Waarom is een serieuze beschouwing van de westerse roofbouw-cultuur zo belangrijk? Om ondermeer de volgende redenen:
Indians walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than the birds and squirrels, and their brush and bark huts last hardly longer than those of wood rats, while their more enduring monuments… vanish in a few centuries.
How different are most of those of the white man… roads blasted in the solid rock, wild streams dammed and tamed and turned out of their channels and led along the sides of canons and valleys to work in mines like slaves… Long will it be ere these marks are effaced, though Nature is doing what she can… patiently trying to heal every raw scar.
John Muir. 1869
Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen said Wednesday that she doesn't know whether the U.S. political system is a democracy or an oligarchy, as a recent study concluded, but that growing inequality is an issue lawmakers should address.
During a hearing on Capitol Hill, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asked Yellen about a Princeton study that found that wealthy, well-connected individuals have far more influence over national policy than the average voter.
'All of the statistics on inequality that you’ve cited are ones that greatly concern me, and I think for the same reason that you’re concerned about them, they can shape the ability of different groups to participate equally in a democracy and have great effects on social stability over time,' Yellen responded.
'I don't know what to call our system,' she added. 'I prefer not to give labels, but there’s no question we’ve had the trend toward growing inequality, and I personally find it a very worrisome trend that deserves the attention of policy makers.'
The Huffington Post. Fed Chair Not Sure Whether To Call U.S. An Oligarchy Or Democracy 9 mei 2014
You ask me to plow the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my mother’s bosom? Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest.
You ask me to dig for stones! Shall I dig under her skin for her bones? Then when I die I cannot enter her body to be born again.
Wovoka. Religieuze leider van Paiute indiaan. 1856-1932
Not since the US and EU took over Eastern Europe, including the Baltic countries, East Germany, Poland and the Balkans and converted them into military outposts of NATO and economic vassals, have the Western powers moved so aggressively to seize a strategic country, such as the Ukraine, posing an existential threat to Russia.
Up until 2013 the Ukraine was a ‘buffer state’, basically a non-aligned country, with economic ties to both the EU and Russia. Ruled by a regime closely tied to local, European, Israeli and Russian based oligarchs, the political elite was a product of a political upheaval in 2004, (the so-called “Orange Revolution”) funded by the US. Subsequently, for the better part of a decade the Ukraine underwent a failed experiment in Western backed ‘neo-liberal’ economic policies. After nearly two decades of political penetration, the US and EU were deeply entrenched in the political system via long-standing funding of so-called non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), political parties and paramilitary groups.
The strategy of the US and EU was to install a pliant regime which would bring Ukraine into the European Common Market and NATO as a subordinate client state. Negotiations between the EU and the Ukraine government proceeded slowly. They eventually faltered because of the onerous conditions demanded by the EU and the more favorable economic concessions and subsidies offered by Russia. Having failed to negotiate the annexation of the Ukraine to the EU, and not willing to await scheduled constitutional elections, the NATO powers activated their well-financed and organized NGOs, client political leaders and armed paramilitary groups to violently overthrow the elected government. The violent putsch succeeded and a US-appointed civilian-military junta took power.
The junta was composed of pliant neo-liberal and chauvinist neo-fascist ‘ministers’. The former were hand-picked by the US, to administer and enforce a new political and economic order, including privatization of public firms and resources, breaking trade and investment ties with Russia, eliminating a treaty allowing the Russian naval base in Crimea and ending military-industrial exports to Russia. The neo-fascists and sectors of the military and police were appointed to ministerial positions in order to violently repress any pro-democracy opposition in the West and East. They oversaw the repression of bilingual speakers (Russian-Ukrainian), institutions and practices – turning the opposition to the US-NATO imposed coup regime into an ethnic opposition. They purged all elected opposition office holders in the West and East and appointed local governors by fiat – essentially creating a martial law regime.
Professor James Petras. The Kiev Putsch: Rebel Workers Take Power in the East. 7 mei 2014
De door de EU en de VS gesteunde gewelddadige, deels neo-nazi, oppositie in de Oekraïne, die onderdeel moet worden van 'Geen Jorwert zonder Brussel,' nu de democratisch gekozen regering is verjaagd, met steun van propagandisten als Geert Mak en Henk Hofland, onderdeel van de zogeheten 'politiek-literaire elite' in de polder.
Als je invloed en macht wilt hebben, moet je groots zijn. Dat is iets wat we in Europa van ze kunnen leren.
Geert Mak over ‘Amerikanen’ op 22 augustus 2012 bij nu.nl
With a continent to take over and Manifest Destiny to goad us, we could not have avoided being footloose. The initial act of emigration from Europe, an act of extreme, deliberate disaffiliation, was the beginning of a national habit.
It should not be denied, either, that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led west. Our folk heroes and our archetypal literary figures accurately reflect that side of us. Leatherstocking, Huckleberry Finn, the narrator of Moby Dick, all are orphans and wanderers: any of them could say, ‘Call me Ishmael.’ The Lone ranger has no dwelling place except the saddle. And when teenagers run away these days, in the belief that they are running toward freedom, they more often than not run west. Listen to Haight-Ashbury dialogues in Joan Didion’s Sloughing toward Bethlehem. Examine the American character as it is self-described in Habits of the Heart, by Robert Bellah and others.
