A strong NATO is not only important for Europe but is also critical to American security interests. The United States will not be able to pursue domestic renewal successfully without peace and stability in Europe, a region where [US] geopolitical stake remains paramount. Even excluding Russia, it embodies the largest collection of military power and potential. It is also a key geographical, strategic and logistical link to the Middle East and Persian Gulf areas. NATO members, including the United States, hold six of the seven G7 seats, make up 16 of 22 members of the IMF, and hold three of the five permanent seats in the United Nations.
— NAVO Secretaris-Generaal Manfred Wörner. A NEW NATO FOR A NEW ERA. 6 oktober 1993
De beschrijving van de hoogste functionaris van de NAVO toont aan hoe nauw het militair-industrieel complex betrokken is bij het beschermen en uitbreiden van de economische belangen van de neoliberale elite, een feit dat door de bekendste opiniemaker van de New York Times, Thomas Friedman, nog eens werd onderstreept toen de 'imperial messenger' op 28 maart 1999 in zijn krant opmerkte dat
The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
Die zienswijze wordt door de voltallige westerse mainstream-pers gedeeld. Daarom kon Geert Mak in 2012 ongegeneerd en plein publique verklaren:
Ik vind Friedman altijd wel leuk om te lezen, lekker upbeat, hij is zo’n man die altijd wel een gat ziet om een probleem op te lossen.
Hoe 'upbeat' Friedman is voor een polder-opiniemaker als Mak, blijkt ondermeer uit Thomas' profetie in het jaar 2000 dat 'The historical debate is over. The answer is free-market capitalism,' en uit zijn visie in mei 2003 dat de agressieoorlog tegen Irak noodzakelijk was, want
[w]e needed to go over there, basically, and take out a very big stick right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble,
aangezien, zo verklaarde Friedman tegenover de TV-interviewer Charlie Rose, wat de moslims
needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house from Basra to Baghdad and basically saying ‘Which part of this sentence don't you understand? You don't think we care about our open society? You think this bubble fantasy, we're just going to let it grow? Well, suck on this!’ That, Charlie, is what this war was about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia! It was part of that bubble. We could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.
De vraag is waarom de ‘Amerika-deskundige’ Geert Mak juist deze Friedman zo ‘upbeat’ vindt, of in eenvoudig Nederlands vertaalt, ‘vrolijk, optimistisch’? Mak zelf geeft als verklaring dat ‘hij zo’n man [is] die altijd wel een gat ziet om een probleem op te lossen.’ Maar wat is zo ‘vrolijk’ aan Friedman’s racistische opmerking dat Saddam Hoessein moest vervangen worden door ‘an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein’? Wat voor 'gat' is dit voor voor welk 'probleem'? Wat is zo ‘optimistisch’ aan Friedman’s opvatting dat ‘The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist’? Wat is zo ‘upbeat’ aan Friedman’s opmerking: ‘[w]ell, suck on this!’? In het algemeen gesproken: waarom vindt Mak ‘Friedman altijd wel leuk om te lezen,’ wanneer we weten dat deze opiniemaker alom beschouwd wordt als de officiële spreekbuis van de neoliberale en neoconservatieve gevestigde orde en als zodanig een kritiekloze pleitbezorger is van de belangen van de Amerikaanse elite? Het antwoord is simpelweg dat Friedman, net als Mak, een opportunist is die — 'suck on this' — zo nodig het hedendaagse fascisme steunt. De Amerikaanse ‘political journalist, best-selling author and syndicated newspaper columnist,’ David Sirota schreef in 2009 over Friedman onder de kop: ‘An Idiot's Guide to Tom Friedman's Idiocy’ het volgende:
Tom Friedman may be the single stupidest figure in American public life, and certainly is the stupidest writer with such a large platform. I don't mean that he's wrong on everything (although he is substantively wrong on a lot of things) - I mean that he's actually an extremely dim bulb in that he displays a stunning lack of basic cognitive function. Specifically, he shows almost zero ability to realize that the arguments made by Tom Friedman often undermine the arguments made by Tom Friedman.
In zijn vuistdikke bestseller In Europa. Reizen door de twintigste eeuw laat Mak zijn lezers met betrekking tot het Avondland het volgende weten:
Vrede is een proces waaraan je voortdurend moet blijven werken. Anders doet ieder wat in zijn aard ligt, de sterken dwingen, de zwakken kunnen enkel accepteren.
