Discussion Page

Poll: Majority of US citizens...

Believe US Politicians Spread

More Misinformation Than

Russia, China

October 8th, 3:43pm (Sputnik)

The majority of US citizens believe that politicians

and social media in the US spread misinformation

online more often than foreign actors, including

Russia and China, according to a joint poll by

the Associated Press, the NORC centre for

public affairs and the University of the

Pearson Institute, in Chicago.

When asked to pick who was the most to blame for the

spread of misinformation about current events in the

US and the world, 77% of respondents picked social

media users, while social platforms such as Face-

book, Twitter and YouTube, and politicians were

picked by 72% of those surveyed each.

Slightly over a half of all respondents considered

the Russian & Chinese governments responsible

for spreading false information, 54% and 53%,

respectively. The Iranian authorities were

chosen by 39% of US citizens surveyed...

and 41% blamed the political structures

of other countries, compared to 48%

of US citizens... blaming their own

government.

Older people were considerably more prone to

believe in the involvement of foreign govern-

ments than younger people, the

poll showed.

A total of 81% percent of US citizens consider the

spread of misinformation, to be a serious issue.

The survey was conducted among 1,071 US

citizens aged over 18 on September 9th-13th.

What do YOU think?

Do you trust your media and dutifully hate all
Muslims, Russians, Chinese, and Iranians?

_________________________________

UK government secures injunction

against eco-warrior protestors

who repeatedly blocked

sections of M25

September 22nd, at 10:12am (RT)

UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps announced on Wednesday

that National Highways has secured an injunction against

protestors calling themselves ‘Insulate Britain’ who have

repeatedly disrupted traffic by blocking the M25.

A judge granted the injunction last night - with it set to come into

effect later today, in a bid to discourage further protestors from

invading the motorway in a “reckless” manner that “puts
lives at risk,” Shapps stated on Twitter.

The eco warrior protestors will “face contempt of court with

possible imprisonment” if they continue to hold their

demonstrations, which have seen ‘Insulate Britain’

activists halt traffic, by sitting down in the
middle of the busy M25 motorway.

The group have stated that they are trying to raise awareness of

concerns about insulation in housing, urging the government to

ensure it is put in all of “Britain’s 29 million leaky homes by

2030 and all social housing by 2025.”

“We are simply asking the government to get on the job. The

people of Britain understand that climate change is a severe

threat to everything they hold dear,” ‘Insulate Britain’

spokesperson Liam Norton stated.

UK Home Secretary Priti Patel previously described the legal

action as an “important injunction” that would ensure

“people can get moving again,” warning the

protestors that “we will not tolerate
lives being put at risk.”

On Tuesday, a demonstration by the group at junctions 9 and 10

of the M25 resulted in 38 protestors being arrested by Surrey

Police, after the activists had unveiled banners and poured

paint on the road.

While the injunction covers the situation on the M25, Patel and

Shapps highlighted in a newspaper column published on

Wednesday that the government is working to ensure

police have more “powers to better manage such

guerrilla tactics in future.”

ALSO ON RT.COM

XR is not a protest group, but a vanity project for

a liberal middle class that soon won’t exist at all.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

_______________________________________

Pipeline proposals brought the Taliban

to power first time round – could the

same be true again now?

August 31st, 5:33pm (RT)

By Kit Klarenberg, an investigative journalist exploring

the role of intelligence services in shaping politics

and perceptions. Follow him on Twitter
@KitKlarenberg

Washington helped the Taliban take power in Afghanistan

before, with a view to unlocking the country's natural

wealth. Now the band is back together in Kabul, is

something similar going on?

Contrary to official claims that the last US soldier has left

Afghanistan, it’s been reported that a “diehard” team of

elite British and US troops are to remain in the country

to “avenge the deaths” of those killed at Kabul airport

in a suicide bombing by ISIS-K.

The joint party – which includes the SAS and the Navy Seals

– may seek to construct a base in the “lawless” Afghan-

Pakistan border area to conduct stealth strikes against

the terror faction, and will be supported by US drones.

Of course, this effort will require the Taliban’s approval

– but defence sources say this is “likely to be given.”

Even more extraordinarily, the possibility of the

taskforce working alongside the returned

rulers of Afghanistan has not been

ruled out.

While seismically shifting alliances are nothing new for London

or Washington, the speed and totality of this volte face, is truly

unprecedented. Nonetheless, the rationale for the resounding

reversal – and indeed the total withdrawal of coalition forces,

despite defense chiefs having long known the illegitimate

and unpopular Western-backed government would

immediately collapse as a result – may

be straightforward.

In March, the Taliban were surprise guests of honour at a US-

brokered meeting in Ashgabat, between representatives of

Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India – the four

participating members of the long-awaited TAPI pipeline.

The group assured attendees... that they weren’t merely

committed to not attacking the project’s infrastructure,

but would actively ensure its safety --- and that of any

and all other “developmental projects” in the country.

The Taliban’s intervention was clearly intended to reassure

international financial institutions, which for so long have

been deterred from investing in the endeavour... by the

very real threat of its destruction by insurgents, that

the pipeline would be in safe hands.. once they were

back in the saddle – if successful, construction can

finally begin, marking the culmination of an effort,

almost three-decades in the making.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 destroyed the Iron

Curtain, that had, for so long, blocked Western access to

Central Asia’s vast energy wealth. The Vice President,

Donald Rumsfeld, declared in 1998... while chief

executive of energy giant Halliburton, which

reaped billions from government contracts

on which only ''it'' was permitted to bid

during the Iraq War.... “I cannot think

of a time when we have had a region

emerge as suddenly... to become

as strategically significant.”

There was just one problem – how could these vast riches

be effectively extracted? Funnelling oil and gas through

Russia would be expensive due to transportation fees

levied by Moscow, brought in to reassert Russia’s

influence over the region’s newly-independent

republics. US sanctions on Iran made even

transiting resources through its borders,

illegal.

That just left Afghanistan a barren wilderness with no infra-

structure to speak of, where Westerners typically feared to

tread. Undiscouraged, US oil major Unocal dispatched

representatives to conduct feasibility studies across

Central Asia starting in 1995. They concluded that...

once a stable government... or at least a governing

force, was in place in Kabul.. a 1,000-mile pipeline

capable of carrying a million barrels per day, was

attainable. At least one Unocal executive

provided information they gained on

these trips, to the CIA.

The next year, the company opened an office in Kandahar –

coincidentally across the street from a compound owned

by Osama Bin Laden, and not far from a Pakistani

intelligence station – as the Taliban were in the

process of taking control of Afghanistan. Their

subsequent success... could well have been

attributable to support provided by Unocal.

A US Defense Intelligence Agency whistleblower who visited

the country at this time heard from numerous informed

sources the group’s capture of Kabul wouldn’t have

been possible without the firm’s assistance.

Once that came to pass, Unocal’s in-house security forces

and the CIA, both afforded the Taliban weapons and

instructors to maintain its grip on power, and the

company engaged in well-funded lobbying back

home to secure Washington’s recognition of
the group as the legitimate government of

Afghanistan, hiring numerous high-profile
government officials for the purpose,
including Henry Kissinger.

He would later be appointed to head the 9/11
Commission, which specifically examined
the pipeline effort, but stepped down,
rather than reveal potential
conflicts of interest.

Another lobbyist enlisted was Zalmay Khalilzad, a State

Department veteran pivotal to increasing the Reagan

administration’s support for the Mujahideen’s war

against the Red Army in the 1980s. In October

1996, he authored a strident op-ed for the

Washington Post, demanding the US

“reengage” with Afghanistan...

dismissing suggestions the

Taliban were an extremist

force, and speaking of

a “common interest”..

between Washington

and the group.

His Unocal role was unmentioned – it also didn’t
factor into mainstream media coverage of his
appointment - as the special envoy to
Afghanistan - in January 2002.

Taliban were also flown into Texas to meet in person with

Unocal executives in late 1997, as its fighters battled to

seize control of the remaining third of Afghanistan not

under its rule. Accounts of the VIP visit are rendered

supremely surreal today --- the group travelled to a

zoo, the NASA space centre, and a massive Target

outlet for a shopping spree, before retiring to the

palatial homes of company chiefs, replete with

golf courses and swimming pools, where they

feasted on halal meat and rice, washed down

with Coca Cola.

The Taliban returned to Afghanistan bearing a number of gifts

from Unocal, including a pledge to invest close to a million

dollars in training Afghans how to construct the pipeline.

For its part, Washington was very much open to recognizing
the group, despite ever-growing domestic outrage at its
treatment of women and their extremely harsh
interpretation of Sharia law.

“The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did. There

will beAramco, pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of

Sharia law. We can live with that,” a senior US diplomat

allegedly said at the time.

That changed in August 1998, when US embassies in Kenya and

Tanzania were bombed by Al Qaeda, killing over 200 people,

and Washington responded with a series of cruise missile

strikes on Afghanistan. By December, Unocal had finally

withdrawn entirely from the pipeline project and ended

its operations in Kabul outright – although the next

year Graham Fuller, former Deputy Director of the

CIA’s National Council on Intelligence, made a

revealing disclosure.

“The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam, and of helping them

against our adversaries worked marvellously well in Afghanistan

against the Red Army,” he said. “The same doctrines can still be

used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and

especially to counter the Chinese influence in

Central Asia.”

So, in 2005, with the US so firmly “guiding the evolution” of Islam

in Kabul anew, the pipeline was back on the table, in the form of

TAPI - US officials were reportedly strongly supportive, because

as before, it would allow Central Asia to export energy to

Western markets “without relying on Russian routes.”

However, the project again stalled in short order, due to an

increasingly volatile security situation. There’s no such

risk of that happening today, though, given the

Taliban’s solemn pledge to defend it at all

costs, from bothersome incursions.

The aforementioned Zalmay Khalilzad was appointed in

September 2018/// as the US Special Representative for

Afghanistan Reconciliation & led talks with the Taliban.

He has been condemned harshly, in some quarters, for

the group’s rapid reseizure of power but no reference
to his time as a Unocal lobbyist, let alone discussion
of how energy interests so intimately intersect with
US foreign policy can be found among the criticism.

This may be attributable to suggestions oil and gas interests

played any role in Afghanistan having long-been dismissed

as lunatic conspiracy theorist fare. But the facts are what

they are, and more than speak for themselves.

What do you think?
Too far fetched..
or obvious?

_______________________________________________

THERE IS LITTLE ENOUGH ENGLISH LANGUAGE
NEWS FROM THE COMMUNISTS IN RUSSIA...
WHO WERE CHEATED OUT OF VICTORY BY
YELTSIN AND HIS CIA ADVISORS IN
ELECTIONS IN THE 1990s.

As the United Russia party is low in the polls and
the Communist Party of the Russian Federation
is the only party with enough cross-country
support to pose a realistic challenge..
perhaps this article is worth
taking a look at.

CPRF is number 1 !

As a result of the drawing of places in the ballot

voting paper for the forthcoming elections of

the State Duma Parliamentaries (September

19th, 2021), held on August 16th by the

Central Election Commission of

Russia, the CPRF is at the
top of the voting list.

This time all the tricks of the ruling party failed.

The Communist Party “clones” striving to

confuse the voter and draw the votes

from CPRF are closer to the end of

the list.

______________________

Essay by Gennady Zyuganov

Chairman of the CPRF, Head of the CPRF at
the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of
the Russian Federation, Dr. of Philosophy

The Country’s Russian Core

The systemic crisis, which has been aggravated by
the pandemic of a previously unknown virus & the
plummeting of the world prices of raw materials,
has laid bare the catastrophic costs of the
capitalist system.

These costs are manifesting themselves all over the
planet. They clearly indicate that the “liberal

paradise” does not exist anywhere in
the world.

Within the globalist world structure even the most developed

countries, faced with large-scale challenges, give in and slip

into the maelstrom of social evil. Planetary crisis processes

are doubly painful for Russia which, like in the beginning of

the last century, is a weak, peripheral link in the world

capitalist chain. They are particularly destructive of

Russian people, which forms the core of the state

and which is hardest hit by the costs and losses

caused by the inhumane social experiments of

the past decades.

World significance of
the Russian question

In 1990 there were more than 120 million ethnic Russians
in Russia, today there are 10 million fewer of them. A
further 20 million Russians, then lived outside the
Russian Federation. Over the past 30 years their
number shrank by 10 million. The contraction
by twenty-five million is comparable to

the losses we suffered during the
Great Patriotic War!

At stake is the question of our survival. Of saving civil
peace and safeguarding our statehood. These all-
important tasks can only be solved through a
fundamental change of the destructive

comprador policy and through the
implementation of a patriotic

anti-crisis program based on
the principles of rule by the

people, and social justice.

On restoring the country’s economic and financial
sovereignty, without which, genuine political
sovereignty, is impossible.

However, such a program cannot be implemented without

an honest and thoughtful look at the Russian question.

Without belittling the dignity and the interests of the other ethnic

entities that form the multinational Russian people, it has to be

recognized that the Russian question is today the most acute

and urgent one. It is key for the destiny of Russia and all the

other peoples living within its borders and on the territory

of the former Soviet Union.

We Communists are staunch supporters of internationalism. We

are very well aware that every people wants to see its language

preserved, its faith endure, its traditional way of life remaining

immutable and its well-being enhanced. However, Russians

form the spiritual, moral and state core of the country. This

was the way our common destiny was formed. This was

what History ordained. This is not something that can be

wished away. To deny this and to think and act in denial

of this is madness that spells disaster for all the peoples

of Russia. If the Russians become enfeebled... and leave

the historical forestage, which is inevitable if the course

pursued since the early 90s is preserved, a catastrophe

is inevitable. I stress: a catastrophe for all the citizens

inhabiting the vast Eurasian space. Russia will simply

be trampled underfoot and torn apart by its stronger

and luckier neighbours.

The best representatives of our Motherland have always been very

mindful of this. In the middle of the 18th century Mikhail Lomonosov,

an outstanding scientist, said: “The grandeur, the power and wealth

of the entire state consists in the preservation and propagation of

the Russian people.” This idea engaged the mind of the great

Mendeleyev in the early 20th century. Pushkin’s genius

expressed concern about Russia and Russianness.

And today... for the country, 80% of whose population are ethnic

Russians, the program of saving the original Russian civilization

and reviving Russians as the spinal cord of the Motherland...

must be the key element of the nationalities policy.

Indeed, the preservation and well-being of Russians, the largest

European nation, is an issue of worldwide relevance. If the

destructive processes of the last 30 years continue... if its

numbers continue to shrink at such a rapid pace, this will

have a fateful impact on the European space and on the

whole planet. This will finally break down geopolitical

and economic stability, in the world in which the

Russians have over many centuries been one

of the key nations determining its character,

history, moral and ethical ideals.

It is not by chance that even the analytical materials of the CIA...

which can hardly be suspected of sympathizing with our country,

speak of the problem of the dying out of Russians, as a key threat

to the world. And yet those who run the Russian economy and the

social sphere today still refuse to admit the scale of the danger

and to seriously discuss effective measures aimed at counter-

acting it. In spite of the serious external & internal challenges

facing Russia, challenges that are obvious to any person in

his right mind, they adhere to the absolutely destructive

liberal policy. A policy that exacerbates tensions within

the country, is openly hostile to the Russians and to

the other peoples, and to our thousand-year-

old statehood.

The CPRF is the only political force which has throughout the post-

Soviet period, consistently upheld the idea of restoring the rule by

the people & justice, strengthening a nationally –oriented system

of governing society and the country. It is only logical that we

persistently raise and thoroughly analyze the Russian

question which is inseparable from the key problems

of our state.