Wallace Stegner. The American West as Living Space. 1987
De vervreemding, het niet betrokken zijn, het aan niemand verantwoording afleggen, het niet geworteld zijn in zowel de natuur als de cultuur, het altijd gemobiliseerd blijven, het op de vlucht zijn voor iets wat doorgaans onbewust blijft, zijn kenmerken van het neoliberale kapitalistische systeem, zoals dat bekritiseerd wordt door een aanzienlijk aantal vooraanstaande denkers in de VS. De Amerikaanse auteur Wallace Stegner:
But the rootlessness that expresses energy and a thirst for the new and an aspiration toward freedom and personal fulfillment has just as often been a curse. Migrants deprive themselves of the physical and spiritual bonds that develop within a place and a society. Our migratoriness has hindered us from becoming a people of communities and traditions, especially in the West. It has robbed us of the gods who make places holy. It has cut off individuals and families and communities from memory and the continuum of time. It has left at least some of us with a kind of spiritual pellagra, a deficiency disease, a hungering for the ties of a rich and stable social order. Not only is the American home a launching pad, as Margaret Mead said; the American community, especially in the West, is an overnight camp. American individualism, much celebrated and cherished, has developed without its essential corrective, which is belonging. Freedom, when found, can turn out to be airless and unsustaining. Especially in the West, what we have instead of place is space. Place is more than half memory, shared memory. Rarely do Westerners stay long enough at one stop to share much of anything.
Het Amerikaanse kapitalistisch systeem heeft de mens een functie gegeven, die van producent en consument, maar het heeft de mens geen plaats gegeven en dat feit wordt door talloze Amerikaanse schrijvers als een grote leegte ervaren in het hart van de maatschappij. In haar bundel Slouching Towards Bethlehem citeert de Amerikaanse schrijfster/journaliste Joan Didion om dit feit te onderstrepen het gedicht van W.B Yeats getiteld The Second Coming met zinnen als deze:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
En eindigend met:
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Het gedicht werd geschreven in 1919, ‘in the aftermath of the first World War.’ In de inleiding van haar bundel schreef Didion bijna een halve eeuw later:
This book is called Slouching Toward Bethlehem because for several years now certain lines from the Yeats poem... have reverberated in my inner ear as if they were surgically implanted there. The widening gyre, the falcon which does not hear the falconer, the gaze blank and pitiless as the sun; those have been my points of reference, the only images against which much of what I was seeing and hearing and thinking seemed to make any pattern. ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ is also the title of one piece in the book, and that piece, which derived from some time spent in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, was for me both the most imperative of all these pieces to write and the only one that made me despondent after it was printed. It was the first time I had dealt directly and flatly with the evidence of atomization, the proof that things fall apart: I went to San Francisco because I had not been able to work in some months, had been paralyzed by the conviction that writing was an irrelevant act, that the world as I had understood it no longer existed. If I was to work again at all, it would be necessary for me to come to terms with disorder. That was why the piece was important to me. And after it was printed I saw that, however directly and flatly I thought I had said it, I had failed to get through to many of the people who read and even liked the piece, failed to suggest that I was talking about something more general than a handful of children wearing mandalas on their foreheads… it seemed to me then (perhaps because the piece was important to me) that I had never gotten a feedback so universally beside the point.
De chaos, die de westerse cultuur heeft geschapen is onmogelijk in zijn geheel te overzien. Het is nu overal, binnen zowel als buiten, in de vorm zowel als in de inhoud, in alles daast wordt geproduceerd. En hoe groter de chaos des te krampachtiger de mens verteld wordt dat het 'orde' is.
Didion schreef meer dan vier decennia geleden over de leegte en het daarmee verbonden uiteenvallen van de Amerikaanse samenleving, in een tijd dus waarin volgens Geert Mak de VS ‘nog decennia van grote voorspoed’ zou meemaken. Maar zoals de intelligentsia in elk groot imperium is ook de Amerikaanse intelligentsia in staat de eigen cultuur haarscherp en genadeloos te analyseren. Niet het corrumperende mainstream verlangen naar 'hoop' speelt daarbij een vitale rol, maar juist het tegenovergestelde ervan, het diepe besef dat ‘We are tragedy,’ zoals Eugene O’Neil schreef, de bekendste Amerikaanse toneelschrijver die in zijn toneelstuk The Iceman Cometh één van zijn protagonisten elke hoop laat vernietigen ‘because he judges it to be more pernicious (kwaadaardig. svh) than despair.’ De 'hoop' van de mainstream werkt altijd en overal vernietigend omdat de geïdealiseerde voorstelling van de werkelijkheid al snel een symptoom blijkt te zijn van autisme, het onvermogen zich aan de realiteit aan te passen. Amerikaanse kunstenaars begonnen dan ook al in een vroeg stadium van de massacultuur te rebelleren tegen de ‘business civilization’ en het verstikkende, hypocriete ‘moral life of the middle class.’ In 1964 schreef de Amerikaanse literair criticus Lionel Trilling, ‘in 1939 the first tenured Jewish professor in the English department’ van Columbia University, over de wijze waarop O’Neill ‘dramatized the actual struggle between Poet and Business Man’ en hoe ‘the lust for gain’ telkens weer destructief uitwerkt. ‘To O’Neill the acquisitive man, kindly and insensitive, practical and immature, became a danger to life and one that he never left off attacking.’ De gezeten burgerij is zich van dit cynisme diep bewust, zoals blijkt uit het feit dat een ‘increasingly respectable audience awarded O’Neill no less than three Pulitzer prices, the medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Yale Doctorate of Letters,’ zonder ooit de consequenties te trekken uit O’Neill’s visie op de vervreemde Amerikaanse maatschappij, waarbij – in de woorden van Trilling – ‘The modern life of false ideals crushes the affirmative and creative nature of man…’ En de reden was simpel, het driftleven in het kapitalisme schuift rationaliteit en moraliteit opzij. Niemand is er ooit verantwoordelijk voor wat dan ook. Alles gebeurt alleen maar met de consument, hij/zij is geen handelingsbekwame burger, maar levenslang een onschuldige toeschouwer. Morele verantwoordelijkheid is alleen voor degene die zich dit kan permitteren. Dat element komt terug in het werk van de Amerikaanse auteur Cormac McCarthy. In zijn roman Meridiaan van Bloed (1985) dat handelt over de logica van het Amerikaans geweld in de wereld, zegt een protagonist:
De moraal is een uitvinding van de mens om de sterken het recht van de sterkste te ontnemen. De moraal wordt voortdurend door de geschiedenis gelogenstraft. Een moreel standpunt valt op geen enkele manier te bewijzen of te weerleggen. Als iemand sterft in een duel zegt dat niets over de juistheid van zijn inzichten. Het feit dat hij duelleert bewijst al dat hij een nieuw, breder inzicht is toegedaan. De bereidheid van de duellisten om andere argumenten als niet ter zake terzijde te schuiven en zich direct op het oordeel van de geschiedenis te beroepen geeft duidelijk aan hoe onbelangrijk standpunten zijn en hoe belangrijk de verschillen ertussen. Want het meningsverschil is op zichzelf futiel maar niet de verschillende willen die erin tot uiting komen. De ijdelheid van de mens kent waarschijnlijk geen grenzen, maar zijn kennis blijft onvolmaakt en hoe hoog hij zijn oordelen ook schat, toch moet hij ze uiteindelijk laten toetsen door een hoger hof. Daar gelden geen bijzondere dispensaties. Daar worden overwegingen van gelijkheid en rechtschapenheid en moreel gelijk van nul en generlei waarde bevonden en de standpunten van partijen geminacht. Als het gaat om leven en dood, om wat er zal zijn en wat niet, speelt het recht geen enkele rol. Aan keuzes op dit niveau zijn die op alle lagere niveaus, de moraal, de religie, de natuur, ondergeschikt.
