From Walmart to the War-mart
The Emma Maersk, above, especially commissioned by Walmart to transport its goods from China to the US, carries 15000 containers and, travelling at 31 knots, it can cross the Atlantic in five days, half the time taken by other such ships. But on every return journey its containers are empty, and that’s the reason we’re being seduced to war.
That this huge ship, and two even bigger just built, should sail one way full and the other way empty is an entirely predictable consequence of the flaw inherent in Western Capitalism, the particular form of Capitalism which governs our lives!
In the nineteen sixties, when Western Capitalism had exhausted every means of remaining profitable in its own market, it began moving its factories offshore in search of cheaper labour. Starting in Japan, and then moving progressively to other cheap labour sources in Asia, Western Capitalism finally ended up on the doorstep of the biggest cheap labour market of all – China.
And now, after forty years of this arrangement and with China having grabbed the opportunity with both hands, it has also grabbed control of Western Capitalism, and Western Capitalism doesn’t like it.
Vastly in debt to China, and with no viable cheap alternative, Western Capitalism is now owned by China. And Western Capitalism’s only way out of the corner it finds itself in is to persuade its other “partners in crime” that China has somehow cheated on the deal, and that adjustments must be made to curb China’s authority. Which is why our Capitalist media has been feeding us stories about how evil, repressive and ruthless China is.
With Western Capitalism’s insatiable appetite for obscene profits having brought us to this perilous point, its strategy to save itself has been expanded to also include Russia, the other great power it has been unable to subdue, and which, consequently, we must also be taught to loath, hate and fear.
The Same Old Stories
Repeating the same tall tales that have always worked, the Capitalist media first describes the offending “regime” as a dictatorship and its leader as a vain-glorious tyrant. And from there the stories move on to tales of cruelty to women and children, oppression of minorities, religious groups and the suppression of opposition political parties.
And then ultimately, once the shooting starts, a stage not yet reached with China but now enveloping Russia, we get fed stories of ruthless attacks on hospitals, schools, supermarkets, churches, and the destruction of vital public utilities, all topped off with bloody stories of the wanton killing of innocent individuals.
And no matter how many times these stories have been proven false, like weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons in Syria, babies thrown from incubators in Kuwait, still we swallow them, hook line and sinker. If the Media asked nicely it seems many would be prepared to proceed to gut and fillet themselves.
With its plans for China simmering, Western Capitalism is proceeding first to destroy Russia. But, because Russia is a nuclear power, its employing proxies to do its dirty work. Ignoring the fact that the USSR was dissolved in 1991 and that Russia has actually embraced Capitalism, Western Capitalism wants more. And having been thwarted in its attempts to simply seize Russia, as it tried to do when the Soviet Union collapsed, Western Capitalism now plans to first destroy it economically, and then seize it.
And to do that Western Capitalism is using its control of Nato, whose membership it has expanded to include former USSR members states, which it is now employing to so threaten Russia’s security that Russia has to retaliate, and so we have the war in Ukraine.
Every effort Russia has made to become an integral part of the Capitalist family must be ignored. And we certainly can’t mention that if it wasn’t for Russia’s great WW2 sacrifices, the fight against the Nazi tyranny would have been lost. Nor can we be reminded that China was fighting the Japanese ten years before Western Capitalism declared war on Japan, or that the US branch of Western Capitalism was still trading with the Nazis up until 1941, by which time my father, and many like him, was a prisoner of the bastards.
And we certainly can’t mention that Ukraine collaborated with the invading Nazis in WW2, colluding with them in the deaths of thousands, including many thousands of Ukrainian Jews.
Capitalism corrupts and Western Capitalism corrupts absolutely.
Just as imperialism was always justified by the argument that it was bringing “enlightenment and civilisation” to the world, so Western Capitalism makes the case that its wars are justified for the “democracy and freedom” they bring. And so we get people like former US Secretary of State, the vile Madeleine Albright, declaring that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children “was worth it” for all the good things the US invasion brought to their country.
Western Capitalism, subduing all before it, is just another form of Imperialism.
At the outset, when domestically-produced goods first started being made offshore, the Capitalist media, ignoring the plight of workers thrown on the scrap heap by the betrayal, instead trumpeted Capitalism’s move for providing consumers with more affordable goods, assuring us that any profits would trickle down to whoever was earlier harmed, and that everything would be rosie.