Back in 2004 I devoted my book Russians and Russia to a detailed

analysis of the issue. The book met with lively interest on the part

of the patriots of our country and provoked a hysterical reaction

from Russophobes and anti-Sovieteers. I regret to admit that

contrary to our hopes for a fundamental change that were

generated in the early 2000s, the position of the Russian

people has not changed for the better. It keeps getting

worse. Russia-haters continue with impunity to attack

and stage provocations against the people that has

erected the edifice of Russian statehood. Their

destructive activities continue with the

connivance of the high-ranking

principals ensconced in the

corridors of power and the

mass media.

The repossession of Crimea & Sebastopol prompted an in-depth

nationwide dialog. Support of the heroic struggle of the people’s

republics of Donbass has shown the potential of the patriotic

sentiments within Russian society. The march of the Immortal

Regiment on Victory Day was a convincing statement in favour

of genuine values. Yet, even after these events, the authorities

failed to cooperate with the political opponents who genuinely

care for the fate of their Motherland. The ruling circles have

failed to take the necessary steps to meet the people, their

problems and aspirations. Instead, they respond to the

growing discontent in society by policing and endless

torrents of anti-Soviet rhetoric, vicious attacks on

socialism and the great achievements of

Leninist-Stalinist modernization.

The “fifth column” and venal propagandists, have launched an

immoral, and indeed, illegal campaign to present as heroes the

White Guard butchers & their followers.. who made short shrift

of their compatriots: side-by-side with the foreign armies of the

Entente and Hitler invaders. Their victims were representatives

of all the peoples that fought courageously for the freedom and

independence of our Motherland during the Civil War and the

Great Patriotic War. Their officially inspired attempts to tear

up the most glorious pages of our history and to put bloody

traitors of our Motherland on the rotten anti-Soviet pedestal

constitute a challenge in the first place to the Russians and

an insult to the country’s largest people, a desecration of

its outstanding victories.

The liberal position deepens the rift between power and society.

People are fed up with endless attacks on our history. Torrents

of dirt have been poured on it since the time of Gorbachev’s

“perestroika.” It was then that the “blank spots” in our past

began to be smeared with black, the colour to which official

propaganda is still clinging. But this paint has not stuck to

the Soviet legacy. It has dried up and peeled off to reveal

- to the astonished gaze of the new generations - the

grandeur of the accomplishments of the Land of

the Soviets.

That is what makes Soviet symbols so popular today and
that is why Lenin and Stalin are seen by the people as
the most authoritative statesmen & political leaders,
the towering figures not only of the Soviet epoch,
but of Russian history as a whole. This is an

undeniable fact and if so, its main lessons
have to be learned. Then we will get rid
of the Russophobia and anti-Sovietism

which impede our progress.

Some of the outstanding historical lessons are worth remembering.

Above all, it is the lesson of the formation of Russian consciousness

and the building of our state which was crowned with the emergence

of the Land of the Soviets, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The power of peacemakers

In old Rus, the patriotic feeling pre-dates the political, economic

or cultural unity of the peoples that inhabited it. Therefore all

the enemies of Russia, then and now, have tried to destroy

this feeling and turn the Russians and kindred peoples of

Eurasia into second-rate simulacra Germans, the Horde

people, Byzantians, Varangians, Hazars and so on…

Yet each time the patriotic feeling proved to be

stronger than external pressure.

Rus never became a colony and was never dissolved in other ethnic

groups. That in itself was a historic feat. Especially considering the

adversities our country faced: the cold climate, shortage of arable

land, openly hostile environments all along the perimeters of the

country’s western and eastern borders.

The English explorer Richard Chancellor, who was the first to penetrate

into Russia and initiate trade relations between the two countries wrote

about the Russians in his 1553 diaries that no other people under the

Sun encountered such harsh conditions. And yet this people. against

all the odds that seemed insuperable, managed to create the largest

country on the planet. This, was because its will was cemented by

unbending patriotism based on the Russians’ battle & labour feats.

The unique geographic and geopolitical position of Russia, which

linked Europe and Asia, led to the synthesis of the Western and

Eastern elements that shaped the unique Russian civilization.

The East is more inclined toward introspection and contemplation,

adherence to tradition and archaics. The Western civilization has

very different aspirations. Its strengths lie in the drive toward

scientific knowledge and development, economic & domestic

improvements based on innovative thinking. However... these

features which underpinned the West’s successes, went hand

-in-hand with its negative features: extreme individualism, and

the cult of personal success, at all costs. The habit of looking

at human relations through the materialistic & financial prism.

The abiding penchant to achieve one’s goal through the

exploitation, enslavement and even extermination of

other peoples. This inevitably caused original

capitalism to morph into imperialism and

globalism, which today, are pushing the

world toward a catastrophe and are

destroying the capitalist system...

pushing it toward degradation

and collapse.

The uniqueness and strength of the Russian world lies in the fact that

it seeks to combine the best features of the East and the West and

springs from the combination of high spirituality, an adherence to

traditional values and collectivism and innovative thinking, a

striving toward scientific and cultural heights.

Like the West, it has striven toward progress, but it never reduced

progress to economic and financial matters. In Russian civilization

progress has always been linked with moral laws... with principles

of sobornost’ (“togetherness”) & justice which rejects selfishness

and individualism. Supreme power and the privileged class some-

times departed from these principles. This led to the revolutionary

uprising in the early 20th century, and a systemic crisis, in whose

vice the country has been struggling over the past three decades.

But the people itself has always adhered to these principles. Only

a state based on them ,can meet its aspirations and ensure its

viability and well-being.

Collectivism, statism, the self-sufficiency of the Russian state,

a commitment to promoting the supreme ideals of justice and

brotherhood – these are bedrock principles of Russian

civilization. They predetermined the historical result

referred to by the philosopher Nikolay Beryayev:

“The Russian people has created the most powerful state

in the world, the greatest empire. From Ivan Kalita
Russia was consistently and steadfastly, pulling
itself together to achieve a size that defies the
imagination of all the peoples of the Earth.”

The Russian state as a unique civilization and the largest power

is the main historical result of the Russian people’s endeavour.

And this is the constant target of our external and internal

enemies, past and present. Not only a geopolitical and

economic but also a spiritual target that is hostile to

them in the cultural and moral sense.

Those who target it target the Russian people. Hence the

whole world civilization, since life itself proves that world

History would have been fundamentally different without

the Russian contribution.

The Empire created by the Russians is the only one in world history

that was not built by conquest, plunder and the extermination of

other peoples, but by allying with them, usually on a voluntary

basis. Whenever the Russians resorted to arms it was to

protect the allied peoples against invaders who

threatened to destroy them.

Russia has a brilliant military history. A history, not of conquest,

but of peace-making. A history of national liberation wars

against aggressors who encroached upon our country,

of saving other peoples from external intervention,

genocide and annihilation.

This was the case in the 17th century when Ukraine rebelled

against Polish oppressors and reunited with Russia. And

again in the 19th century... during Russia’s wars against

Persia and the Ottoman Empire when Armenia found

refuge from ruthless neighbours under the Russian

wing. And again in the 20th century when the USSR

determined the outcome of the most terrible war in

History by defeating Hitler’s Nazism and saving the

world from the “brown plague.”

The role of Russia and the Russian people in world history is above

all, the great role of peace-maker. Without it the world would have

been totally different and many of the peoples inhabiting it today

would not exist. This is something that cannot be said about any

other power. It can only be said about Russia and the Russians.

“We shall be the first to herald to the world that we want prosperity

for ourselves not through suppression of the individual and other

nationalities, that we seek it through the freest and most brotherly

universal unity.” This is what the outstanding Russian writer of

prose & essays, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. wrote in his Diary Notes

in 1877. These words were fully vindicated by the military

exploits of our people and the Russian Empire and the

Soviet Union, created in line with these principles.

Russia’s interests from ancient times have been not to conquer, invade

and subjugate someone but to unite on its land, under its wing, under

the protection of a single powerful state, all the Russian people and all

those who consider Russia to be their motherland. All the peoples that

agree to cast in their historical lot with Russia.

We seek to ensure unconditional and lasting peace in our own home

secured against any encroachments from without and from within,

creating favorable external conditions for this. To defend our

historical uniqueness and original spirituality against the

aggression of alien and perverted stereotypes of mass

consciousness. Against the pernicious influence of

immorality elevated to the level of the norm. Against

egoism praised as a virtue. To create for our fellow

citizens, all the necessary conditions for education

and healthcare, work and leisure, the development

of science and culture, a happy childhood, and a

secure old age.

However, Russia has had at all times, to uphold its right to all this

in fierce struggle against foreign enemies and their high-ranking

accomplices inside the country. Against the “fifth column” which

today continues brazenly to corrupt and strangle our country.

From the geopolitical point of view Russia is a key element in

preserving the global balance of forces. A kind of safety fuse

that deters the world powers from violating strategic inter-

national equilibrium. From attempts to use force to create

a unipolar world... which transnational capital seeks to

create, and which brought forth Hitler’s Fascism in

the last century & today is concentrated in Anglo

-Saxon political and financial centres. From the

disastrous mixing of political systems,
cultures, and religious teachings
advocated by the globalists, who
try to reduce humankind to a
uniform, anonymous and
totally docile mass.

From one century to the next, our country turned out
to be the main obstacle in the way of all those who
sought to dominate the world.

All those who ever laid claim to global power & sought
to enslave mankind – from Batu Khan to Tamerlane to
Napoleon and Hitler stumbled upon Russia. After the
Great Patriotic War our country stood in the way of
the Americans.... who held out to the world the

prospect of electronic slavery, essentially an
“updated” version of Fascism, laced with
neoliberal socio-economic and geo-
political theories.

The Soviet Union provided an antidote to this deadly

triumph, until the USSR and the world socialist
system collapsed, as a result of betrayal.

Victorious warriors.

As we mark the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory we should

remind the young generation of our country’s heroic history.

Beginning from the 9th century when the Russian state was born it had

to fight at least 70 major wars to defend its freedom, honour and dignity.

And our country has been involved in countless military conflicts. In

the period between 1240 & 1462, according to historical chronicles,

Russia survived nearly 200 wars and invasions. Of the 500 years

between the 14th and 20th centuries the country was fighting for

almost 330 years. In 1900 the well-known Russian general

Kuropatkin in his memorandum to the Czar wrote that in

the previous 200 years Russia had been in a state of war

for 128 years and enjoyed only 72 years of peace.

Throughout its history our power was constantly the target
of external enemies. The arduous and heroic fate of our
country was summed up in the words of Alexander III:
“Russia has no friends, our vastness is feared.
Russia has only two reliable allies –
its army and navy.”

A country which has such a destiny must have a strong army. Russia’s

history has always been and will be inseparable from its armed forces.

Therefore its greatest leaders – from Peter I to Lenin and Stalin – were

the creators of a powerful state and builders of an invincible Army.

Alexander Nevksy, then barely 20 years old, defeated the Swedish

invaders on Lake Ladoga. Two years later he scored a brilliant

victory on Lake Chudskoye over the Livonian Order forcing it

to give up all the previously conquered Russian lands.

Thanks to the valour of our warriors, Ivan the Terrible, who was

enthroned when he was just 16... opened up Russia’s road to

Siberia along the Volga and the Caspian, when he was 25.

Peter I created the armed forces of the Russian Empire which replaced

the Streltsy regiments and manorial troops. He laid the foundations not

only of recruitment of the regular Russian army, but the principles of

unconditional respect for the defenders of the Motherland, which

penetrated deep into the thick of the people.

Having spent so many years fighting, Russia did not become cruel. Its

army, unlike the armies of Western countries, had never been an army

of hangmen. Its soldiers did not fight, in order to turn other peoples

into slaves, rob foreign lands and grow rich at the expense of their

resources. Our soldiers never perpetrated the kind of plunder and

treachery that spawned the world capitalist system.

This calls to mind the words of the brilliant Russia poet & diplomat

Fyodor Tyutchev, in the mid-19th century, when he served at the

Russian Embassy to Germany, & was engaged in polemics with

the Russophobes who even then tried to accuse our country of

being “an Evil Empire.” “Walk through the French departments

and ask people which enemy soldiers constantly displayed the

greatest humanity, strictest discipline and the least hostility

toward civilians. One hundred to one, they would name

the Russian soldier.”

The combination of great courage and unquestionable
humanism has always guaranteed the victorious feats
of the Soviet soldier. Its most salient manifestation,
was the Soviet country and the Red Army

which took on Fascism.

When it entered the Great Patriotic War our people was
truly united. Its cohesion was the main foundation of
the May 1945 Victory. The cohesion manifested itself
in everything. The Soviet leadership & Communist
Party fully shared the fate of the fighting people.

All the grown-up sons of the members of the

Politbureau of the CC AUCP (B), went to the
front, & many of them died a hero’s death.
The unity of power and society cemented
the unexampled national solidarity and

assured victory over the enemy.

The Soviet State did everything.. to remind people of the
heroic pages of Russia’s thousand-year history. In 1941
the artists, Kykryniksy, and the poet Samuil Marshak,
made a poster which showed Red Army soldiers and
tanks standing like an iron wall to block Fascists.
Above them, also facing the enemy, were figures
ofthe great military commanders of the past:
Alexander Nevsky, Alexander Suvorov
and Vasily Chapayev.

It was as if they were in a single file with the Red Army
men defending their Motherland. Beneath the picture
were the verses:

We are fighting hard,

Wielding bayonets,

Grandchildren of Suvorov,

Children of Chapayev.

Stalin said on November 7th, 1941: “May you be inspired by
the courageous images of our great ancestors – Alexander
Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Kuzma Minin, Dmitry Pozharsky,
Alexander Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov.” He was saying
these words from the stand of the Lenin Mausoleum...
during a military parade to mark the 24th anniversary
of the Great October Socialist Revolution. The words
of a great statesman who managed to bring together
the great ideas coming from the depth of time and
embodied in Soviet society: the great state
and socialism.

The marriage of these ideas opened a new and the most glorious

page in Russian history. It marked the birth of a new state of which

its founder, Lenin, had every reason to say in his 1919 article

“The Great Beginning”: “The world has never seen a more

democratic state in the true meaning, a state more closely

linked with the working and exploited mases.”

It was the fullest and most successful embodiment of the
unique synthesis of the best features of the West & East
which brought forth the Russian civilization. A synthesis
of forward-looking energy of great transformations and
spirituality rooted in the innermost eternal values of
equality, justice and selfless love

of the Motherland.

The Russian Roots
of Socialism

It is impossible to understand Russian history as a whole and its

outstanding Soviet period without being conscious of the fact

that the socialist idea has its roots in Christianity. The Gospel

of charity, equality, justice, of rejecting “filthy lucre,” lies and

exploitation. The underlying basis of the socialist world view

is the faith whose adoption finally made Russia a single

nation that embarked on the path of constant spiritual,

cultural, state, and political, creative endeavour.

The tail end of the 10th century, on the eve of Russia’s adoption of

Christianity, saw the schism between the Western Roman Catholic

Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. The confessional

division was not over differences of ritual, as some historians

and propagandists would have us believe. It had to do with

the underlying world view and values.

Western Christianity, which concentrated on the glitter of rituals and

the bureaucratic structure of the papal hierarchy, virtually cast

aside the basic ideas of the Gospel: Sobornist’, inconspicuous

charity, care about the poor and the disadvantaged, rejection

of the ideology of usury branded by Christ. Protestantism,

which branched off from the Roman Church in the middle

of the previous millennium, spreading to the Anglo-Saxon

world and the north of the European continent, was

reduced to the preaching of extreme individualism,

and the superiority of “the select.” It severed all

links with the foundations of the Christian faith

& laid the foundations of the capitalist ideology

declaring glaring social inequality to be “God’s

providence” and the amassing of material

wealth, to be the highest virtue.