Een betere beschrijving van het eeuwenlange westerse expansionisme is ondenkbaar. Geweld is daarbij een ritueel, en ‘Een ritueel houdt het vergieten van bloed in,’ zo vertelt Cormac McCarthy zijn lezers, en
Rituelen die in dit opzicht tekortschieten zijn niet meer dan schijnrituelen. Iedereen beseft onmiddellijk wat eraan schort. Geen twijfel mogelijk. […] We spreken niet in raadselen. Juist jou moet dat gevoel niet onbekend zijn, die leegheid en die radeloosheid. Die zijn het toch waartegen wij de wapens opnemen, of niet? Is niet het bloed het ingredient in de mortel dat bindt? […] Kijk, die man daar. Die man zonder hoed. Je weet hoe hij over de wereld denkt. Je kunt het zien aan zijn gezicht, aan de manier waarop hij staat. Toch verbergt zijn klacht, dat het leven geen lolletje is, wat hem werkelijk dwarszit, en dat is dat de mensen niet doen wat hij wil. Ze hebben het nooit gedaan en ze zullen het nooit doen. Dat is zijn probleem en dat maakt zijn leven zo moeilijk en zo anders dan het volgens hem had moeten zijn.
Geweld is de hoeksteen van zowel de Amerikaanse binnenlandse dagelijkse realiteit als de Amerikaanse buitenlandse politiek. Alleen met geweld kan het parasitaire systeem in stand worden gehouden. Geweld versus coëxistentie, parasitair versus mutualistisme waarbij twee ongelijksoortige organismen met elkaar leven tot wederzijds voordeel. Nogmaals Wallace Stegner in The American West as Living Space:
Adaptation is het covenant that all successful organisms sign with the dry country. Mary Austin, writing of the Owens Valley in the rain shadow of the Sierra, remarked that ‘the manner of the country makes the usage of life there, and the land will not be lived in except in its own fashion. The Shoshones live like their trees, with great spaces between…’
She might have added, though I don’t remember that she did, how often Shoshonean place names contain the syllable -pah: Tonopah, Ivanpah, Pahrump, Paria. In the Shosonean language, -pah means water, or water hole. The Pah-Utes are the Water Utes, taking their name from their rarest and most precious resource. They live mainly in Utah and Nevada, the two driest states in the Union, and in those regions water is safety, home, life, place. All around those precious watered places, forbidding and unlivable, is only space, what one must travel through between places of safety.
Maar aangezien het verschijnsel schaarste geen plaats kent in het systeem van mateloosheid wordt nog steeds roofbouw gepleegd. Omdat de mateloosheid een onbespreekbaar dogma is, waren er zelfs dwazen die dachten dat ze de natuur daaraan konden aanpassen. Zo verzon de negentiende eeuwse Amerikaanse journalist en speculant in grond, Charles Dana Wilber, een hele doctrine gebaseerd op de bewering dat de ‘Rain follows the plow.’ Het is nu een in diskrediet geraakte
'God speed the plow... By this wonderful provision, which is only man's mastery over nature, the clouds are dispensing copious rains ... [the plow] is the instrument which separates civilization from savagery; and converts a desert into a farm or garden.... To be more concise, Rain follows the plow.'
The basic premise of the theory was that human habitation and agriculture through homesteading effected a permanent change in the climate of arid and semi-arid regions, making these regions more humid. The theory was widely promoted in the 1870s as a justification for the settlement of the Great Plains, a region previously known as the ‘Great American Desert’.
De kurkdroge omgeving van Baker, Nevada. Ondergronds ligt een aquifer dat door Las Vegas wordt geclaimd.
Op grond van ondermeer deze propaganda werden honderdduizenden in het Oosten van de VS overtollig geworden emigranten westwaarts gedreven. Maar toen de regen maar niet kwam, trok men door, de bergen over. De grond was te schraal en het bleef er te droog. Nog steeds neemt de waterschaarste in rap tempo toe in het gebied van de Great Basin dat een relatief klein oppervlakte van Oost Californië, heel Nevada en ongeveer de helft van Utah beslaat. Wallace Stegner:
what makes that western space and distance? The same condition that enforces mobility on all adapted creatures, and tolerates only small or temporary concentrations of human or other life.
Aridity.
And what do you do about aridity, if you are a nation inured to plenty and impatient of restriction and led westward by pillars of fire and cloud? You may deny it for a while. Then you must either adapt to it or try to engineer it out of existence.
