U.S. Leadership’s Tradition v. History’s Truth

Middle East: U.S. Meddling, Disparaging, Interminable Crises

Presidential lies and blame

Lie and Blame the Other Guy

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.S. President Donald Trump’s Cabinet Meeting October 21, 2019

…[W]e’ll work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money, they have some cash flow.  Maybe we’ll get one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly.  But they’ll have some cash flow, which they basically don’t have right now.  Everybody is fighting.  It’s not a big oil area, but everybody is fighting for whatever there is.  So we have a lot of good things going over there, and they’re going very well.…”

“As you know, most of the ISIS fighters that we captured — ‘we.’  We.  Not Obama.  We.  … ♦ Me.  …

We helped the Kurds.  Everyone said the Kurds helped us; that’s true.  But we helped the Kurds.  They’re no angels, but we helped the Kurds.”

[But] “We never gave the Kurds a commitment that we’d stay for the next 400 years and protect them. …   [N]obody ever committed, ‘Gee, if you do this, we’re going to do that, and we’re going to stay with you forever.’ …”  

“Where’s an agreement that said we have to stay in the Middle East for the rest of humanity, for the rest of civilization, to protect the Kurds?”

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.S. President Donald Trump’s Northern Syria remarks on the “Situation in Northern Syria” October 23, 2019

“We’ve secured the oil, and, therefore, a small number of U.S. troops will remain in the area where they have the oil.  And we’re going to be protecting it, and we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with it in the future.

“Turkey, Syria, and all forms of the Kurds, have been fighting for centuries.  We have done them a great service, and we’ve done a great job for all of them.

“…It was supposed to be a very quick hit and let’s get out.  And it was a quick hit, except they stayed for almost 10 years. …

“American forces defeated 100 percent of the ISIS caliphate during the last two years.… Now Turkey, Syria, and others in the region must work to ensure that ISIS does not regain any territory.  It’s their neighborhood; they have to maintain it. …

“… As a backup to the Kurds watching over them, should something happen, Turkey is there to grab them.”

“…we’re leaving.

“…Let someone else fight over this long-bloodstained sand.”

Other Views in the News

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T reporting from Northern Syria October 23, 2019

Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin and President of the Republic of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Tuesday this week “held lengthy talks in Russia’s resort of Sochi (and came) up with an agreement regarding northeast Syria.

“As a result of the deal, Turkish military incursion dubbed ‘Operation Peace Spring’ has effectively come to an end, while Syrian troops and Russian military police are set to deploy to much of the Syrian-Turkish border. Kurdish-led militias – which Ankara believes to have strong ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – are to be fully withdrawn from a 30-kilometer (19-mile) strip along the border.”

 

Historical Context, Depth, Insight

U.S. Character and Continuance in Middle East Crises

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rofessor Norman Finkelstein in conversation with Renegade Inc

“The long history of foreign policies of the U.S and Britain are integral to how the history of the Middle East has evolved over time.

‘You have to look at it over a long period. You cannot pretend as if the situation that has befallen the Middle East – the past say, decade – is divorced from systems … that were set up by the British when they came to the Middle East …, (climaxing) in the mess you have now because they set up all these autocracies – self-serving corrupt regimes’

“This set a reaction among competing capitalism(s) culminating in the contemporary domination of the region by the U.S.

‘You can’t understand Iran without understanding the coup orchestrated by the United States in Iran in 1953.

‘You can’t understand Saddam unless you see that the US supported Saddam during the war with Iran from 1980 to 1988.

‘…One has to accept the fact that the climax of that foreign first intervention then interference is what we’re experiencing right now. This is the result of that whole corrupt system’

And there’s this

“White Man’s Burden”

“The contextual analysis outlined by Finkelstein is largely lost on a Western political and media establishment guided by morally paternalistic concepts akin to Kipling’s ‘White Man’s Burden’:

“‘There’s a feeling like we did them a favor and they blew it’”— this idea found in a post-U.S. Iraq War book by U.S. Ivy Leaguer Arab Foyad Ajami, The Foreigners Gift, whose title suggests “‘We came in, we ended the tyranny of Saddam Hussein and then they blew it. We gave them a gift and they blew it because, Arabs are so incompetent and stupid.’

“Underpinning this notion of imperialistic paternalism is a form of authoritarianism with a moral obligation at its core predicated on hubris and arrogance that’s devoid of responsibility.”  The “imperialist-colonial mindset:

‘These are lesser peoples and they’re basically incompetent – not very bright.’

 “In order to counter this, says Finkelstein:

 ‘You set up some sort of benign dictatorship which looks to the West for its inspiration.

‘… [T]hey’re not there to set up democratic regimes but regimes that are enthralled to the west. ‘They then justify it in their minds on the grounds that, ‘Well, that’s the best you can hope for from people like that.’

‘[T]hey also believe that these Middle Eastern types are African types who are completely incompetent.

‘Left to their own devices, they’re going to mess everything up because that’s just their nature.’”