The Russian people from the start chose Orthodoxy which managed to

preserve the genuine spirit of Christianity and maintain the moral high

ground. To preserve over the centuries adherence to sobornost’

which was uniquely embodied centuries later in the

collectivism and solidarity of Soviet society.

The enemies of Communism in their spurious propaganda make wide

use of 2“unmasking” theses. The first one is that the Bolshevik Party,

upon coming to power, supplanted the Christian idea and symbols

with its own forcing out of society’s consciousness the spiritual

assumptions and meanings and replacing them with political

and social ones. The second charge our enemies level at us

is that the communist ideology allegedly, has the character

of worship, of symbols and major political figures.

The truth is that the idea implemented in Soviet society combines

the basic Christian values which echo humanity’s age-old dream

of justice and political practice aimed at embodying this dream in

reality. We are looking... not at a contradiction between socialism

& Christianity, but at the historically logical evolution of popular

consciousness, worldview and morality rooted in Orthodoxy

toward their political and social implementation. That is only

possible in a society of social justice and in a socialist state.

That is why the presence of Stalin’s image in the main church of

the Armed Forces built in Kubinka near Moscow to mark the 75th

Victory Anniversary is deeply symbolic. It infuriated many

prominent functionaries who have effectively made anti-

Communism their profession. However honest and

principled church representatives gave a fitting

rebuff to these attempts to whip up hysteria.

Thus, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church's expert council on

church art, architecture and restoration, Reverend Leonid Kalinin,

explaining why he would never order the image of the leader of

thevictorious Soviet country, to be removed from the church,

said quite rightly: “I have no rights or authority to tear out

pages from the Book of History.”

It was not in Russia that the basic principles of the Communist political

philosophy were formulated. They were proclaimed by Marx & Engels

in the Communist Manifesto. But it was our country and the Russian

people that adopted them not just as an ideology, but as a national

idea. They had been prepared for doing so by centuries of their

development. Herein lies one of the main reasons why

socialism first triumphed on Russian soil.

Such a triumph could only occur on a social and philosophical soil

of which Dostoyevsky said the following in A Writer’s Diary more

than forty years before the October Revolution: “The supreme

and most characteristic feature of our people, is a sense of

justice and a hankering for it.”

This is why the socialist idea is so close to the Russian world. This

predetermines the sincere adherence of the followers of socialism

to the key values: equality, rejection of greed, collectivism,

compassion, responsibility for the country & the society

understood as personal responsibility.

With true communists, staunch champions of socialism this

adherence is indeed akin to religious faith. Which ensured

the great Soviet achievements. The Great Victory in 1945

and the outstanding social and economic achievements

of the Soviet Land, or our conquest of outer space,

could not have happened without it.

Like the present authorities, those who ruled Russia before
the Revolution, proved to be unable to understand the
irrepressible yearning of the Russian soul for justice
& its stubborn resistance to capitalism. They paid
dearly for their deafness. This is a lesson today’s
rulers should learn. But they stubbornly refuse
to do so. They do not want to understand the
destiny of their own country, the character
and mentality of the Russian man.

Throughout the 19th century social and class contradictions in

Russia were growing in spite of the desperate attempts of the

state to take the situation under control. Neither the “great

reforms” of Alexander II, nor the “counter-reforms” of

Alexander III... nor the establishment of the State Duma

by Nicholas II saved the country from social upheavals.

The Romanov dynasty had led the country into an impasse.
The bourgeois Provisional Government that replaced it
failed to take Russia out of its crisis. It helplessly
watched the country falling to pieces. Only the
Bolshevik Party managed to prevent the

country from being buried under the
ruins of the monarchy.

The national elite of Russia's Empire failed to fulfil its main function:

to ensure an acceptable level of well-being and social justice for its

people. No wonder it was swept away by the revolutionary wave in

1917, the wave of the Great October. That wave had been prepared

by the revolutionary movement of the 19th century which was

Russian society’s response to the progressive degeneration

of its ruling class. To the inability of power to keep the

country within the framework of its indigenous

non-capitalist path.

Socialism and Soviet power provided Russia with a new historical

form of the centuries-old Russian idea by not only preserving but

putting into practice what is its core: altruism, collectivism, the

yearning for justice, readiness to make sacrifices in the name

of lofty ideals. In short, everything that negates capitalism

and cannot coexist with it, as it is incompatible with the

Russian civilization.

Contrary to the wish of the ruling class, which challenged the

fundamental laws of civilization, it blazed the trail toward a

new, socialist world reuniting the Russian Power under the

banner of the Soviet Union. It radically changed the history

of the whole of mankind. This was the second great gain

of the Russian world after the creation of the Russian

Empire and the foremost result of its thousand-year

development.

Soviet power and
national pride

Another thesis popular among the anti-Sovieteers who try put on the

patriotic garb is that socialism and Soviet power with their adherence

to internationalism, are allegedly hostile to patriotism. Including

Russian patriotism, whereas the capitalist system does not in

any way impinge upon patriotic feelings and even

encourages them. This is a patent lie.

Capitalism identifies national interests exclusively with the interests

of the ruling class, the exploiting minority of the nation. This is

manifest in the version of patriotism offered to society by the

official Russian propaganda which equates patriotism with

worship of the rulers. Seeking to perpetuate class divisions

within society capitalism thereby tries to perpetuate a

cleavage within the nation. In dividing the world into

exploiter and proletarian nations and dividing

classes within individual countries... the

capitalist system foments international

contradictions and tensions

within states.

In the 21st century capitalism acquired its final anti-national form in

the shape of globalism which has a stake in intellectual, cultural

and linguistic uniformity. It sees people’s consciousness, their

culture and individuality as no more than a function of capital.

As indeed the human personality. Everything that does not

correspond to this function should be rooted out,

according to the globalist ideology. Therefore

the aim is to subjugate all national cultures

to a single cosmopolitan and essentially

anti-cultural standard.

To this end the globalists are prepared to use the most sophisticated

technologies of digital enslavement. These include tacit
mass chipization they may eventually resort to under
the pretext of a mandatory vaccination against the
coronavirus. The ideologists of digital fascism have
allies among the owners of major corporations,
bank presidents and high-ranking officials,
including in our country.

Unlike capitalism, socialism is inherently aimed at eliminating the

soil on which inter-ethnic contradictions and conflicts arise. It

creates prerequisites for the nations which have put an end to

class divisions of nations to draw closer together on the basis

of cooperation and mutual enrichment. This is in striking

contrast with the national and cultural uniformity which

capitalism has long been trying to impose on the world.

That is why there are absolutely no grounds for

opposing patriotism to internationalism which

is essentially the opposite of anti-national

capitalist cosmopolitanism.

Even before they came to power, the Bolsheviks saw the future

Soviet State as a combination of socialist and patriotic ideals.

The key ideals which are equally dear to the Russian people

and which are an indispensable condition of its well-being.

Yes, it is a historical fact that in the early post-Revolutionary years

Trotskyites who were in thrall to anti-Russian sentiments and a

nihilistic attitude to the history and spiritual heritage of our

country sought to play an active role in Soviet politics

and social life. However, these attempts were

resolutely brushed aside by the Soviet State

and suffered a debacle.

Exposing the anti-Russian ideas of the Trotskyites, Stalin said:

“We are told that nationals... should not be mistreated. This is

very true and I agree with this: they should not be mistreated.

But to promote a new theory, to the effect that the Great

Russian proletariat should be put in an unequal

position to the former oppressed nations,

means to talk nonsense.”

Today there is a lot of such nonsense about. It is actively used

by the Russophobes who oppose the unity of peoples. They

continue to whip up anti-Russian hysteria in Ukraine. They

are trying to spread its bacilli to fraternal Byelorussia.

They rail against the historical choice of the people

of Crimea and Donbass. But their wicked activities

are doomed to failure, as witnessed by the

Bolshevik experience.

Beginning from the early 1930s the USSR categorically rejected

attempts to portray Russia’s pre-Soviet history as nothing but a

combination of backwardness, oppression and aggressive

feudal wars. School textbooks and literary works pictured

the country’s rulers, military commanders and diplomats

as colourful, flesh-and-blood, and many-dimensional

individuals. They stressed the continuity of historical

development of Kieavan and Muscovite Rus, Peter’s

Russia and the Soviet land.

After the Victory Stalin openly admitted that the Russians take the

decisive credit for this Victory. He never tired of reminding people

of what the CPRF staunchly adheres to and what is written down

in our program and what we insist should be reflected in the

Constitution: the Russian people forms the core of the state

because it is ordained by history to play the central and

unifying role in our Motherland.

The architects of the Soviet State were very conscious of the idea

which is pivotal for our party’s ideology and policy: the distinctive

feature of Russia patriotism that stems from the unique Russian

history and from Russian consciousness is its anti-capitalist

and anti-bourgeois thrust.

The far-reaching consequences of this truth for the practices of the

Soviet State have been acknowledged even by those who, after the

October Revolution, disagreed with Soviet power & left the country.

This is what the philosopher Nikolay Berdyayev said in his book

The Sources and Meaning of Russian Communism, published in

1938 in France where he lived after emigrating “A new generation

of youth has appeared which has been able to commit itself with

enthusiasm to implementing the Five-Year Plan, which perceives

the task of economic development not as its personal interest

but as social service. The Russian Revolution has awakened

and released the great strength of the Russian people.

Herein lies its main meaning.”

Today one can elaborate on the philosopher’s idea: herein lies the

main reason why, in the minds of those who hate the Russian

people, hostility toward it is intertwined with anti-Sovietism

and a visceral rejection of socialism.

The ideology of sovereignty

The Great Patriotic War which the Soviet Power won, thus saving

the world from destruction, has fully vindicated the path chosen

by the Communists, the Soviet leadership and the people who

came to believe it. Stalin put it very emotionally when he

famously toasted the Russian people in 1945.

In the wake of Victory our country created a new geopolitical space,

the socialist community led by the Soviet Union. The resulting

geopolitical and economic model was an outstanding

combination of traditional Russian concepts: the

imperial one with its idea of self-sufficient

statehood and the Pan-Slavic one,

based on the idea of the Great

Slavic Space.

Stalin’s policy of rapid industrialization was designed not simply

to boost the economy, but also to create a self-reliant economic

system independent from external conditions. Thus,

industrialization also solved the main political task

of ensuring unconditional sovereignty and its

protection against any adversary.

The task that was key for the Russians and that was only

completely solved during the Soviet era... when Russia

got rid of the enslaving influence of capitalism, which

basically colonizes peoples, by making them live

according to its laws.

At this point recalling the lessons of history – this time

socio-economic history – would not come amiss.

In the period between 1885 and 1913, Russia’s national
revenue was growing at an average annual rate of 3.4%.
The period between 1914 and 1920, when the country
lived through two terrible wars - the First World War
and the Civil War - predictably saw a decline of the
national revenue by an average 11.7% a year.

However, already in the following 8 years, during Lenin’s
NEP... these lamentable results gave way to growth
unheard of, not only in this country, but in the world

economy: 12.7% a year. In 1929 - 1940, when Stalin’s

industrialization was launched, our annual national

revenue was growing at a still more astonishing
rate of 14.5%. That was more than four times
the rate of the most favorable
pre-revolutionary years.

The New Economic Policy of the 1920s introduced by the Bolsheviks

was based on the model aimed at recovery of a devastated country

which had sustained huge human and economic losses. That model

proved the Communists’ ability to withstand any crisis and to keep

their word. Lenin’s party delivered on a promise it gave its people:

under its leadership the country attained a fundamentally higher

level of development than pre-revolutionary Russia.

Stalin’s industrialization, building on the foundation of the economic

and social achievements of the early Soviet years, represented a

model of forward-looking development. The model aimed at

making the country in which only 15 years earlier half of the

population were illiterate, one of the world leaders in key

areas. By the early 1940s this target was achieved in

spite of the colossal external pressure from the

enemies of the Soviet Union. In spite of the

international sanctions, which were even

more severe than the present ones.

Stalin left behind him a country which, by the mid-1950s, had a national

revenue 14 times that of the late 1920s with an industry growing at an

annual 12.3% and, not counting the war years, at 19%. The country

had paid off all its foreign debts. Its gold and currency reserves

were the second largest in the world. We were first in Europe in

terms of absolute industrial output volume, and first in the world

in terms of the proportion of machine building in industry and

mechanization of agriculture. The Soviet power had assured

its total technical and economic independence. The most

advanced high-tech industries –nuclear, space, aviation,

instrument-building, radio electronics — were powering

ahead. This was ensured by a spectacular development

of world-level engineering and science schools, top-

class and free education and healthcare systems.

Average life expectancy had increased by 23 years between 1929

and 1955. Russia’s population had increased by 40 million. Above

all due to the rapid growth of the number of Russians. And this in

spite of the colossal losses sustained during the Great Patriotic

War which carried away 27 million Soviet lives... of which,

20 million were Russian lives.

The welfare of the people was growing steadily. Real wages during

this period had increased more than fourfold and total bank

savings fivefold. Meanwhile prices in the USSR were

constantly going down, unlike in the capitalist

economy whose law says that as incomes

grow so do prices, which basically brings

to naught the formal rise of wages.

Here is but one example from Soviet history which contrasts sharply

with the current socio-economic policy, which spells a
constant impoverishment of the people: in the period
between 1947 and1954, consumer goods and food
prices in the USSR, went down by 2.3 times.

The giant economic and social leap forward the Soviet Union made in

less than three decades is unmatched by any state in human history

except socialism. This spectacular achievement is underpinned by

three factors: wise strategic planning, massive government

investments in development and fair distribution of the

national income in the interests of the state and its

citizens, and hence in the interests of the Russian

people who account for the absolute majority of

the population.

These factors are totally absent in the policy of the present authorities.

As a result, the country is unable to adopt the proactive development

model and indeed to implement the model of recovery development

and overcome the consequences of the decimation of a powerful

and self-sufficient Soviet economy.

Today economic recovery should take the shape of return of the

financial and production base to the state and the people. It is

only by wresting the financial system and strategically

important sectors from the fabulously rich oligarchy

that these sectors can be harnessed to proactive

development, to ensuring a technological break-

through and economic independence of the

country. This is the essence of the CPRF

program... to which there can be no

alternative.. if we want to really lift

Russia from its knees and ensure

a decent life for all its citizens.

However, those who run our economy think otherwise.

They continue to feed society with tales that claim that

the socialist model has failed. That “perestroika” in

the second half of the 1980s, which developed into

a geopolitical & social catastrophe, was allegedly

brought about by a crisis of the Soviet economy

& by the need to revert to capitalist principles.

But that is a malicious lie.

The USSR had built entire sectors of the national economy,

major enterprises many of which are still in operation. The

well-being and social security of citizens was growing, the

USSR had become a great space, science and industrial

power. It remained such a power until a handful of out-

and-out traitors and rent-seekers pushed the country

toward self-destruction... under the pretext of

“perestroika.”

In 1987 the USSR accounted for one-fifth of the world industrial

output whereas today that share is almost 10 times less. Per

capita industrial output in our country was 4.5 times the

world average. While in the USA national revenue was

growing at the rate of 3% a year in the Soviet Union it

was more than 4%. In the mid-1980s our industrial

output growth was double that of America: 5.3%

versus 2.6%. We were also ahead of the USA in

terms of average life expectancy.