And ever since, official indicators that would normally expose the fallacy of those assurances have been gerrymandered to hide the terrible consequences suffered by working people. For instance people working part time or in temporary employment can be regarded as “fully employed” and so not numbered among the jobless.
Capitalism is Social Spending’s biggest Beneficiary
The rotten irony of Western Capitalism is that, for all its lauding of the virtues of free enterprise and the evils of Socialism, it is social spending’s greatest beneficiary.
Think about it – just as it was suggested that last week’s budget payment of a cost of living subsidy to the poor would go straight to every supermarket’s bottom line, so too does every dollar paid to a beneficiary wind up in Capitalism’s pocket. And since public works departments were dismantled, so too do all the huge sums allocated for building and maintaining infrastructure, hospitals, schools, public buildings, dams, housing, bridges and roading, end up in Capitalist coffers.
But it gets worse – with Western Capitalism’s pursuit of “profits before people” having brought us to the brink of war, requiring vast sums of public money to be budgeted for wars, again it’s Capitalism, which owns the arms industry, hat profits from it.
Armaments produced by the Military Industrial Complex are not constrained by price, or any competitive quoting system, but, so, long as the Capitalist media can create enough fear among enough people, weapons of war can be sold for whatever exorbitant price Western Capitalism cares to charge for their supply.
And that situation is made ever more cruel by the fact that so many workers who were made redundant by Western Capitalism’s move to cheaper labour markets, are now employed in the arms industry. Where, in effect, they are paid from public funds to make profits for the system that destroyed their jobs, to make weapons intended to destroy the workers to whom those jobs were given.
Our arsenal is not as empty as those shipping containers
If all this rings a bell but seems to suggest nothing can be done – there is something we can do! We can demand that our media be required to tell both sides of the story of any conflict, not just that supplied by those hired to supply stories that benefit Western Capitalism’s vested interests.
We can demand that your government and media explain why, if China’s reported interests in the Pacific pose a threat to our security, why are Russia’s similar concerns about Nato forces being situated on its borders, not similarly valid.
We you can ask them, if atrocities being reported in Ukraine are so horrendous as to require us to adopt sanctions against Russia and to send military and civilian aid to the victims, why is similar action not taken against Israel for the creeping genocide it has been conducting on the Palestinians for the past 75 years.
We can demand that those charged with ensuring that goods and services we consume meet the highest standards, be also required to scrutinise the media, whose biased content poses a greater threat to our health and safety than any of the other consumer goods they so diligently monitor.
And if the Media, or your MP, or Jacinda, or Luxon, or Mahuta won’t respond to these concerns, we can report them to the Ombudsman, or to any number of consumer watchdog organisations, including the Consumer Council, or even the broadcasting Standards Authority or the Press Council, although I wouldn’t bet on the last two doing much.
We are only as powerless as we allow ourselves to be.
Fabulous column. Ive long since given up upon the cognitive dissonance that has beset Leftists worldwide supporting Western capitalism and imperialism in support of a neo Nazi regime.
What a great summary of today’s events. I couldn’t have explained it better myself. Hopefully more of the world can wake-up to what is really happening and that the US are the new Nazis. Eventually the tide will turn and it will be the US that will self destruct going by the history of past empires. There is a lot of truth in the saying “you reap what you sow”
Well said, Malcolm.
You’re laser-focussed on the real issues.
I’ll copy this article to many people who I’ve been trying to get these points across to for the last dozen or more years, but who assume that I can’t possibly know that this is true (reading fake media etc etc), and if it was true it’d be in the media……….D’Oh.
Many thaks Sir, please write more of these highly informative and excellent articles.
Great synopsis Malcolm. Perhaps now some will look a Trump in a different light. The prime plank that he was elected on was that he wanted manufacturing jobs returned from China to the “rust belt” where they used to be = the ships not sailing to Wal mart at all!!
Soon after he was elected early in his term on his first visit to Europe as President he pointed out that Europe had already lost to Putin as they were dependant on Russian gas.
All Putin has to do is turn it off. TO DATE HE HAS NOT the gas still flows.
The Wests sactions on Russia are having a far greater impact on the West than Putin. In Energy, grain and fertilizer prices are rising the people of the west have to meet them or frezze and starve in the dark.
