Comments by "John Roberts" (@view1st) on "Geopolitical Economy Report" channel.

  1. It's a shame what's happening in Pakistan. Imran Khan seemed to be a politician who genuinely cared about his country and its people and under whose leadership the country appeared to have gained a greater degree of stability and prosperity. Now it will be sold out to the USA and used to antagonise both India and China, while serving as a base for continuing US clandestine operations in Afghanistan.
    80
  2. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) needs to be reformed or replaced, as should the United Nations (UN). Both serve the interests of western capital more than they serve those of the Global South, to the detriment of everyone else.
    24
  3. Can't really do that with Russia and China and I imagine India too. And sooner or later Argentina and Brazil may join them.
    18
  4. And for control over their energy.
    18
  5. Iran... and oil. Oh, and as you say, China and Russia. Slowly but surely the power of the two most powerful countries in the world are undermining the power monopoly the USA has in the Middle East (west Asia) and creating a system more conducive to respecting the economic and political interests of countries, opposing unipolarity in favour of the interdependence of states with no one country excessively dominating the rest.
    16
  6. To destroy the system you must be part of the the system. Remember Gorbachev, Yeltsin?
    14
  7. Are Belarus engaging in active hostilities with Ukraine? If not then why are they being lumped together with Russia.
    14
  8. Like the Bible, if it gets anything right it's by sheer chance.
    12
  9. They will do what Russia has done: ally themselves more closely with China.
    12
  10. The cold war is what I call the United States-led war of global hegemony. So really we are into US-led WOGH 2.
    9
  11. Trudeau does seem like a US puppet at times, too eager to please Uncle Sam. May be this is why.
    9
  12. A classic rentier economy.
    9
  13. GDP and GNP are not very good indicators of the health of a society. Perhaps that is the very reason why they are used; to use any other metric would show the USA and the UK to be less 'advanced' than they really are.
    9
  14. ​ @Marty-o5o  Purchasing Power Parity is how they measure such things.
    8
  15. How much of Ukraine will be left after Russia's 'special military operation'? Will Russia be forced to honour the contracts and loans taken on by Zelensky if they take the whole country or will they just declare force majeure and renege on those contracts and declare any loans odious debt?
    6
  16. Because it's not about that. It's about liberalism/neoliberalism.
    6
  17. They first came for Cuba but I did nothing because I was not from there. Then they came for Nicaragua but I did nothing for I was not from there either. They also came one by one for Iran, for Iraq, for Yugoslavia, for Libya, for Yemen, for Syria, for Sudan, for Ethiopia, for Egypt, for.... I still did nothing for I was not from any of those places. Then they came for me. But there was no one left to speak out for me.
    6
  18. Correction. It isn't the European Union that's waging a new cold war but the USA. The EU, consisting as it does of a comprador class, is merely carrying out their orders. An EU that truly represented Europe in a broad sense would not be doing this.
    5
  19. Will the introduction of central bank digital currencies in any way mitigate any great depression that may be coming or allow the USA to somehow wiggle its way out of disaster, as by creating a dollar area in the EU/Latin America similar to the sterling area that Britain created in the interwar years and persuading other countries to keep on using the dollar?
    5
  20. I think you may be overestimating Britain's influence on India, cultural or otherwise. If any English-speaking country has any influence on India it is the USA, and that, I think, it built purely around geopolitical considerations based on pragmatism and expediency.
    5
  21. Capitalists seek profit. At any cost. No other concerns matter.
    4
  22. Only closer economic relations between Russia, China and Germany and a greater independence of the European Union can undermine this vassalage. And that's exactly what Britain and the USA don't want!
    4
  23. ​ @yaoliang1580  A comprador class made up of collaborators.
    4
  24. A never-to-be-repeated accident of history. And the French revolution didn't destroy a system of oppression — the monarchy — it merely replaced it with a new form of oppression — the republic. The nobility of French feudalism was replaced by the haute bourgeoisie of capitalism. Also, you mustn't forget the counter-revolution of 1815 when the monarchy was briefly restored by the victors of Waterloo, or that none other than Bonaparte betrayed the republican values of the French revolution by declaring himself an emperor.
    4
  25. ​​ @flyingfishnet  The entire population of the world (approximately 8 billions) could fit comfortably in the state of Texas. And could be easily fed too. It's not resources per se that put limits on population, but access to resources by the majority of the world's population. We live in a world of artificial scarcity where resources are monopolised. That's not to say that we shouldn't do anything to mitigate the damage we, as a species, might be doing to the climate and ecology of the planet. Of course we should, but what I'm trying to say is population growth is not the main issue here. Also, population decline comes with its own problems, not least extinction!
    4
  26. They do the same with their coverage of Russia. It's laughable and sad at the same time.
    4
  27. Like with Russia — not a hot war but a cold war. Especially regarding the European Union and countries like Japan and South Korea. The USA wants to partially disconnect their economies and keep Eurasia disunited.
    4
  28. And unfortunately it's what the present economic system is. In a word rentierism.
    3
  29. It's only a problem if you desire to control the whole world and another country stands in your way by remaining independent and able to resist your domination.
    3
  30. 16:44 The ICJ did not explicitly say that Israel was committing genocide. Rather it said that their was sufficient prima facie evidence to suggest genocide was being committed but with the implication that the matter needed further investigation to confirm with the allegations were true. In other words the I.C.J. was stalling.