Ook dat laatste nu blijkt onmogelijk. Wat niet is, is er eenvoudigweg niet. De mensen trekken weg, of passen zich aan, en degenen die dit weigeren te doen speuren het land af op zoek naar de laatste ondergrondse reservoirs. Ook hier geldt dat de sterkste wint, zoals ik in augustus 2010 merkte in Baker, Nevada, een gehucht van 68 inwoners dat een kilometer of acht verwijderd is van de oostelijke ingang van de Great Basin National Park met zijn millennia-oude bristlecone pines. Baker ligt in de droge Snake Valley, aan de voet en in de luwte van het Sierra Nevada gebergte met zijn meer dan 4000 meter hoge bergtoppen die grote hoeveelheden verdampt water uit de Stille Oceaan opvangen. Elk voorjaar stroomt het smeltende sneeuwwater naar de vallei waar het in een aquifer terecht komt en door locale ranchers wordt gebruikt. Het is een oase, stil en ongerept, maar het water wordt nu opgeëist door de almaar uitdijende woestijnstad Las Vegas. Dankzij de bronnen konden het wild en de mens in deze geïsoleerde vallei al 12.000 jaar leven. Eerst de rond trekkende Paleo-Indianen, de allereerste bewoners van het continent, die door de jacht op mastodonten en wolven wisten te overleven, daarna de pre-Columbiaanse landbouwers, behorend tot de Fremont Cultuur, die in de dertiende eeuw nabij Baker een een tamelijk complex gestructureerd dorp van adobe-huizen bouwden en het land irrigeerden om er mais en bonen te verbouwen, zo bleek uit archeologische onderzoek in de jaren negentig van de vorige eeuw. Vervolgens trokken hier nomadische Shoshone Indianen rond tot ze door epidemieën en het genocidale geweld van de binnendringende Europese emigranten bijna uitgeroeid werden. De Snake Vallei is altijd een doorgangsroute geweest, de blanke
trappers and hunters crossed it searching for riches, followed by explorers, Mormon missionaries, and miners. Some of the people who came to Snake Valley stayed awhile, and some stayed long enough that they had children and their descendants still live in Snake Valley today.
Communities began to spring up to support the local miners, with orchards and vegetable fields planted. Some people brought livestock and began planting alfalfa and grains to support the sheep and cattle during the winter months. Communities developed, and eventually modern ways made it to Snake Valley: paved roads, electricity, phone service. The timeline below lists important events in Snake Valley history.
Baker bestaat sinds 1873 uit een handjevol mensen dat direct of indirect afhankelijk is van veeteelt. Ik sprak er met Dean Baker, een oude rancher wiens familie van oudsher bijna alle waterrechten in deze omgeving bezit. Maar sinds enige tijd wordt hun voortbestaan bedreigd door Las Vegas, die de waterrechten wil opkopen om het gokken in de woestijnstad nog meer uit te kunnen breiden. Baker vertelt me hoe ambtenaren uit die stad hierheen vlogen en op zijn kleine vliegveld landden. Met koffers in de hand stapten ze bij hem binnen, de papieren waren al klaar, de oude Baker hoefde alleen nog te tekenen, maar hij weigerde. Sindsdien zet Las Vegas hem en zijn familie onder steeds zwaardere druk. Niet alleen heeft de Las Vegas-Mafia de ambtenaren in hun zak, maar ook de politici die de wet kunnen veranderen en de waterbronnen kunnen confisqueren. ‘Tegen de macht van het geld kunnen kan niemand op,’ zei Baker. Ik vroeg hem waarom hij dan niet niet tekent.
Las Vegas wil jaarlijks tot 169 miljoen liter water uit deze vallei gaan weg pompen. We hebben elders in Utah en Californië kunnen zien wat er gebeurt zodra de mens op grote schaal water oppompt uit de ondergrondse waterreservoirs. De grondwaterspiegel verandert ingrijpend, het gebied droogt uit, en al het leven, niet alleen dat van de mens en het dier, maar ook van de planten wordt daardoor vernietigd. We hebben het in de Owens Vallei in Californië kunnen zien, waar al het water naar Los Angeles werd getransporteerd waardoor de bronnen opdroogden en de vegetatie, die van het grondwater afhankelijk was, stierf.
De Indianen hadden gelijk, alles is met elkaar verbonden, als je op één plaats het evenwicht verstoord dan verstoor je het geheel. Bovendien ben ik verantwoordelijk voor de mensen die hier wonen, en die financieel afhankelijk van me zijn. Tenslotte is dit ons land, wij zijn hier geworteld. Voor veel Amerikanen heeft een eigen plaats weinig of geen betekenis, maar ik hou van dit gebied, ik hou van de grond en de planten en de wilde dieren. Waarom zou ik dit opgeven? Dit alles erven mijn kinderen, ook mijn zoons zijn veetelers. Het zit ons in het bloed.
Vroeger ging ik met mijn vader jagen in de bergen, maar toen kwam de staat en maakte er een nationaal park van waardoor wij niet meer in onze bergen kunnen jagen. Maar wie is de staat? De staat is steeds zichtbaarder en tegelijkertijd steeds onzichtbaarder geworden. Je ziet de staat overal, maar niemand weet wie aan de touwtjes trekt. De staat heeft zich nooit over ons bekommerd, is niet geïnteresseerd in gewone mensen, de staat dient het geld en zal dus Las Vegas steunen waar het geld nog meer geld wil maken. Las Vegas ligt ongeveer 450 kilometer hiervandaan, maar het geld spreidt zijn tentakels overal uit. Overal elders zuigt het leven weg, Las Vegas parasiteert op de wijde omgeving. Maar geld kun je niet eten, je kunt er hooguit een nog grotere limousine voor kopen. Ondertussen is de staat niet zuinig met wat de natuur ons heeft gegeven. Het water zullen ze in no time verkwanselen en dit gebied zal sterven. De staat heeft geen respect voor alles dat is. U vroeg mij net waarom op ons land oude roestende voertuigen en werktuigen staan. Welnu, voor de meeste mensen is dit niet meer dan schroot, maar voor ons vertegenwoordigen ze herinneringen. Ik weet nog precies wanneer ik iets nieuws kocht en wat een werktuig allemaal voor ons gedaan heeft. Hoe het ons liet overleven en wat het dus betekende in ons leven. Het is een bezield aandenken, een verwijzing naar een deel van ons bestaan. Bovendien kan het nog nuttig blijken te zijn, onderdelen kun je altijd weer gebruiken. Met het water is het precies zo. Het heeft onze families bijna 140 jaar lang in leven gehouden, het is ons leven. Je kunt toch niet je eigen leven verkopen?
