Bits and pieces - 12-30-22 - Have a Happy New Year

A new model for democracy?

The new government in Israel is already pursuing plans to restrict the rights of minorities, alter the system of governmental checks and balances, hollow out the judiciary, exert influence over the army and security forces, and allow harsher treatment of Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories.

“This is not the end of democracy; it is the essence of democracy!” Netanyahu said at his inauguration event at the Knesset.

 Looks like we have a new iteration of democracy. Should we call it neodemocacy? And will the US government continue to pour billions of dollars of our taxpayer money into neodemocracies as well as traditional autocracies like Saudi Arabia?  

Exxon to the EU – You can’t tax me!

Fresh off posting the highest quarterly profit in its history, the U.S.-based fossil fuel giant ExxonMobil sued the European Union on Wednesday in an attempt to stop the bloc from imposing its recently approved windfall tax targeting major oil and gas companies.

The Financial Times, which first reported the new lawsuit, noted that the challenge takes aim at the European Council’s “legal authority to impose the new tax—a power historically reserved for sovereign countries—and its use of emergency powers to secure member states’ approval for the measure.”

“The new tax is due to take effect from December 31 and will apply a levy of at least 33% on any taxable profits in 2022-23 that are 20% or more above average profits between 2018 and 2021,” the newspaper explained.

In a statement, Exxon spokesperson Casey Norton insisted the company recognizes that sky-high energy costs are “weighing heavily on families and businesses” but claimed the tax would “undermine investor confidence, discourage investment, and increase reliance on imported energy.” From Nation of Change

Capitalist planning

One thing you can say for capitalists, they spend a good deal of time and money planning for the future. Not the future of the economy and the welfare of the country, but the future of their wealth, all of which, under current tax laws, they can pass down to their progeny. Take Southwest Airlines – well, maybe not over the holidays.

 As travelers and airline workers reel from mass flight cancellations, a corporate watchdog noted Wednesday that Southwest spent nearly $6 billion on stock buybacks in the years ahead of the coronavirus pandemic instead of devoting those resources to technological improvements that unions have been demanding for years. – from Common Dreams, 12/29/22

Railroad merger = diminished service, higher prices and more trucks on the road

After a victory against workers demanding sick days as part of recent contract negotiations, two major railroads are pursuing a merger.

“On Wednesday, a coalition of 10 organizations sent a letter to the Surface Transportation Board urging it to reject the merger of Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern on a number of different grounds, warning that further consolidation would lead to diminished service, higher prices, and more trucks on the road, despite rosy promises from the carriers to the contrary. Concentrated and brittle supply chains, they argue, have already helped drive inflation amid the pandemic.” – from The Intercept, 12/22/22

The one thing they failed to note is that the merger will undoubtedly result in big payouts to the stockholders.

School Resource Officers (SRO): Who or what do cops in schools protect?

Obviously not black students.

From an article by Maya Brown, NBC News:

The presence of police in schools actively jeopardizes the safety of Black students compared to their counterparts of other races, according to a report published this month. 

Black students were subjected to more than 80% of the incidents of police violence accounted for in the survey, which analyzed more than 285 incidents over a decade. At least 60% of police assaults on students resulted in serious injury to the students, including broken bones, concussions and hospitalizations. The report also cited 24 cases of sexual assault on students and five student deaths as a result of police force in schools. It was published by the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization, and the Alliance for Educational Justice, a coalition of groups working toward equity in public schools.

“It’s not just the fact that school policing is ineffective and a major waste of public funds. It is also harmful to the physical and emotional safety and health of students of color throughout the United States,” said Tyler Whittenberg, the deputy director at the Advancement Project. 

For those of us who have had any relationship with public schools in this country and are reasonably cognizant of the world around us, this is NOT news. Maybe if the “nice white parents”, who are so concerned that their “nice white children” will feel guilty if taught the truth about racism in this country, had one ounce of empathy for the Black students, whose history they want to whitewash, and who just might be made to feel bad by being excluded from the history of their country (a good proportion of Blacks can trace their heritage in the US a lot further back than can the white descendants of the immigrant wave of the late 1800s and early 1900s), we could work together to make the changes necessary to ensure that ALL students in our schools got the sound, basic education that they deserve.

To those who cannot or will not see this, I want to say that it is you who should feel guilty, because IF YOU ARE NOT PART OF THE SOLUTION, YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.

 

 

 

 

The Ukraine crisis is a classic ‘security dilemma’

I've reposted below a excellent article from Code Pink, which documents the underlying issues behind the war in Ukraine. No need to comment or edit. Code Pink is a women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism, support peace and human rights initiatives, and redirect our tax dollars into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming programs. It emerged out of a deep desire by a group of American women to stop the United States from invading Iraq. Check it out at https://www.codepink.org/  

The Ukraine crisis is a classic ‘security dilemma’ – Media Benjamin and Nicholas J. S. Davies

On December 27 2022, both Russia and Ukraine issued calls for ending the war in Ukraine, but only on non-negotiable terms that they each know the other side will reject. 

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Kuleba proposed a “peace summit” in February to be chaired by UN Secretary General Guterres, but with the precondition that Russia must first face prosecution for war crimes in an international court. On the other side, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov issued a chilling ultimatum that Ukraine must accept Russia’s terms for peace or “the issue will be decided by the Russian Army.”    

But what if there were a way of understanding this conflict and possible solutions that encompassed the views of all sides and could take us beyond one-sided narratives and proposals that serve only to fuel and escalate the war? The crisis in Ukraine is in fact a classic case of what International Relations scholars call a “security dilemma,” and this provides a more objective way of looking at it. 

A security dilemma is a situation in which countries on each side take actions for their own defense that countries on the other side then see as a threat. Since offensive and defensive weapons and forces are often indistinguishable, one side’s defensive build-up can easily be seen as an offensive build-up by the other side. As each side responds to the actions of the other, the net result is a spiral of militarization and escalation, even though both sides insist, and may even believe, that their own actions are defensive. 

In the case of Ukraine, this has happened on different levels, both between Russia and national and regional governments in Ukraine, but also on a larger geopolitical scale between Russia and the United States/NATO.

The very essence of a security dilemma is the lack of trust between the parties. In the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Cuban Missile Crisis served as an alarm bell that forced both sides to start negotiating arms control treaties and safeguard mechanisms that would limit escalation, even as deep levels of mistrust remained. Both sides recognized that the other was not hell-bent on destroying the world, and this provided the necessary minimum basis for negotiations and safeguards to try to ensure that this did not come to pass.

After the end of the Cold War, both sides cooperated with major reductions in their nuclear arsenals, but the United States gradually withdrew from a succession of arms control treaties, violated its promises not to expand NATO into Eastern Europe, and used military force in ways that directly violated the UN Charter’s prohibition against the “threat or use of force.” U.S. leaders claimed that the conjunction of terrorism and the existence of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons gave them a new right to wage “preemptive war,” but neither the UN nor any other country ever agreed to that.

