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Democracy Has Departed The West - and is nowhere to be found
#1

Democracy Has Departed The West

September 22, 2015



Paul Craig Roberts
Before the West spreads democracy abroad maybe it could get some for itself. The US is an oligarchy in which government is answerable to six powerful private interest groups. In Europe governments are answerable to the EU, Washington, and private bankers and not to their peoples. In the UK the military brass has declared its hold on the reins of power.
Jeremy Corbyn is the first Labourite to lead the Labour Party in a long time. Considering the stupidity and immorality of the Tories, Corbyn could become prime minister of Britain. Should this occur, Corbyn would shift the budget priorities away from supporting Washington's wars toward refurbishing the social welfare state that made life for ordinary Britishers more secure and less stressful.
A senior serving general of the British army said that the army would not allow the people to "put a maverick in charge of the country's security. The Army just wouldn't stand for it and would use whatever means possible, fair or foul, to prevent that."
In other words, a democratic outcome unacceptable to the English military will be overthrown. Just like in Egypt.
Here we have the incongruity of Washington and London bringing democracy to others through what Vladimir Putin calls "airstrike democracy," while tolerating a democracy deficit themselves. The safest conclusion is that democracy is a cloak for an aggressive agenda, not a value in itself to the US and UK elites, who rule and who intend to continue to rule these countries for their personal benefit.
Jonathan Cook reports that the use of "whatever means possible, fair or foul," against Labour prime ministers who actually stood for the people rather than for the elites is not unique to Corbyn.
Labour Prime Minister Harald Wilson faced similar pressure and resigned. http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2015-0...e-not-new/
As far as I can tell, not only has democracy departed the Western world, but also compassion, empathy for others, morality, integrity, respect for truth, justice, faithfulness, and self-respect. Western civilization has become a hollow shell. There is nothing left but greed and coercion and the threat of coercion. When I readhopefully incorrect reportsthat Russia's President Putin desires to be a partner of the West, I wonder why such a powerful country, which has emerged into light out of darkness, wants to be Satan's partner. I assume that the reports are untrue or that Putin is acting in the interest of humankind to defuse the dangerous situation created by Washington and its NATO sock puppets.
Russia should not forget the courageous speech that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave to the UN on September 20, 2006. Standing at the podium, Chavez said that on the previous day George W. Bush stood here, "Satan himself, speaking as if he owned the world. You can still smell the sulfur." The purpose of America, Chavez said, is "to preserve the pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world."
Chavez's words were too much truth for US politicians. Nancy Pelosi, the multimillionaire Speaker of the US House of Representatives, said that such a speech was to be expected from an "everyday thug."
Elsewhere the response was different. Rafael Correa, currently President of Ecuador, said that Chavez had insulted Satan, because although Satan is evil like Washington, he is al least intelligent, and Washington is completely stupid.
The Western World is on its last legs. Unemployment is horrendous for European and American youthprimarily for the educated. Young American women, driven by student debt, advertise on Internet sites for "sugar daddies" to whom they will supply sex for financial support. The easy answer"education is the solution" is a lie. Ph.Ds cannot get jobs, because university budgets are cut in order to save money for wars and bank bailouts and 75% of the remaining budget is used by administrations to pay themselves large salaries and perks. NYU, for example, provides its higher administrative personnel with expensive summer homes. University presidents in America have multimillion dollar incomes, while the students drown in debt.
The Wall Street Mentalityunlimited Greedhas taken over American life, and this greed has been exported to Europe, which had achieved a sharing relationship between labor and capital. Today Europe, like the US, is an opportunity wasteland for the young. Greece has been sacrificed for the private bankers, and Italy, Spain, and Portugal are waiting in the wings. In the place of independent European countries, a fascist centralized authority is rising.
As millions of refugees from Washington and its NATO enablers' wars seek refuge in Europe,
budgets for social welfare are further pressed.
In recent years we have witnessed that private bankers acting through the EU were able to appoint the governments of the allegedly democratic governments of Greece and Italy.
In the Western World the aristocracy of wealth is being re-established. If Russia and China join this "partnership," then billions of peoples will be ruled by a handful of mega-rich elites.
The world is on the knife edge. The West is lost. Russia and China could go down with the West, because both Russia and China suffered tyranny and look to the West for the paths to freedom and liberty. But Western paths lead to "domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world."
Will Russia and China participate in the pillage, or will they resist it, standing firm for humanity?
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
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#2
Says it all really.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14
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#3
Neoliberal Aggression in Britain: Her Majesty's Police State

By Graham Vanbergen
Global Research, September 28, 2015
TruePublica 28 September 2015

http://www.globalresearch.ca/neoliberal-...te/5478556

Britain is not a democracy any more. The Government is now bowing down to a few extremely powerful organisations that funds their very existence.