Dat laatste is nu precies wat Europa onder aanvoering van de VS sinds de jaren vijftig bijna overal ter wereld doet, zoals blijkt uit de vernietiging van de Iraanse democratie in 1953, de politieke steun aan de Amerikaanse massaslachting in Vietnam, het militaire geweld in het dekoloniserende Afrika, de steun aan de Amerikaanse en Britse terreur in Irak, de militaire en geopolitieke betrokkenheid in Afghanistan en Libië, de huidige militaire en logistieke ondersteuning van het geweld van de zogeheten 'Syrische rebellen,' de steun aan de zionistische terreur, de interventies in Oekraïne die tot een burgeroorlog hebben geleid, etcetera. Maar daarover zwijgt Mak, gekleurde volkeren spelen geen rol van betekenis in zijn bestsellers over het koloniale en neokoloniale Europa van de 20ste en 21ste eeuw. En geen enkele lezer van zijn veel geprezen boeken heeft hier publiekelijk een vraagteken bij gezet. Integendeel zelfs, de blanke Europeaan uit de christelijke cultuur vindt het niet meer dan normaal dat nu nog steeds het Europa van de NAVO miljarden besteedt aan het proces waarbij 'de sterken dwingen' en 'de zwakken enkel [kunnen] accepteren.' Want boven alles geldt voor de mainstream dat 'vrede' alleen bestaat als elders bommen ontploffen, en niet hier. Inderdaad, 'vrede is een proces waaraan je voortdurend moet blijven werken,' dat wil zeggen: het geweld wordt verplaatst naar de arme wereld, zodat Mak's Europa van 'Geen Jorwert zonder Brussel' in alle rust van zijn rijkdom kan blijven genieten. Dat is het onuitgesproken doel van de westerse mainstream. Vandaar dat in het register van Geert Mak's 1223 pagina's tellende boek het woord NAVO slechts 2 keer voorkomt, in beide gevallen wordt het terloops in enkele zinnen afgedaan.
Toch leven de Europeanen al meer dan een halve eeuw lang onder de dreiging van de Amerikaanse en Russische doctrine van de wederzijdse verzekerde vernietiging, de totale uitroeiing, maar voor Mak moet dit een te verwaarlozen futiliteit zijn, want hij besteedt geen aandacht aan deze krankzinnige chantage waarop geen enkele democratische controle bestaat, terwijl toch In Europa (2014) wordt aangeprezen als een reisverslag
over het verleden, en wat het verleden met ons doet. Het gaat over verscheurdheid en onwetendheid, over historie en angst, over armoede en hoop, over alles wat ons nieuwe Europa scheidt en bindt.
Het boek schampt aan de geschiedenis, veel dat niet in zijn officiële versie van de werkelijkheid paste, verzweeg Geert Mak. Bestsellers kennen hun eigen werkelijkheid. De epiloog van In Europa eindigt met de bewering dat 'Europa als vredesproces een eclatant succes' was, terwijl 'Europa als economische eenheid ook een eind op weg' is. Dat beeld sluit naadloos aan bij de strekking van zijn acht jaar later verschenen bestseller Reizen zonder John. Op zoek naar Amerika (2012) waarvan de conclusie is dat de VS als '‘vitale… democratie’ na 1945 ‘decennialang als ordebewaker en politieagent [fungeerde] – om maar te zwijgen van alle hulp die het uitdeelde.’ Zoveel hulp dat de kloof tussen arm en rijk wereldwijd almaar blijft toenemen. De Amerikaanse econoom Walter E. Williams:
In terms of natural resources, Africa is the world's richest continent. It has 50 percent of the world's gold, most of the world's diamonds and chromium, 90 percent of the cobalt, 40 percent of the world's potential hydroelectric power, 65 percent of the manganese, millions of acres of untilled farmland as well as other natural resources. Despite the natural wealth, Africa is home to the world's most impoverished and abused people.
De belangrijkste oorzaken van de toenemende kloof tussen arm en rijk, (dus niet de aanleiding,) is het al ruim 5 eeuwen durende westerse expansionisme en de interventies die een geweldloze ontwikkeling van Afrika onmogelijk maken. Dinsdag 2 juni 2015 meldde de kritische Amerikaanse website Truthout:
In 1993 maakte de secretaris-generaal van de NAVO, Manfred Wörner, nog eens duidelijk waar het de macht werkelijk om draait, toen hij verklaarde dat 'a strong NATO is not only important for Europe but is also critical to American security interests,' waarbij ieder weldenkend mens beseft dat het zwaar bewapende Westen niet vreest door Afrika (of welk werelddeel dan ook) te zullen worden aangevallen, maar dat de Europese en Amerikaanse 'security interests' een eufemisme zijn voor het met geweld beschermen en uitbreiden van de belangen van de economische elite. Westerse autoriteiten die hoog opgeven van democratie en mensenrechten kunnen immers moeilijk publiekelijk verklaren dat 'we' de 'gekleurde volkeren eronder moeten houden om daar moeiteloos grondstoffen te kunnen roven en markten te beschermen.' En dus zei de toenmalige hoogste NAVO-functionaris dat:
US MILITARY EXPANSION IN AFRICA IS ABOUT DOMINATION AND EXPLOITATION, NOT HUMANITARIAN CONCERNS
the transatlantic relationship is the most stable and valuable geopolitical asset on the globe today, bringing together the world's two largest trading zones, and the two regions with the greatest global outreach and sense of global responsibilities. How could we seriously hope to achieve a more stable world without a strategic alliance of these two major power centers? Where else but in NATO could they coordinate their policies and pool their capabilities to deal with major security challenges, as was done so successfully in the Gulf War? Moreover, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe already rely upon the stabilizing influence which the Alliance exerts around its periphery. The end of NATO would increase the risk of conflict in Europe dramatically.