Was that a system that had to be dismantled instead of modernizing

and strengthening it? Only avowed enemies of our country, of the

Russians and all the other peoples inhabiting it can make such a

claim. But they continue unabashedly to lie and pour dirt on our

history. The reasons for this are obvious.

Anti-Soviet alliance
of Russophobes.

Russophobia nearly always lurks behind anti-Soviet statements. It is

a feature of practically all those who are hostile toward our past and

the ideology of socialism. If you scratch them hard enough even

those who try to project an image of patriots who care about the

interests of the Russian people, those who claim to have been

ill-done-by under Soviet rule turn out to be Russophobes, who

have profound disdain for the people, its history

and achievements.

Soviet history is about the establishment of the first state in the

world, based on the principles of social justice. The victory of

our country in the most terrible of wars. The great unmatched

feat of industrialization, colossal economic, scientific, cultural

& social achievements. It is a history of the great uplift of the

Russian people. An uplift which manifested its will, & infinite

creative potential.

This is one of the main reasons why the Soviet idea and Soviet

history so enrage professional anti-Communists the absolute

majority of whom hate and detest the Russian people. Suffice

it to look at the propaganda talk of anti-Sovieteers and the

deeds of those who persistently attack our past, to see

that they are also, all of them, Russophobes.

The activities of propagandists who foment anti-Sovietism and

Russophobia have the support of high-ranking officials who

prefer not to display such sentiments publicly, but who

share them deep down.

Today the systemic crisis is putting the increasingly unstable

peace to a test. The two previous crises ended in world wars.

Today, too, the enemy does not want to confine itself to the

economic and information wars it has long been waging

against Russia.

NATO is again sabre-rattling close to our border. The prospects

of a new Drung nach Osten are again publicly discussed. We

are surrounded by a contracting ring of fronts. Transatlantic

provocateurs continue to run the show... in Ukraine. Their

Bandera underlings make constant attempts to aggravate

the situation on the border with Crimea and Donbass. The

Russophobic regimes in the Baltic states and in Eastern

Europe, are desecrating the graves of Soviet soldiers.

CRISIS IN BELARUS

Three dozen Afghan migrants roam

Polish-Belarusian border for 12th day

August 20th, 12:26pm (TASS)

A large group of migrants is roaming the Polish-

Belarussian border --- guarded by the two

countries’ law enforcers, for the twelfth

day. As a TASS correspondent reports

from the scene, about 30 people are

stranded... near the community
of Usnarz-Gorny, Podlaskie

Voivodeship, in the east

of the country.

The refugees from Afghanistan tried to illegally cross the

border, only to be stopped by border guards. The Polish

authorities argue that the migrants are on the territory

of Belarus. On one side.. they are guarded by armed

Belarusian law-enforcers, who prevent their return

to Belarus. On the other side Polish border guards

and the army, keep them out of Poland.

"The situation has not changed. As before, up to 30 people

are on the Belarussian side of the border," the press-

secretary of the Podlaska border guard office,

Katarzyna Zdanowicz told TASS.

"The Polish border guard service is doing its job," she

added, when asked if Poland had any plans for letting

the migrants in.

Zdanowicz said Poland had asked Belarus to take part

in resolving the problem. After that, nearly all women

and children were taken out of the temporary

refugee camp.

The migrants - mostly young men - have set up one tent.

Most spend the nights in sleeping bags on the ground.

Some politicians and human rights activists have

visited the site. Food and water is being brought

to the migrants.

Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told a news

briefing, on Thursday, that Poland had no intention of

accommodating illegal migrants roaming the

border on the Belarusian side. He added

that such a decision would entail a

migration crisis, involving tens

of thousands.

Situation on the border

Earlier, Poland and Lithuania urged the European Union to

take tougher measures against Belarus over the migration

crisis in the region, allegedly provoked by Minsk. Since

the beginning of this year, more than 4,000 illegal

migrants have been detained on the Lithuanian

-Belarusian border, which is 50 times more

than in the whole of 2020.

According to the Polish Interior Ministry, there have been

2,100 illegal attempts to enter the country since the

beginning of August. The border guards prevented

1,342 attempts at crossing the border, and 758

foreign nationals were detained and sent to

closed centres.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that

his country had served as a barrier in the way of

illegal migrants to the neighboring country, but

in the light of political pressure from the West,

Minsk might think again about maintaining

this policy.

What do you think?

Should Belarus keep the West safe, from
an influx of young men of dubious intent
...when the West keeps trying to crash
Belarus' sovereignty?

______________________________

Perestroika did not cause

USSR’s downfall; but ‘a lot

of things’ - should have

been done differently,

says ex-Soviet leader

Gorbachev

by Jonny Tickle

August 4th, 4:56pm (RT)

The collapse of the Soviet Union was not caused by the

controversial policy of perestroika but should actually

be blamed on the attempted coup, in August 1991,
and a conspiracy between the leaders of
Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

That’s according to former Soviet President Mikhail

Gorbachev, who wrote an article for ‘Russia in

Global Affairs’, explaining his point of view:

that perestroika was “historically correct”

and necessary for the USSR.

Gorbachev led the Soviet Union from 1985 until its collapse

in 1991 and is seen as one of the most important figures of

20th-century history. However... while he enjoys a positive

reputation outside of the country, he is viewed differently

inside Russia. Many people blame him for the post-Soviet

economic crisis, that led to a dramatic decline in living

standards, as well as a diminution of Moscow’s

status on the world stage.

Perestroika, seen by some as a significant contributing factor

in the dissolution of the USSR, was an attempt to restructure

the economic system and end stagnation. As part of the

policy, Gorbachev introduced market-like reforms into

the socialist system, which led to food shortages

and political tensions.

However, according to Gorbachev, those who believe

perestroika wasn’t necessary... have a very

short memory.

“They have either forgotten or don’t want to remember what

the moral and psychological situation in Soviet society was

like by 1985,” he explained. “People were clamouring for

change. Everyone - both leaders and ordinary citizens

- felt that something was wrong with the country.
The country was sinking deeper into stagnation.

Economic growth had virtually stopped.”

“Perestroika was aimed at people. Its goal was to liberate a

person, to make him the master of his own destiny, of his

country,” he said.

However, despite his conviction that the policy was correct,

he did note that he would have done “a lot of things

differently.”

In Gorbachev’s opinion, the real reason for the fall of the

Soviet Union, was insubordination within the ranks of

the Communist Party.

“Two blows proved fatal for perestroika,” he explained.

“The attempted coup d’etat, organized by reactionary

forces, including those from my entourage, in August

1991, and the December collusion of the leaders of

Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, which ended the

centuries-old history of our state.”

In particular, he pointed the finger at Boris Yeltsin, who was

the leader of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist

Republic, and who promised that a union of some

sort would survive. However, according to the

former Soviet leader, the heads of Russia,

Ukraine, and Belarus got together and

opted to destroy the country.

“Yeltsin did not keep his word,” Gorbachev wrote. “He and

his entourage sacrificed the Union --- to an unstoppable

desire to reign in the Kremlin.”

What do you think?

________________________________________

Back to Stalingrad? Disputed poll

claims TWO THIRDS of Russians

want Volgograd to return name

used in legendary WW2 battle

July 30th, 10:13am (RT)

A majority of Russians support restoring the name of the

country’s twelfth-largest city back to ‘Stalingrad,’ 60

years after it was renamed Volgograd, in the Soviet

program of de-Stalinization, a poll has revealed.

The survey, commissioned by the centre-left political party

‘A Fair Russia’, and made public on Thursday, revealed

that 68% of Russians are in favour of returning to the

title it bore from 1925 to 1961, with just 28%
wanting to keep the current name.

Interestingly, in Volgograd itself, the poll discovered that

local residents are somewhat less supportive of a name

change, with 48% backing a return to Stalingrad.

The last time Federov’s pollsters conducted a study on

this topic was in 2005, and just 23.4% in Russia said

then, that they supported a renaming.

However, most interestingly, the faction is now coming

under attack from the Communist Party (CPRF), which

has accused A Fair Russia of stealing one of its flag-

ship proposals. Speaking to the Moscow daily,

Kommersant, Communist Party Secretary

for Elections, Sergey Obukhov, accused

''right-wing forces'' of using his party’s

ideas to draw away voters. In 2013

-- on the 70th anniversary of the

Battle of Stalingrad -- the CPRF

collected more than 100,000

signatures in favour of

the renaming.

...What do YOU think?

________________________________

Slovenian PM: EU’s ‘imaginary values’

could trigger ‘collapse’ of bloc,

amid Hungary LGBT row

July 4th, 2:09pm (RT)

Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa has condemned

the EU’s western states, for imposing “imaginary

European values”, without respecting local

cultures. Jansa supports Hungary, in its

fight against LGBT content in
schools and TV.

Sandwiched between Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Croatia,

Slovenia is a tiny country of 2.1 million people. However,

for the next six months, it will set the agenda of the

European Council.

Speaking after his country assumed the council’s rotating

presidency, last week, Jansa made it clear, that his

priorities might not line up with those of the

bloc’s western powers.

Railing at the Slovenian “mainstream media” and its alleged

allies in the country’s judiciary, Jansa also spoke out

against the EU’s promotion of its liberal values in

eastern and central Europe, LGBT causes

among them.

Imposing “imaginary European values,” he argued,

would be the “fastest road to collapse” for the bloc.

“The European Union brings together countries with

different traditions, with different cultures, there
are differences... that need to be taken into
account and respected,” he stated.

European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen,

openly disagreed with Jansa during the press briefing,

saying that “freedom of expression, diversity and

equality” are fundamental “European values”

that need to be upheld.

The clash between Jansa and von der Leyen is just one

more battle in a growing cultural conflict between the

western swathe of the EU, and the centre and east.

In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has led the charge

against Brussels in this conflict, angering the liberal West

by passing a law forbidding the portrayal of

homosexuality to children.

The EU in return has threatened legal action against Hungary,

and 17 western European leaders signed a letter last month

condemning “discrimination towards the LGBTI community”

and their “fundamental rights.”

Orban has insisted that the law does not discriminate against

the LGBT community, but allows parents to decide what to

teach their children, about matters of gender

and sexuality.

Jansa has taken a similar line. Responding to von der Leyen

on Friday, he said that the pair had “a sincere discussion on

what human rights are,” but that he defended “the right of

parents to educate their children” as they see fit. Von der

Leyen responded that “the right of parents to educate

their children was not at all disputed,” but “the

question was … whether the amendments

of existing laws discriminate against

minorities.”

Jansa also proclaimed that Slovenia is not “a colony” of the EU

to be dictated to, much like Orban last week decried the Dutch

“colonial” mentality, after Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte

declared earlier that Hungary “has no business being in

the European Union any more” if it doesn’t submit to

the bloc’s position on LGBT rights.

What do YOU think?

Think your friends would be interested?

Share this story!

__________________________________

Save the Children has been captured

by transgender ideology. It isn't

protecting youngsters, it’s

endangering them

by Debbie Hayton

July 2nd, (RT)

Debbie Hayton is a high school teacher and trade union

officer. She teaches science to 11-18-year-olds, at a

school in central England. As a transgender person,

she has written extensively about what it means to

be trans, and how trans people can be included in

society without compromising the rights of other

vulnerable groups. Her work can be read in

publications from across the political

spectrum, where rational scientific

debate is allowed and encouraged.

Follow her on Twitter @DebbieHayton

The charity is supposed to help vulnerable children, which is

why it rightly opposes FGM. So why is it promoting the idea

that it’s OK for girls as young as seven to go down a path

that leads to gender reassignment surgery?

Save the Children was established in the aftermath of the First

World War by Eglantyne Jebb and Dorothy Buxton, two sisters

from England who had been appalled by the impact of British

government policy on children across Europe. The war may

have been over, but the Royal Navy maintained a blockade

of Germany until it signed the Treaty of Versailles. In cities

like Berlin and Vienna, children were starving.

In 1919, Jebb was arrested and convicted --- for distributing

leaflets bearing shocking images of malnourished children.

A hundred years later, their campaign has grown into a

massive NGO with an annual turnover approaching

£300 million. Enjoying royal patronage, it is now

part of the British establishment. In the 2020

annual report, Princess Anne wrote, “I

thank you for everything you have

done for children this year.”

Maybe Princess Anne should ask them about their

campaign for Pride Month? Earlier this week, they

shared some tips about how to raise a

“transgender child.”

Judging by the video clip, Save the Children has been captured

by transgender ideology – the idea that men and women are

defined not by their sex but by some soul-like gender identity.

With reckless abandon, they extend this idea to children.

The lack of critical analysis is breathtaking. Each

slide could and should have been pulled apart.

There is no need to pigeonhole children as ‘transgender’.

We should let them be. Gender is not assigned at birth;

sex is observed and recorded sometimes before birth.

Identifying as the opposite sex does not mean we are

the opposite sex.Girls can have short hair; it’s fine!

Why do we need to validate feelings? What does it

even mean to validate feelings? We are all

vulnerable to the reactions of others, and

all parents can help their children to

respond constructively.

But behind the slogans, the cartoons, and the enchanting

music, this campaign focuses on a real nine-year-old girl

whose parents think she is a boy. They claim their

daughter was “assigned a female gender at birth,”

something she was questioning by the time she

was five. Two years later, she apparently

identified as a boy. In response, her

parents cut her hair short and

changed her name. In

their words:

“As we move forwards and puberty looms, there

will be problems to solve and decisions to take.”

These are problems of the parents’ making. The decision

they should be making for their child is to return to reality.

Despite their professed “moments of grief,” they still have

a daughter. She never left. Girls can be masculine – they

can cut their hair short, they can take a preferred name

usually adopted by boys, they can climb trees and play

football – and that is fine. But they are still female.

But rather than celebrate the diversity of humanity within

each sex, Save the Children uses this family’s story to

perpetuate the lie that girls can become boys. Worse,

gender non-conforming children, and their parents,

may get the impression that girls need to become

boys to express their masculinity. The video ends

with a link to Mermaids UK, an organisation that

promotes puberty blockers, drugs that stunt

natural development and lead to profound

and irreversible damage.

This is the same organisation that – rightly – condemns

female genital mutilation. Their country director for

Sudan said, “FGM is not only a violation of girl’s

rights, it has serious consequences for a girl’s

physical and mental health.”

Why is the mutilation that results from puberty blockers,

cross-sex-hormones, double mastectomies – for girls

whose breasts developed before they started treat-

ment – and gender reassignment surgery any

different? Abuse is abuse.

Who told Save the Children that seven-year-olds have a

gender identity that trumps their biological sex, and –

more importantly – why did the charity believe them?

Gender identity can be neither proved nor falsified,

and it is not needed to explain transsexualism.

I know that... as a trans person who

transitioned as an adult.

The fact that I am unhappy with my sex does not mean

I am the opposite sex; I am simply unhappy with it.

Further, I know that it is possible to be reconciled

to my sex. That delivered peace and contentment

within my own skin that I never experienced when

I thought I was some sort of woman. These

children’s lives are being built on folly, and

that is no way for anyone to start out in life.

Lies can never satisfy in the same way.

A hundred years ago, Eglantyne Jebb campaigned

against policies that harmed children. Her modern

successors are actively promoting harm.

Think your friends would be interested?

Share this story!

...what do YOU think?

__________________________________

Did the Soviet Union collapse
because of a lack of love?

Or because it foolishly
trusted and looked up
to the West?

OR, PERHAPS, both.

What do YOU think?