On a second note capitalism works well when it based on capital but it fails when it is based on debt. Which as you point out, is now the case with most of western capitailism. The rewards being reaped by the money lender.
‘Western capitalism’ is a system … a formula. Is there actually an ideal system? I’d like to know it – and having known it – present it to the P.M. – knowing the world will change because of my actions.
Capitalism is bad but the alternative is worse . When Russia allowed a few westerners as the cold war slowly evaporated a friend went there on a business trip. He found warehouses full of shoes but only for the left foot rivers were like tar nothing got done without money changing hands a fear was very apparent at all levels .
The mainstream media sells Ukraine as a democracy, unlike Russia where the opposition is pretty much banned. It never mentions that Zelensky has banned the Ukrainian opposition parties that received 14% of the vote in the 2019 elections and has imprisoned the parliamentary opposition leaders.
War Is A Racket
https://www.bookdepository.com/War-Is-Racket-with-War-Prayer-Complaint-Peace-Smedley-D-Butler/9781908388322?ref=grid-view&qid=1653294567308&sr=1-4
Never in all my life have I seen a blog so utterly wrong. So totally upside down. It’s hard to know where to start!
A few points:
1. China has screwed itself. It is strategically weak, it’s made enemies of all its neighbours, it cannot feed itself, it’s running out of drinkable water and now facing demographic collapse thanks to its one child policy. It’s internal finances are a fraud and a crash is on the way. Those who moved fixed assets to China will regret it in the long term.
2. Russia invaded Ukraine: part of a decades long pattern by Putin of trying to regain control of the old Warsaw Pact countries by bully tans invading neighbouring states. This was his last roll of the dice and he’s failed. Russia is also in demographic decline, has never developed a manufacturing capacity and even relies on foreign companies to extract its own resources.
3. Oh and it now transpired that there were WMD in Iraq! That strange gulf war syndrome so many suffered from turned out to be sarin gas released by accident when they bombed one of Saddam’s bases.
Well said Andrew So people need to take off their blinkers
Andrews ‘story’ has a 1001 holes in it including how many of the hundreds of thousands of usa troops got to inhale the ‘vapors’ from this one sarin site ,,, was it burning for the length of the war?
Also, was it old no ‘red line’, usa supplied stock ,,,, “During the Iran-Iraq war, the United States provided a lot of support to Iraq, ranging from conventional weapons to biological and chemical weapons, from intelligence analysis to direct intervention .”……
Now, exposure to the real and proven tonnes of vaporized depleted uranium dust created by usa munitions making troops sick, I could believe …. George Bush’s ‘ghost’ sarin gets them off the hook for being responsible ,,, conveniently from ” a US Government-funded study “.
From the suspicious to the absurd ,,, Trevors ‘left foot shoe wharehouse is taking the piss ,,,, Did a factory supply these shoes for one legged participants,,,, in a Russian arse kicking contest Trev?,,,,,
The Russians must think westerners are incredibly stupid/racist , to believe Russians are that stupid.
Lol if you keep smoking crack maybe the Communist Party of China will finally fall apart tomorrow as all you neocons have been predicting for decades.
Pity it will only be in your mind.
A lot of your piece might make sense but there no excuse to defend a murderous authoritarian regime – Russia. It’s the idiocy of the far left that they do this. Any left wingers who support Russia are a pack of idiots who have no idea what is happening there. Right wingers ditto.
Why do you neocon lunatics defend the most murderous authoritarian regime that has ever existed, the so called ‘United States of America’?
At least in democracies you can vote leadership out and have a media free enough to challenge the reasons for going to war in the first place. Completely agree the msm gets manipulated but I would argue that nearly all we know about wrong doings in the west comes from sources in the west. You are not getting that from Chinese or Russian sources. No I am a neoconservative.
That would be ‘ no I am not’
Myself I see it as ridiculous to support US neocon imperialism, or to support a corrupt neo Nazi kleptocracy that has banned political opposition. Support Russia? Cant say they smell of roses, so no again. Best thing NZ can do is going neutral like Switzerland.
Anlther brickbat for our corrupt Western media making up stories of great Ukrainian victories. Bull. Lying scum.
It’s not about “left” or “right” – it’s about “Western Capitalism!”
