The Imperial case against Capitalism

People in the West are familiar with warfare. Our history is dominated by WW2 and before that the even more bloody, for us, WW1. And you might be forgiven for thinking these were the only wars that happened. Few people today realise the scale of warfare that the West has been involved in. We vaguely know of the Boer War against the Dutch in South Africa and the Crimean War against the Russian Empire and the Napoleonic Wars against the French. Few know of the three Anglo-Afghan wars that preceded the current 20 year conflict. Then there were the Opium Wars with China. And the war with America. And all this in the last 300 years. And before that we were continually at war with the Ottoman Empire going all the way back to the mediaeval Crusades.

It turns out that there are only 22 countries that have been spared war with the UK. Namely Monaco, Mongolia, Marshall Islands, Mali, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Kyrgyzstan, Ivory Coast, Andorra, Bolivia, Belarus, DemocraticRepublic of Congo, Burundi, Central African Republic, Guatemala, Chad, Paraquay, Vatican City, Tajikistan, Sweden, Uzbekistan and Sao Tome and Principle. And 7 of barely the size of towns or cities. So there are only 15 proper countries in the whole world of well over 100 countries that the UK has not invaded at some stage. In terms of todays population that is  272,873,050 people or 3.5% of the world. So the UK has invaded and tried to exert dominance over something like 96.5% of the world's people. If people actually want peace that UK was never your answer it seems.

And these were not sporadic military engagement. UK is always at war. In the last 100 years there has not even been a single break in fighting, with British soldiers engaged in some battle somewhere throughout the world for the whole of the last 100 years. A graphics here details the engagements.

Something else we know about the UK. Britain held the world's largest Empire covering 1/4 of the Earth's land surface and about 1/4 of the world's people. The Sun never set on the British Empire was the accolade often attributed. Is it a coincidence that 400 years of war resulted and maintained the world's largest Empire?

And another coincidence to think about. Capitalism and in the Industrial Revolution both started around the same time in Georgian Britain around 300 years ago.

If we think of the Roman Empire we think of warfare also. It seems that Empire mean wars. And the converse I also suggest seems to be true: wars mean Empires.

In the UK we are brought up on a diet of WW2 being about the destruction of an evil political system called Fascism and particularly the killing of Hitler and the end of Nazism. It is told as a noble crusade of Good against Evil. The war began with the invasion of Poland by Germany. Britain saw this as an act of aggression and so nobly sacrificed itself and declared war on Germany and WW2 began. With the help of the Russians and Americans, Germany was defeated and a great evil was removed from the world.

This story never sat too well with me. Wasn't it rather hypocritical for a country like Britain who had been at war with the world for centuries, invaded almost everyone and developed a huge empire to be criticising Germany for invading Poland? It wasn't unilateral either. Russia invaded at the same time as Germany in a power sharing agreement called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Yet Britain never mentioned any hostility against Russia for their surely equally evil invasion. Rather one sided. And to illustrate that Britain had the interests of Polish at heart they even gave Poland freedom away to the Soviets at the end of the war (sarcasm). It seems that Churchill did not fight WW2 (and it was Churchill alone, the rest of the UK wanted peace) just to rid the world of evil. Usually the Holocaust gets mentioned here, but the Holocaust began in 1942 and the scale wasn't really appreciated until the end of the war. No one ever suggests it was why the war was started.

British interests are also very partisan. In 1943 Bengal faced a famine but Churchill needed the food for his military effort and refused to release food for the Indians. The result was millions* starved to death. Churchill's initial and infamous reaction was "they deserved to die for breeding like rabbits." This was no throw away line, he considered Indians inferior human beings and he hated them. Not Churchill's fault, such thinking was quite usual at the time as we see with his adversary Hitler and his attitude to Jews, Russians and other Eastern Europeans.