Toen ik Dean Baker vroeg hoe lang hij zich tegen Las Vegas zou kunnen blijven verzetten, antwoordde hij: ‘Ik blijf vechten voor dit stuk land en de mensen hier. Dat is het enige wat zeker is. En voor de rest…’ Hij zweeg en bestelde een koffie in het kleine Silver Jack Inn & LectroLux Cafe, het locale trefpunt waar de temperatuur inmiddels tot 36 graden Celsius was opgelopen. Tenslotte vertelde Baker me dat hij en zijn mensen uit onverwachte hoek steun hadden gekregen, de leiding en de rangers van het nabijgelegen Great Basin National Park verzetten zich nu ook tegen de geplande waterroof van Las Vegas. ‘Juist de mensen van natuurbehoud weten hoe desastreus de gevolgen in de wijde omtrek zullen zijn als ze hier miljoenen liters water beginnen weg te pompen.’ Wanneer Dean Baker vertrokken is bekijk ik enkele landschapsfoto’s, gemaakt door Terry Marasco, de eigenaar van het café, iemand die in 2004 in Baker neerstreek. Bij één van de foto’s staat de titel van een van de beroemdste gedichten in de VS ‘The Gift Outright’ van Robert Frost dat de maker ervan declameerde tijdens de inauguratie in 1961 van president Kennedy.
The land was ours before we were the lands.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people.
She was ours In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.
Hoewel de meeste Amerikanen in dit gedicht een patriottische lofzang lezen, kan het ook geheel anders worden opgevat, namelijk: de Amerikanen eigenden zich met geweld een reusachtig land toe, maar de overgrote meerderheid heeft zich nooit aan het land overgegeven, zijn nooit geworteld geraakt, zodat het land nog steeds ‘unstoried, artless, unenhanced’ is gebleven en de bewoners daarom niets anders kunnen dan als ontheemden blijven rondzwerven. Een roofbouw-cultuur dringt tot elke porie door van het psychologische en sociale weefsel, maar eveneens tot elke ecologische niche, tot ze zichzelf en haar natuurlijke omgeving heeft vernietigd. Een dergelijke cultuur is in staat om alles te verwoesten dat in de weg staat: verleden, heden en toekomst, waardoor de mens tenslotte niet meer weet wie en wat hij is. Het systeem zelf verandert tegelijkertijd in het tegendeel van datgene wat het claimt te zijn. De gerespecteerde Amerikaanse hoogleraar Geschiedenis aan Columbia University, Eric Foner, schreef in The Story of American Freedom (1998) met betrekking tot dit onderwerp:
It is hardly original to point out that the United States, founded on the premise that liberty is an entitlement of all humanity, blatantly deprived many of its own people of freedom… the history of freedom also suggests that the search for a unifying account of the American past needs to be conducted in new ways. It highlights how the universalities of our common culture have been constructed on the basis of difference and on the exclusion of considerable numbers of Americans from their benefits… the boundaries of freedom have been as contested as the word's definition itself…
Non-whites, women, and laborers experienced firsthand the paradox that one person's freedom has frequently been linked to another's servitude. The master's freedom rested on the reality of slavery, the vaunted autonomy of men on the subordinate position of women…
The authors of the notion of freedom as a universal birthright, a truly human ideal, were not so much the founding fathers, who created a nation dedicated to liberty but resting in large measure on slavery, but abolitionists who sought to extend the blessings of liberty to encompass blacks, slave and free; women who seized upon the rhetoric of democratic freedom to demand the right to vote; and immigrant groups who insisted that nativity and culture ought not to form boundaries of exclusion. The struggles of such groups for freedom elevated equality to a central place in the language of liberty, challenging the views of other Americans who held that equality is the antithesis of freedom…
The title of this book, as is perhaps obvious, is meant to be ambitious or ironic (one might even call it postmodern). A story is both a history of actual events and an invention. Over the course of our history, American freedom has been both a reality and a mythic ideal — a living truth for millions of Americans; a cruel mockery for others.
En dit laatste geldt nu nog steeds, misschien zelfs in hogere mate dan een halve eeuw geleden toen de politieke wil bestond om wezenlijke veranderingen aan te brengen in het rauwe Amerikaanse kapitalisme. Het is een 'cruel mockery' dat 'in 's werelds rijkste land ter wereld' volgens The Huffington Post tenminste '49 miljoen Amerikanen' regelmatig honger lijden.
49 Million Americans Go Hungry, Despite So-Called Recovery…
Although the U.S. is said to be in the midst of an economic recovery, the percentage of Americans lacking consistent access to food has been stuck at the same level since 2008, the heart of the Great Recession. Congress hasn't helped matters any by deciding to slash food stamp benefits at just the wrong moment…
A new report from the hunger relief charity Feeding America throws the nation’s struggle with hunger into an even starker light. The report, titled 'Map the Meal Gap 2014,' broke the USDA’s data down county by county, giving a more nuanced picture of food insecurity. The report reveals that there are 16 counties in the U.S. with more than 100,000 'food insecure' children -- a number you might expect to see in a developing country rather than the world’s wealthiest nation…
One reason the numbers of Americans without enough food remained so stubbornly high in 2012 may be the dramatic rise in energy and food prices the previous year. Energy prices rose 6.6 percent in 2011, compared with 0.5 percent in 2012, according to CNN, while food prices rose 4.7 percent in 2011 and only 1.8 percent in 2012.
It’s hard to predict if things will get better this year. There are mixed signals on unemployment and poverty, two of the key drivers of hunger.