U.S. aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere was alarming to people all over the world, and even to many Americans, so it was no wonder that Russian leaders were especially worried by America’s renewed post-Cold War militarism. As NATO incorporated more and more countries in Eastern Europe, a classic security dilemma began to play out. 

President Putin, who was elected in 2000, began to use international fora to challenge NATO expansion and U.S. war-making, insisting that new diplomacy was needed to ensure the security of all countries in Europe, not only those invited to join NATO. 

The former Communist countries in Eastern Europe joined NATO out of defensive concerns about possible Russian aggression, but this also exacerbated Russia’s security concerns about the ambitious and aggressive military alliance gathering around its borders, especially as the United States and NATO refused to address those concerns. 

In this context, broken promises on NATO expansion, U.S. serial aggression in the greater Middle East and elsewhere, and absurd claims that U.S. missile defense batteries in Poland and Romania were to protect Europe from Iran, not Russia, set alarm bells ringing in Moscow. 

The U.S. withdrawal from nuclear arms control treaties and its refusal to alter its nuclear first strike policy raised even greater fears that a new generation of U.S. nuclear weapons were being designed to give the United States a nuclear first strike capability against Russia.

On the other side, Russia’s increasing assertiveness on the world stage, including its military actions to defend Russian enclaves in Georgia and its intervention in Syria to defend its ally the Assad government, raised security concerns in other former Soviet republics and allies, including new NATO members. Where might Russia intervene next?

As the United States refused to diplomatically address Russia’s security concerns, each side took actions that ratcheted up the security dilemma. The United States backed the violent overthrow of President Yanukovych in Ukraine in 2014, which led to rebellions against the post-coup government in Crimea and Donbas. Russia responded by annexing Crimea and supporting the breakaway “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk. 

Even if all sides were acting in good faith and out of defensive concerns, in the absence of effective diplomacy they all assumed the worst about each other’s motives as the crisis spun further out of control, exactly as the “security dilemma” model predicts that nations will do amid such rising tensions.
Of course, since mutual mistrust lies at the heart of any security dilemma, the situation is further complicated when any of the parties is seen to act in bad faith. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently admitted that Western leaders had no intention of enforcing Ukraine’s compliance with the terms of the Minsk II agreement in 2015, and only agreed to it to buy time to build up Ukraine militarily.

The breakdown of the Minsk II peace agreement and the continuing diplomatic impasse in the larger geopolitical conflict between the United States, NATO and Russia plunged relations into a deepening crisis and led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Officials on all sides must have recognized the dynamics of the underlying security dilemma, and yet they failed to take the necessary diplomatic initiatives to resolve the crisis.

Peaceful, diplomatic alternatives have always been available if the parties chose to pursue them, but they did not. Does that mean that all sides deliberately chose war over peace? They would all deny that.   

Yet all sides apparently now see advantages in a prolonged conflict, despite the relentless daily slaughter, dreadful and deteriorating conditions for millions of civilians, and the unthinkable dangers of full-scale war between NATO and Russia. All sides have convinced themselves they can or must win, and so they keep escalating the war, along with all its impacts and the risks that it will spin out of control.   

President Biden came to office promising a new era of American diplomacy, but has instead led the United States and the world to the brink of World War III.           

Clearly, the only solution to a security dilemma like this is a cease-fire and peace agreement to stop the carnage, followed by the kind of diplomacy that took place between the United States and the Soviet Union in the decades that followed the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, which led to the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963 and successive arms control treaties. Former UN official Alfred de Zayas has also called for UN-administered referenda to determine the wishes of the people of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk.  

It is not an endorsement of an adversary’s conduct or position to negotiate a path to peaceful coexistence. We are witnessing the absolutist alternative in Ukraine today. There is no moral high ground in relentless, open-ended mass slaughter, managed, directed and in fact perpetrated by people in smart suits and military uniforms in imperial capitals thousands of miles from the crashing of shells, the cries of the wounded and the stench of death.  

If proposals for peace talks are to be more than PR exercises, they must be firmly grounded in an understanding of the security needs of all sides, and a willingness to compromise to see that those needs are met and that all the underlying conflicts are addressed.    

 

The Rise and Fall(?) of the Neoliberal Order - a brief review

 

The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order is the title of the book that the Wilmington Progressive Book Club is currently discussing.

The author’s premise is that over the last 200 years or so, capitalism has seen three periods of “liberal” order: classical liberalism, with its emphasis on individual liberty (growing out of the American and French Revolutions and the economics of Adam Smith); New Deal liberalism, with its emphasis on providing a social safety net to facilitate every individual’s liberty; and neoliberalism, which focused on the idea that unleashing capitalism from the fetters imposed by the New Deal liberals would promote strong economic growth and thus “lift every boat”.

According to the author, a new “order” arises out of the crises of the old order and the felt need for a new approach to deal with these crises. As the broader political spectrum consolidates around this new approach (which initially can be seen as a movement) it becomes transformative and ushers in a new order.

Neoliberalism, which had its theoretical foundation in the post WW II era, began to replace the New Deal order starting in the late 1970s as a result of the economic, political and social crises of the 1960s & 70s. While the neoliberal movement (not yet an “order”) achieved power in the early 1980s (think Reagan and Thatcher), it became an order in the 1990s, when neoliberalism came to dominate the opposition political parties (think Clinton and Blair) as well. Neoliberalism then provided the political and economic foundation for globalization.

The author, Gary Gerstle, posits that we are seeing the fall of neoliberalism as a result of the policrises (not his term, but one that is becoming quite common in the literature) brought on by that order. It began with the economic meltdown in 2008-9 and has morphed into a series of interrelated crises, hence the term policrises. He points to the rejection of neoliberalism from both right and left (think Trump and Sanders) in the election of 2016.

Further evidence of this can be seen in an article from Adam Tooze’s Chartbook #182. Tooze asks “Are we witnessing a fundamental shift in the politics of trade in the US?” His answer is that, while it is still early days “all the signs are that we are indeed witnessing a profound shift in the positioning of US power towards the world economy. Already in the 2016 Presidential election the US Chamber of Commerce was alarmed to note that none of the three leading candidates - Trump, Sanders or Clinton - could be described as favoring further trade liberalization.”

In other words, the US is moving to rein in globalization, an essential economic component of neoliberalism. Tooze writes that couched in terms of supply train issues and national security, it “looks like the US is abandoning the structures of global trade that it did so much to build between 1945 and the early 2000s. It smells as though it is. It sounds as though that is the plan. Can it possibly be true?”