Boris Yeltsin had entourage of

‘hundreds’ of CIA agents, who

instructed him on how to run

Russia, claims the former

parliamentary speaker

by Jonny Tickle

June 12th, 8:20am (RT)

The first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, was surrounded

by “hundreds” of CIA agents, who told him what to do

throughout his tenure as leader. That’s according to

Ruslan Khasbulatov, the former chairman of

Russia’s parliament.

Speaking to radio station Govorit Moskva, Khasbulatov

claimed Yeltsin’s entourage was full of Americans. In

1991, he was elected to his leadership post, with

Washington’s ''help'', it has been alleged, and it
is still not yet known, to what extent the US

remained the voice in his ear, through-

out his presidency.

“There must have been a hundred [CIA employees],”

Khasbulatov said. “They determined everything.”

He added that, after ''winning'' the presidential

election, Yeltsin would send security officials

and heads of departments to the US, so the

Americans could “examine them” and

“give conclusions.”

Khasbulatov’s statement comes after former Russian vice

president Alexander Rutskoy told online outlet Lenta that

12 full-time employees of the CIA helped carry out the

landmark Yeltsin-Gaidar market reforms, system-

atically dismantling the centrally planned

economic system --- and leading the
country into shock capitalism.

However, according to Khasbulatov, everyone knew about

Rutskoy’s links to the US, and American officials even

influenced the former president to replace a

considerable number of his appointees.

“On the whole, Rutskoy is absolutely right – Yeltsin was

advised by foreigners,” he continued. “There is no

secret here... and a great number of people know

about it. I don’t have any detective stories about

eavesdropping, but, in general, it’s well known.

Yeltsin used to confer very closely, on all

personnel matters, with foreign

representatives.”

Yeltsin left office in 1999, but not before creating a hyper-

presidential system, taking power away from a hostile

parliament, and removing almost all the checks and

balances. This move was supported by Washington,
which hoped to keep the Communist Party out of
power in the newly formed Russian state.

Now, Yeltsin has a mixed legacy, with many Russians

believing he was a drunkard, who sold the country to

Western capitalists. However... in ''the West'', he is

compared to revolutionaries such as South Africa's

Nelson Mandela, Poland’s Lech Walensa... and

Czechoslovakia’s Václav Havel, with former

US president, Bill Clinton, even having

likened him to Abraham Lincoln.

Like this story? Share it with a friend!

_________________________________

Interview: ''Love for people''

makes Chinese communists

source of strength, says

French party chief

May 24th, 10:14am (Xinhua)

Chinese communists... have accomplished great

achievements in the country's development, by

living up to their all-for-the-people commitment

Jacques Cheminade, chairman of the French

political party, Solidarity and Progress,

recently told Xinhua, via video link.

For the Communist Party of China (CPC), loving people

is not only a political commitment, but also its source

of strength, said Cheminade.

In his view, a political party must know well about, and

be linked to, the history of its own country, which is

exactly what the CPC has been doing.

"In China, there is a vision of the future nourished by

the past, by Chinese history," said the party leader,
referring to the Belt and Road Initiative,

as a case in point.

In 2019, Cheminade visited China for the first time, and

participated in the Euro-Asia Economic Forum in Xi'an,

capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

During the trip, he noticed that people's living standards

in this country, had been growing incredibly fast, and

that local people were more optimistic about their

future, compared with people in the West.

Talking about relations between France & China

Cheminade expressed his hope: that the two

countries could forge... a more rational and

active link in safeguarding multilateralism.

"It is by building multilateralism through

different ways, that we will achieve the

same commitment to the development

of all," he said.

In March, Cheminade co-signed a declaration with

experts from different countries, calling on the

West to face up to China's development

achievements - and to strengthen

cooperation with the

Asian country.

Denouncing the anti-China propaganda organized

by some Western countries, Cheminade stressed

that China has never imposed its own political

system on other countries.

In dealing with adverse situations created by the West,

China has, also, been showing patience and good

political will, he added, expressing appreciation

for "the sense of common welfare" of the
CPC and the Chinese people.

___________________________

Siege of Russia by
US and its Allies

Offers a Lesson
for China

April 20th, 12:04pm

The US has rallied its European allies, to launch a new

diplomatic expulsion campaign, and a public opinion

crackdown against Russia.

In addition to the situation in eastern Ukraine,
Alexei Navalny's hunger strike in prison - and
reports that he's "dying" - have now become
the latest focus of pressure on Russia.

It is noteworthy... that countries including the Czech

Republic, Poland, Ukraine, and Bulgaria have joined

the US in expelling Russian diplomats, mostly

claiming that these Russian diplomats have

conducted "activities incompatible with

their status".

This is a highly ambiguous reason for expulsion. Once
members of the Warsaw Pact, or part of the Soviet

Union, these countries are now often the first to
respond to the US' calls to confront Russia.

There are complex historical reasons for the Central &

Eastern European countries tilting toward the US, and

becoming "anti-Russia", that are difficult for outsiders

to comment on. It is a pity that internal disintegration

- rather than coercion from the US - had directly led
to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Russian Federation was one of the main promoters

of this disintegration.. and the original agreement to

replace the Soviet Union with the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS), was signed by Russia,

Ukraine and Belarus. The Russian leaders who

destroyed the Soviet Union, had no idea what

would happen to their country afterwards.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has brought about

geopolitical changes globally, and the evaluation
of the event is destined to vary from country to

country, and from time to time. But it has

become increasingly clear, that Russia

has been the biggest loser from

that collapse.

Many Russians once believed that when the Communist

Party stepped down and the Soviet Union collapsed, the

US and the West would embrace Russia and respect

them, for taking the initiative to end the Cold War.
The reality, however, is harsh. Moscow has
received no gratitude or kindness,
from the West.

From the moment the Soviet Union collapsed, the US has

arrogantly treated Russia as a defeated country in the

Cold War, engaging in all possible moves to suppress

Russia, at will.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was a geopolitical disaster

for Russia. As the dominant power in the Soviet Union, if it

had chosen to support reforms to solve problems in the

beginning, Russia could have paid a much smaller

geopolitical price, than it would pay, over the

following 30 years. Back then, Moscow had

a broad sphere of influence and powerful

capabilities; it could act independently

and defiantly against Washington. But

it has ceded those geopolitical

resources, giving up its

advantages.

The US' vicious attitude toward Russia offers a glimpse into

the brutality of great power competition and helps people

see through Washington's geopolitical manipulation

measures. The US portrayed its Cold War with the

Soviet Union as an ideological confrontation --
to conceal its intention -- to dominate the

world alone.

Many people, including Russians, believed a political

change of course, would fundamentally change their

relationship with the US, and that Russia could thus

integrate into the West, and become a dignified

member of the Group of Eight.

Yet Russia is too large, with a nuclear arsenal on par

with that of the US. It spans the Eurasian continent

and advocates multi-polarity, with no possibility to

becoming a new member of the West, that is

submissive to Washington.

The US then took advantage of its "victory" - promoted the

eastward expansion of NATO, squeezed Russia's strategic

space at the fastest speed, and completely abandoned its

verbal commitment that, after Germany was unified and

remained a NATO member, the bloc would recruit no

former Warsaw Pact countries, or former Soviet

republics, as new members.

The US is extremely untrustworthy. Its method of great power

competition fully mobilises the ideological resources of its

own, and in the West, and it is very good at infiltrating into

other countries, which makes it very deceptive. Since the

collapse of the Soviet Union, the world has witnessed

other "colour revolutions" supported by the US. The

destinies of countries that experienced subversion

of state power, have proven tragic, as the US has

neither the intention nor the ability to provide

substantial assistance to those countries.

China, as a newly targeted "strategic competitor" of the US,

is fortunate that we've witnessed all the colour revolutions

in the world in the past 30 years. This is equivalent to

having gotten politically vaccinated and receiving

a boost shot to enhance the effectiveness.

The Chinese people must protect the fruitful achievements

of the People's Republic of China, & remain sober-minded

about the US's repeated deceptive clamour that the

strategic ''game'' between the US and China, is a

battle between "democracies and autocracies".

China must continue to grow its national strength and weaken

the ability of the US to pressure it "from a position of strength".

China can only be a friend with whom the US has to coexist,

because it cannot crush it. We must not bear any illusion

that the US would embrace China, due to its changes.

China is so big that we cannot try to get rid of the natural

burden that comes with it. Since China is big, it should

live with great courage and advantages.

This article originally appeared

on the Global Times website.

What do YOU think?

Is the US a friend
to the world ?

Or a psychopathic racist empire?

_______________________________________

Justice or Hegemony...
what do you think?

In Quest of a Multi-Polar World

March 28th, 2021

Michael Hudson and Pepe Escobar resume their

conversation about a global monetary system

that appears headed for divorce.

Michael Hudson: Fifty ago, I wrote Super Imperialism about

basically how America dominates the world financially and

gets the free ride.

I wrote it right after America went off gold in 1971, when the

Vietnam War, which was responsible for the entire balance

of payments deficit, forced the country to go off gold. And

everybody at that time worried the dollar was going to go

down. There’d be hyperinflation. And what happened

was something entirely different.

Once there was no gold, America strong-armed its allies to

invest in U.S. Treasury bonds because their central banks

don’t buy companies. They don’t buy raw materials. All

they could buy is other central bank’s treasury bonds.

So, all of a sudden, the only thing that other people

could buy with all the dollars coming in were U.S.

Treasury securities.

And the securities they bought essentially were to finance

yet more war making and the balance of payments deficit

from war, and the 800 military bases America has around

the world. And the largest customer, I think we discussed

it before, are the Defense Department and the CIA that

looked at it [Super Imperialism] as a how-to-do it

book. Well, that was 50 years ago.

And what I’ve done is not only re-edit the book and add more

information that’s come out, but I’ve picked up the last 50

years and how it’s absolutely transformed the whole

world. And it’s a new kind of imperialism.

There was still a view 50 years ago that imperialism was

[essentially] economic. And this is the view that there’s

still a rivalry for instance, between America and China

or America and Europe and other countries.

But I think the whole world has changed so much in the last

50 years that what we have now is not really so much a

conflict between America and China or America and

Russia, but between a financial system economy

run by finance and an economy run by

governments — democratic or less

democratic, but certainly a mixed

economy.

Well, everything that made industrial capitalism rich, every-

thing that made the USA so strong in the 19th century,

through its protective tariffs & through its public infra-

structure investment, all the way down through World

War II & the aftermath. We had a mixed economy in

America, and that was very balanced. Europe had a

mixed economy. Every economy since Babylon and

Rome, has been a mixed economy, but in America

you’ve had, since 1980, something entirely
different.

That was not foreseen by anybody
because it seemed to be
so disruptive.

And what that was, was the financial sector saying we need
liberty and by liberty, meaning we have to take planning and

subsidy & economic policy and tax policy, out of the hands

of government. And put it in the hands of Wall Street.

So libertarianism & a free market is a centralized economy

which is centralized in the hands of the financial centres,
Wall St, the City of London, the Paris Bourse. And what
you have today is the attempt of the financial sector to
take the role the landlord class had in Europe, from
feudal times through the 19th century. It’s a kind
of resurgence.

If you look at the whole last 200 years of economic theory -

from Adam Smith and, Henry George and Marx, onward -

the whole idea was that everybody expected a mixed

economy to become more and more productive and

to free itself from the landlords, to free itself from

banking - to make land a public utility.

That was the tax base to make finance basically something

public, and government would decide who gets the funding

and thus, the idea of finance in the public sector was going

to be pretty much what it is in China. You create bank credit

in order to finance capital investment in factories. It means

the production of machinery, agricultural modernization, of

transport, infrastructure of high-speed trains of ports and

all of that.

But in the US & UK, you have finance becoming something
completely different. Banks don’t lend money to factories.
They don’t want money to make the means of production.
They make money to take over other assets. 80% of bank
loans are mortgage loans to transfer the ownership of
real estate. And of course that’s what created a
middle class in the US.

The middle class was able to buy its own housing, it didn’t

have to pay rent to landlords or absentee owners or war-

lords and their descendants in England and Europe.

They could buy their own. What nobody realized is

that if you borrow the money to take a mortgage,

there’s still an economic rental value that is not

paid to the landlords. It’s paid to the banks.

And so, in the Western civilizations in

America and Europe, the banks have

played the role that the landlords

played a hundred years ago.

And just as the landlord is trying to do everything they can

through the House of Lords in England & the upper houses

of government in Europe, they’re trying to block any kind of

democratic government. And the fight really, is against

governments that will do anything that isn't controlled

by the 1 percent, by the banks. Essentially the merger

between finance insurance and real estate; the FIRE

sector. So, you have almost a relapse of capitalism

in the West back into feudalism, but feudalism with

a financialized twist, much more than it was in

medieval times.

The fight against China, the fear of China is that you can’t do

to China, what you did to Russia. America would love for

there to be a [former Russian President Boris] Yeltsin

figure in China to say, just give all the railroads that

you’ve built, the high-speed rail, the wealth, all the

factories to individuals. And let the individuals run

everything and, then we’ll lend them the money,
or we’ll buy them out and then we can control
them financially.

And China’s not letting that happen. & Russia stopped that

from happening. And the fury in the West is that somehow,
the American financial system is unable to take over
foreign resources, foreign agriculture. It is left only
with military means of grabbing them, as we are
seeing in the near East. And you’re it seeing
in the Ukraine, right now.

Pepe Escobar: Well, as an introduction, Michael that was

perfect because now we have the overall framework -

geo-economic and historically - at least for the past

70 years.

I have a series of questions for you. I was saving one of these

for the end, but I think I should start really the Metallica way.

Let’s go heavy metal for a start, right?

So considering what you describe as a new kind of imperialism

and the fact that this sort of extended free lunch cannot apply

anymore because sovereigns around the world, especially

Russia and China, I tried to formulate the idea that there are

only three real sovereign powers on the planet, apart from

the hegemon; Russia, China, and Iran, these three, which

happen to be the main hub and the main focus of not only

the New Silk Roads but of the Eurasia integration process,

they are actively working for some sort of change of the

rules that predominated for the past 70 years.

So my first question to you would be, do you see any realistic

possibility of a, sort of a Bretton Woods 2.0, which would

imply the end of the dollar hegemony as we know it, and

petrodollar recycling on and on and on, with the very

important presence of that oily hacienda in the lands

of Arabia. Do you think this is possible considering

President [Vladimir] Putin himself - only a few days

ago reiterated once again that the US is no longer

agreement-capable? So that destroys already the

possibility of the emergence of the new rules of

the game. But do you think this is still

realistically possible?

Michael: I certainly do not see any repetition of a Bretton Woods

because as I described in Super Imperialism, the whole of

Bretton Woods was designed to make American control

over Britain, over Europe total. Bretton Woods was a U.S.

-centered system to prevent England from maintaining

its empire. That’s okay. To prevent France from maint-

aining its empire --- and for America to take over the

sterling area and, essentially, with the World Bank,

stop other countries from becoming independent

and feeding themselves --- to make sure that they

supported plantation agriculture, not land reform.

The one single fight of the World Bank was to

prevent land reform and to make sure that

America and foreign investors, would take

over the agriculture of these countries.

And often, people think of capitalism, certainly in the sense

that Marx described in Volume One, is exploitation of wage

labour by employers. But capitalism also is appropriation

of land rent, agricultural rent, natural resource rent, oil

and mineral rent. And the idea of Bretton Woods was to

make sure that other countries couldn't impose capital

controls or prevent US finance from coming in and

appropriating their resources, of making loans to

foreign governments so that governments would

not create their own money to promote their own

social development, but would have to borrow

from the World Bank & IMF, that essentially

meant from the Pentagon and the State

Department, in U.S. dollars.