De mainstream propagandisten in de polder, zoals Geert Mak en Henk Hofland, die volhouden dat de VS een 'vitale democratie' is, zouden zichzelf de volgende vraag moeten stellen:
Wat zijn de exacte redenen achter het feit dat de neoconservatieve elite in de regering Obama, volgens eigen zeggen, de gewelddadige oppositie in Oekraïne met 5 miljard dollar heeft gesteund om de democratisch gekozen regering te verjagen en er een zogeheten vrije markt-economie te vestigen, terwijl 'in 's werelds rijkste land' 49 miljoen van de eigen landgenoten honger lijdt? Om er een neoliberale democratie mogelijk te maken, waarbij een aanzienlijk percentage burgers 'food insecure' zijn? Zo nee, waarom steunden de VS van de illegale inval in Irak, én de EU van 'Geen Jorwert zonder Brussel' dan een staatsgreep in Oekraïne? Is daarentegen het antwoord: ja, dan zijn de Makkianen en Hoflanden even grote bedriegers, want in dat geval steunen ze een expansionistisch misdadig beleid dat tot honger lijdt.
Waarom is er niemand van de 'vrije pers' die deze vraag durft te stellen? Waarom doen mijn collega's van de mainstream journalistiek hun werk niet? Waarom steunen ze de neoliberale corruptie en doen ze mee aan het om zeep helpen van de toch al beperkte democratie? Mak heeft met zijn propaganda miljoenen verdient, en ook Hofland hoeft zich net zo min als ik, financieel enige zorgen te maken. De heren zijn, net als ik, financieel onafhankelijk. Ze kunnen, net als ik doe, hun stem verheffen. Waarom doen ze het niet? Nog voordat er ook maar één schot is gevallen hebben ze hun zo vurig beleden idealen verraden. Voor een bord linzen.
Wat lees ik nu weer allemaal?
'Op de dag dat wij onze vrijheid vieren maakt Geert Mak zich grote zorgen over die vrijheid. Die danken wij, zo zegt hij, zo ontzettend aan Europa. Maar op de drempel van de Europese verkiezingen zien 'wij' dat hele Europa steeds minder zitten. Waar ging het mis? Is het nog te repareren? En zo niet, hoe loopt het dan - met Poetin op de achtergrond - met ons af?'
Kennelijk om zijn boeken te promoten en zijn contacten bij de EU te verstevigen, heeft Mak een boeman nodig. Poetin. Waar ging het met Mak mis? Is het nog te repareren? Zo niet, hoe loopt het dan met ons af? Intussen zijn z'n beweringen in zijn boeken over 'Europa' en 'Amerika' nu al achterhaalt.
Leest u het onderstaande artikel van een geïnformeerde bron:
De fascistische pro-Europa stoottroepen in Kiev die de democratisch gekozen regering met geweld verjoegen. Mak's boek 'In Europa' verscheen ook in het Oekraïens. Heeft het geholpen? Zo te zien niet, of misschien juist wel.
The Kiev Putsch: Rebel Workers Take Power in the East
Global Research, May 07, 2014
Introduction
Not since the US and EU took over Eastern Europe, including the Baltic countries, East Germany, Poland and the Balkans and converted them into military outposts of NATO and economic vassals, have the Western powers moved so aggressively to seize a strategic country, such as the Ukraine, posing an existential threat to Russia.
Up until 2013 the Ukraine was a ‘buffer state’, basically a non-aligned country, with economic ties to both the EU and Russia. Ruled by a regime closely tied to local, European, Israeli and Russian based oligarchs, the political elite was a product of a political upheaval in 2004, (the so-called “Orange Revolution”) funded by the US. Subsequently, for the better part of a decade the Ukraine underwent a failed experiment in Western backed ‘neo-liberal’ economic policies. After nearly two decades of political penetration, the US and EU were deeply entrenched in the political system via long-standing funding of so-called non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), political parties and paramilitary groups.
The strategy of the US and EU was to install a pliant regime which would bring Ukraine into the European Common Market and NATO as a subordinate client state. Negotiations between the EU and the Ukraine government proceeded slowly. They eventually faltered because of the onerous conditions demanded by the EU and the more favorable economic concessions and subsidies offered by Russia. Having failed to negotiate the annexation of the Ukraine to the EU, and not willing to await scheduled constitutional elections, the NATO powers activated their well-financed and organized NGOs, client political leaders and armed paramilitary groups to violently overthrow the elected government. The violent putsch succeeded and a US-appointed civilian-military junta took power.
The junta was composed of pliant neo-liberal and chauvinist neo-fascist ‘ministers’. The former were hand-picked by the US, to administer and enforce a new political and economic order, including privatization of public firms and resources, breaking trade and investment ties with Russia, eliminating a treaty allowing the Russian naval base in Crimea and ending military-industrial exports to Russia. The neo-fascists and sectors of the military and police were appointed to ministerial positions in order to violently repress any pro-democracy opposition in the West and East. They oversaw the repression of bilingual speakers (Russian-Ukrainian), institutions and practices – turning the opposition to the US-NATO imposed coup regime into an ethnic opposition. They purged all elected opposition office holders in the West and East and appointed local governors by fiat – essentially creating a martial law regime.
The Strategic Targets of the NATO-Junta
NATOs violent, high-risk seizure of the Ukraine was driven by several strategic military objectives. These included:
1.) The ousting of Russia from its military bases in Crimea – turning them into NATO bases facing Russia.
2.) The conversion of the Ukraine into a springboard for penetrating Southern Russia and the Caucasus; a forward position to politically manage and support liberal pro-NATO parties and NGOs within Russia.
3.) The disruption of key sectors of the Russian military defense industry, linked to the Ukrainian factories, by ending the export of critical engines and parts to Russia.