“The tone of Paul Krugman’s recent piece in the New York Times is telling. The leading trade economist of his generation cannot avoid the conclusion that something dramatic is happening. The willingness of the Biden team to flaunt the view of the WTO and its partners, Krugman writes, is a very big deal, much bigger than Trump’s tariff tantrums. Trump may have huffed and puffed, but Biden is quietly shifting the basic foundations of the world economic order.” (Tooze, Chartbook #182)

So, are the bastions of the neoliberal order collapsing? Possibly, but I would like to offer one caveat. It has to do with the military/industrial complex and US foreign policy. Both the war in Ukraine, precipitated by the continuing expansion of NATO and the rising conflict with China, which led to massive increases in an already bloated military budget, indicate a consensus among Democrats and Republicans on a very aggressive militaristic approach to challenges to US hegemony, the maintenance of which is a central pillar of neoliberalism. How this fits with Gerstle’s analysis of the fall of neoliberalism is unclear, but one possibility is that we are seeing a desperate and reckless response of the neoliberal order in an attempt to stave off its demise. If the US’s Empire of Liberty is losing its grip and responding in ways that other declining empires have in history, we are facing another existential crisis along with climate change.

What is needed in the US today is a strong anti-imperialist movement to challenge this. Two organizations that are working towards this a Code Pink and Massachusetts Peace Action. You can sign up for their newsletters at https://masspeaceaction.org/  and  https://www.codepink.org/

A luta continua, vitória é certa

 

China and the US - Comparing apples to tanks

 

While the US conducted naval exercises under the auspices of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the South Pacific, the Chinese were quietly extending their influence with constructive economic investment. In 2023, the US will pour almost $1,000,000,000,000 (more than the military spending of the next 11 countries in the world combined) into its military might to cower countries into submission in order to protect and extend its global empire, with the added benefit(?) that it will make obscene profits for the “Masters of War” at home. This, while only investing in the countries of the Global South in projects that will benefit the CEO’s and shareholders of the largest corporations and the banks at home.

I recall an old example of how this works. There once was a small country south of the border, called Guatemala (it could have had a number of other names), where the natives elected a government pledged to nationalize the US company that literally owned the majority of the arable land in the entire country. The government even agreed to repay the company for their “investment” over a 30-year period, but only at the value that the company had declared for tax purposes. The company demurred.

Relevant here are some other facts: first, that United Fruit Company (think Chiquita Banana) was extracting huge profits by paying its workers near starvation wages and then repatriating those profits, minus a few pesos to increase their “investment” in Guatemala. I’m not sure of the exact definition of repatriating, but I would imagine it is somewhat akin to theft, legal theft, that is.

The new government had another issue, this one with Chiquita Banana’s infrastructure “investments”. The company had built roads in Guatemala, but only from the banana plantations (note the use of the term plantations rather than farms) to the ports. As a result the development of infrastructure in Guatemala in no way facilitated the creation of a strong local economy; it was designed to cement the banana republic status of that country.

This all happened almost 70 years ago, but I’m willing to bet that it is what continues to happen in the US’s relationship with the countries of the Global South, and I only bet on sure things. The exact methods of extracting wealth from countries of the Global South may have changed, but, as the saying goes, “the more things change, the more they stay the same”.

To finish the story of Guatemala and the United Fruit Company, it didn’t have a happy ending for the Guatemalans. It turns out that United Fruit had some powerful friends in the US government. Two of their lawyers (and probably stockholders) were John Foster Dulles and Alan Dulles, respectively, the US Secretary of State and the head of the CIA. The Dulles boys plotted and carried out the overthrow of the elected government of President Jacobo Arbenz and installed and supported a series of brutal regimes, which committed widespread torture and genocide against the Mayan people living in Guatemala.

The US actions in Guatemala were replicated around the world, over and over during the 40+ years of the Cold War, supposedly justified by the need to stop the spread of communism. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, one might have expected a major push to reduce armament (it was called the “peace dividend”) and a real effort to help the Global South develop; instead what we have seen is an intensifying new Cold War, as the US (the Empire of Liberty) worked to overpower any threat to its constantly expanding global empire.

Today, the threat is no longer communism or national liberation, but the growth in influence of a new economic giant, China and its junior partner, Russia. With its economic weaknesses, the US seems bent of responding the only way it knows how, with violence. This just one more version of a long and terrible history of violence at home and abroad. Ever wonder why our national anthem celebrates war? But more on that in another post.

Below is a post from Adam Tooze on one of many, many projects China has as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

From Adam Tooze, Chartbook #141

After three years of Chinese-led construction work, Cambodia's very first toll expressway has opened for business, the project symbolizing the deepening economic ties between the Southeast Asian nation and Beijing. Costing roughly $2 billion to construct, the expressway stretches 190 kilometers between Phnom Penh, the capital, and the port city of Sihanoukville. CRBC was also responsible for the construction of the expressway.

China and Cambodia first signed a deal for the road in 2018 under the build-operate-transfer model. Under the agreement, CRBC will collect tolls for five decades, before transferring ownership of the road to Cambodia. In return, Cambodia is believed to be responsible for virtually none of the costs. CRBC is headquartered in Beijing and has offices in about 60 countries and territories. Although CRBC's earnings are unclear, its parent entity, the China Communications Construction Group (CCCG), recorded 842.8 billion yuan ($119.9 billion) in group sales last year. CCCG is the third-ranked contractor in the world in terms of overseas revenue, according to Engineering News-Record, a U.S. construction industry publication.

The group serves as one of the biggest players in the Belt and Road Initiative … Sihanoukville is home to the Ream Naval Base, which is undergoing a China-funded expansion and could be used by the Chinese military as it seeks to strengthen its military presence in the South China Sea. Chinese entities have also ramped up investment in hotels and casinos in Sihanoukville.

China policy: The US responds to the threat to its hegemony the only way it can

I found the information below in a post on the internet, but unfortunately my computer crashed and I can't find the source. In any case it presents a clear picture of the US attempts to use its military might to maintain its hegemony, not just in Europe (the war in Ukraine) but halfway around the world. 

On Nuclear Weapons: According to the Pentagon report, China possesses around 400 nuclear warheads with no clear plan on how to use them. If this estimation of China’s arsenal is correct, it’s still trivial compared to the US’s almost 6,000 warheads. China is the only nuclear power with an unconditional “no first use” policy, and has been clear that it only intends to use its nuclear power for assurance and defense. Meanwhile, the US is the only country to have used nuclear weapons in war and has also flirted with escalating tensions into a nuclear war with Russia this year. Who is preparing for war? 

On Global Military Presence: The Pentagon reports that since China established its first overseas military base in Djibouti, it has ambitions to expand its military presence globally. At the same time, the US has more than 750 military bases in around 80 countries. This includes more than 250 bases in the Asia-Pacific encircling China with 375,000 personnel in the Indo-Pacific Command, while China has no military presence in the Western Hemisphere. Who is preparing for war? 