    3
  31. The effects of depopulation will take decades to have an effect and most of Europe and the USA are also effected by below replacement fertility rates. It therefore won't just be China and Russia that are effected. The impact will be felt everywhere and every country will have to find its own way of dealing with the problem.
    3
  32. Even if it means these 'allies' face the destruction of their own economies and industries. With allies like these who needs client states.
    3
  33. Espérons que les contraintes économiques imposées aux États-Unis (par exemple la dédollarisation) les empêcheront d’escalader la situation à ce point.
    3
  34. Well said! And I would add the the cold war was also about the deterrence of state planning by the former colonies of western Europe as a means of achieving national economic development. Just look at the vitriole directed against China and Russia and their planned economies and the praise for a 'free market' that never existed. The West didn't — and still doesn't — want other countries developing and outcompeting them and up until now the rest of the world was assigned the task of merely providing the basic raw materials and initial unskilled labour for the West to then add value by turning those raw materials into manufactured goods. Unfortunately for the West this state of affairs may all change as first China, then Russia, and then India and Latin America break away from this one-sided and unfair system and develop their national economies.
    3
  35. ​ @etow8034  "Sexually assimilated them." I read it as sexually assaulted them. 😆
    3
  36. And the Norwegians, Finns and Danes
    3
  37. Didn't you watch the video?
    3
  38. It's basically what the British employed during the empire, applying it to others, of course, not itself. At home it was protectionist.
    3
  39. For me they seem to be nothing more than intelligence assets, giving a public face to the CIA, FBI, etc.
    3
  40. Since the time of tsar Peter the Great Russia has looked to western Europe as its inspiration and before then I would say it looked inward rather than eastwards. The West (principally western Europe) was rising at that time (industrial, cultural and technological revolutions) and Asia was declining (as a total of world GDP). Only now with the apparent rise of an Asia led by China does Russia increasingly look towards the east, balancing its outlook between East and West.
    3
  41. It certainly looks that way.
    3
  42. It would appear that these repeated crises can go on indefinitely seeing as capitalism has repeatedly shown how adaptable it is to changing circumstances no matter how bad it might be for humans or the environment. European feudalism lasted a thousand years and the Greco-Roman slave economies that preceded it for at least five hundred despite both having in retrospect their shortcomings. So what makes you think that capitalism is going to end any time soon (assuming the era of the global corporation we seem to be in now can still be defined as capitalism rather than, say, neo-feudalism).
    3
  43. It WAS originally a German name pronounced in the German way, BUT it has since been anglicized and is now pronounced according to American English.
    3
  44. It's been planned. Much of the weapons are obsolete or obsolescent or they're just getting rid of old stock that's coming to the end of its service life. They are also planning to buy new weapons from the USA, replacing not only their own stock but the major part of their own weapons industry, thus making Europe increasingly dependent on United States to a hitherto unprecedented degree. The same goes for Europe's energy industry, made to a high degree dependent upon the USA.
    3
  45. Or... capitalism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.
    3
  46. I think the United States is betting on being able to control Europe and use them as a captive market, destroying the EU's domestic economies in the process.
    2
  47. The 'West' is just a cover word for the rapacious economic imperialism of western European and north American capital, especially the core capitalist states vis‐à‐vis the periphery. Nothing much has changed since the 19th century regarding capitalism's insatiable need to seek out new and higher rates of profit by whatever means necessary.
    2
  48. To people in the USA and Canada a 'fortnight' is a period of 2 weeks.
    2
  49. I thought it was the USA through institutions like the IMF that was doing that and every time a leader comes to power that tries to make their country better they get overthrown. Ask yourself, who overthrew Khan, China or the USA?
    2
  50. NATO is outdated. There is nothing that NATO can do that the EU can't, security wise (not that I support an EU army).
    2
  51. Why would they want to imitate a failed/failing socioeconomic system as American liberal democracy!
    2
  52. Everyone will be living in "fusion centers".
    2
  53. More like a resumption of the Cold War – the global hegemony war of transnational capital and finance, led by the USA. The aim, like in the first Cold War, is to destroy Russia and China as independent sovereign states or at least as states that are not controlled by, or actively resist, the transnational capital and finance located in western Europe and North America. Nukes weren't used in the first cold war, – which lasted 50 years, 2-3 generations – and are just as unlikely to be used now. Of course there can always be accidents and incidents.
    2
  54. a) Is it communist? b) Is it Chinese communism, NOT European or even Marxist communism?
    2
  55.  @pfroudzdo  to keep its military-industrial economy functioning. The USA appears to have given up on having a non-military industrial base so it needs constant war and conflict to keep itself going.
    2
  56. The USA. At this point in time the West is basically the USA.
    2
  57. Theatrics. I doubt they have the ability or desire to really go against China or Russia. If there is some kind of military confrontation it will probably be semi-accidental, limited and of short duration.