* a quick note on death counts. A number of different methods are used. For instance when establishing the size of massacres against American Indians the US government requires official documents and reports from actual witnesses of individual deaths before adding them to the tally. Obviously this method will arrive at the lowest possible value. Meanwhile when establishing the size of the Nazi Holocaust bull park figures based on estimation, at least rounded to the nearest million, like "6 million" are accepted. Likewise when establishing war crimes against civilians like Hiroshima and Dresden the official figures are much more stringent and also reject figures from the ground. For example Google gives 25,000–35,000 as the death toll from Dresden while the official German emergency services missing persons report was over 120,000 and some estimates give 250,000. There were no bodies to count the fire burned so ferociously that everything was vaporised. In this case the lowest possible figure seems to have become established. So death counts can be a factor of 5 out, or even 10 in the case of Dresden. Majdanek concentration camp is another example. When soldiers first liberated the camp the rumour in the camp was that half a million had been killed there and news reporters gave this value. The first official estimate was 360,000 in 1948 and has been steadily revised to around 78,000 now. Again initial official estimates were out by a factor of around 5 and rumours out by 7. Stalin's killing sprees are yet another example. 20 million was the initial figure. Historians now range as low as 2 million now. Again a factor of 10 out. Obviously every single death is always a tragedy but death toll figures are nevertheless used to highlight the significance of events and these figures are often incredibly unreliable so you pick and chose the figures that suit your perspective.  

So the defeat of Evil doesn't work as a narrative. What does work is that Hitler and Mussolini spoke of creating an Axis between Berlin and Rome to challenge the Axis of London and Washington.  A Y-Axis, so to speak, for the X-Axis that existed. It would have been a 2-dimensional world with the Fascists in Eastern Europe and the Capitalists in the West. The fascists envisaged a power sharing agreement. They did not understand the British Empire or its mentality. Britain shares power with no one. You do not become the world's largest Empire by sharing power. The reason a battle between Churchill and Hitler in Europe became a "World" war was that Germany began to attack the British Empire. And the British Empire was ordered to protect itself thus making it a global conflict. It was ultimately an Imperial Battle. A war that came from Empire. WW2 fits perfectly into the long history of Britain developing and protecting its Empire.

Now not all conflict is so overt. Few people realise the scale of covert operations. The James Bond type operations have an even greater extent than the official ones. There is no country or people on Earth who have not been affected by British and American covert ops.

A brilliant example of just how much covert action goes unreported and unnoticed was revealed on the BBC 6 o'clock news in early 2011. David Cameron was still apparently deliberating over the official UK position in Libya. Yet on the news a live report from Libya with soldiers moving behind the journalist captured the unmistakable "move, move, move" call from a soldier in an upper class British accept. This was not a Libyan but an British soldier. Early the next morning No. 10 announced that the SAS had been deployed in Libya. Presumably the pretence that they had nothing to do with current events had to end. This also raises questions about why the journalist never said anything. They would have know there were SAS right behind them, Journalists respect the secrecy of covert ops and so no one ever knows quite what is going on.

The Coup in Iran in 1953 seems to have been a watershed moment for the CIA. A documentary called "Coup 53"--while about the British operation to re-establish the Shah of Iran after the people revolted against British rule--has a segment that details how the British MI6 taught the CIA how to destabilise a country very simply through covert means and gain the political upper hand without a costly military campaign. When Eisenhower heard about this it completely changed the US mode of operation and it began secret operations to destabilise countries all round the world.

A 4 minute edited clip from Coup 53 where they discuss the covert MI6 operation to destabilise the government of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mosaddegh in Iran and redevelop support for the Shah. Given that the Shah was seen by most Iranians as a corrupt puppet of the West this was quite an achievement. The actor Ralph Fiennes recreates an interview from a recently discovered transcript with MI6 operative Norman Darbyshire. 

Link

Now this is the pattern you will see throughout the latter part of the C20th and beyond. The West has control of a country through a ruling royal family or dictatorship. When eventually a revolution deposes this corrupt official the West then intervenes with covert military action to either re-establish support of the Western puppet or if that fails throw the country into civil war so that no one can benefit.