And they would dollarize their economies and the economies

would all be sucked. The economic rents from oil, agriculture,

mining would all be sucked into the United States. That kind

of Bretton Woods cannot be done again. And since Bretton

Woods was an idea of centralizing the world’s economic

surplus in a single country, the United States, no, that

can never be done again.

What is happening? You mentioned the world of free lunch,

and that’s what was a theme of Super Imperialism, when

America issues dollars, for these all end up in central

banks and they hold the dollars as a surplus. That

means what can they do? All they can do is really

lend them to the US. The US got a free lunch. It

could spend and spend on its military, on

bumping up corporate takeovers of other

countries. The dollars have come in, and

foreign countries couldn’t cash them in

for gold. They had nothing to cash them

into. All they could do, is finance the US

budget deficit, by buying Treasury bills.

That’s the irony now, what has happened in the last few years

in the fight against Russia and China is America has killed the

free lunch because it said, okay, now we’re going to have

sanctions against Russia and China. We’re going to all of

a sudden grab whatever money you have in foreign banks

like we grabbed Venezuela’s money. Let’s go, we’re going

to excommunicate you from the bank clearing system. So

you can’t use banking. We’re going to put sanctions

against banks that deal with you.

So obviously Russia and China said, okay, we can’t deal with

the dollar anymore, because the US just creamed them. And

if we do have dollars, we’re just going to hold everything in

reserves * lending to the US, the dollars that it’s going to

spend building more military bases around us to make us

waste our money on monetary spending. And so America

itself by the way, in fighting against China and Russia,
has ended the free lunch.

“In America you’ve had since 1980 something entirely different.

That was not foreseen by anybody because it seemed to be

so disruptive.”

And now, Russia and China as you pointed out, are de-dollarizing,

they’re trading in each other’s currency. They’re being the exact

opposite of everything that Bretton Woods tried to create. They

are trying to create independence from the United States.

If Bretton Woods is this dependence on the US, a centralized

system dependent ultimately on Wall Street financial planners

then, what China & Russia are trying to create is an economy

that’s not run by the financial sector, but it is run by, let’s say,

industrial and economic engineering and saying, what kind

of an economy do we need in order to raise living standards

& wages and self-sufficiency and preserve the environment,

what is needed for the ideal world that we want?

Well, in order to do that, you’re going to have to have a lot of

infrastructure. And in America, infrastructure is all privatized.

You have to make a profit. And once you have infrastructure,

a railroad or electric utility, like you see in Texas recently, it’s

a monopoly. Infrastructure, for 5,000 years, Europe, the near

East, Asia was always kept in the public domain that goes, if

you give it to private owners, they’ll charge a monopoly rent.

Well, the idea that China has is, “OK, we’re going to provide

the educational system freely and let everybody try to get

an education.” In America if you have an education, you

have to go into debt for the banks for between $50,000

and $200,000. And whatever you make you’re going to

end up paying the bank while in China, if you give free

education, the money that they earned from education

will be spent into the economy, buying the goods and

services that they produce, and the economy will be

expanding, not shrinking, not having it all sucked out

into the financial banks financing your education,

same thing with railroads, same things with

healthcare.

If you provide healthcare freely then the employers do not

have to pay for the healthcare because that’s provided free.

In the United States, if the corporation and the employees

have to pay for healthcare, that means that the employees

have to be paid a much higher wage in order to afford the

healthcare, in order to afford the transportation that gets

him to work, in order to afford the auto loans, in order to

drive to work, all of this is free, or subsidized in other

countries, who create their own credit.

In the United States and Europe, governments feel that they

have to borrow from the wealthy people in a bond and pay

interest. In China they say, “we don’t have to borrow from

a wealthy class. We can simply print the money.” That’s

Modern Monetary Theory. As Donald Trump explained in

the United States, we can print whatever we want. Dick

Cheney said, deficits don’t matter. We can just print it.

And of course, Stephanie Kelton and my colleagues

in MMT at Kansas City, for many years, have

been saying.

“The economy has been saturated & Reaganized and

the result is, a fight of economic systems against
China and Russia.”

The banks fear this because they say, “Wait a minute, Modern

Monetary Theory means it’s not feudal monetary theory. We

want feudal monetary theory. We want the rich people to be

able to have a choke point on the economy that you can’t

survive unless you borrow from us and pay us interest.

We want the choke points.” That’s called economic rent.

So, you have the West turning into a rent-extractive economy,

a rent-seeking economy. And you’ll have the whole ideal of

Russia, China, and other countries, being the ideal of not

only Marx, but Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Ricardo. The

whole of classical economics was to free economies from

economic rent. & the US economy is all about extracting

rent through the real estate sector, the financial sector,
the health insurance sector, the monopolies and the

infrastructure sector.

The economy has been saturated and Reaganized and the

result is a fight of economic systems against China and

Russia. So, it’s not simply that, there’s a fight between

who makes the best computer chips and iPhones. It’s:

are we going to have a fallback of civilization back to

feudalism, back into control by a narrow class at the

top of the economy, that 1 percent? Or are we going

to have the ideal of democratic industrialization that

used to be called socialism - but it was also called

capitalism. Industrial capitalism was socialism; it

was socialized medicine, it was socialized infra-

structure, it was socialized schooling. And so,

the fight against socialism is a fight against

industrial capitalism, a fight against

democracy, a fight against

prosperity.

That’s why what you’re seeing now is a fight for what

direction civilization will go into. And you can’t have
a Bretton Woods for a single kind of organization...

because the US would never join that civilization.

The US calls a country trying to make its labour

force prosperous, educated and healthy,
instead of sick with shorter lifespans,
they call it communism or socialism.

Well, it can call it whatever it wants, but

that’s the dynamic we are talking about.

Pepe: Well, you put it very, I would say starkly. Opposition

between 2 completely different systems, what the Chinese

are proposing, including, from productive capitalism to

trade and investment all across Eurasia and beyond,

including Africa, parts of Latin America as well. And

the rentier obsession of the 0.01 percent that

controls the U.S. financial system. In terms of

facts on the ground, are we going slowly but

surely and ominously, towards an absolute

divorce --- by a system based on rentier,

ultra-financialization, which is the US's

system and not productive capitalism

at all.

I was going through a small list of what the U.S. exports, it’s

not much as you know, better than I do. Agricultural products

but always privileging U.S. farmers. Hollywood, we are all

hostages of Hollywood all over the world. Pop culture?

That’s not the pop culture that used to be absolutely

impregnable and omniscient during the ‘60s, the 70s,

during the Madonna, Michael Jackson era in the ‘80s,

right? Infotech. And that’s where a big bet comes in.

And this is maybe the most important US export at

the moment because American Big Tech controls

social networks all over the planet. Big Pharma.

Now we see the power of Big Pharma with the

whole Covid operations, right? But Boeing

prefers to invest in financial engineering

instead of building decent products.

Right?

So, in terms of a major superpower, the hyperpower, that’s

not much, and obviously buyers all over the world already

noticed that. So, China is proposing the New Silk Roads,

which is a foreign-policy strategy, & a trade, investment

and sustainable development strategy. [It’s] applied not

only to the whole of Eurasia, but Eurasia and beyond to

grow a great deal of the Global South and that’s why we

have Global South partners to the New Silk Roads —

130-and-counting as we speak.

So, the dichotomy could not be clearer. What will the 0.001

percent do? Because they don’t have anything seductive

to sell. To all those nations in the Global South to start

with; the new version of the Non-Aligned Movement,

NAM, the countries that are already part of New Silk

Road projects, not even to Europe and this, we

could see by the end of last year when the

China-European Union agreement... was

more or less sealed. It’s probably going

to be sealed in 2021 for good.

And at the same time, we had the Regional Economic

Comprehensive Partnership, RCEP, with the ASEAN

10, my neighbours here, the Association of South

East Asian Nations, China, Japan, South Korea,

Australia, and New Zealand. So, when you have

the China-EU deal, and when you have RCEP,

you have China as the number one trade

partner on the planet, no competition

whatsoever.

And obviously every one of these players wants to do

business with China. And they’re privileging doing

business with China to doing business with the

U.S., especially with a country that once again,

according to President Putin, is non-agreement

capable. So, Michael, what is your key geo-

economic view of the next steps? Are we

going towards a divorce of the American

financialization system and the Eurasia-

and-beyond integration system?

Michael: Well, you have made the whole point clear.

There is incompatibility between a rentier society

controlled by the finance and real estate interests

& military interests - and an industrial democracy.

Industry in England and Europe in the 19th century — the

whole fight for democratic reform to increase the role of

the House of Commons against the House of Lords in

England and the lower house in Europe — was a fight

to get labour on the side of industry [and] to get rid
of the landlord class. And it was expected that …

capitalism [would then be] free of the landlord

class, free of something that wasn’t really

capitalism at all, it was a carry-over from

feudalism. Once you free capitalism, you

wouldn’t have this overhead of the idle

1 percent, only consuming resources

and going to war, anymore.

And then World War I changed all of that . … Already, in the

late 19th century, the landlords and the banks fought back,

and they fought back largely through the Austrian School

of individualism and the English marginalists and they

called it freedom. They call it free markets. Free
market meant giving power to monopolists,
to oppressors, to violence. A free market
was where armies can come, take your

country, impose client dictatorships like

[Gen. Augusto] Pinochet in Chile or the

neo-Nazis in the Ukraine. And you call

that, a free market.

The free world was a world centrally planned by the US

military & finance, together. So, it’s Orwellian, and the

dynamic of this world is shrinking since it’s polarizing

- and you’ve seen with the Covid pandemic in the US -

the economy has polarized much more sharply than

ever before between the 1%, the 10% and the rest
of the economy.

Well, as opposed to that here, you have economies that are

not run by a rentier class, that don't have a banking class

and the landlord class controlling the economy, but a

partnership. The kind of thing you had in Germany in

the late 19th century, government industry & labour

all working together to design how we provide the

financing for industry, so that it can provide, not

only industrial capital formation, but public

funding for us to build infrastructure and

uplift the population.

What China is doing is what made America rich in the 19th

century, what made Germany rich. It’s exactly the same

logical engineering plan. Now, this plan, because it’s

based on economic expansion, and environmental

preservation and economic balance instead of on

concentration, this is going to be a growing

economy. So, you are having a growing

economy outside of the USt - and a
shrinking economy in the States

and its satellites in Europe.

Europe had a choice; either it could shrink, and be American,

or it could join the growth. Europe has decided unanimously,

we don’t want to grow. We want to be constant. We want our

banks to take over just like in America. That’s a free market

because Americans have found out, and I’m told by US

officials we just buy the European politicians, they’re

bribable. That’s why when president Putin says,

America and Europe are not agreement capable,

it means they’re just in it for the money. There

is no ideology there. There is no idea of the

overall social benefit. The system is “how

can I get rich, and you can get rich, by

being bribed?” That’s why you go into

politics. As you can tell in the US with

the Supreme Court's law saying that
politics can be personally financed.

So, you’re having two incompatible systems and, they’re

on different trajectories & if you have a system that is

shrinking, like the West, and growing in the East, you

have resentment. People who obtain their wealth in

crooked ways, or without working - by inheritance,

by crime, by exploitation - they will fight like any-

thing to keep that. Whereas people who actually

create wealth, labour, capital, they, they’re not

willing to fight, they just want to be creative.

So you have a destructive military force, in

the West... And a productive, economic

growth force. And in Eurasia, the clash

now is occurring largely in Ukraine.

You’re having the US back the

neo-Nazis.

Pepe: The old Nazi movement!

Michael: It’s the same swastika-carrying group that threatened

Russia in World War II. And this is like waving a red flag before

a bull. Putin continues to remind the Russians. We know what

happened with the 22 million Russians that died in World War II

with Europe coming in. We’re not going to let it happen again.

And you can be certain Russia is not going to be sucked into

invading the Ukraine. The US has its military advisers in the

Ukraine. Now, the Vineyard of the Saker has a very good

report on that. America’s trying to needle Russia into

fighting back against the terrorist groups and Russia

has no desire at all to. There’s nothing that Russia

has to gain by taking it over. It’s essentially a

bankrupt country.

The US is trying to provoke a response so it can say Russia
is attacking the West. The result will probably be, that

Russia will simply provide arms to the E. Ukrainians

to fight back the invasion. And you’re going to have
a waste-land in Western Ukraine and Poland. And
this wasteland will be a new buffer state with
Europe. Already you have, maybe, 10% of the
Ukrainians having moved to Russia and the
east. 10% are now plumbers in England
and Europe, working.

They are beginning to look like Latvia, and all the other

neo-liberalized countries. Neo-liberalized countries? If

you want to see the future, look at Latvia and Estonia.

Look at Greece. That’s the American plan. Essentially,

an emigration of skilled labour, a sharp reduction of

living standards, a 20 percent decline in population.

And although it may appear to have more income,

all of this income and GDP is essentially interest

collection and rents to the FIRE sector.

All US GDP growth is essentially payment to the bank, to
the landlords and the monopolist, it’s not the population -

employees aren't sharing in the GDP. It’s all concentrated
at the top. They make a desert, and they call it growth.

It hasn’t changed. Rome was a predatory economy held by

military force that ultimately collapsed and the US is on the

same trajectory as Rome. And it knows this, I have spoken

to US policymakers & they say, “you know, we’re going to
be dead by then. It doesn’t matter if the West loses.

I’m going to be rich. I’m going to buy a farm in New
Zealand, and make a big bomb shelter there, and
live underground, you know, like a cave dweller.”

The financial time frame * the predatory rentier time frame

is short term. The Eurasian time frame, is long-term. So,

you’ve got to have the short-term burning what wealth

it has, as opposed to the longer-term building up.

[Consider the Biden Covid relief measure.] They call it a stimulus

bill, but if you’re starving, if you haven’t been able to pay your

rent, if you’re six months behind in your rent and you get

enough money to pay the landlord, at least one month

back rent, that’s not a stimulus, that’s a survival. And

it’s a one-time payment. This kind of stimulus checks

that America’s sending out are sent out every month

in Germany and parts of Europe.

The whole idea in Europe is: OK, you have a pandemic, you

have business interrupted. What we’re going to do is we’re

going to have a pause. You don’t pay the rent, but the land-

lords are not going to pay the banks. And the banks are

not going to be in arrears. We’re just going to have a

pause so that when it’s all over people will go back

to normal. Well... China and Russia are already

pretty much there and where you are [in Asia],

and especially in Thailand, are already back

to normal.

But in America anybody who’s renting or who’s bought a

house on mortgage credit or who has credit card debt or

personal debt or automobile debt they’re way behind.

And all of these stimulus checks are just being used

to pay the banks and the landlords - not to buy more

goods and services.

All they’re trying to do is, is get out of the hole they’ve dug

in the last 12 months. That’s not a stimulus that’s a partial,

desperation payment. This problem never existed in other

civilizations. You have the whole tradition of Greece and

Babylonia --- that’s what my book Forgiving the Debt is

all about. The whole idea is, when there's an economic

interruption, you have an interruption, you don’t have

people going into debt. You wipe out all the arrears

that have mounted up. You wipe out the tax arrears,

the rent arrears, the debt of payment arrears. So,

once the crisis is over, you can start from a

normal position again.

There’s no normalization in the US, there’s no normal position

to start. You’re starting from a position, even more behind the

financial problems than you were when you went in. The

foreign economies of China and Russia don’t have that

kind of problem, they don’t have any kind of deficit. So,

the West is beginning with 99% of the population

deeper and deeper into debt to the 1 percent.