    2
  58. @burdizzoid  Non-imperialistic nationalism (or, more properly, state sovereignty) is not the same as American Exceptionalism whereby the USA (and western Europe) has the right to its own culture, who it allows into the country, and how it uses its national resources free from the interference of others (i.e. absolute and unqualified sovereignty within its national territory but others do not. Just some examples of your kind of "patriotic nationalism" are: Telling Iran it cannot have The Bomb but the USA can; That Europe cannot import Russian oil and gas while the USA can still do so on the sly; That China has no right to exercise full sovereignty over its national territories of Tibet, Hong Kong and Taiwan but the USA can exercise de facto semi-sovereignty over the national territories of countries like Syria and Kosovo; That Muslims and Hindus (fundamentalists) must interpret their religions in ways that don't offend the sensibilities of secular liberals while Christian fundamentalists are free to go around banning abortion; Telling the world that it cannot have socialism or communism but only Anglo-American corporatism and killing millions to stop it.
    2
  59. And at least one of those has always belonged to China since at least the 17th century and is currently recognised in international law as Chinese. As for the other, I'm presuming its khanates have always recognised Chinese suzereinty under the tribute system in place for hundreds of years even if the Chinese didn't formally rule them.
    2
  60. The (collective) West should really be called the empire of the United States, more truthfully, the empire of capitalism.
    2
  61. That will also make them less dependent on foreign oil and gas for their economic needs and thus less vulnerable to blockade.
    2
  62. But loves corporatism and the monopoly profits that goes with it. Unfortunately.
    2
  63. We Brits have been successfully stopping Franco-German and Russo-German collaboration for 150 years, since at least the time of Napoleon. Now it seems the USA is carrying on where we left off. Anything that looks like pan-Eurasianism or European autarky/mercantilism is anathema to the USA.
    2
  64. Unfortunately, their assets tend to be held abroad by powers extremely hostile to such attempts at recompense.
    2
  65. The island of Taiwan is recognised by the international community as represented by the UN and the EU as being an integral part of the People's Republic China. Even its people identify as Chinese, albeit with a different government to those on the mainland. Under international law I don't think the PRC taking back by force what most people consider its own territory and overthrowing the government of the Republic of China would constitute a jus ad bellum, a legitimate reason for foreign intervention. And it's not like anyone can do anything about it given the massive military, political and economic power that present-day China wields. A fortiori the Republic of Ukraine vis‐à‐vis the Russian Federation, of which it was a part for most of its history until recently.
    2
  66. Their thinking is better a Hillary Clinton than a Bernie Sanders, but a Hitler (or a Zelensky) if that option isn't available.
    2
  67. Love being a wage slave do ya! People work to live, not live to work. It's only socialisation and compulsion that make people work for spend their lives slaving so others can get rich on pain of immiseration if they don't.
    2
  68. The BRICS members should emphasise the nature of the organisation – to facilitate trade between nations – and that it's not like the UN or the SCO where countries compete for influence.
    2
  69. realpolitik is entirely indifferent to ideological constructs like communism, fascism and capitalism. It's all about business, national security, and securing access to resources. Ethics, morality, political principles are at best given second-order status.
    2
  70. 4 centuries is a long time, you'd expect a country to be invaded at least once during that time. Now if Russia had been invaded 4-5 times in one century it would be worth talking about, but 4-5 in as many centuries not so much.
    2
  71. Regime change has never been popular that is why it has been the go-to for the USA (and France, Britain) as it's the only way for them achieve their objectives by overriding the wishes of the majority. Just ask the natives.
    2
  72. How can you separate the two?
    2
  73. You are right. In the same way non-western countries apparently appear to be unable to break the same psychological conditioning.
    2
  74. If the Chinese want to they can easily – and do – have access to western media and internet. To say otherwise is pure ignorance.
    2
  75. Communism and socialism both belong to an era long gone in the West (certainly fast vanishing) – that of heavily industrialised societies with genuine proletariats made up of an industrial working class with common interests that could be mobilised and coopted – ironically – by the (petty) bourgeoisie in their own fight with the haute bourgeoisie/aristocracy. In post-industrial societies increasingly dependent on outsourcing, insourcing (i.e. mass immigration), automation, AI, and with a workforce made up of atomised individuals seeking self-actualization through individualism this is no longer the case.
    2
  76.  @fun_ghoul  Eventually, yes, by certain metrics and looked at from within the capitalist paradigm, but for most of the time that capitalism has existed the benefits for the ordinary person were haphazard and limited. Only from the 1850's onward was there any significant rise in living standards, life expectancy and general overall improvements to the conditions of ordinary people.
    2
  77. The stick is riddled with wood rot and is more brittle than it looks. Good for bludgeoning soft things but if it strikes something hard it it is liable to break.
    2
  78. It would still be capitalist/corporatist with all the attendant problems.
    2
  79. Ordinary people demanding free speech and trying to escape from the oppressive yoke of church and state is what gave him that (in so far as he has it to any meaningful degree. I mean, his words are hardly causing to a revolution now are they).
    2
  80. That's basically what China has done. Indeed, all the countries that are counted as successful did something similar during their rise.
    2
  81. You assume there exists some kind of effective political or social mechanism by which the majority can effect change, or even know and would be able to disseminate a coherent idea what that change would look like.
    2
  82. Centre-left? Neoliberalism is not centrist, it's hard right. Traditional Conservatism may be described as centrist, but not Neo-Conservativism in my opinion.
    2
  83. The US government was dangerously provocative towards Cuba and by extension the Soviet Union. And it took the world almost to nuclear war. Just goes to show how capitalism is such a success that it needs constant subversion and the threat of nuclear war to keep it going.