On International Order: The Pentagon reports that China may challenge the US in the international arena. It is true that China is taking the lead internationally in economic development, in technological innovation, and in fighting climate change. Other countries around the world are happy for its support in growing their capacities to be independent of US hegemony in their regions. China builds relationships through economic cooperation and good diplomacy. In contrast, the US asserts its global dominance through direct or proxy war, occupation, crippling sanctions, and regime-changing coups. The international order that the US seeks to maintain is rooted in violence and destruction. Let's invest in peace, not war! 

Ukraine, China and US Hegemony - The Context of War

For the last 10 months I have been trying to point out that we must view the war in Ukraine in a broader context, that of the US effort to maintain economic and political hegemony in the face of the rising challenge of China and its junior partner, Russia. While some in the peace movement and on the left have opposed the US military support for the war on grounds that it threatens to escalate to a nuclear Armageddon or because of its terrible consequences for the people of Ukraine, too few have focused on the root causes of the war as a conflict of empires, similar in many respects to that which preceded the outbreak of WW I, a little over 100 years ago.

This article does that. It gives us a basis for opposing both  the US and Russian actions. It also explains why countries in the Global South have, with very few exceptions, not taken sides, since they have no interest in supporting one imperial power against another. Unfortunately, they are the ones who are suffering the most collateral damage and, unlike during the Cold War, they have little to gain by aligning with either side.

While on a geopolitical level this analysis is, I believe, excellent, it doesn't clearly set out the underlying economic basis of the conflict, nor does it reference the racism that is an integral part of the reaction to this war. I hope to be able to develop my analysis of these two aspects in future postings.

Washington’s New National Security Strategy: Seeking to Reinforce U.S. Hegemony by Joseph Gerson

from Mass Peace Action and Common Dreams 

The catastrophic Ukraine War is about much more than Ukraine. As the recently released U.S. National Security Strategy tells us, “The post-Cold War era is definitely over, and competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next.” The war is a primary front in the global competition for power and privilege. Even as Russia finds itself increasingly on the defensive, the current moment bears a deeply disturbing resemblance to the period before First World War that ushered in the “American Century” and the Soviet revolution: competition between rising and declining imperialist powers, arms races with new technologies, complicated alliance structures, economic competition and cooperation, wild card actors, and territorial disputes.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was designed 1) to counter expanding U.S./NATO influence on its borders which increased Moscow’s strategic vulnerability, 2)  to reinforce Russia’s historic imperial ambitions, and 3)  to reinforce the standing of Moscow’s ruling elite. All has not gone well for Putin. In addition to his setbacks in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson, he has found  that his partnership with Beijing is not  “unlimited.”  Beijing has its own priorities: reinforcing the Communist Party’s  domestic and national security. Xi and company seek to ensure that Washington and NATO will need  to continue concentrating military and economic resources in Europe in order to reduce the intensity of their containment challenge to China’s rise. And, with its nearly unlimited military and economic support for the  great power proxy war in Ukraine, the Biden Administration seeks to reinforce and expand the four generation old Bretton Woods/NATO systems against Russia’s immediate threat to the so-called “rules based” order. Unlike Trump, Biden and company understand that the U.S. cannot do this unilaterally. Hence the priority given to integrating and consolidating  their allies’ military, economic and technological power with that of the U.S. to contain China.

The Biden Administration’s new National Security Strategy is filled with patriotic pablum and contradictions. It reflects the U.S. elite’s commitments to contain and “out compete” China while “constraining Russia.” Consistent with U.S. “Manifest Destiny” traditions, the Strategy updates and revises Obama and Trump priorities:  Obama’s “pivot” to Asia and the Pacific,  Trump’s  protectionist trade policies, and the insistence on maintaining the nation’s “unmatched” military – including nuclear, AI, and space weaponry. President Biden has crowed that “the U.S. is back.” His National Security Strategy is designed to enforce that boast.

The Biden Strategy warns that China and Russia are increasingly aligned with each other” but acknowledges that the challenges they pose are “distinct.”  Significantly, the China threat in the “decisive decade”  is detailed first. China is seen  as “the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it.”  With its increased military spending, China’s military is described as ”increasingly capable in the Indo-Pacific and growing in strength and reach globally”. The Strategy goes on to warn that Beijing uses its “technological capacity” and diplomatic influence to advance its interest at the expense of others.  And technological primacy is understood to be determinative for military and economic power.

The Strategy calls for what is essentially a two-part containment strategy: massive investments to revitalize the U.S. economy and technological innovation to meet the Chinese challenge and deepening military, economic, and technological  alignment with U.S. allies and partners. Biden made advances in fulfilling the Strategy’s first commitments with a $560 billion boost for the U.S. economy, reinforced by a $ 52 billion subsidy for the U.S. semiconductor and high-tech industry. And, to reinforce what have been four generations of U.S. Asia-Pacific hegemony, Biden and company consolidated the QUAD military alliance with Japan, Australia, and India. The nuclear AUKUS (Australian, UK, and US) alliance is being deepened, while South Korea and Japan are encouraged to paper over profound historic enmities to build a tripartite alliance. The new Marcos dictatorship has reembraced the U.S. military alliance. And NATO’s new strategic concept names Chinese containment as an  Alliance  priority.  These nations’ militaries  and technological resources  are being further integrated, while the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity has been launched to serve as the economic glue

Taiwan is the hinge and most dangerous potential flash point of this geopolitical stew. For China, Taiwan, a province first severed from the mainland by Japan in 1895, is seen as strategically critical and as the final prize in overcoming the Middle Kingdom’s 150 years of humiliation. For the U.S. and now Japan, Taiwan is essential for bottling up China’s Navy, and it is a democratic society that cannot be sacrificed to Chinese authoritarianism. Beginning in the Trump era and accelerated by Biden, is  the commitment to bring Taiwan fully into the U.S. sphere in violation of the One China Policy that  has served as the foundation since 1979  for Northeast Asian stability, and to which the U.S. still gives lip service. With almost daily Chinese and U.S. military provocations an accident, incident, or miscalculation could escalate to miliary – even nuclear – conflict.

Similarly, Japanese, and Chinese competition for the uninhabited Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, and competition for control over the resources and sea lanes of the South China Sea (over which 40% of World trade including Middle East and Indonesian oil essential for East Asia’s economies transits) could trigger a catastrophic war. And not to be forgotten is the nuclear confrontation between North and South Korea. The Yoon Government in Seoul seeks the return of U.S. nuclear forces to the peninsula, and Japan is increasingly committed to acquiring non-nuclear first-strike capabilities to incapacitate Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal. Recently renewed and expanded U.S.-South Korea wargames designed to defeat and oust the Kim Dynasty have fueled frequent  North Koreas missile tests, with the tensions transformed into a mutually reinforcing and spiraling military escalation dynamic.