Where is that whole polarization between the 1% and the

99 %? It doesn’t exist, certainly in China and in Russia,

Putin is trying to minimize it, given the legacy of kleptocracy

that the neo-liberals put in, he’s still trying to deal with that,

but you really have that. It’s a difference in economic

systems, and the direction in which these systems

are moving in.

Pepe: I’m really glad that you brought up Ukraine, Michael,

because this, let’s say U.S. foreign policy, even before

Trump and now with the Biden-Harris administration,

basically more or less what it boils down to, is

sanctions, sanctions, sanctions, as we know,

and provocations --- which is what they’re

doing, certainly, in Syria with that

recent bombing.

In the case of Ukraine & Donbass, it’s absolutely crazy

because NATO so-called strategists, when you talk to
them in Brussels, they know very, very well, about
each state or whatever they weaponize and
financialize, to profit Kiev to mount some
sort of offensive against the Donbass:

and even if they would have l,300,000
soldiers against 30,000 in Donbass.

If the Russians see that this is going to get really heavy if they

intervene directly with their bombing, with their super missiles,

they could finish this story in one day. And if they want it, they

could finish the whole story, including invading Ukraine, in

three days, like they did in 2008 with Georgia, and still they

keep the provocations, loosely acted on by people from

inside the Pentagon.

And so, we have sanctions, we have nonstop provocations, and

we have also a sort of introducing a Fifth Column — elements

inside or at the top of government — which brings me to, and

I would love to have your personal analysis on the role of

Mario (Goldman Sachs) Draghi now in Italy, which is

something I had been discussing with my Italian

friends. And, there’s more or less a consensus,

among very well informed, independent Italian

analysts that Draghi may be a perfect Trojan

horse to accelerate the destruction of the

Italian state, which will accelerate the

globalist project of the European

Union, which is absolutely non-

state centric.

Let’s put it this way, which is also part of the Great Reset,

so, if you could briefly talk to us about the role of Super

Mario at the moment.

Michael: Well, Italy is a very good example to look at. It had

strings for a long time. When you have a country that needs

infrastructure, plus public, social democratic spending...

you need a government to create the credit. But when the

US and specifically the University of Chicago free market

lobbyists created the the Eurozone financial system, their

premise was that governments cannot create money. Only

banks can create money. Only banks owned by the bond

holders can create money for the benefit of their owners

and bond holders. So, no European government, first of

all, can run a budget deficit sufficient to cope with the

coronavirus or with the problems that have been

plaguing Italy for a decade.

They can’t create their money to revive employment, to revive

infrastructure, to revive the economy. The European Central

Bank only lends to other central banks.

It’s created trillions of euros just to buy stocks and bonds, not

to spend into the economy, not to hire labor, not to build infra-

structure, but just for the holders of the stocks and bonds.

The 1% or 5% of the population gets richer. The function of

the European Central Bank is to create money, to save the

wealthiest 5% from losing a single penny on their stocks

and bonds.

And the cost is to impoverish the economy and to basically

make the economy end up looking like Greece, which was

sort of, the dress rehearsal for how the Eurozone was

going to just essentially reduce Europe to debt

dependency, just like in feudalism, everybody

had to have access to the land by becoming

a serf.

Well now you’re in debt peonage. It’s the modern, finance

capital’s version of serfdom. And so, in Italy we’re going

to need government spending. We are going to need to

do in our way what China’s doing in its way and what

Russia is doing in its way. We’re going to have some

kind of government program. And we can’t have the

economy being impoverished, just because the

University of Chicago has designed a plan for

Europe to prevent the euro ever from being

a rival to the U.S. dollar.

If there’s no European central bank to borrow,

to pump euros into the world economy, then,
only dollars will be left for central bank

reserves.

The United States doesn’t ever want a rival. It wants satellites

and so that’s what it’s basically turned Europe into. And I do

not see any response outside of Italy for an attempt to say

we can’t be a part of this system. Let’s withdraw from

the euro.

I know that the Greeks, when I was in Greece years ago, we all

thought can’t we join with Italy and Portugal and Ireland and

say look, the system isn’t working. Everybody else no, no,

the Americans will just simply get us out of office one way

or another.

And in Italy, of course, if you look at what happened after World

War II, the great threat was Italian communism. You had the

Americans essentially say well, we know the answer to

communism, it’s fascism, and, you saw where they put

the money. They essentially did every dirty trick in the

book in order to fight any left- wing group in Italy, just

as they did in Yugoslavia, just as they did in Greece,

wiping out the partisans, all the leading anti-Nazi

groups from Greece to Italy to elsewhere. All of

a sudden, they were all either assassinated or

moved out of office and replaced by the very

people that the US had been fighting against

during World War II.

Well, now Italy is finally coming to terms with this and trying

to fight back and you’re having what’s happening there,

between Northern Italy and Southern Italy. You’re

having the same splits occur in other countries.

Pepe: Yeah. Well, I’m going to bring up, perhaps an even more

extreme case now Michael, which is the case of Brazil, which

at the moment is in the middle of an absolutely out of this

world mix of telenovela and Kabuki theater that even for

most Brazilians is absolutely incomprehensible. It’s like

a fragmentation bomb exploding over and over again,

a Groundhog Day of fragmentation bombs.

In fact, it’s completely crazy. Lula [former President Luiz Inácio

Lula da Silva] is back in the picture as well. We still don’t know

under which terms, we still don’t know how the guys who run

the show, which are the Brazilian military, are going to deal

with him or instrumentalize him, et cetera.

I bring up this case because …essentially it has convulsed

Brazil completely and large parts of Latin America. It is a

telenovela with one cliffhanger after another, sometimes

in a matter of minutes, but it encompasses all the basic

themes of what really interests the 0.01 percent, which

we can identify as a class war against labour which is

what the system in Brazil, since the coup against the

Former President Dilma Rousseff has been waging.

A war on mixed economies, economic sovereignty,

which is something that the Masters of the Universe

of the 0.01 percent cannot wage against Russia and

China. But that was very successfully waged against

Brazil and implemented in Brazil. In fact, in a matter

of 2 years, they completely devastated the country

in every possible sense, industrially,

sociologically, you name it…

And of course, because the main objective is something that

you keep stressing over and over again, unipolar rentier

dominance, in fact.

Brazil, I would say is the extreme case in the world not only in

the Global South, but in planetary terms of let’s say the last

frontier of the rentier economy, when you manage to capture

a country that was slowly emerging as a leader in the Global

South, as an economic leader. Don’t forget that a few years

ago, Brazil was the sixth-largest economy in the world and

on the way to become the fifth. Now it’s the 12th and falling

down nonstop and controlled by a mafia that includes not

by accident, a Chicago Boy Pinochetista, Minister Paulo

Guedes, who is implementing, in the 21st century,

something that was implemented in Chile in the

‘70s and ‘80s. And they were successful.

Apparently, at least so far.

Brazil is so disorganized as a nation, so shattered, so fragmented

& atomized as a nation that it depends on the re-emergence of a

single political leader, in this case Lula to try to rebuild the nation

from scratch. And even in a position where he cannot control the

game he can interfere in the game, which is what happened, like

you know, … when he gave a larger-than-life press conference,

mixed with a representation of himself as a statesman and said,

“Look the whole thing is shattered, but there is some light at

the end of the tunnel.”

But still, he cannot confront the real Masters of the Universe that

have allowed this to happen in the first place. So just to give an

example to many of you who are not familiar with some details

of the Brazilian case, and it involves directly the Obama-Biden

scheme or the Obama-Biden larger operation. When Biden was

vice president in 2013, in May 2013, he visited Brazil for three

days and he met with President Dilma.

They discussed very touchy subjects, including the most important

one, the absolutely enormous, pre-salt oil reserves, which obviously,

the Americans wanted to be part of the whole thing, not by accident.

You know what happened one week later? The start of the Brazilian

colour revolution, and this thing kept rolling and rolling and rolling.

We got the coup against Dilma in 2016, we got to the Car Wash

operation landing Lula in jail. And we got to the election of

[President Jair] Bolsanaro. And now we are in a place where

even if the military controls this whole process, even if

Bolsanaro is becoming bad for business will he become

bad for the rentier class business, for the 0.01 percent in

the U.S. that has all the connections in their new, large

neo-colony in the tropics, which has enormous

strategic value, not to mention, unforeseen

resources, wealth resources, right?

So, this is an extreme case - and I know you follow Brazil

relatively closely. So, your geo-economic and geopolitical

input on the running telenovela I think would be priceless

for all of us.

Michael: Well, this problem goes back 60 years. In 1965, the

former president of Brazil came to New York and we met. He

explained to me how the United States essentially got rid of

him because he wasn’t representing the banking class. And

he said that they built Brasilia because it’s apart from the big

industrial cities, they wanted to prevent industry and

democracy and the population from controlling

the government.

So, they built Brasilia. He said maybe they’ll use it as an atom

bomb site. It certainly doesn’t have an economic thing. Well,

fast forward, in 1980, after Mexico defaulted on its foreign

debt in 1972, nobody would invest in Latin America. And

by 1990, Brazil was paying 45 % interest per year to

borrow the dollars to be able to finance its deficit,

which is mainly flight capital by the wealthy.

Well I think I’d mentioned before, I was hired by Scudder,

Stevens and Clark for the Third World bond fund. 45%:

I mean, just imagine that. It’s a fortune every year. No

American would buy it, no European would buy it. Who

bought it? The Brazilians and Argentineans bought it,

& I get it, they’re the government, they’re the central

bankers. They’re the president’s family. They’re the

1 percent, they’re the only people that are holding

Brazil’s dollar debt.

So when Brazil pays its foreign dollar debt, it’s paying to its own

1 percent who are holding, who are saying well, we’re holding it

off shore in the Dutch West Indies where the fund was located

for tax-exempt purposes and pretending to be American

imperialists, but actually being local imperialists.

Well then, just towards the end of Lula’s reign, the Council of

Economic Advisors brought Jamie Galbraith and Randy Wray

and me down for a discussion. How do we, you know, we’re,

we’re really worried because, Lula in order to get elected,

had to meet with the banks and agree to give them what

they wanted.

They said, look, we can see that, you know, you have the power

to be elected. We don’t want to have to fight you in dirty ways,

but will let you be elected, but you’re going to have to do the

policies and certainly the financial policies that we want and

Lula made a kind of a devil’s agreement with them because

he didn’t want to be killed and he wanted to do some

good things.

So, he was sort of like a Bernie Sanders-type character. Okay,

you have to go along with a really bad system in order to get

something good done, because Brazil really needs something

good done. Well, the fact is that even the little bit he did the

finance couldn’t take because one of the characteristics of

financial wealth is it’s addictive. It’s not like diminishing

marginal utility. If you give more food to an employee or

to a worker you know, at the end of the meal, you’re

satiated, you don’t want much more. If you give

enough money you know, OK, they buy a few

luxuries and then, OK, they save it. But if you

give more money to a billionaire they want

even more... and they grow... even more

desperate. It’s like a cocaine-addicted

person and the Brazilian ruling class

wanted it so desperately that they

framed up and controlled the

utterly corrupt judiciary.

The judiciary in Brazil is almost as

corrupt as it is in New York City.

Pepe: More, even more.

Michael: They framed them up and they want totalitarian control.

And that sort of is what free market is. Totalitarian control by the

financial class. That’s freedom for the financial class, if the

freedom to do what they want to do to the rest of the

economy, that’s libertarianism, it’s a free market,

it’s Austrian economics.

It’s the right wing’s fight against government, it’s a fight against

any governments for long enough who resist the financial and

real estate interests. That’s what the free market is. And Brazil

is merely the most devastating example of this because it

takes such a racial term there. Not only does Brazil want

to make a fortune, tearing down the Amazon, cutting up

the Amazon, selling the lumber to China, turning the

Amazon into soy production to sell to China. But for

that, you have to kill off the domestic population,
the indigenous population that wants to use land
to feed itself. So you see the kind of race war &

ethnic war that you have, not to mention the

war against blacks in the Brazilian slums -

that Lula tried so much to overcome.

So you have a resumption of the ethnic war there, and on Wall

Street, I had discussions with money managers back in 1990.

Well I wonder whether that’s going to be a model for what’s

happening in the United States with the ethnic war here.

Essentially, it’s a tragedy what’s happening in Brazil, but it’s

pretty much what happened in Chile under Pinochet which

is why they have the Pinochetistas and the Chicago boys

that you mentioned.

Pepe: Absolutely. Coming back to China, Michael, and the

[recent] approval of the 5-Year Plan, which isn't actually
the 5-year plan. It’s actually three 5-year plans in one

because they are already planning 2035, which is

something absolutely unimaginable anywhere

in the West. Right?

So, it’s a different strategy of productive investment, of the

expansion of social welfare and solidifying social welfare,

technological improvements. I would say by 2025 China

will be very close to the same infotech level of the U.S.,

This is part of “Made in China 2025,” which is fantastic.

They stopped talking about it, but they're still implement-

ing it, the technological drive in all those standard areas

that they had codified a few years ago. And of course,

this notion, which I found particularly fascinating

because it is, in one sense, socialism with some

Confucianist elements, but is also very Taoist:

The dual development strategy, which is

inversions and expansion of domestic

investment and consumption and the

balancing all the time with projects

across Eurasia, not only affiliated

with the Belt and Road, with the

New Silk Road, but all other

projects as well.

So, when you have a leadership that is capable of planning

with this scope, amplitude breadth and reach, and when we

compare it to the money managers in the West, which

basically their planning goes, not even quarterly in

many cases, it’s 24 hours.

So our dichotomy between rentier capitalism, financialization,

or whatever we want to define it, and state planning with the

view of social benefit is even starker in fact, and I’m not

saying that the Chinese system can be exported to the

rest of the world, but I’m sure that, all across the Global

South, when people look at Chinese policies, long-term,

how they are planning, how they are developed and how
they are always fine tuning what they developed and

discuss…. As you said in the beginning, this is a

frontal shock of two systems and sooner or later

we’re going to have the bulk of the Global South

including nations which nowadays are still

American vassals or satrapies or puppets

or poodles, et cetera.

They’re going to see which way the wind is blowing. Right?

Michael: Why can’t the Chinese system be exported to the West?

That’s a good question…. How would you make US industry able

to follow the same productive path that China did? Well for one

thing the biggest element in workers’ budget today is housing,

40 percent. There was one way to get rid of it, get rid of the

high housing prices that essentially, or whatever a bank

would lend. And the banks lend essentially the economic

rent. There’s a very simple way to keep housing prices

down. You tax the land rent, you use your tax system,

not on taxing labor, that increases the cost of labor,

not increasing capital, that leaves less, industrial

capital, but your tax of the land and the real

estate and the banks.

Well, suppose you were to lower the price of housing in

America from 40% to 10% like China has, and this is the

big element in the cost structure difference. Well, if all

of a sudden, people only had to pay 10% of their

income for housing, then all the banks would
go under, because 80% of the bank loans,

are mortgage loans.

The whole idea is that the purpose of housing is to force how

many buyers and renters go into debt to the banks so that the

banks end up with all of the lend rent that the landlord class

used to get. This is what’s preventing America from being like

China. What if America would try to develop a high-speed

railroad like China?

Well, then you need the right of way. You’d need to have the

railroads go in a straight line. … They need a right of way

and it doesn’t have a right of way because that conflicts

with private property and most of the right of way is a

very expensive real estate.