    2
  84. Stop making sense, the IMF don't like it.
    2
  85.  @sheezle3  Not necessarily. The USA might create a preference area the way Britain did in the interwar years and it and Europe might then trade with a basket of currencies and/or the euro but with the dollar still the foremost currency. It might even hold Europe's gold reserves the way that it holds Germany's and the way that France holds some of Africa's. Britain already sold its gold reserves so is now completely vulnerable to economic blackmail because it has nothing to fall back on. Maybe that gold was bought by the USA and is intended to be used to back up a planned dollar-eurozone digital central bank currency area.
    2
  86. But what is NATO protecting Europe from? The Warsaw Pact is no more.
    2
  87. Human rights have been weaponised by the USA and the EU and the whole issue surrounding their application completely politicised.
    2
  88. The European Union was never really democratic because it never was intended to be. Ditto the United Nations.
    2
  89. Or slowly, almost imperceptibly, take over the old one. Ideally no one nation should be able to exercise as much control over the UN as the USA – and to a lesser degree Britain and France – currently does. It needs serious reform to give a voice to more countries.
    2
  90. Exactly! Not to mention most of the products that Americans denigrate as garbage that are made by Chinese factories on behalf of American corporations and made to US specifications. The government of the United States (its mainstream media at least) is disingenuous and very hypocritical.
    2
  91. The USA appoints the British prime minister, not the electorate and it shows in the piss poor quality of our leadership; as piss poor as the United States. Same goes for Canada and Australia. People chosen for their loyalty and unwavering, fanatical devotion to neofascist bankster liberalism and the corporate empire.
    2
  92. All talk and nothing but talk. Until the Chinese (or whoever) are able and willing to do something about it the status quo will remain indefinitely. And anyway the dollar losing its reserve currency status will no more reduce the power of the US to coerce that it did Russia and China during the cold war; no more then it did France or Britain.
    1
  93. The West is basically the USA and its UK protégé where the major monopolistic corporations and rentier banks are based.
    1
  94. When the USA was attacking Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq did Europeans boycott or sanction them? When the USA attacked Yugoslavia to allow for it to spread NATO and the EU to eastern Europe, did they? When they couped Ukraine, precipitating civil war? No! Then why should we Europeans boycott or sanction the Russian Federation when they are re‐incorporating a former part of their territory when it is being used by a foreign power to threaten their very existence? — Europe using Russian gas, oil and other natural resources makes perfect economic sense, using the USA's less so.
    1
  95. Do you think he'll end up like one of his predecessors, executed?
    1
  96. I heard that too though I don't know whether the amount quoted includes the budgets for the civilian intelligence agencies and civilian military-related research and development or whether those are considered separately.
    1
  97. 'Global South' and 'Developing countries' are themselves terms invented by the West and used to slyly denigrate the non-European world.
    1
  98. It is not CCP (Chinese Communist Party). It is CPC (Communist Party of China). A Chinese person would know that. The fact that you used the typical spelling of western — expecially US — media outlets casts suspicions upon your authenticity, in my personal opinion.
    1
  99. ... The best way to destroy that prosperity (if they can't control it).
    1
  100. Certain monopolies when state owned and operated for the greater good of society tend to be better in terms of social wellbeing and are thus preferable to their privately owned, for-profit counterparts. I think the best system though is the one that manages to combine both private and public in a harmonious way. The private sector can cater to the wants of society while the state can cater to its needs.
    1
  101. All planned. From 9/11 on down.
    1
  102. India's GDP is not a reliable indicator of economic and political stability, much less social progress. It's only because capitalists and corporatists in the West love GDP because it allows them to portray themselves as progressive (and westerners are obsessed with the idea of progress). India's lack of a single, powerful centre with an overarching moral-ideological underpinning that its people can buy in to and that can systematically plan and implement a national economic plan the way the Chinese and Russians do will seriously hinder India. If India rises it will be in spite of itself.
    1
  103. The West is undergoing a new cold war and this time around is is the one that is losing. Like the the Soviet Union before it, the West, the USA in particular, can't compete with the productivity and rising living standards of China. They still have a long way to go but like the countries of western Europe during their rise it is only a matter of time. The West is also slowly losing the propaganda war because the Chinese model is delivering success while the western model is only delivering stagnation.
    1
  104. Will a digital currency still allow the United States to dominate the European Union and the world, or will it be just one powerful currency among two or three others? Will Europe Union and the USA create a single currency like the euro and create a dollar-preference area?
    1
  105. How would they react? Simple. They wouldn't. Beyond words and token gestures they are as supportive of an impotent UN has the USA, France and Britain are. They no more want to empower the UN than the Americans do because it could be used against them also. Only if they could wrestle control of the UN apparatus from the USA and coopt it would they change their tune. The UN is just a political football that the superpowers kick around to score points of each other and nothing more.
    1
  106. The wishes of the Ukrainian people evidently do not matter otherwise the USA and the EU would not have couped the Ukrainian government chosen democratically through elections, in addition to reneging on their subsequent commitments to ending the civil war between the central government and the breakaway republics of Lugansk and Donetsk.
    1
  107. Which Bible? And 'Islamism' is a creation of the USA, just as fascism is a creation of capitalism, both designed to counter threats to the political system of the capitalist countries of western Europe and the North America, the imperial core of the West.