The U.S., NATO, Russia and the Ukraine War

The Biden Strategy  warns that “Russia now poses an immediate and persistent threat to international peace and stability.” Certainly, Vladimir Putin bears principal responsibility for the Ukraine War. Yet, as Anatol Lieven has written, there is sufficient moral ambiguity to go around. Few remember the  1990s European Common Security commitments: The Paris Charter, the NATO-Russia Founding Act, and the 1999 OSCE memorandum. They all enshrined the commitment that no nation would seek to augment its security at the expense of another.

There were several  precipitating causes for the Russian invasion,  including Putin’s commitment to restore Russia’s century’s old empire and to restructure domestic support for his regime. But even as Germany and France blocked Ukraine’s entry into NATO, Moscow’s elite was anxious about strategic vulnerabilities resulting from NATO’s advance to Russia’s borders and by the deepening integration of Ukrainians’ military into NATO’s systems. Recall Napoleon’s the Kaiser’s and Hitler’s devastating invasions of Russia. Remember too the warning sounded by George Kennan, author of the U.S. Cold War containment doctrine, that President Clinton’s initial expansion of NATO was a “tragic mistake” that would result in an “adverse” Russian reaction. More recently, Fiona Hill warned George W. Bush  against pressing Ukrainian and Georgian NATO membership, saying that it could provoke Moscow.

This is the “order” that Biden’s Strategy states that Russia seeks to ‘overturn..” Worth noting is that two months before Russia’s invasion, it proposed a draft treaty. It would have banned Ukraine from ever joining NATO,  but more, it would have banned deployment of NATO military forces and weapons in  eleven existing NATO nations – including the Baltics, Romania, and the Czech Republic. The Kremlin certainly understood that it was a provocative non-starter, but one signaling its security and imperial ambitions.

The Biden Strategy wants it both ways, weakening Russia while recreating strategic stability. It states the U.S. commitment to ensuring the Ukraine War ends with Russia’s “strategic failure.” And Biden has not been shy about saying that he seeks to weaking Russia and 0hope that Putin will be toppled. The Strategy stresses the commitment to a united NATO front,  to “constraining Russia’s strategic economic sectors,  and to countering Russia in multilateral institutions. Yet the strategy also claims that the U.S. “retains an interest in preserving the strategic stability” that the war has shattered, to pursuing arms control, and to “rebuilding European security arrangements.”  Given the war, these seem to be  tasks for future Russian and U.S. governments!

Toward a Common Security Future

When the resources and energies of the world’s richest and most powerful nations, and those of their allies, should be focused on taking humanity’s foot off the accelerator on what  U.N. Secretary General Guterres describes as ““a climate of climate hell”,  and preparations and tensions for nuclear apocalypse build , the great powers  are sleepwalking toward catastrophe. But, as another U.N. General Secretary, Ban-Ki Moon once advised, governments will not alone deliver the world essential for human survival. Pressure below from movements and civil society is essential.

Noam Chomsky has reminded us that we know the solutions to the greatest threats we face. Today that means building popular pressure for a ceasefire and negotiations leading to a sovereign, secure and neutral Ukraine to prevent the Ukraine war from expanding  and escalating. It means honoring former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s urgent appeal to establish guard rails to contain dangers of an avoidable and catastrophic U.S.-Chinese War. It means winning commitments for renewed OSCE (Euro-Atlantic) negotiations for the creation of a 21^st century Common Security architecture for Europe. Midst our  efforts to win more ratifications for the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, it means pressing for a U.S. no-first use nuclear doctrine to match China’s,  multi-lateral negotiations for a Northeast Asian nuclear weapons free zone, and  mutual reduction of provocative military operations related to Taiwan and in the East and South China Seas.

Yoko Ono told us that “The War Is Over (If you want it). Joe Hill’s dying words were “Organize Organize.”  And we have a roadmap in the Common Security 2022 Report. Against the odds, it’s up to us.

Joseph Gerson is President of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, Co-founder of the Committee for a SANE U.S. China Policy, Vice President of the International Peace Bureau and member of the board of Massachusetts Peace Action. His books include Empire and the Bomb, and With Hiroshima Eyes.

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Bits and pieces - 12-17-22

 

Marshall Law?

On the “it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so scary” page:

Text from Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina to Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff, on January 17, 2021 “Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!”

Now, it would be a great improvement of our current situation if the country was governed on the basis the legal expertise of Marshall, Thurgood, that is. But what this idiot was asking Trump to do was to invoke martial law. Amazing how voters could elect some one to the “greatest legislative body in the world” who doesn’t know the difference.

I guess I shouldn’t be so critical of South Carolina voters. After all, voters in my Congressional District just reelected Representative David Rouzer, who would have a hard time besting an 8-year-old on Jeopardy if the topics were on the US Constitution.

 

Alabama leads the way

When Tiara Young Hudson, a black public defense attorney, won the Democratic primary for circuit court judge in Jefferson County, and was therefore a shoo in for the court, since there was no Republican challenger, an Alabama state commission simply voted 8-3, along racial lines, to dissolve the judgeship. 

By the way, Jefferson County is the largest and most diverse county in the state. The Judicial Resources Allocation Commission made to decision to “relocate” the circuit court to the majority-while Madison County, giving rightwing Republicans another way to subvert democracy.

  

Go a nasty cold that won’t go away?

You might want to try Ambroxol, which is available nearly everywhere in the world as a generic. It has been in wide use since 1979. Robert Kuttner described it as “a kind of miracle drug for coughs and colds” after he and his wife used it during a trip to France. A box cost eight euros.

It’s available everywhere in the world that is, except the US. Apparently, “no U.S. drugmaker has ever applied for FDA approval to sell it, which requires extensive testing and clinical trials, as if the drug were brand-new; the FDA does not take the word of, say, the European Medicines Agency.”

One more example of how “the promise of generics has been blunted because the big dogs at PhRMA, who want exorbitant profits and restricted competition, have been buying up generic drugmakers.”

The good news is that you can go on line and order Ambroxol from Europe.

“Racism is like a Cadillac; they bring out a new model every year.” - Malcolm X

Once You See the Truth About Cars, You Can’t Unsee It (edited version)

By Andrew Ross and Julie Livingston, NYT, 12/15/22

Andrew Ross and Julie Livingston are New York University professors, members of NYU’s Prison Education Program Research Lab and authors of the book “Cars and Jails: Freedom Dreams, Debt, and Carcerality.”

In American consumer lore, the automobile has always been a “freedom machine” and liberty lies on the open road. “Americans are a race of independent people” whose “ancestors came to this country for the sake of freedom and adventure,” the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce’s soon-to-be-president, Roy Chapin, declared in 1924. “The automobile satisfies these instincts.” During the Cold War, vehicles with baroque tail fins and oodles of surplus chrome rolled off the assembly line, with Native American names like Pontiac, Apache, Dakota, Cherokee, Thunderbird and Winnebago — the ultimate expressions of capitalist triumph and Manifest Destiny.