The Ukraine had long been an important part of the Soviet Union’s military industrial complex. NATO planners behind the putsch were keenly aware that one-third of the Soviet defense industry had remained in the Ukraine after the break-up of the USSR and that forty percent of the Ukraine’s exports to Russia, until recently, consisted of armaments and related machinery. More specifically, the Motor-Sikh plant in Eastern Ukraine manufactured most of the engines for Russian military helicopters including a current contract to supply engines for one thousand attack helicopters. NATO strategists immediately directed their political stooges in Kiev to suspend all military deliveries to Russia, including medium-range air-to air-missiles, inter-continental ballistic missiles, transport planes and space rockets (Financial Times, 4/21/14, p3). US and EU military strategists viewed the Kiev putsch as a way to undermine Russian air, sea and border defenses. President Putin has acknowledged the blow but insists that Russia will be able to substitute domestic production for the critical parts within two years. This means the loss of thousands of skilled factory jobs in Eastern Ukraine.
4. The military encirclement of Russia with forward NATO bases in the Ukraine matching those from the Baltic to the Balkans, from Turkey to the Caucasus and then onward from Georgia into the autonomous Russian Federation.
The US-EU encirclement of Russia is designed to end Russian access to the North Sea, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. By encircling and confining Russia to an isolated landmass without ‘outlets to the sea’, US-EU empire builders seek to limit Russia’s role as a rival power center and possible counter-weight to its imperial ambitions in the Middle East, North Africa, Southwest Asia and the North Atlantic.
Ukraine Putsch: Integral to Imperial Expansion
The US and EU are intent on destroying independent, nationalist and non-aligned governments throughout the world and converting them into imperial satellites by whatever means are effective. For example, the current NATO-armed mercenary invasion of Syria is directed at overthrowing the nationalist, secular Assad government and establishing a pro-NATO vassal state, regardless of the bloody consequences to the diverse Syrian people. The attack on Syria serves multiple purposes: Eliminating a Russian ally and its Mediterranean naval base; undermining a supporter of Palestine and adversary of Israel; encircling the Islamic Republic of Iran and the powerful militant Hezbollah Party in Lebanon and establishing new military bases on Syrian soil.
The NATO seizure of the Ukraine has a multiplier effect that reaches ‘upward’ toward Russia and ‘downward’ toward the Middle East and consolidates control over its vast oil wealth.
The recent NATO wars against Russian allies or trading partners confirm this prognosis. In Libya, the independent, non-aligned policies of the Gadhafi regime stood out in stark contrast to the servile Western satellites like Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia. Gadhafi was overthrown and Libya destroyed via a massive NATO air assault. Egypt’s mass popular anti-Mubarak rebellion and emerging democracy were subverted by a military coup and eventually returned the country to the US-Israeli-NATO orbit – under a brutal dictator. Armed incursions by NATO proxy, Israel, against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as the US-EU sanctions against Iran are all directed against potential allies or trading partners of Russia.
The US has moved forcefully from encircling Russia via ‘elections and free markets’ in Eastern Europe to relying on military force, death squads, terror and economic sanctions in the Ukraine, the Caucasus, the Middle East and Asia.
Regime Change in Russia: from Global Power to Vassal State
Washington’s strategic objective is to isolate Russia from without, undermine its military capability and erode its economy, in order to strengthen NATO’s political and economic collaborators inside Russia – leading to its further fragmentation and return to the semi-vassal status.
The imperial strategic goal is to place neo-liberal political proxies in power in Moscow, just like the ones who oversaw the pillage and destruction of Russia during the infamous Yeltsin decade. The US-EU power grab in the Ukraine is a big step in that direction.
Evaluating the Encirclement and Conquest Strategy
So far NATO’s seizure of the Ukraine has not moved forward as planned. First of all, the violent seizure of power by overtly pro-NATO elites openly reneging on military treaty agreements with Russia over bases in Crimea, had forced Russia to intervene in support of the local, overwhelmingly ethnic Russian population. Following a free and open referendum, Russia annexed the region and secured its strategic military presence.
While Russia retained its naval presence on the Black Sea ... the NATO junta in Kiev unleashed a large-scale military offensive against the pro-democracy, anti-coup Russian-speaking majority in the eastern half of the Ukraine who have been demanding a federal form of government reflecting Ukraine’s cultural diversity. The US-EU promoted a “military response” to mass popular dissent and encouraged the coup-regime to eliminate the civil rights of the Russian speaking majority through neo-Nazi terror and to force the population to accept junta-appointed regional rulers in place of their elected leaders. In response to this repression, popular self-defense committees and local militias quickly sprang up and the Ukrainian army was initially forced back with thousands of soldiers refusing to shoot their own compatriots on behalf of the Western –installed regime in Kiev. For a while, the NATO-backed neo-liberal-neo-fascist coalition junta had to contend with the disintegration of its ‘power base’. At the same time, ‘aid’ from the EU, IMF and the US failed to compensate for the cut-off of Russian trade and energy subsidies. Under the advise of visiting US CIA Director, Brenner, the Kiev Junta then dispatched its elite “special forces” trained by the CIA and FBI to carry out massacres against pro-democracy civilians and popular militias. They bussed in armed thugs to the diverse city of Odessa who staged an ‘exemplary’ massacre: Burning the city’s major trade union headquarters and slaughtering 41, mostly unarmed civilians who were trapped in the building with its exits blocked by neo-Nazis. The dead included many women and teenagers who had sought shelter from the rampaging neo-Nazis. The survivors were brutally beaten and imprisoned by the ‘police’ who had passively watched while the building burned.
The Coming Collapse of the Putsch-Junta
Obama’s Ukraine power grab and his efforts to isolate Russia have provoked some opposition in the EU. Clearly US sanctions prejudice major European multi-nationals with deep ties in Russia. The US military build-up in Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Black Sea raises tensions and threatens a large-scale military conflagration, disrupting major economic contracts. US-EU threats on Russia’s border have increased popular support for President Putin and strengthened the Russian leadership. The strategic power grab in the Ukraine has radicalized and deepened the polarization of Ukrainian politics-between neo-fascist and pro-democracy forces.