    1
  108. Glad to hear you're not in the slightest bit racist or cultural chauvinist and that you support the States being taken over by the Hispanics and the Chinese, or a combination of the two. Nice to know that the Great White Replacement theory that some people have been talking about is not just a conspiracy theory after all. Keep being so welcoming and demographically speaking you'll be majority Catholic/Confucian atheist, speak Latin American Spanish, and have a population with predominantly brown skin: Blacks, Native Americans, Indians, Hispanics, Chinese and other Asians. In sure the Chinese and the Latinos (the latter with their apparent love of fascist dictatorships ready to step in to defend American capitalism) will absolutely love the freedoms of the USA.
    1
  109. More likely a slush fund for the deep state or a money laundering scheme for politicians and CEO's.
    1
  110. These parties are throughly infiltrated and compromised. Nothing can be expected of them.
    1
  111. Pepe, it's too early to say we are seeing a second wave of decolonisation in Africa. I think it is premature to make such a prognosis.
    1
  112. It serves its founders and will continue to exist as long as its founders exist; that's China, France, Britain, Russia and the United States. Every other member is just a co-voter of one or more of the aforementioned, supporting them out of self-interest or necessity.
    1
  113. @fun_ghoul  Irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that China as a nation-state co-founded the UN and will certainly not wish to see its demise anytime soon, especially as it can reasonably be expected to dominate the institution in the fullness of time or if can't, founding something that will be very similar in form and function.
    1
  114. Actually I think if such an unlikely thing were to occur China and Russia would probably be the ones launching a cold war. They would be the reactionaries.
    1
  115. If you see Christian fundamentalism in the USA in the same way you see Islamic fundamentalism, as something deliberately fostered by those at the top to divide people and to serve as the fanatical foot soldiers of elite corporate power, then you will see that the phenomenon is something that exists to preserve the status quo and serves an ulterior and quite secular purpose: to preserve Western global hegemony over both the domestic (USA, LatAm) and foreign populations (Middle East).
    1
  116. Europe is being Latin Americanised by the rentier capitalism of the USA.
    1
  117. ​​​ @tomtube1012  That's why China is in the crosshairs. It's already knocked the USA off the number one spot but because of statistical chicanery the USA appears to still be the world's largest economy. It's economic stats, like its unemployment and inflation stats, are a lie.
    1
  118. Not post modern ( post modernism ). Post modernism is against colonialism, imperialism, etc. and critiques it (one of the reasons it's attacked).
    1
  119. Such a strategy helped destroy the Soviet Union and bring to an end communism in that country. The greatest rival to the USA – political, military, economic and idelogical – was thus brought low by this method and the working classes in all countries suffered, and continue to suffer, as a result.
    1
  120.  @pfroudzdo  That sounds very plausible. Russia needs to keep the United States at at a minimum distance from its borders, especially regarding its nuclear weapons.
    1
  121. But where will this communism come from? All the major countries, including China, Russia and India, all appear to be corporate-capitalist in character. I'm sure the fledgling bourgeoisie in Russia would fight tooth and nail to stop it returning, and the Chinese don't appear too keen on its return either. Such countries are more likely to form an alliance against a communist power than side with it. At best we will have two kinds of capitalist, neoliberal and non-neoliberal, arguing over who will get the bigger slice of the pie.
    1
  122. The problem there is if the US dollar becomes worthless then nobody will want to be left with money they can't spend. What's more, if the dollar crashes and there is high or even hyper-inflation, the USA is itself likely to become a dictorship. It's almost there already with a Congress and military‐industrial complex that ignores the needs of its citizens and only 2 factions of what is in effect a single party, with semi-rigged elections.
    1
  123.  @HarrySmith-hr2iv  But that debt would be repudiated during a war. And I don't think anyone believes for a moment that the USA can repay, or has any intention of repaying, that debt.
    1
  124. Neoliberalism (for the majority) doesn't work. Full stop. It ends up wrecking the economy.
    1
  125. Ukraine is just a vast money laundering, gun running, drug smuggling and people trafficking scam, in addition to being a gold mine for arms manufacturers, banks and corporations. That and the ushering in of a new cold war that leaves Europe divided and the USA's dollar hegemony intact.
    1
  126. Once the Chinese (or those with global influence) decide to use the Yuan (or whatever currency can serve as a substitute) as the new reserve currency. And not until! Trading in one's own currency is not the same as creating a new reserve currency. Also, the Chinese and Russians, Indians and Brazilians and all the rest are quite happy to go along with sanctions, especially if they come from the United Nations – eg. on Saddam Husseins' Iraq in Gulf War 1, on North Korea, on Muammar Quaddafi 's Libya, on Slobodan Milosovic's Yugoslavia, on Iran, on Syria and the Palestinians.
    1
  127. The West = the United States' imperium.
    1
  128. All this yapping about the end of US and western imperialism and neo-colonialism.... All I'll say is I'll see believe it when I see it.
    1
  129. That's probably because the USA demands that Europe does not use Chinese or Russian technology. Think Huwai. Think Cold War. Think sanctions.
    1
  130. Its demise is too slow for my liking and I'm dubious that whatever replaces it may not be that much better.
    1
  131. With the exception of Spain during the Middle Ages, I'd have to ask from which countries have the Jews been repeatedly expelled and could good old fashioned love- thy-neighbour Christian anti-semitism be to blame?