But for many low-income and minority Americans, automobiles have been turbo-boosted engines of inequality, immobilizing their owners with debt, increasing their exposure to hostile law enforcement, and in general accelerating the forces that drive apart haves and have-nots.

Though progressive in intent, the Biden administration’s signature legislative achievements on infrastructure and climate change will further entrench the nation’s staunch commitment to car production, ownership and use. The recent Inflation Reduction Act offers subsidies for many kinds of vehicles using alternative fuel, and should result in real reductions in emissions, but it includes essentially no direct incentives for public transit — by far the most effective means of decarbonizing transport. And without comprehensive policy efforts to eliminate discriminatory policing and predatory lending, merely shifting to electric from combustion will do nothing to reduce car owners’ ever-growing risk of falling into legal and financial jeopardy, especially those who are poor or Black.

By the 1940s, African American car owners had more reason than anyone to see their vehicles as freedom machines, as a means to escape, however temporarily, redlined urban ghettos in the North or segregated towns in the South. But their progress on roads outside of the metro core was regularly obstructed by the police, threatened by vigilante assaults, and stymied by owners of whites-only restaurants, lodgings and gas stations. Courts granted the police vast discretionary authority to stop and search for any one of hundreds of code violations — powers that they did not apply evenly. Today, officers make more than 50,000 traffic stops a day. “Driving while Black” has become a major route to incarceration — or much worse. When Daunte Wright was killed by a police officer in April 2021, he had been pulled over for an expired registration tag on his car’s license plate. He joined the long list of Black drivers whose violent and premature deaths at the hands of police were set in motion by a minor traffic infraction — Sandra Bland (failure to use a turn signal), Maurice Gordon (alleged speeding), Samuel DuBose (missing front license plate), and Philando Castile and Walter Scott (broken taillights) among them. 

In the consumer arena, cars have become tightly sprung debt traps. The average monthly auto loan payment crossed $700 for the first time this year, which does not include insurance or maintenance costs. Subprime lending and longer loan terms of up to 84 months have resulted in a doubling of auto loan debt over the last decade and a notable surge in the number of drivers who are “upside down”— owing more money than their cars are worth. But, again, the pain is not evenly distributed. Auto financing companies often charge nonwhite consumers higher interest rates than white consumers, as do insurers.

Formerly incarcerated buyers whose credit scores are depressed from inactivity are especially red meat to dealers and predatory lenders. In our research, we spoke to many such buyers who found it easier, upon release from prison, to acquire expensive cars than to secure an affordable apartment. (Editor's note: This has a long history. I can remember walking through the Black community in Hackensack, NJ in the late 1950s on the way to basketball practice, and noting the Cadillacs parked next to rundown homes) Some, like LeMarcus, a Black Brooklynite (whose name has been changed to protect his privacy under ethical research guidelines), discovered that loans were readily available for a luxury vehicle but not for the more practical car he wanted. Even with friends and family willing to help him with a down payment, after he spent roughly five years in prison, his credit score made it impossible to get a Honda or “a regular car.” Instead, relying on a friend to co-sign a loan, he was offered a high-interest loan on a pre-owned Mercedes E350. We interviewed many other formerly incarcerated people who followed a similar path, only to see their cars repossessed.

LeMarcus was “car rich, cash poor,” a common and precarious condition that can have serious legal consequences for low-income drivers, as can something as simple as a speeding ticket. A $200 ticket is a meaningless deterrent to a hedge fund manager, but it could be a devastating blow to those who live pay check to pay check. If they cannot pay promptly, they will face cascading penalties. If they cannot take a day off work to appear in court, they risk a bench warrant or loss of their license for debt delinquency. With few other options to travel to work, millions of Americans make the choice to continue driving even without a license, which means their next traffic stop may land them in jail.

The pathway that leads from a simple traffic fine to financial insolvency or detention is increasingly crowded because of the spread of revenue policing intended to generate income from traffic tickets, court fees and asset forfeiture. Fiscally squeezed by austerity policies, officials extract the funds from those least able to pay. 

Deadly traffic stops, racially biased predatory lending, revenue policing have all come under public scrutiny of late, but typically they are viewed as distinct realms of injustice, rather than as the interlocking systems that they are. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it: A traffic stop can result in fines or arrest; time behind bars can result in repossession or a low credit score; a low score results in more debt and less ability to pay fines, fees and surcharges. Championed as a kind of liberation, car ownership — all but mandatory in most parts of the country — has for many become a vehicle of capture and control.

Industry boosters promise us that technological advances like on-demand transport, self-driving electric vehicles and artificial intelligence-powered traffic cameras will smooth out the human errors that lead to discrimination, and that car-sharing will reduce the runaway costs of ownership. But no combination of apps and cloud-based solutions can ensure that the dealerships, local municipalities, courts and prison industries will be willing to give up the steady income they derive from shaking down motorists.

Aside from the profound need for accessible public transportation, what could help? Withdraw armed police officers from traffic duties, just as they have been from parking and tollbooth enforcement in many jurisdictions. Introduce income-graduated traffic fines. Regulate auto lending with strict interest caps and steep penalties for concealing fees and add-ons and for other well-known dealership scams. Crack down hard on the widespread use of revenue policing. And close the back door to debtors’ prisons by ending the use of arrest warrants in debt collection cases. Without determined public action along these lines, technological advances often end up reproducing deeply rooted prejudices. As Malcolm X wisely said, “Racism is like a Cadillac; they bring out a new model every year.”

 

Bits and pieces 12-15-22 - Good News, Bad News

Now for the good news

Employees at Ultium Cells, a joint venture of GM and LG Energy Solution in Warren, Ohio, voted 710 to 16 to join the UAW, according to the National Labor Relations Board. The plant has roughly 900 workers.

This gives the powerful union a foothold in the new wave of EV component and assembly plants unleashed by historic clean-energy investments pushed by the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress.

Note the vote: 710 votes for the union, only 16 opposed!!! And the union: United Auto Workers!!!

The UAW is also the union of the 48,000 striking University of California academic workers.

And more good news, from North Carolina

With their 2020 win, nurses at Mission Hospital in Asheville, NC are on the leading edge of organizing in the South and are already scoring big victories. Through their Professional Practice Committee, they’ve pushed management to make major investments in staffing, both for nurse retention and for support staff like phlebotomists. They’ve seen staffing levels improve in response to Assignment Despite Objection forms that nurses file. And this fall, the hospital, which is owned by HCA, the largest for-profit hospital chain in the United States, announced it was investing $22 million in pay raises for its health care workers who provide or directly support patient care — undoubtedly a result of pressure from its union nurses.