“Then there are the pragmatic achievements of the west’s adversaries:

‘(People like … Nasrallah (the head of the Hezbollah) …, an extremely smart guy, very focused…; the only leader in the world from whose speeches you actually learn things’…

‘It begins with the Koranic verses and allegories; then, around one-quarter of the way through he starts with facts and analysis.

‘You could see he’s a guy who is using his time to educate. And you feel there is somebody who has pride in being Arab and Muslim.

‘I’m not a believer but I think there’s something to be said at the end of the day about human dignity and being’”

Sources

“Remarks by President Trump in Cabinet Meeting” Issued on: October 21, 2019 Cabinet Room

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-cabinet-meeting-15/

Remarks by President Trump on the Situation in Northern Syria” (Foreign Policy) Issued on: October 23, 2019 Diplomatic Reception Room https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-situation-northern-syria/

RT “‘Thanks Russia!’ — Kurdish military chief welcomes Russian peacekeeping patrols” October 23, 2019 https://www.rt.com/news/471674-kurds-abdi-shoigu-russia-thanks/

Renegade Inc Renegade TV Segment “Labouring Under Antisemitism”

Politics: renowned U.S political scientist, academic, activist and author, Professor Norman Finkelstein in conversation with Renegade Inc. https://renegadeinc.com/labouring-under-antisemitism/

Renegade Inc. is a mainstream media platform that “creates and broadcasts content aimed at those who think differently. Its mission is to inform, illuminate and inspire, focusing initially on three sectors: entrepreneurship, self-learning and the arts.”

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Banks, Politicians, Media Cloaking Coming Crash

“… The biggest human failure is not learning from failure”— Ross Ashcroft

Excerpts from Renegade Inc’s January talk with economists Marc Friedrich and Matthias Weik

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rooks, liars, crony capitalism casting blame, creating crises, continuing policies that cause crises

“…Politicians tell the public that they have got record employment and everybody’s better off but nobody tells them that more and more people are doing two or three jobs within low and stagnating wage sectors” (Friedrich)

In the last decade, economists and politicians learned nothing. “They have merely bought time”; and going forward into another crisis, “the Fed, ECB and other central banks” will continue the same pattern of printing more money.

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otchers and Betrayers

• Big winners: “The banks who created the last financial crisis.”

• Big losers: “The working class and underclass who were encouraged to borrow recklessly;” and who later suffered the U.S. and UK news media's casting of blame “for the crisis” (Friedrich).

“The banks have betrayed all of us…. They manipulated interest rates (among other things)…. Everybody who bought a house with credit was suffering.” Though we thought elected politicians are (were) “here for us,” they robbed the public treasury (our money) and “bailed out the banks” at our expense (Friedrich).

Without blame or accountability, the big banks still stand. “Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, the European Central Bank – they’re all still here. Nothing happened. And in the years “since 2008, the people lost trust” in politicians, the media and the banks.

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anufactured crisis of low-interest rates and heaps of cheap money

“Since 2008, debts worldwide doubled for private people and for companies — even three times more debts than 2008. … Central banks create one bubble after another to keep the whole thing running.” Systemic debt piled on the deletion of which requiring “inflation, devaluation of the currency and/or war.” In each case, “the people are forced to pay.”

“We used cheap money like a drug…, putting more and more drugs into the system (vein).” The last time “…, China and all the states rescued the world; they won’t save us anymore.” “We’re at the end game because it’s the final bubble…, the government bond bubble and there won’t be another bubble afterwards. It will burst.” (Weik)

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eople Power to the rescue of a Bankrupt, Failed Monetary System

“Change always comes from the people. We are more than them… We have to create the change. … Change the monetary system … Think about a new monetary system.” (Friedrich)

“Solutions … likely utilized through artificial intelligence, controlled by people for the benefit of people.” (Friedrich)

“T

he morning after the end game, if we are smart, we can solve the crisis.” If we delay, “there will be an implosion of the global markets on a scale something like the scale of 1929 — perhaps even worse.” (Weik)

Source news peg

Renegade Inc “Financial Capitalism: The Endgame” Renegade Inc Host Ross Ashcroft traveled to Germany and talked with economists Marc Friedrich and Matthias Weik aired January 21, 2019 https://www.rt.com/shows/renegade-inc/449308-financial-capitalism-end-failure/

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“Identity” Imprisons against Essential Society

Thoughts on SABOTAGE Day 60

“Democracy funded and fueled by corporate power … disenfranchises the individual, provoking some to search for empowerment through identity politics,” writes English economist Mary Wrenn.

“The argument set forth suggests that individuals construct, reinforce, or escalate allegiance to identities as a coping mechanism, some of which manifest in violent identity politics.”

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aging Caged

If the singularity of identity or perceived identity—in terms of race, creed, color, sex, sexuality and variations on the theme, national/ancestral origin or that particularly modern obsession DNA) is all you can see or want to see in self and others. 