    1
  132. Is the appointment of all these neo-fascist warmongers a pschop designed like the Star Wars programme to convince the Chinese and Russians that the leadership of the USA is insane and liable to do hitherto unthinkable things and cross hitherto sacrosanct red lines if they don't at least meet the USA halfway (as by letting them genocide the Palestinians and allow the the creation of what amount to a second Puerto Rico in the Middle East)?
    1
  133. Intelligence agency guy, predecessor probably killed by the same mRNA bio-weapon they used in the clotshot masquerading as a vaccine. But like 9/11 and JFK, Israel versus Hamas, we'll never know until it's no longer important.
    1
  134. She's a puppet of the USA.
    1
  135. Bilateral treaties between countries obliging mutual assistance (though not necessarily of the military kind) in case of attack could be a partial solution, whilst international organisations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) could serve as an alternative venue for the resolution of disputes, cutting out the need for the United Nations to get involved except a an observer.
    1
  136.  @michaelkatz275  I'd rather stay at home and have my government do the same. Britain has no business in Ukraine and shouldn't allow itself to be used as a pawn in America's great game.
    1
  137.  @michaelkatz275  You mean the man who tried to avert a war between the British empire and the wannabe nascent German empire; you know, the one that thought it could tell the Germans that the rules made by the then global hegemon Britain were set in stone and that, while we, together with France, could divide Europe up anyway we liked the Germans weren't allowed to. This time around there are nuclear weapons that can wipe out entire societies, if not humanity itself. Is all you can come up with a Neville Chamberlain (and using a whitewashed version of history at that, one that portrays Britain as some kind of pacifist saint bending over backwards to prevent war). Do you really want a war for the sake of the sick system of fascistic Anglo-American capitalism and United States domination of the entire planet?
    1
  138. That's still 2 camps.
    1
  139. But it can't. And it won't. We'll see.
    1
  140. That's why they undermine a democracy anyway they can.
    1
  141. The USA is spreading the risk to the whole world, globalising this systemic 'too big to fail' problem and making it a problem for everyone.
    1
  142. It was the fear of communist revolution combined with electoral gains by socialist parties and increasing union militancy that finally convinced certain members of the propertied class in the USA to give their (very qualified) support for American-style social democratic movements and reforms favouring the working class. Theodore Roosevelt among others was one such person. That's why they threatened him with a putsch in the 30's during the Great Depression. Maybe something like that will happen again; a member of the elite will see that it's better to throw a few loaves of bread at the mob now and stave off calls for root and branch reform than to continue to continue to sprinkle them with just the breadcrumbs.
    1
  143.  @zurinarctus1329  Probably because he wanted political and economic sovereignty for Libya and Africa and didn't want either Russia or China undermining that. He probably also wanted Libya to have the same currency dominance as the USA has with the Bretton Woods system. In the end he was too ambitious. Economic power not backed up by commensurate military power is very susceptible to being destroyed by countries that have both. Also, only by combining the aforementioned judiciously can you have political power and its political power that is what a country aspires to. Economic power and military power are the means, political power is the end.
    1
  144. He already has developed a strong military and paramilitary to suppress organised labour and political dissent. More to the point, the USA and certain countries in Europe have done most of the organising as he's merely the figurehead.
    1
  145. Jesus was a black man...‽ 😮🫨😵☹️😮😯😲🤫
    1
  146. The Chinese need to thwart the creation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) denominated in US dollars that will allow the United States to have control over people's money even more than they have now.
    1
  147. Or quite possibly humanity's end game.
    1
  148. But... that would be communism. Putin would then be called a fascist and a communist tyrant by the West. — Joking aside, the Russians are keen to be seen as a country that honours its contractual obligations, quite apart from any legal or political ramifications that such a move would have. Of course, in the areas the Russians intend to keep they could, presumably, buy out foreign landowners (or use eminent domain) and then sell or give the land to its own citizens, or possibly keep it as public land held by the state.
    1
  149. Military keynesianism.
    1
  150. Ben probably supports the so‐called state capitalism of China, seeing it as preferable to that practiced in the USA and (western) Europe, basically falling into the trap of 'the-lesser-of-two-evils-ism'.
    1
  151. Hope you're right. Though economic, cultural and political war has already broken out, indeed, has been waged since 1917 (Russian revolution) and intensified after 1946 (cold war). More than a hundred years of hate caused by capitalists and corporatists.
    1
  152. I read somewhere where these banks were sent into bankruptcy deliberately to deter banks dealing in crypto currencies by being denied access to certain credit facilities that are allowed to regular banks.
    1
  153. Capitalists. That they may help the consumer is largely incidental. That's trickle-down for you. Like in Hitler's Germany or NATO during the cold war, the capitalist only cares about the consumer (working class) when threatened. Communism did this in Hitler's Germany and in western Europe from 1918 up to 1991. But communism is no more and the USA's steady infiltration and subversion of the West over the last 50 years by its alphabet soup of intelligence agencies, astroturf NGO's, combined by corporations control of the mass media, schools and think tanks, along with colour revolutions, coups and supranational organisations like WEF, IMF, UN, EU work very hard to make sure that communism and socialism never make a come back. That's why we see the rise of the right/fascism: the working class have nowhere else to turn. Fake political parties and fake democracy is all the West has. They are portrayed as moderates and centrists guarding democracy from extremism.