Quote:Extremism is also coming from within. The military has just affirmed its intentions by stating that the wrong selection by popular citizen vote will mean tanks rolling down the streets of London. Referring to Jeremy Corbyn, a senior British army general declared; "Put a maverick in charge of the country's security the Army just wouldn't stand for it and would use whatever means possible, fair or foul, to prevent that." This unnamed general, who, threatening mutiny of Britain's armed forces has not been identified by one colleague, politician or newspaper mogul who printed the story and has not been arrested by the authorities for an act of treason. Clearly, they must all concur.

Lord Ashcroft's recent revelations exposes how the rich and powerful have to be obeyed. David Cameron's leadership record is torn apart by a former defence chief, Tory grandees and White House officials, for he did not toe the line.

Jeremy Corbyn's dramatic rise to power is the result of the shortsighted, self serving, deranged and fatuous that stalk the corridors of power. Immorality and greed, being the current centre of neoliberal policy has turned the population of Britain into a war weary and austerity exhausted nation, depressed and discontented with the dismal failure of an economic recovery that has the characteristics of an optical illusion more than reality.

Corbyn will transfer government expenditure away from war and wealthy tax dodging corporations and individuals towards reconstruction of the welfare state. The millions of disaffected, alienated and disengaged will probably vote for the first time in years if Corbyn makes it to the next election. He probably won't when the oligarchy funded campaign gets into high gear. They own 80% of the printed media business, 90% of internet service providers and 100% of Tories you don't think he has much of a chance do you?

The hugely destructive nature of neoliberal aggression in the UK is camouflaged by what some would call democracy. This democracy is centred around a flawed and corrupt voting system and three quarters of the electorate now know it. The current incumbents in Downing Street knew this, offered an alternative to get there then withdrew it. Of course.

The electoral process under our current system is effectively "rigged". It is an outdated and corrupt electoral system. Why do you think Britain is the only country in Europe that has such a system?

If there had been a fairer, proportional voting system, we would have never had the stand-alone, single-party governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major and, never had "New" Labour and the disposing of socialism under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. We also wouldn't have David Cameron, no longer a prime minister but more a public relations executive for corporate interests, or Jeremy Corbyn, a cry for help from the masses.

We would have had governments unable to attack Iraq and cause a million civilian deaths, or be heavily involved in the bombing of nations across the middle east now causing a tidal wave of traumatised war torn refugees to descend upon our shores.

We would not have had Thatchers right-to-buy' that saw an unprecedented 4.1 million council homes sold off, 40% of which ended up in the hands of private landlords raking in ever higher revenues in what is now a rentier society of have's and have-nots, now defined simplistically as a housing crisis'.

We would not have had the repealing of strong financial safeguards that protected us against rapacious and mindless out of control testosterone driven morons that bankrupted entire nations ours included.

We might have experienced a thriving democracy with an electorate fully engaged. Now we just have one desperate social crisis after another. Increasing poverty and homelessness, an expanding housing crisis, more ill health, increased suicide the list of profit taking through austerity and privatisation goes on.

We might have had a more prosperous economy with the foresight of rebuilding our shattered industrial heartlands instead we off-shored our real wealth and power to places like China and India in the ad-hoc pursuit of profit and dividends. How very American.

As these defeated and wanting economic scams evaporate, new, even more abhorrent rackets of extortion are invented. Now we have TTIP a secret trade agreement under secret negotiation that will have a profound impact upon our democracy, one that won't be so secret when international disputes turn into defective relations and end in conflict. This, a story that has not been covered by the media barons, for their own favourable reasons and warped logic for fear of being uncovered.

As China's economic wet dream of exploiting farmers in workhouse factories to make your shoes, (once made in Northampton) grinds to a standstill, the profits of off-shoring is crashing and with it international bourses across the world.

The destructive economic and political enterprise that attempted to construct citizen management around the edicts of the global marketplace has not just failed to mature it has comprehensively miscarried. The long assured expansion of wealth and prosperity that was to have raised the living standards of everyone through so-called "trickle-down economics" has been uncovered as nothing more than the globalised deception it really is.

As a result, we now live in times where nothing and no-one can be trusted. Not our political leaders, nor our financial or corporate leaders or religious leaders. The recent VW scandal has only amplified the global corporate lawlessness of today. All of them have abandoned the very people and principles that put them there. All of them are either raping us or raping us a different way!

What we are witnessing now is this same tightly organised oligarchy amassing unparalleled wealth as corrupt governments and officials abdicate responsibility and restore unrestricted exploitation and plundering of people and resources at the alter of profit and greed. Thatcher, Blair and Cameron have their DNA assembled around this detrimental and deadly business model.