Will nurses take the lead in bringing unions to the South? Let’s hope so.

From Southern Revival, National Nurses Magazine, July | August | September 2022

And now the not so good news, for folks in New Hanover County, NC, USA

Just under 2 years ago, the Board of Commissioners for the county “sold” our hospital to a large, and growing, hospital conglomerate, Novant. This despite the fact that our hospital had an excellent record in terms of serving the community and Novant had a terrible history in its hospital acquisitions in other parts of the state. The “sale” had many questionable aspects (see my Aug. 28^th post, A Cautionary Tale: Privatization and Its Toll, posted I might add, just before my 6-day emergency visit to said hospital, which confirmed all the worst reports), but one of the most egregious was that almost all of the cash for the sale, $1.25 billion, was put into an endowment under the control of Novant!

Up until this week, not one penny of the Endowment had been disbursed to the community. Now the local media is reporting that decisions have been made to disburse the first $9 million. Looks like "our" money is being well spent. The awards of approximately $9 million to community organizations (a number of which are, at least in my mind, suspect) was reported along with the apparent loss of $150 million in the assets of the endowment. Where did all that money go? To the salaries of the endowment’s managers? To the banks that are holding the endowment’s money? To the hiring of what can only be described as a criminal organization, Black Rock, Inc, the world's largest asset manager, to manage the rest of the funds ($1.1 billion)?

What will happen to the remaining $1.1 billion? How much of it will end up in the hands of Black Rock’s CEO and stockholders, the big banks and Novant’s management?

It just gets worse and worse, doesn't it?

And more bad news for consumers and workers everywhere

Thousands of workers at two of America’s biggest supermarkets are warning of potential mass layoffs as the giant firms push for a merger. Kroger, the second largest grocery chair in the US, and Albertsons, the fourth largest, are pushing for a merger through the Federal Trade Commission.

Kroger’s chief executive, Rodney McMullen, claimed no employees would be laid off, but said the company planned to place 100 to 350 stores into a spin-off company. In past mergers, spin-off companies, saddled with the least profitable stores, often ended up going out of business, and thus laying off thousands of workers.

In other news, Albertsons announced that it would pay shareholders about $4 billion in special dividends as part of the merger agreement.

From an article in The Guardian

A Better World is Possible

 

Varoufakis Details Vision for Ending 'Global Empire of Capital' to Avert Catastrophe

From Common Dreams - Kenny Stancil - December 12, 2022

Humanity faces a grim fate because the global ruling class refuses to depart from the capitalist status quo even as their quest to maximize profits intensifies the climate crisis and the prospects of a nuclear war. But with enough solidarity, progressives around the world can build an egalitarian, democratic, peaceful, and sustainable society.

That's the message shared Monday by former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who outlined his vision for how the left can work together to end the "global empire of capital" and forge a humane future—part of a Progressive International-led effort to chart a path toward a "New International Economic Order for the 21st century."

Varoufakis began by noting that "we have never been closer to a nuclear holocaust than today," as the doomsday clock that scientists invented in the 1940s quickly approaches midnight. Meanwhile, there is another clock "counting down to the moment humanity will have passed the point of no return from climate catastrophe."

"What is the global ruling class doing to avert these twin calamities?" asked Varoufakis. "Their best to push humanity over both cliffs at once."

"They have started a new Cold War," said Varoufakis. "They are pursuing white-hot endless wars around the world—wars that help them sell more weapons than ever."

"They are drilling with renewed gusto for oil and gas, while delivering speeches on environmental protection," he continued. "They are turning the screws on workers everywhere, while waxing lyrical about social responsibility."

"Enough of their hypocrisy, their war-mongering, their financialization of lives, and the privatization of our commons," Varoufakis declared. "Progressives of the world refuse to take sides on this new 'cold' hot war. We are instead building a new non-aligned movement to fight for humanity's survival by working for peace, solidarity, and cooperation," he added, referring to the assemblage of Third World nations that refused in the wake of decolonization and throughout the Cold War to side with either the United States or the Soviet Union.

According to Varoufakis, the "one thing" that undercuts cooperation, solidarity, and peace is "the reign of capital over labor and the debt bondage it inflicts upon the majority everywhere—in the Global South, but also in the Global North."

As the 50th anniversary of the United Nations' 1974 adoption of the original non-aligned movement's proposals for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) nears, Varoufakis argued that to turn progressives' yearning for a NIEO into reality, a revived non-aligned movement must "direct large quantities of money into the things humanity craves, from plentiful green energy to public health to public education and poverty alleviation."

Just imagine, said Varoufakis, if existing international financial institutions were restructured and invested "10% of global income into the green transition, especially in the developing world."

"Unless we bring down the global empire of increasingly concentrated capital, there is no chance we can end wars, eradicate poverty, or avert climate disaster."

"Of course," he acknowledged, "this will remain a dream unless our movement manages to dismantle the global empire of capital."

To end "the tyranny of capital over people" and reclaim "plundered commons on land, in the oceans, in the air, and soon in outer space," Varoufakis called for two key reforms.

The first is to ensure that "corporations belong to the people who work in them on the basis of one person, one share, one vote," said Varoufakis. The second is to deny "banks a monopoly over peoples' transactions."

Once that happens, banks and profits will "wither as society's main drivers," the political economist argued, "because the banks will be defanged" and the distinction between profits and wages erased. "The simultaneous euthanasia of the labor markets and the share markets, along with the defanging of the banks, will automatically redistribute wealth and as a magnificent byproduct, remove the main incentives for waging war."

Moreover, "the end of capital's power over society will allow communities collectively to decide health provision, education, [and] investment in saving the environment from our virus-like growth," he continued. "Genuine democracy will at last be possible, to be practiced in the citizens' and the workers' assemblies—not behind the closed doors where oligarchs and bureaucrats gather."

Varoufakis admitted that "the twin democratization of capital and of money sounds like an impossible dream." However, he countered, "not more impossible than the principle of one person, one vote, or of the end of the divine right of kings once sounded."

"Unless we bring down the global empire of increasingly concentrated capital, there is no chance we can end wars, eradicate poverty, or avert climate disaster," said Varoufakis. "This twin democratization is nothing short of a precondition for our species' survival."

The former Greek finance minister concluded by calling on progressives everywhere "to unite in a common struggle not just for humanity's survival but for a chance at giving every child that is born tomorrow and in the future a chance at a successful life... on a livable planet, where war has become extinct, along with poverty and fear."

Varoufakis' address is part of a campaign that Progressive International launched last Thursday at the People's Forum in New York City, where scholars and policymakers from around the world met "to present, deliberate, and develop proposals for a New International Economic Order fit for the 21st century."