    1
  154. ​​​​ @sharkybrickfilms99120  Korea invaded itself...‽ ~ Get your facts straight: it was the United States of America that invaded Korea together with the usual bunch of western European imperialists under the figleaf of the United Nations. It did this when the brutal caitalist-fascist, pro-Japanese and collaborationist puppet regime of the South fell. Same with Vietnam, another country that was attacked and bombed back to the stone age for having the audacity to invade itself.
    1
  155. I'm noticing big blank spaces between comments. Is anyone else noticing this?
    1
  156. It's cultural. India and China are completely unalike.
    1
  157. The simple answer to the question posed: China is a rival and rivals impose constraints upon rival hegemons. The USA, as the rival hegemon does not like constraints imposed upon it.
    1
  158. The USA is intending to destroy China/Russia like it did in the cold war. A long drawn out attritional war of economic sabotage, cultural subversion, terrorism and insurgency. It took about 75 years to destroy communism as a political, economic and ideological system practiced in places like Russia and China — about 3 or 4 generations — and the military-corporate leadership in the United States think they can have a repeat, despite the change in circumstances, this time destroying the state capitalism as practiced first and foremost by China with Russia as the secondary target.
    1
  159.  @77Bardem  🌹🙋‍♂️
    1
  160.  @fun_ghoul  Really‽
    1
  161.  @fun_ghoul  And good bye to you too.
    1
  162. Until China decides to pull the plug.
    1
  163. Human beings like stability and traditionalism embodies that, as does conservativism. That said I think that there should be a cut-off point of between 40 and 60 for people to hold positions of political power. At the very least a quota system should be introduced to dilute significantly the number of old people who are involved in politics ranging from politicians to members of the judiciary, legislature, executive, armed forces and police.
    1
  164. The president of France is already unpopular with a significant proportion of the French electorate (or so it would seem from the recent demonstrations) so any perception among French voters that his policies vis-a-vis China are having a negative effect on the French economy will make him even less popular, especially if he's seen as pandering to the USA at the expense of his own country.
    1
  165. Stop shouting! (You're hurting my eyes) 😵 🙈 🙀 🥺
    1
  166. The "boomers" as you call them had — and have — no more influence on government than any other generation before or since. It's silly to blame an entire generation, millions of people, for the actions of a few. A "boomer" is merely a person who, through no fault of their own, just happened to be born during the good times of late stage capitalism immediately after the wars in Europe and Asia when the economy of the USA went through an unprecedented and never-to-be-repeated boom caused by the unique conditions prevailing then. For approximately 35 years from 1945 to 1980 the economies of the West experienced rapid growth that allowed them to prosper, but that all disappeared when the corporations and banks (monopolists and rentiers) came to power from 1980 onwards. So you should blame them, the neo-conservatives and neo-liberals and those who put them in power, the lobbyists, for your predicament.
    1
  167. Like with Africa before and after the fall of Gaddafi, there will be a before and after moment with South East Asia. Maybe it will be the Philippines that will have to succumb before missiles are allowed, maybe Indonesia, but however it turns out, just like Libya had to succumb before the rest of Africa fell in line, so the USA will keep pushing until it finds an Asian domino to push over.
    1
  168. ​​ @70newlife  A dictator like Hitler might and a more efficient one like Stalin certainly could. It would all be about disciplining the workforce and lowering their expectations and living standards in the case of the right seizing power, disciplining the workforce and increasing their expectations and standards in the case of the left seizing power. Think Brazil or India versus China or Russia.
    1
  169. ​ @davidgmaloof  So failed harvests compounded by the lack of proper data is an atrocity. Like, the Chinese government just woke up one day and said let's kill a couple of million of our own people... just because. You know what are real atrocities? Enslaving people and genociding them based on their ethnicity, two policies that were deliberate and not excusable on grounds of bureaucratic incompetence or maladministration.
    1
  170. If you're an elite member of the Bank of International Settlements — thus definitely know what you're doing — the same logic applies. To wit, if you can rig the system in your favour then, yes, what you say is true.
    1
  171. And then they'll accuse the Indians of stealing their jobs.
    1
  172. The NSA has a monopoly on open source intelligence. Wow! No wonder the Chinese and Russians want to develop their own internet and search engines. And it's not Bezos and co. rather it's the government of the USA. These ostensibly private monopolies are in fact state monopolies in disguise. The likes of Geoff Bezos and Bill Gates merely give the illusion of capitalist free enterprise. Without the state creating it – using public money and public universities – the 'capitalist' internet wouldn't exist.
    1
  173. Watch the video from beginning to end. Several times. Then you might get it.
    1
  174. And add "corporatism" and "plutocracy".
    1
  175. When the Ottoman empire fell and the USA took over, placing their military bases on Turkish soil, destroyed the Turkish left during the cold war, and imposed on the country corporate fascism – neoliberalism – via the debt bondage of the IMF and World Bank. Ever since then the rulers of Turkey have been nothing more than a westernised compradors class, parasites put in power by western-backed coups á la Latin America.
    1
  176. That's next.
    1
  177. That's why China (in so far as it can be considered socialist or communist) cannot allow the type of parliamentary or liberal quasi-democracy practised in the English-speaking world and neither could the Soviet Union before it. To do so would be like a small family-run business going up against a corporation, votes doled out according to wealth and power, not merit and integrity.