Kia ora Malcolm
Re the Press Council aka New Zealand Media Council, I posted an article on their formal complaints process on TDB Open Mic. https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2022/05/21/the-daily-blog-open-mic-21st-may-2022/
Will upload it to http://www.republican.co.nz sometime in the next few days.
Is there a disease called neocon? Or one that establishes when the wind comes from a certain quarter, and minds shut with a snap never to open again. You sound like a bunch of ignorant loonies with your finger pointing. The appearance of something you can exclaim about, but the how and why can never be realised objectively viewed from all quarters, admitting the conditions at each quarter, much less some path to move on from there.
There is nothing neo-con about me whatsoever. I am centre-left in fact. The US is not perfect but you can say what you like about Biden and you can demonstrate on the streets. You can’t do any of that in Russia. It’s not about Western capitalism either. It’s about standing up to tyranny.
It’s about appearances. Living room democrats? with matching cushions and curtains having intelligent conversation over cheese and wine. It’s supporting others sending others to do the dirty work of putting others down so there can be cheese and wine into infinity – for you. The side that promises a pleasant life for you is the side you are on, not one concerned with some creed or principles.)
Sounds like a KGB dirty politics column. I was converted into a communist by my brother in laws old man in the 1970’s. That was until we tried to visit USSR in 1982, but instead got behind the Iron curtain. What I saw was an oppressed poor backwards paranoid population with the old working the farms/fields and the young in the military. The only modern vehicles were the Lada of the army.
I think Putin as the leader of a super power is a coward and bully attacking a defenceless nation. What is the dumb, lunatic thinking behind destroying human life and structures and then taking over the country. This is exactly like what Hitler and then Stalin did to the Poland and the European nations. If he wants to change a head of state then they should have free elections and no one wants a communist government. I can see Putin’s situation progressing to a world war III with the use thousands of weapons of mass destruction and the end of mankind as we know it. This is 2022 not 1942?????.
Nothing to see here. Move along now:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/85qihtvw6e/the-faces-from-chinas-uyghur-detention-camps
“With Western Capitalism’s insatiable appetite for obscene profits… ”
Would also describe China I believe?
Hey, from reading your article, I get the I impression that you think capitalism (the system) is bad, and that you don’t like it.
But I didn’t see any alternative system, governance or example of the way a country or government should be mentioned.
Did I miss it? Or
What is the alternative to capitalism?
Or is capitalism with more controls?
Surely, if Capitalism is the way, it should be applied for the common good, not to simply benefit the 1% as is the case with our Western model, with its promise of the benefits trickling down. The question is; should we live in a a Capitalist-controlled state, rewarding the few, or one where State-controlled capitalism rewards the many?
The Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern fresh from a “trade mission” to Japan and Singapore is now on a “trade mission” to the United States. She has a Minister of Trade (Damien O’Connor) and a Minister of Foreign Affairs (Nanaia Mahuta) so why, when she has two dogs in the kennels, does she decide to do the barking herself? Does she lack confidence in the ability of her Ministers or is she simply motivated by the opportunity to have her star shine at the Harvard graduation ceremony?
The reality is that this is not really a trade mission, even though trade will be a key sticking point. Jacinda went to the US for the same reason that she visited Japan. To bring New Zealand into an expanded NATO military alliance against China, which requires Russia to be fully incorporated into the US sphere of influence in order to isolate and effectively encircle China. That in turn requires that the NATO states give New Zealand access to their markets sufficient to make up for the loss of Chinese and Russian markets. That is a huge ask of the United States and NATO and it is questionable whether even the honey-tongued Jacinda can succeed where all her predecessors have failed.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will be taking a very simple message to President Joseph Biden which is “I have already committed our country to war with Russia. I want to go to war with China as well, but without a substitute for our Chinese export market I will not be able to hold my people within the NATO alliance. You have to deliver access to your markets if I am to join the war on China while holding the people of New Zealand in check”.
This is not a trade mission, it is a war mission and Jacinda is there because only heads of government can speak on matters of war and peace. However despite what she may believe it is not a given that NATO forces will prevail over Russia in Ukraine, and there is even greater doubt over their ability to forcibly contain and isolate the PRC. The New Zealand government is heading down a dangerous and deceitful track with no certain outcomes.