Most recently we saw this in Syria. Once the West had secured a stronghold in Iraq they then started to move into surrounding countries. The Syrian Civil War officially started in 2011. The CIA officially started operations in 2013. One problem with covert operations is that they are secret. Secrecy is a doubled edged weapon. It means that intelligence is protected from falling into the hands of the enemy, but it also means that no one trusts you and in "so called" Democracies that is critically important to rule by the people. If you want people to trust you you need to be honest. As a result of secrecy its hard to know exactly what is going on, but its a small step of imagination to think that CIA operations in Syria really began in earnest as soon as Iraq fell. CIA scouts looking for groups who oppose the government, making connections, making promises, routing money and weapons, supplying training, and most importantly spreading propaganda-- all the things the CIA do. CIA for instance pay for anti-government pirate radio stations in countries they want to topple, or help the government with propaganda in countries they want to support. For instance releasing global press releases so that the "world" believes what the CIA wants them to believe. Psyops it is called. The game of controlling and expanding an Empire is complex and far reaching.

Psychology is critical to power. Alexander the Great won a battle simply by fooling Oxyartes--the King of an impenetrable citadel called the Sogdian Rock in modern Afghanistan--that he had winged infantry. Such is the power of psychological warfare.

Now one thing I need to add here is the key propaganda tool used by an Empire (any Empire) and that is having an Enemy. An empire that is always just attacking other countries starts to look bad, and the people in that empire start to become war weary, ask why all this money is being spent and the leaders lose control. The simplest way of maintaining support and making overt aggression look like defence is having an enemy. It can take many forms. I believe the Romans thought non-romans were uncivilised barbarians and that being invaded and added to the Roman Empire was in their good. Indeed there is some truth to this. What have the Roman's ever done for us jokes Monty Python. Being in the Roman Empire gave you peace (from those outside the empire) and technology. But it came with a cost. You had to pay for it all with taxes to Rome and you were not free but governed from the Imperial Capital Rome. America is a bizarre place. You have Mel Gibson in Braveheart giving the immortal line, "they will never take our freedom" while sitting at the heart of an Empire that is at war across the globe against people who want their freedom but who the USA thinks need to be defeated and brought into the Empire. People want to be free to govern themselves. That is established. When an empire has to fight, it is always to subdue that desire for freedom. We see that in Afghanistan right now. Like it or not the Taliban are now free from US rule. That is a great day if you are Taliban, and no one can take that from them, not even the CIA pro-Imperial propaganda that fills all our news feeds at the moment. Someone should have a Taliban giving that Braveheart speech just to illustrate this point.

If its not bringing civilisation to people (selected by the Empire) its protecting them from other empires. At one point US Empire was protecting Europeans from the Nazis. As soon as they were defeated the US was protecting Europeans from Soviets. When that ended the US was protecting Europeans from Terrorists. There is only one thing common to all this and it is the presence of the US Empire. An Empire will always galvanise support by having an enemy so that those in the Empire look outwards rather than critically inwards. That way we don't seen the steady march of The Empire over our own freedoms.

So were the Soviets an actual threat. Who really knows. But if you look at it there is no evidence for it. All the while it was the Americans having all the wars. Korea, Vietnam to start with and all the covert operations mentioned above. The US tries to make us believe the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. But US propaganda never told us why. Why have a difficult 10 year war with a country that already supports you? Well there is video of Zbigniew Brzezinski speaking to the Taliban (then the Mujahedeen) in 1979 telling them to keep fighting. And he later admitted that the CIA had destabilise the country deliberately to draw the USSR into a destructive war. The truth is that the Afghan government invited the Soviets in to help fight the Taliban. When we compare the truth with what our media tells us we see just how heavily the CIA controls Western "free" media. I call it the Imperial Press. Its an obvious feature of an Empire that it generates pro-Imperial press for its people. That is no criticism its an obvious thing that will happen. What is more surprising is just how well they do it and how few questions the people ask. Take the example here. Did anyone really believe the USSR invaded Afghanistan? It simply makes no sense. Afghanistan was on the Russian side already. Yet people in Empires seem to just believe what they are told without question, and Empires reply upon this subservience to prosper. Certainly members of the military must not question too deeply. You see them in the NEWS struggling with what they do, because it makes no sense. But there is a kind of religious faith amongst many service men that even when it makes no sense, just keep on fighting. It does make sense, you are Imperial Storm Troopers fighting to hold and expand an empire just the same as soldiers throughout history have done. Very simple. That is warfare.