Anti-union proposals by the Tories is merely the launch of the biggestcrackdown on trade unions for 30 years. The Tories are out to fundamentally shift the balance of power towards government and employers. Under the last parliament workers suffered the longest squeeze on living standards for generations.

This is all about profit. But no-one is being allowed to share it. You don't really think that the 40 hour working week, pensions, protective terms and conditions, maternity rights and so forth all came from the benevolence of paternalistic employers do you? No, they came from the very people who are now being attacked by democracy' and capitalism'.

These moves by the government are anti-democratic, undermine a basic right to organise and show the lengths the rich and powerful will go to make ordinary people pay the price (of austerity) that was and still is largely derived by their reckless, anti-social and negligent behaviour. These are not the traits of functioning capitalism either.

In the meantime, a hydra-like evil emerges from the middle east in the guise ofISIS that invokes a terrifying fear at home that the government augments and exploits to strip citizens of privacy and rights.

We now have a panopticon surveillance system corresponding to a modern day secret police state designed to inhibit citizen activism and dissent. Citizen groups are being harassed and police tactics are emerging worthy of the East German Stazi.

Arbitrary detention and the targeting of whistleblowers, attacks on free speechand withdrawal from Human Rights are the hallmarks of an authoritarian state. There is a pernicious veil of secrecy descending upon Britain with trade deals such as TTIP where 97% of citizens are averse but governments advance. There is an egregious and unwarrented use of terror laws and sweeping attacks on democratic rights and legal norms.

The Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, was passed during the reign of the restored monarchy of Charles II after the English Civil War. Centuries old laws such as these, desecrated in an instant with no debate, such as extra-judicial assassinations undertaken by a small elite of politicians and military personnel with no legal justification to do so. This is effectively the suspension of the rule of law and does not represent democracy as we know it.

Our Prime Minister no longer feels he needs parliamentary permission to bomb other sovereign nations and seeks no legal counsel for assassinating its own citizens. Government agencies, the police and state funded organisations use terror laws for collecting unpaid fines. Corporations are given the green light to expand employee exploitation. Unprecedented state surveillance, targeting of whistleblowers, withdrawal from Human Rights protections. Rigged voting systems, enlargement of wealth inequality and a failed monetary system where will this all lead to?

In the end, the dismantling of democracy and destruction of ordered capitalism leads to extremism one way or the other, which is exactly the direction Britain is heading.

Copyright © Graham Vanbergen, TruePublica, 2015
"There are three sorts of conspiracy: by the people who complain, by the people who write, by the people who take action. There is nothing to fear from the first group, the two others are more dangerous; but the police have to be part of all three,"

Joseph Fouche
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#4
It is pretty clear that the UK and the USA are in step on this....which is following the other is academic and while I have an opinion, that is not important IMO. The question in my mind is 'why now' and 'how to fight it effectively'?
As to the why now, I'm inclined to believe that the real [not necessarily the visible] governing structures of all large nations have always desired undemocratic and complete control, and use every opportunity given to them to consolidate that power. WWI, WWII, the Cold War, nuclear weapons fright, now 'terrorism', along with a host of false-flag operations, phony reasons for wars, boogey men, straw men, lies and propaganda machinery, financial manipulations, along with technological advances that have made complete surveillance and the propaganda easy are the likely reasons for why now. It had a kind of inevitability if the People didn't vigilantly fight against it. It has been a project of the Oligarchy since the Enlightenment and has really made huge gains since the two 'World Wars' and Cold War. Sadly, many other countries are only a few steps behind. China and Russia are very bad too, along with some smaller countries.

So, the big question is what is to be done?! ::dictator::

To me, the most obvious is you can't do anything if you don't see what has happened and the pattern[s] throughout history and nations. Once a nation ceases to become even a representative democracy [which is never a true democracy], voting will do little except on the local level, IMHO....leaving only the mechanisms of 'general strike', general resistance, or revolt/revolution [hopefully peacefully] as the way to return the sovereign to the People. Those in power have a lot of levers they can pull and a lot of repression they can use to attempt to maintain their current 'gains'. We are in a time of what I call neo-Feudalism when I don't call it neo-Fascism.

Fun times these are not. To ignore what is going on will prove fatal to humanity in not too long and to what crumbs remain of democracy very soon...as most of what little we did have before is all but gone by now. The internet and good written analysis on this, along with discussing this with others in person or over the internet, etc. are the ways to find strategies to effect change and roll back the repression and loss of rights. All too many just don't want to have to bother fighting a struggle outside of their own personal lives - I think they simply have no choice if they don't want to live their lives on their knees.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
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