While the imperial strategists are extending and escalating their military build-up in Estonia and Poland and pouring arms into the Ukraine, the entire power grab rests on very precarious political and economic foundations- which could collapse within the year – amidst a bloody civil war/ inter-ethnic slaughter.
The Ukraine junta has already lost political control of over a third of the country to pro-democracy, anti-coup movements and self-defense militias. By cutting off strategic exports to Russia to serve US military interests, the Ukraine lost one of its most important markets, which cannot be replaced. Under NATO control, Ukraine will have to buy NATO-specified military hardware leading to the closure of its factories geared to the Russian market. The loss of Russian trade is already leading to mass unemployment, especially among skilled industrial workers in the East who may be forced to immigrate to Russia. Ballooning trade deficits and the erosion of state revenues will bring a total economic collapse. Thirdly, as a result of the Kiev junta’s submission to NATO, the Ukraine has lost billions of dollars in subsidized energy from Russia. High energy costs make Ukrainian industries non-competitive in global markets. Fourthly, in order to secure loans from the IMF and the EU, the junta has agreed to eliminate food and energy price subsidies, severely depressing household incomes and plunging pensioners into destitution. Bankruptcies are on the rise, as imports from the EU and elsewhere displace formerly protected local industries.
No new investments are flowing in because of the violence, instability and conflicts between neo-fascists and neo-liberals within he junta. Just to stabilize the day-to-day operations of government, the junta needs a no-interest $30 billion dollar handout – from its NATO patrons, an amount, which is not forthcoming now or in the immediate future.
It is clear that NATO ‘strategists’ who planned the putsch were only thinking about weakening Russia militarily and gave no thought to the political, economic and social costs of sustaining a puppet regime in Kiev when Ukraine had been so dependent on Russian markets, loans and subsidized energy. Moreover, they appear to have overlooked the political, industrial and agricultural dynamics of the predictably hostile Eastern regions of the country. Alternately, Washington strategists may have based their calculations on instigating a Yugoslavia-style break-up accompanied by massive ethnic cleansing amidst population transfers and slaughter. Undeterred by the millions of civilian casualties, Washington considers its policy of dismantling Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya to have been great political-military successes.
Ukraine most certainly will enter a prolonged and deep depression, including a precipitous decline in its exports, employment and output. Possibly, economic collapse will lead to nationwide protests and social unrest: spreading from East to West, from South to North. Social upheavals and mass misery may further undermine the morale of the Ukrainian armed forces. Even now, Kiev can barely afford to feed its soldiers and has to rely on neo-Fascist volunteer militias who may be hard to control. The US-EU are not likely to intervene directly with an Libya-style bombing campaign since they would face a prolonged war on Russia’s border at a time when public opinion in the US is suffering from imperial war exhaustion, and European business interests with links to Russian resource companies are resisting consequential sanctions.
The US-EU putsch has produced a failing regime and a society riven by violent conflicts – spinning into open ethnic violence. What, in fact, has ensued is a system of dual power with contenders cutting across regional boundaries. The Kiev junta lacks the coherence and stability to serve as a reliable NATO military link in the encirclement of Russia. On the contrary, US-EU sanctions, military threats and bellicose rhetoric are forcing Russians to quickly rethink their ‘openness’ to the West. The strategic threats to its national security are leading Russia to review its ties to Western banks and corporations. Russia may have to resort to a policy of expanded industrialization via public investments and import substitution. Russian oligarchs, having lost their overseas holdings, may become less central to Russian economic policy.
What is clear is that the power grab in Kiev will not result in a ‘knife pointed at the heartland of Russia’. The ultimate defeat and overthrow of the Kiev junta can lead to a radicalized self-governing Ukraine, based on the burgeoning democratic movements and rising working class consciousness. This will have to emerge from their struggle against IMF austerity programs and Western asset stripping of Ukraine’s resources and enterprises. The industrial workers of Ukraine who succeed in throwing off the yoke of the western vassals in Kiev have no intention of submitting themselves to the yoke of the Russian oligarchs. Their struggle is for a democratic state, capable of developing an independent economic policy, free of imperial military alliances.
Epilogue:
May Day 2014: Dual Popular Power in the East, Fascism Rising in the West
The predictable falling out between the neo-fascists and neo-liberal partners in the Kiev junta was evidenced by large-scale riots, between rival street gangs and police on May Day. The US-EU strategy envisioned using the neo-fascists as ‘shock troops’ and street fighters in overthrowing the elected regime of Yankovich and later discarding them. As exemplified by the notorious taped conversation between Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Kiev, the EU-US strategists promote their own handpicked neoliberal proxies to represent foreign capital, impose austerity policies and sign treaties for foreign military bases. In contrast, the neo-fascist militias and parties would favor nationalist economic policies, retaining state enterprises and are likely to be hostile to oligarchs, especially those with ‘dual Israeli-Ukraine’ citizenship.
The Kiev junta’s inability to develop an economic strategy, its violent seizure of power and repression of pro-democracy dissidents in the East has led to a situation of ‘dual power’. In many cases, troops sent to repress the pro-democracy movements have abandoned their weapons, abandoned the Kiev junta and joined the self-governing movements in the East.
Apart from its outside backers-the White House, Brussels and IMF – the Kiev junta has been abandoned by its rightwing allies in Kiev for being too subservient to NATO and resisted by the pro-democracy movement in the East for being authoritarian and centralist. The Kiev junta has fallen between two chairs: it lacks legitimacy among most Ukrainians and has lost control of all but a small patch of land occupied by government offices in Kiev and even those are under siege by the neo-fascist right and increasingly from its own disenchanted former supporters.
Let us be absolutely clear, the struggle in the Ukraine is not between the US and Russia, it is between a NATO-imposed junta composed of neo-liberal oligarchs and fascists on one side and the industrial workers and their local militias and democratic councils on the other. The former defends and obeys the IMF and Washington; the latter relies on the productive capacity of local industry and rules by responding to the majority.