Another obvious case of the USSR being no threat was that you could count their nuclear weapons on one hand until the 1970s. It was the rapid growth of the US nuclear arsenal that prompted the rest of the world to follow suit. USA was the aggressor. Yet The US Empire suggested all along that they were simply defending themselves from the USSR. Simple and basic lies.

I suppose I should quickly address the other great bogey-man: Hitler. Was Nazism a threat? I was brought up to believe that Hitler wanted to rule the world. Well whether he did or didn't it occurred to me at the time: isn't that what Britain is already doing? If its good for Britain its good for Hitler. And I was told if Germany had won the war we would be speaking German. But aren't they speaking English. So again what is good for Britain is good for Germany. And so it goes on. The only thing we have against Hitler is the Holocaust. And yet Britain had a similar sized Holocaust in Bengal at the same time. Which has led me to think the German Holocaust, where most people died of  starvation, was in the main really just caused by the war just as the Bengal Holocaust was. Whether there was significant death in the much more controversial gas chambers is quite another story that I don't think should be confused with the main mass starvation of people. But all that aside Germany never claimed to want to rule the world. They simply wanted to join forces with the British Empire to have an Empire of their own rather than live in slavery to the British and French under the Versailles agreement. No need to make out that Hitler was a good guy at all, but he and Germany were certainly a chip from the same block as everyone else around: just looking to extend an Empire.

Now I mentioned the link between all this Imperialism and Capitalism. You will note that the Imperialists have so far have destroyed Fascism and done a good job destroying Socialism and Communism. CIA operations around the world have destabilised every single democratic socialist country in Earth. Of those that are resistant like Cuba and North Korea the US has imposed crippling sanctions. It can do this because Global Empires first and foremost control trade. All of Britain's wars were not so much to gain land as to control trade routes. This means you can tax and sanction and that gives you control of the world. Much better than old empires that just controlled land. And there have been some overt military actions against Socialism. The most famous being Vietnam. America had literally no reason for that war other than to stop Vietnam becoming Socialist.

Its not enough to apply military and economic means to crush socialism there is much Psyops too. The main argument you will hear for Capitalism is that it nay be flawed but all the other systems don't work. If the don't work you may wonder why the US has spent the last 100 years working so hard to destroy all the other systems. They are clearly viable and popular else you wouldn't need to stop them.

So why does the US hate all other systems so much. Why must America and Capitalism be the only way. The film Team America: World Police captures this mentality perfectly. America appears to be the only option. Well obviously this confers enormous power to the US when everyone believes it represents freedom and its the only way. That in itself stops people asking questions and controls their minds. And yet even people brainwashed within the empire can see that Saudi Arabia is a quite different Islamic Extremist ideology and the Taliban too. They may even know that the US supports both  Saudi Arabia and at least used to support the Taliban. We wait to see whether current affairs in Afghanistan are just the start of new Taliban cooperation with the US Empire. But perhaps the most important reason that the US hates other systems is that many Nationalise Industry. This means they take industry out of the market and give it to the Nation. A billion billion words have been spent arguing why this is a bad idea but they are almost all CIA Pysops.

Capitalism is the floating of assets on stock markets so that investors can buy and sell them. This way companies raise cash. They can also raise cash from banks. In both cases the wealth can share their wealth with industry. But like with Empire this comes at a cost. The wealthy demand either interest or dividends on their lending. As a result the savvy investor can generate a continual Return On Investment. In Jane Austin stories this is what is referred to as an "income." And it is this income that Capitalists men had attached to then which made them such attractive marriage prospects for women in her books. But there is an obvious issue with this. Why should the wealthy be rewarded for being wealthy. Why when you already have money should that money enable you to get even more? It results in a "positive feedback." In Capitalism the more money you have the more you can get. This seems ridiculous especially for the poor who do not have money to invest and end up doing all the work that ultimately supplies the wealth that is paid to the rich. This is all bad enough when confined to a country. But when the Internationally Rich start buying up your nation's assets the people end up working for money that is immediately lost from the country in interest payment and dividends. You also end up with foreigners sitting on the boards of your companies and making decisions that may benefit the Rich Investors but which may not benefit the people of the country. So powerful are these Rich International Investors that most of the decisions in a country can start to be made by these people instead of the democratic governments, and the sheer amounts of money they have can be used to bribe politicians and steer political campaigns. This was most powerfully illustrated by the East India Company that started trading in Bengal and went on to rule the whole of India. The owners of such companies are powerful enough to finance armies and start wars. And this is where we are at with the US Empire. It seeks to control countries through Capitalism. Buying and profiting from assets in other countries, steering their boards of directors, influencing local politics and if all that fails using their people in government to legalise sanctions and wars against belligerent countries.