    1
  178. They accuse others of things that they are guilty of.
    1
  179. It's one of those dog whistling euphemisms for niggas. Western elites have made it taboo to use race as a method of classifying peoples into superior and inferior so they have took to using vague geographic terms like sub-Saharan, Global South, Third/Second World, etc. The euphemisms change from time to time – like Negro became Black, then African-American and then People of Colour; Chinaman became Chinese – but the intention behind it, even if not admitted to, is to divide the world into a hierarchy of the worthy and the unworthy; the good and the bad; the 'free' world and those they enslave, with 'The West' as the only real civilisation.
    1
  180. How many poles, 2, 3? If there are only going to be 2 or 3 poles then that will be just like the 2 or 3 political parties in so‐called western democracies: there will be little to no difference between them. Under such a system no one should expect a Chinese or Russian pole to come to the rescue of the oppressed and exploited in a US or European Union pole. Russia for instance is capitalist-corporatist so will have no qualms in joining the United States in preventing a resurgence of communism. Ditto China .
    1
  181. "Laws and rights" are still values, values which are ultimately derived from moral reason as held by the rulers of any given society at any given time.
    1
  182.  @Nikoya73  I am sorry but I am having trouble understanding the distinction you are trying to make between a moral value and the legal codification of that moral value. ¤ Is not a law merely the expression of a moral sentiment. Society believes 'X' is morally right or morally wrong and the law reflects that. Society, for instance, may believe that murder is wrong and thus the law says it is wrong; society says that theft is wrong and, again, the law does too. ¤ Is it not society — based on inherent moral concepts of right and wrong — that decides whether or not someone should have or be denied certain rights, together with what those rights should be in the first place?
    1
  183.  @Nikoya73  Okay. Nice talking to you. 👋
    1
  184.  @Nikoya73  Okay. Nice talking to you. 👋
    1
  185. Or turn to communism or socialism. In the USA the interests of about 5% of the population take priority over the other 95%. The American system of capitalism is shamelessly gamed in favour of the ultra rich and it is no way to run an economy, much less a society. The citizenry of the USA are being cheated of the better quality of life that is possible under some form of state/public control of strategic sectors of the economy that are not just those related to maintaining a war economy. Take China as the example. Look what can be achieved.
    1
  186. The neo-fascists of the USA (neolibs, neocons) think that by simply redefining something they can change reality. However, they can only change the perception of reality, not reality itself.
    1
  187. How does using athletes to spy on other athletes work? Do they share the same changing rooms and eavesdrop on conversations? Do they pick the locks of other athlete's lockers and search them? Surreptitiously take drug swabs from athletes or their clothes?
    1
  188. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has its critics.
    1
  189.  @fun_ghoul  Ignoratio elenchi.
    1
  190. The attempts of the United States to recreate the conditions of the cold war and retain its hegemonic status are having a deleterious effect on its finances and the more it spends on trying to maintain unipolarity the greater is the damage to American society. The USA needs to become a 'normal' country, content to play the role of regional hegemon in its hemisphere but not the role of the hegemon of the world. A hegemonic role like China and Russia, content to stay within their borders and trade with everyone, persuading by example and primarily with soft power instead of using force.
    1
  191. That was pre-1945 before the US puppet Konrad Adenauer was put in power as Germany's first post war chancellor and its school text books (especially those concerning history and political science) and national curriculum, as well as its mass media, were brought under the control of the USA and made to teach a pro-NATO, pro-EU, pro-cold war meta-narrative supportive of US hegemony.
    1
  192. She's got a good career ahead of her in one of the many think tanks and shady organisations that influence the world.
    1
  193. Like NATO, the EU serves US interests. It was set up that way. Indeed the whole of the post war European and international political-economic system, such as Bretton Woods, was specifically set up to benefit the USA first and foremost. That is now under challenge. Merely by developing and diverting their resources to serve their own needs is a threat.
    1
  194. Rent seeking – the enemy of capitalism. Adam Smith warned against it, as did Karl Marx. Is this the 'late stage capitalism' that some people have talked about?
    1
  195. Good for some and bad for others.
    1
  196. I think it's already been written. In fact, as I'm given to understand, some capitalists/ fascists were so outraged by it they even wrote a response which they entitled the Little Black Book of Communism.
    1
  197. Social democracy, for what it was, died in the 1980's under Thatcher and Reagan. It was euthanized rather than violently murdered like in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America which is maybe why we didn't notice its passing so much. Besides, what's so good about social democracy when only capitalists — like social democrats — are the only ones who get elected?
    1
  198. On paper and in principle, but in practice?
    1
  199. China is doing a Europe in reverse.
    1
  200. Taiwan already belongs to China as a de jure province. The USA implicitly, of not explicitly, recognises this, as does most of the international community, the countries of the United Nations. Therefore, legally, Taiwan is an integral part of the territory of China, albeit one that is currently not under its direct control. As for Japan, I really don't think they are a ready to sacrifice themselves as much as Americans and their supporters would like to believe. Ditto the South Koreans.
    1
  201. "... especially after the loss of East Germany." Western Germany was reunited with its eastern part in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down and the Federal Republic of Germany absorbed its rival.
    1
  202. Socialism was what allowed them to get to first base in the first place. If it wasn't for socialism (or state capitalism/state corporatism?) they would probably have still remained at the same socioeconomic level as India.
    1
  203. The Soviet Union threw China under the bus. The spat between Kruschev and Mao was the trigger.
    1