So, you can’t have high-speed rail in the United States, like in

China. Suppose you would have a low-cost education. Well

then, you get rid of the whole means of siphoning off labor’s

income to pay for education loans. You could go, suppose

you had private healthcare and prevent Americans from

getting sick like they do in China and Thailand, where

you are.

Well, then the health insurance companies and pharmaceutical

companies wouldn’t be able to make their rent. So you could

not have America adopt a China type industrial program

without what would be really a revolution against the

legacy of the monopoly of private banking, of finance

and all of the fortunes that have been built up

financially really in the last 40 years

since 1980.

Pepe: So, what’s going to happen in the, let’s say, short to

mid-term in the U.S.? Michael, we are seeing the corrosion

of the whole system, not only externally in terms of foreign

policy & the end of the free lunch, but internally with those

70-million-plus “deplorables” being, literally, canceled from

public debate, the impoverishment of the middle classes,

with over 50 million people in the US who are practically

becoming literally poor. Obviously the American dream

ended a few decades ago, maybe, but now there’s not
even a glimpse of it, that there could be a renewal
of the American dream.

So, we have a larval civil war situation, degrading on a
daily basis. What’sthe end game in fact? And what
exactly does Wall Street, the US ruling class - guys
who have those lunches at the Harvard club -

what do they, ultimately, want?

Michael: Well, what you call a disaster for the economy, isn’t it

a bonanza for the 1%? This is a victory of finance. You look at

it as a collapse of industrial capitalism. I look at it as the

victory of rentier finance capitalism. You’re having

probably 10 million Americans that are going to be

thrown out of their apartments and their homes in

June when the moratorium on rents & mortgages

ends. You’re going to have a vast increase in the

homeless population. It will probably represent

an increase in people who use the subways.

Where else are they going to live?

And all of this, there’s an immense amount of private capital

firms that have all been created in the last year of just wealth

accumulations and they’re saying there are going to be such

great opportunities to pick up real estate at bargain prices,

all of this for the commercial real estate, that’s broken, all

the buildings and the restaurants that have to be sold...

because they can’t meet their mortgage payments and

their rents, all the houses that are going to be under,

private capital can come in and do what was done

after the Obama evictions.

We can do what Blackstone did. We can buy them all out for

pennies on the dollar. So, for them, they’re looking at their

own 20-year plan. And their 20-year plan, is to grab

everything!

consortiumnews.com

The views of individual contributors

do not necessarily represent those

of Strategic Culture Foundation.

__________________________________

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Recently, the British Board of Film Classification

(BBFC), the body tasked with censoring and

classifying the films released in the UK,

announced that it has decided to get

involved in educating parents:- on

how to deal with one of the most

controversial issues they face.

It has compiled a list of five movies that “explore

transgender experiences” which it believes are

fit for family discussions. It hopes that, as a

result of this initiative, it can prompt a

discussion on this rather sensitive
topic, between parents and
their children.

Although on its website the BBFC presents the
initiative as an educational one, its real aim,
however, is not so much to educate,
as to advocate.

In this instance, the objective is to get families to

educate themselves about “trans rights & trans

people’s journeys”. It uses the term “educate”,

in the sense that advocacy campaigners use it

- which means encouraging families to accept

and embrace the gender ideology promoted

by the trans activists also involved in

this initiative.

The BBFC’s ''partner'', is All About Trans, a project

backed by charity On Road Media, which aims to

“change how the media understands & portrays

transgender people”. It clearly also wants to

influence parents and children, so their

outlook falls into line with its views.

In principle, there is nothing objectionable about groups

of private individuals organising and launching an

advocacy campaign. In a free and democratic

society, advocating for different points of

view is an important feature of
public life.

But matters are very different when supposedly neutral

official institutions take it on themselves to serve as

conduits for the agenda and ideology of

campaigning groups.

There is a problem when the official authority of the BBFC

is used to promote the views of one section of the

community --- particularly on a sensitive and

contentious subject such as trans culture.

(Part of an article by Frank Furedi, author and

social commentator. He's emeritus professor of
sociology at the University of Kent, Canterbury.

Author of How Fear Works: The Culture of Fear

in the 21st Century. Follow him on Twitter

@Furedibyte The full article first
appeared In RT)

______________________________________________

This news item appeared in Fort Russ

4 months ago & was missed by many:

Belarusian President Lukashenko Says
IMF Offered A Billion USD Bribe

To Impose Covid-19 Lockdown

by Joaquin Flores

September 10th, 2020 (Fort Russ)

Now we see another dimension to the German

push to remove Belarus President Lukashenko!

Armstrong Economics –

Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said

last month, via Belarusian Telegraph Agency,
BelTA., that the World Bank and IMF offered
him a bribe of $940 million USD, in the
form of “Covid Relief Aid.”

In exchange for $940 million USD, the World

Bank and IMF demanded that the President

of Belarus:

• impose an “extreme lockdown on his people”

• force them to wear face masks

• impose very strict curfews

• impose a police state

• crash the economy

Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko refused the
offer and stated that he could not accept such an
offer and would put his people above the needs
of the IMF and World Bank. This fact can
be verified using most search engines.

Now the IMF and World Bank are bailing out failing airlines

with billions of dollars, and in exchange, they are forcing

airline CEOs to implement very strict policies such as

forced face mask covers on everyone, including

small children, whose health will suffer as a

result of these policies.

And if it is true for Belarus, then it is true for the rest of the

world. The IMF and World Bank want to crash every major

economy, with the intention of buying over every nation’s

infrastructure, at cents on the dollar.

What do you think, gentle reader?

________________________________

Chinese court orders man to

pay ex-wife for housework

in landmark ruling

February 24th (PressTV)

A Chinese man has been ordered to pay his ex-wife

almost $8,000 for years of unpaid housework, in a

landmark divorce case that has sparked furious

debate in China.

Under the country's new civil code, which came into

effect this year, divorcing spouses have the right

for the first time to request compensation if

they bore more responsibilities at home.

Ex-wife Wang told the Beijing court that during five years

of marriage she "looked after the child and managed

household chores, while (her husband) Chen did

not care about, or participate in, any other

household affairs besides going to work."

She filed a claim for extra compensation for housework

and childcare duties, according to a February 4th

court statement.

The court ruled that Wang had, indeed, taken on more

household responsibilities and should receive 50,000

yuan ($7,700) plus sole child custody and an

additional 2,000 yuan in alimony per month.

But after local media reported this week that Wang had

appealed — having originally requested 160,000 yuan

compensation — the ruling sparked widespread

online debate over the value of women's
unpaid domestic labour.

The trending hashtag "stay-at-home wife receives 50,000

yuan housework compensation" gained over 570 million

views on the Twitter-like platform Weibo by Wednesday.

The amount reflected the length of time the couple were

married plus "the effort Wang put into housework,

Chen's income and the local cost of living,"

according to one of the judges quoted

on Monday in local media.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development

(OECD) has estimated that Chinese women spend nearly four

hours doing unpaid labour daily — 2.5 times that of men and

higher than the average.

Marriage breakups have surged over the last two decades in

China as divorce laws were liberalized and women became

more financially independent — to the concern of Beijing,

which is trying to boost birth rates, in an

ageing population.

(Source: AFP)

What do you think?

___________________________

Imam Khamenei: Enemies Can’t

Do a Damn Thing against Iran

February 3rd (al Manar)

Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Sayyed

Ali Khamenei, stressed that the enemies of the

Islamic Republic are incapable of adopting

anti-Iranian measures.

“Be aware, that enemies cannot do a damn thing against

the Islamic Republic. Islam’s and the Islamic Republic’s

power and authority is growing,” the Leader said on

Wednesday during a videoconference with a group

of Iranian eulogists in an annual ceremony marking

the birth anniversary of Sayyeda Fatima Zahra (a.s.).

“Of course, there have been ups and downs, some individuals

serve the country and some others lose this opportunity but

all in all the movement is towards development,” Imam

Khamenei said, as quoted by Mehr news agency.

His eminence congratulated Muslims on the birthday

anniversary of Sayyeda Fatima Zahra (a.s.), as he

pointed to some of her distinctive characteristics.

The Leader referred to the fundamental difference of Islam and

the West towards women. “Islam’s and the Islamic Republic’s

view towards women is based on respect, while the West

views woman as a commodity and instrument,” he noted.

''Islam knows no difference between men and women with

regards to divine and human values'', Imam Khamenei said.

“We are proud of the view of Islam and we protest

over the Western view of women and lifestyle.”

Referring to the Western propaganda - that claims Islam and the

Islamic hijab hinder the growth of women, Imam Khamenei said

“This is a clear lie and the obvious proof is the situation of

women in the Islamic Republic.”

“Iran has not seen in its history this great a portion of educated

women and women that are active in different social, cultural,

artistic, scientific, political, and economic fields and this is
a result of the Islamic Republic,” the Leader highlighted.

Source: Iranian media

WHAT DO you THINK?

_________________________________

The quantum leap forward: On birthing

the world’s fastest, most advanced

internet network, China claims

supremacy over the US

January 14th, 2021 (RT)

by Brian McGleenon,

A journalist who has worked for Fuji Television,

The Daily Express, The Independent, KBS and

Pear Video.

Beijing’s new quantum computer can solve mathematical

problems in 200 seconds that it would take current super-

computers millions of years to solve – and the network

around it, will revolutionise how we live and work.

China achieved “quantum supremacy” with the development

of its Jiuzhang quantum computer, which last month surpassed

Google’s Sycamore quantum device with its ability to calculate

100 trillion times faster than the fastest classical supercomputer.

The development sent shock waves around the world. But before

this news could be fully digested by rival players in the quantum

race, Beijing announced it had also built the world’s first fully

integrated quantum network. Earlier this month, a network of

satellite relays and fiber optic cables between Shanghai and

Beijing, was able to “teleport” huge amounts of data.

The world is now witnessing the birth of a Chinese quantum

internet that will revolutionize society by allowing unhackable

transfers of data and optimizing machine learning for the

‘internet of things’, and possibly leading to instantaneous

communication when developed further. Quantum

computing allows the evaluating of multiple

possibilities at once and the performing
of complex calculations not possible
on normal computers.

“Quantum computers aren’t just about doing things faster or

more efficiently,” a Wired article explained last year. “They’ll

let us do things that we couldn’t even have dreamed of

without them. Things that even the best super-

computer just isn’t capable of.”

As the writer described it: “If you ask a normal computer to

figure its way out of a maze, it will try every single branch

in turn, ruling them all out individually until it finds the

right one. A quantum computer can go down every

path of the maze at once. It can hold uncertainty

in its head.”

The Chinese scientists teleported quantum information 1,400km

(870 miles) to two satellites then back to earth via receiver

stations – a first step in creating a global-scale quantum

internet. Together with the development of Jiuzhang,

the recent developments have pushed the country

to the forefront in the race to win the ‘quantum age’

– a development that will unnerve Washington

and Silicon Valley.

According to Professor Lo Hoi-kwong, of the University of

Hong Kong, China is now playing the leading role in the

application of quantum communications. He predicted
that the technology would have advanced applications

for the Chinese military, its finance sector, and for

the country’s overall communications.

One of the key architects of Jiuzhang, Professor Chao-Yang

Lu, of the University of Science and Technology of China,

told RT.com that the computer gained “quantum

advantage” over the most advanced classic

supercomputer through the use of photons

of light to solve calculations, instead of the

classical use of electrical binary signals

in microprocessors.

He claimed the revolutionary design would allow computations

that would take conventional supercomputers hundreds of

millions of years to solve to be executed in seconds.

Speaking to RT.com from his office in Beijing, Professor Lu

said the applications of the new technology would transform

“the field of quantum chemistry and optimization, which can

be helpful in designing new materials and machine learning”.

He explained how Jiuzhang could be deployed in China’s quantum

internet development, “because it can be used as a node,” able to

program and store information being communicated through the

quantum network. The professor added that the Chinese device

had an advantage over its competitors, such as Sycamore,as

“it uses photons that are naturally compatible with the

internet because obviously flying photons are the

fastest and only sensible way to transfer

information over long distances”.

He added that “quantum computation and quantum communication

using photons share a lot of techniques in common”. Sycamore

relies on super-cold, superconducting metal, whereas the

Chinese alternative can operate at room temperature.

One promising application for quantum computers is their ability

to solve machine-learning optimization problems and quickly

read huge data sets. This speeding up of machine-learning

algorithms will allow much more advanced autonomous

devices. The development of the internet of things will

see vast scales of data gathered every second by

devices, sensors and machines. Quantum

computers would be ideal information-

processing systems.

Professor Lu emphasized that the phrase “quantum supremacy”

was not about political domination, but based on such devices

outperforming classical supercomputers. He stressed:

“Building quantum computer machines is a race between

nature and humans, not between countries... The whole

international community should closely collaborate.

We should encourage more open scientific

exchange, in both knowledge and people.”

Since 2016, China's president Xi Jinping has been aggressively

pushing the advancement of the nation’s research into quantum

technology. The move is a key part of his blueprint to make

China technologically self-reliant and a global leader in

scientific research and development. He has set the

nation a goal of achieving dominance in the area

of quantum computing by 2030.

Billions of dollars have been poured into the quest, and a new

institute created: the Chinese National Laboratory for Quantum

Information Sciences. The institute was behind the creation of

the integrated quantum network, consisting of two satellites

and thousands of kilometers of optical fiber cables linking

key government facilities, power grids, military posts, and

banks between Beijing and Shanghai. The whole system

is claimed to be immune from disruptive cyber-attacks.

According to the Global Times, president Xi announced at a CCP

group study session in October 2020 that he wanted to strengthen

“top-level design” in the field of quantum science and encouraged

the acceleration of “breakthroughs in basic research”. Referring

to the nation’s dedication to becoming dominant in the field, the

state-run tabloid also reported that “China had nearly twice as

many patent filings as the US for quantum technology overall

in 2018”.

The US has responded testily to China's ambitions in quantum

computing, particularly fearing its military applications. In 2018,

President Donald Trump placed his signature to the National

Quantum Initiative Act, which pledged $1.2 billion for research

in the field over five years. In the same year, the US military

implicitly referred to China’s quantum advancements as a

national security threat in a statement titled ‘Technologies

for Threat Military Applications’. It read: “A global race has

ensued to exploit and operationalize quantum technologies

for the use of military effects. The race to conquer the

quantum domain is among the most fiercely

competitive in today’s world of technology.”

Quantum computing can utilize two fundamental properties

of quantum mechanics: superposition and entanglement.

Superposition means the information held in ‘qubits’ can

exist in two different states simultaneously. This could

allow vast amounts of information to be stored in

sections of code.

The infinite variables allow the quantum computer vast

amounts of processing power, because each qubit can

perform multiple calculations at once. Superposition

also greatly increases the speed by which a quantum

computer can solve certain problems that would take

classical computers millions of years. For instance,

the computational advantage of China’s quantum

computer can solve mathematical problems in

seconds that the world’s fastest conventional

computer, Japan’s Fugaku, would take an

estimated 600 million years to solve.

Entanglement is another advantage of the quantum and is

one of the strangest phenomena of quantum mechanics.

Einstein called entanglement “spooky action at a distance”,

in which subatomic particles that are nearby each other

influence each other in some way, such as the direction

they spin in. However, the strange effects of entangle-

ment mean that when these two particles are separated,

no matter at how vast a distance, if one is changed,

the other goes through the same changes at exactly

the same time, meaning these two particles are

intimately and forever connected.

The principle of entanglement could be used by quantum

devices for the exponentially faster communication of

information.

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_________________________________

Since our youngsters accept the line that its all a con...