Not surprising many countries have fought back and firstly by kicking out the Imperialist Capitalists. They nationalise key industry to ensure that it is run only by the people of the country and to ensure that all profits of that industry are enjoyed within the country. Sure there is corruption but it is within the country and by the Trickle-Down economics everyone benefits. Also moving against a corrupt leader in your own country is just part of the normal process of politics and is much easier than moving against corrupt international finance where you have no control. So in every way making local economics and politics your first priority benefits everyone except the international rich investors who cannot profit from you. A quick word to their people in the Empire and in no time you find sanctions and CIA activity in your country. This is the pattern and this is why standing up to the Empire is so difficult.

Now there are of course benefits to free trade. Being able to sell what you are good at on international markets gives you access to all the goods produced in other countries. But it has a cost too. You must price everything on international markets and that will put much of your home grown business out of work. Why buy home made china plates when you can buy mass produced plastic ones for a fraction of the price? So your economics gets skewed by international trade. It makes you vulnerable to famine also. International mass production of food like US corn will destroy your local food production. In the event of a rise in corn prices your country will go hungry. This kind of economics only works if you have another strong means of income that you can use to buy food. It great for UK where we control the world's finances through London or the US which cheated its way to get the Reserve Currency status. But for most countries its a precarious path. there are benefits and costs. So a sensible government that nationalises critical industry to protect itself, but opens the door to trade as well to get the best of both world's is what you want. But it is not what The Empire wants. It hates protectionism, it wants complete free trade (except when it suits it in sanctions) to drive prices down (for import) and enable investors to buy up and profit from everything profitable (Capitalism).

Now this is all a well oiled and established pattern. If any of this is new where have you been. And if anyone ever reads this far into the blog completely well done. It's an unedited monster post.

Recently I heard about Bolivia. In Iain Stewards excellent BBC Rise of the Continents he briefly covers the Lithium deposits in the Salar de Uyuni thought to be the world's largest lithium deposit.

This sounds like a government that puts its own people first, respects their lives, ways of life, and livelihoods. The ideal government that people in the West have been praying for. was it true?

Well the country that has been kept secret from us by the Imperial Press but its true. Evo Morales and Bolivia's Remarkable Success Story. Without external influence the people elected a leader who put them and the country first. Unthinkable in the West.

However given everything that has been said above, and the centuries of history of the Capitalist Empire to learn from, we can predict very accurately how this went for Bolivia.

The people will elect and love a socialist leader who closes the border so the Imperialists can't buy up and exploit the nations resources for their own gain. Funnelling raw materials and money out of the country as though the assets never belonged to the country in the first place. This is basically theft. It used to be done by sending an army down and simply taking what they wanted, massacring anyone who got in the way. But that is old school Roman style Imperialism.

The leader will nationalise the industry so that the government controls the finances and the profits remain within the country. If the government becomes corrupt the people will elect a new leader. If the leader collapses democracy there is a civil war again and a new democratic leader takes office. This is the normal cycle.

But this never happens. The CIA start operations to find a potential leader who will open up the country to Capitalist Investors and agree to give control of the industry to foreign investors. They then fund demonstrations and unrest and propaganda campaigns to interfere with the existing government and tarnish it in any way. If a government is reasonable and slow to react, strategies may even include "False Flag" attacks where protestors attack themselves to make it look like the government is being heavy handed, thus justifying an escalation of violence. This is what MI6 showed the CIA how to do in Iran in 1953. Its not difficult to make life very difficult even for the best and most reasonable government.