In a pair of videos shared Monday, Jayati Ghosh, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and one of the thinkers who participated in last week's discussion, stressed the need to ditch neoliberal policies, to "claw back some of the rights that we have lost over the past 50 years, and to reinvent what we see as a just, equitable, sustainable, viable international economy."

To start with, policymakers must "undo the major privatizations" of the past half-century, said Ghosh. Alluding to the ongoing refusal of wealthy countries and pharmaceutical corporations to share know-how and transfer technology that would enable the expanded production of Covid-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments, she also called for action to address "the concentration of knowledge, which has become something that is actually obscene and actively killing people."

As part of its campaign to win a fresh U.N. declaration on a NIEO by 2024, Progressive International has also launched The Internationalist, a subscription-based newsletter featuring exclusive interviews; accounts of struggle from trade union, social movement, and political leaders; academic research; translations; art; and more.

The latest edition includes an interview with Andrés Arauz, an economist and former minister of knowledge and human talent under ex-Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. The conversation with Arauz, who narrowly lost the 2021 presidential election in Ecuador and was part of last week's panel convened by Progressive International, focuses on the "political economy of under-development in the Global South."

During last week's event, Yusnier Romero Puentes, deputy permanent representative of Cuba to the U.N., announced that the Cuban government had invited Progressive International to host a NIEO-focused summit in Havana on January 25, 2023.

Progressive International general coordinator David Adler told the audience that "we are again in a moment of rapid geopolitical transformation with the end of the unipolar domination of the United States—but we lack a common vision of the multipolar world that is now in formation."

"Next month in Havana, we will bring together governments, political representatives, popular movements, scholars, and policymakers to start the process of constructing that common vision and building the power to bring it about," he added.

 

Challenging Neoliberalism in Great Britain

It would appear that Great Britain may be about to break out of the neoliberal order. The significance for us in the good old USA is that the Brits have been our number one partner in establishing and promoting neoliberalism (think Maggie Thatcher and Ronnie Reagan). Our "special" relationship throughout the last 200 years could be challenged, especially if a reinvigorated Labor Party takes the helm on the other side of the pond.

This, combined with the resurgent left in Latin America and the growing power of BRICS nations, could provide an alternative to the neoliberal capitalist order overseen by the US. 

From the New York Times

Britain Is Miserable, but Britons Are Fighting Back, Dec. 8, 2022, by Rachel Shabi

LONDON — Britain is languishing, and the signs are everywhere.

Inflation is in double digits, and the recession — the worst of all Group of 7 countries — is expected to last deep into 2024. The National Health Service is on life support, public transport is sputtering, and post-Brexit worker shortages are widespread. Homeowners face soaring mortgage rates, renters are subject to no-fault evictions, and millions can’t afford to heat their homes. Food banks, which barely existed a decade ago, are at breaking point, and 14.5 million people are in poverty. Winter is here, and it’s bleak.

But Britons are fighting back. Months after what was called a hot strike summer, in which almost 200,000 workers staged walkouts, Britain is witnessing industrial action on a scale not seen in decades — and in all sorts of unlikely places. University staff members recently staged their biggest walkout, for example, and the Royal College of Nursing, which represents N.H.S. nurses, will soon take strike action for the first time in its 106-year history. The breadth of disputes is striking. Among those picketing or about to strike are postal workers, civil servants, charity workers, bus drivers, firefighters and factory workers.

The strikes, usually contentious, have unexpectedly captured the public mood. People go to picket lines and speak up for workers on television and radio phone-ins. Support, so far, is holding up: In August, three in five adult Britons backed industrial action, and polling in October showed 65 percent support for a nursing staff walkout. Rail strikes are less backed, especially with the approach of Christmas, but Mick Lynch, the leader of the transport union that has been at the forefront of strikes, has become an unlikely national hero. His refusal to accept things as they are, as well as his evisceration of hostile interviewers, has struck a chord.

Against those who insist that there is no alternative but to suffer, ordinary Britons are saying that, actually, there is — and it’s called solidarity.

Their defiance stands in stark contrast to the mood in Westminster. After weeks of political infighting and chaos, a solemn fatalism has taken hold there. To counter unsustainable levels of government debt and a global energy crisis, the argument goes, the country must make difficult decisions. As the finance minister put it before setting out a punitive budget last month, there is a “tough road ahead.” In these straitened times, everyone will have to make sacrifices for the good of the country.

Britain has heard that before. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash, politicians reached for similar arguments to justify cuts to state spending. Drawing on the figure of the welfare scrounger, assisted by an acquiescent media and compliant opposition party, the government persuaded the public that austerity was a reasonable response. This time, the approach isn’t working. According to the National Center for Social Research, 52 percent of people now think there should be more government support, not less. What’s more, fewer people now agree that welfare is too generous and prevents people from standing on their own two feet. After all, it’s hard to blame individuals for financial woes that are so widely shared.

Instead, another narrative is taking hold. In this version, the profound economic pain afflicting Britain is not acceptable or inevitable. Union leaders describe the cost-of-living crisis as a class war, effectively a money-siphoning opportunity for profiteering companies, facilitated by the government. The government’s refusal to countenance raising taxes on the very wealthy — something that, according to Tax Justice UK, an advocacy organization, could raise 37 billion pounds, or $45 billion, a year — in favor of stealth tax increases that hit low- and middle-income people is a case in point.

Abandoned by the government, people are stepping up. The Enough Is Enough campaign, started in August by trade unions, community organizers and legislators from the Labour Party’s left, has signed up 750,000 people and staged packed-out nationwide rallies. The campaign has five key demands: a real pay rise, an end to food poverty, slashed energy bills, decent housing for all and higher taxes on the highest earners. Organizers say they are reaching unlikely corners of the country, including Conservative strongholds, and the campaign is channeling supporters onto picket lines.

The grass-roots group Don’t Pay UK, set up in June, has taken things a step further. Undergirded by hundreds of support groups nationwide, 250,000 people pledged to start a coordinated national payment strike on energy bills on Dec. 1, joining the estimated three million who simply cannot pay their bills. Against criticism that nonpayment would inflict heavy penalties on the most vulnerable, the campaign seeks to provide collective support for people whose individual situations are often terrifying.

Seen as a whole, it looks like a public more prepared to stand together. Behind this sentiment, perhaps paradoxically, is the Covid pandemic. For one thing, it showed that — with political will — funds could be found to spend on public services and pay. For another, it forged such intense gratitude for nurses and other key workers that it’s now hard to dismiss their demands for better pay and conditions. Crucially, the experience of lockdown and widespread illness spawned thousands of mutual aid groups, premised on collectivism and reconnecting atomized communities. It’s this civic spirit that’s now being revived.

Four decades ago, Margaret Thatcher famously insisted that “there’s no such thing as society.” Perhaps Britain is finally ready to prove her wrong.