If such “identity” is that by which you wish to be seen, named and contained, you are lost—and a “loss” to society. Such obsessive narrowing of mind, place and grouping cages, imprisons, renders useless to a world in need of new and fresh ideas, true progress.

Segregating, battling over “identity”; and allowing oneself to be caged and contained in “identity” by clever ideologues bent on robbing you and enriching themselves is one of the great tragedies of the modern era. 

The selfish sacrifice of society—giving up this essential entity of care, this life-giving, empowered and empowering, replenishing collective — is a manifestation of SABOTAGE. 

Economic Ideological Selfishness

Use and abuse of 

"Identity" against Society

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abid Individualism

Economist Mary V. Wrenn, Professor William Waller  

“The core ideological drive of neoliberalism—its villains and principal proponents politicians and business interests—is the individual over the collective…

“Under neoliberalism, the market mentality dominates all other spheres of living; collective social identity is circumscribed by neoliberalism ….”

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Thnic Caging

Mary Wrenn

“… Agency within neoliberalism (bears) certain ethnographic markers … to sustain the system.”

Within the context of neoliberalism, agency “requires tailored cultural mechanisms and artefacts (artifact) to construct and support a self-referential yet non-authentic agency.”  

[British “artifact”; also artifact: a product of artificial character (as in a scientific test) due usually to extraneous (as human) agency (Merriam-Webster)]  [Ethnic: race, culture; ethnology: a science dividing human beings into races and their origin, distribution, relations, characteristics; ethnography studies and systematically records human cultures

“No such thing as Society”

Economist and writer Frances Coppola

The philosophical movement led by Ayn Rand “emphasized individualism over everything else – what historically has been denoted ‘selfishness.’”

“One of neoliberalisms core tenets, the primacy of the individual, was “embodied” in former British Prime Minister Margaret “Thatcher’s famous aphorism, ‘There’s no such thing as society’, which implies an underlying singular human rationality, when in reality people are guided by a multitude of behaviors and emotions.”

An unlivable, unendurable, level of inequality has been “facilitated by centrist politicians who use neoclassical economics to deliver economic extremism.” And under the economic ideology of neoliberalism “a tiny proportion of people” have come to “own most of the world’s wealth.”

The void in human existence, society, collective, community gives rise to fear and uncertainty and then “populist right-wing [or other winged] forces, who maintain an uneasy status quo, but cannot deliver,” Coppola says.

“A form of political stasis [stagnation] permeates society indicative of a culture in nostalgic retreat, devoid of new ideas: … trying to hang on to what we have” and “looking back towards people whose political heyday was in the 1970s; rather than trying to look for political leaders in the new generation and saying, ‘Do they have fresh ideas?’”

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ay forward

Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking Eric Beinhocker

“Populist movements do contain some racists, xenophobes, genuinely crazy people, and others whom we should absolutely condemn,” Beinhocker writes; “but they also contain many normal people (whose) ... issues aren’t just economic.

They are also social and psychological.

They have lost dignity and respect, and crave a sense of identity and belonging.…

“They also feel that their political leaders and institutions are profoundly out of touch, untrustworthy, and self-serving. And finally they feel at the mercy of big impersonal forces – globalization, technology change, rootless banks and large faceless corporations.”

Remember (Wrenn bears repeating): “Democracy funded and fueled by corporate power …  disenfranchises the individual, provoking some to search for empowerment through identity politics. … Individuals construct, reinforce, or escalate allegiance to identities as a coping mechanism—some of which manifest in violent identity politics.”

Self-SABOTAGE!

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dealism's better

Beinhocker recalls an essential truth that lights the way forward. 

“All of the science shows that deeply ingrained, reciprocal moral behaviors are the glue that holds society together …. We must all push forwards together.”

“Periods of progress are usually characterized by idealism, common projects we can all aspire to.

Populism is a zero-sum mentality—the populist leader will help me get more of a fixed pie.

Idealism is a positive-sum mentality—we can do great things together.

Idealism is the most powerful antidote to populism.

Sources

Mary Wrenn, 2014. “Identity, Identity Politics, and Neoliberalism,” Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 61(4), pages 503-515, September.

https://ideas.repec.org/a/voj/journl/v61y2014i4p503-515.html

Mary V. Wrenn, 2015. "Agency and neoliberalism," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 39(5), pages 1231-1243. https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/cambje/v39y2015i5p1231-1243..html

“Care and the Neoliberal Individual” by Mary V. Wrenn, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of the West of England; and William Waller, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Economics, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

“Neoliberalism – An Idea Swallowing The World… what 40 years of neoliberal economics has done to us and our political landscape.” By Renegade Inc with economist Mary Wrenn and economist and writer Frances Coppola

Eric Beinhocker. “It’s Time for New Economic Thinking Based on the Best Science Available, Not Ideology: A new narrative for a complex age” http://evonomics.com/time-new-economic-thinking-based-best-science-available-not-ideology/

Eric Beinhocker is the Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.

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