The critical mistake is when a leader decides to disband democracy or declare martial law to stop the rise of foreign interests. The leader thinks its in the interest of the country, but it is easily sold as dictatorship. Chants for "freedom" become ever louder and what freedom means is an open door to foreign interests and the sale and exploitation of the country by The Empire. This is how it has worked for 70 years or more, time and again.

So after hearing about Bolivia on that BBC program I searched the internet for "bolivia CIA coup" hoping things might be different for the Bolivian people. You will see in the list above it is one of the only countries that has been spared a UK invasion. I don't know how it fared under Reagan and his intense CIA military operations in South America. The answer is obvious. Of course the empire is trying to break Bolivia. That much Lithum is too great a prize for any Empire not to want to steal.

US Backed Coup ends Democracy in Bolivia 

Taken alone you might believe the press. But seen in the context of 70 years of oppression of any country that has profits that the International Capitalists want it is just business as usual.

In Africa they say "please let it not be oil." This is not because the people won't benefit from oil, its because The Empire will arrive and destroy your country while it extracts the oil and the profits.

Its a great irony that the country that walks over every person on Earth speaking of freedom is really only there just to take what they want and then leave. The US makes no secret of this. US always says that "it works in US interests." They can't be accused of lying. Biden said of the Afghanistan exit this week that the war "no longer served US interests." That is all they were ever there for "US interests." It seems weird that the Imperial Press has people saying that the US has betrayed them. It never has anyone's interests at heart other than the US. It was no secret. I personally don't believe people are hat stupid. People ask for the US Empire to come in because they have their own agenda and the US may be useful. But if you call upon a bigger rat to remove your current rat you have only really made the problem worse. Though no one actually asked for the US to invade Afghanistan (unlike the Soviets who were asked). They just invaded as Empire are wont to do. The question that remains of that war is what did the Capitalists want from Afghanistan. They have invested $2t in Afghanistan they are not going to turn away without getting a return on that. But what could that return be? We will have to wait and see. Perhaps it is just the bigger prize of controlling the area adjacent to China and Iran both of which hold riches the Capitalists want.

So there concludes a length trip  through the last 400 years of history and the rise of the British Empire with all the wars that involved bringing us to the C20th and the handing over of operations to the US Empire and MI6 passing on its techniques to the CIA in Iran in 1953.

Hopefully anyone reading this, for which it is a new perspective, will be armed with an extra way of seeing press reports and world events.

p.s. This differs a lot from current internet trends. Everyone agrees that we, the people, are not free but quite how we are controlled and imprisoned is not clear. In its most puerile version the story is that the Democrats are seeking to control us and the Republicans are seeking to free us. Well that may or may not be true in America bit for people outside America this has been going on for longer than America has even existed. America is just a colony of the British Empire which with help from France gained its independence from that Empire. It however went on to create its own and Britain has collaborated ever more with this growing empire.

The other narrative that is very common is that it is Socialism that seeks to spread across the world and enslave us, while Capitalism is fighting back to free us. This is ironic since Capitalism came first (17th-18th century) and it was Socialism that was invented (19th century) to try and free non-capitalist people from the power and enslavement of giant factory and industry owners. The idea that Socialism and especially Communism is about just dictatorship is an idea actually promoted by the CIA. There are many dictatorships that are not Socialist for instance Saudi Arabia. If a Socialist country is a dictatorship that is a coincidence and the people will want to remove that dictator. The irony here, that I hope has been explained in enough detail above, is that is most cases dictators only survive popular uprising because of Western support. Most Dictators are great friends of the West because they usually agree to open up the nations industry and business to foreign ownership for which they get a carte blache to do whatever they want. See Saudi Arabia as a prime example where the dictatorship is more brutal than anywhere else in earth but the press leaves them alone. For the Imperial Press to leave you alone requires high level agreements. The dictators we hate are the ones who challenge the West like Hitler or Hussein. Its this obvious double standard that complete rips apart the US narrative of desiring freedom and protection for the people of the World.

The Empire, or US led coalition AKA the US  ruled imperial coalition, works in its own interests and those interests are the enrichment of the wealthy international capitalists oligarchy that seek to plunder the globe.