. That's what's awakening the Afghans!

That's a lot of reading, a lot of thinking, a lot of propaganda for a weekend.

What's Friedman been smoking?

I've had to read it through a couple of times, but I'm still not sure what Friedman is trying to say when he posits that Egypt must decide between a future like India's rather than Pakistan's.

Obviously Thomas thinks India is the model Egypt should aspire to.

Why? Why would they set the bar that low? Right now they have a higher GDP per capita, longer life expectancy, and lower infant mortality.

Perhaps India should aspire to be more like Egypt?

Ah, but India has an "inclusive democracy", as evidenced by a Muslim being appointed as intelligence chief. That, according to Friedman, would be akin to Egypt appointing a Coptic Christian to that post; "preposterous!"

Well, no more preposterous than Israel appointing a Muslim as the next Mossad boss.

Maybe Israel should aspire to be more like India too?