Inderdaad, de zogeheten 'stabiliteit' van het rijke Westen zou ernstig verstoord worden wanneer de NAVO zou worden opgeheven, aangezien dan ook 'het risico van conflicten binnen Europa dramatisch [zou toenemen].' De lezer dient niet te vergeten dat vanuit het oogpunt van de macht ook grootscheepse binnenlandse onrust 'major security challenges' vormen. Als het volk niet meer in gareel kan worden gehouden, moet gehoorzaamheid met geweld worden afgedwongen. Dat is concreet de betekenis van wat president Theodore Roosevelt een eeuw geleden als volgt formuleerde: 'Speak softly, and carry a big stick,' een ideologie die zowel voor de buitenlandse als de binnenlandse politiek opgaat. Maatschappelijke onrust verstoort de 'orde' van de elite. Het is dezelfde 'orde' die Geert Mak en Henk Hofland bepleiten wanneer ze het Westen afschilderen als 'ordebewaker en politieagent' die 'vredestichtend' te werk gaat. Omdat alleen de zon voor niets opgaat blijft natuurlijk de vraag wie voor deze 'orde' de prijs moet betalen. In elk geval niet de miljonair Mak en ook niet zijn collega-opiniemaker, de hoogbejaarde vrijgestelde spreekbuis van de gevestigde 'orde' Henk Hofland. De Britse historicus, wijlen Tony Judt, schreef in verband hiermee in zijn essay Europe: The Grand Illusion (1996):
If 'Europe' stands for the winners, who shall speak for the losers — the 'south,' the poor, the linguistically, educationally, or culturally disadvantaged, underprivileged, or despised Europeans… the European Union cannot realistically promise even its existing members a future as secure and as prosperous as its past… For the foreseeable future it would be an expensive act of charity, economically speaking, for the EU to absorb the countries to its east on any acceptable terms… The European Union has utterly failed to bring its members together for nay common policy or action in military or foreign affairs,
waarbij Judt verwees naar
the Yugoslav tragedy, illustrating as it does the weakness of Europe and initiatives, the compulsion to avoid engagement, and the absence of any agreed collective strategic interest beyond maintaining the status quo… it confirmed another lesson taught by events in the Balkans, that the 'European' edifice is fundamentally hollow, selfishly obsessed with fiscal rectitude and commercial advantage. Just as there is no effective international community, so there is, for these purposes, no European one either. There are merely powers, great and not so great; and from the moment at least, a German-led Europe is not among them… 'Europe' is no longer a credible bolt hole (schuilplaats. svh). The years 1945-1989 are coming to seem more and more like a parenthesis (interval. svh),
aldus de internationaal gerespecteerde Tony Judt, acht jaar voordat de krampachtig naar optimisme en hoop ('Ik kan niet zonder hoop, Stan, dat klinkt misschien wat pathetisch, maar het is toch zo.') zoekende Geert Mak in zijn bestseller In Europa (2004) beweerde dat het uitstekend ging met zijn Europa. Nederlandse intellectuelen zijn getraind in het negeren van de werkelijkheid. Datgene wat hen niet uitkomt negeren ze. Een kenmerkend voorbeeld daarvan gaf Anton Stolwijk die 'aan een boek over de Atjeh-oorlog werkt' en in De Groene Amsterdammer van 28 mei 2015 zichzelf en zijn lezers de vraag stelde: 'waarom heeft niemand het over de allergrootste bloedigste oorlog van toen, de Atjeh-oorlog?' De kolonialistische elite in Nederland wilde namelijk eind negentiende, begin twintigste eeuw uit economische motieven het land van 'een van de grootste peperproducenten ter wereld' in bezit nemen. Stolwijk schreef:
Samen met zijn controversiële adviseur, de Leidse islamoloog Snouck Hurgronje, stippelt (luitenant-generaal. svh) Van Heutsz vanaf 1898 een tactiek van 'chirurgisch geweld' uit. Het lukraak platbranden van dorpen en rijstvelden gaat in de ban — er worden voortaan alleen nog kleine groepjes zwaarbewapende contraguerrilla's diep de jungle in gestuurd, op zoek naar 'bendeleiders.' Het is een tactiek die al snel zijn vruchten afwerpt, want het door Nederland gecontroleerde grondgebied wordt spectaculair uitgebreid en Van Heutsz groeit uit tot een gelauwerde held. Het is ook een tactiek die het uiterste vergt van het door bezuinigingen steeds verder uitgeholde koloniale leger, wat uiteindelijk zal leiden tot de beruchtste excessen uit de Atjeh-oorlog.
Het taalgebruik is onthullend, 'chirurgisch geweld,' oftewel in hedendaags jargon: 'surgical strikes' die, zoals telkens weer blijkt, een aanzienlijke 'collateral damage' veroorzaakt onder de burgerbevolking. De guerrillastrijders heetten toen 'bendeleiders,' wat tegenwoordig 'terroristen' worden genoemd, of die nu in Tsjetsjenië vechten of in Afghanistan, en ook het begrip 'excessen' is illustrerend voor de westerse manier van denken, daarbij voorbijgaand aan het feit dat het land van een ander bezetten en het verzet de kop indrukken op zich al een 'exces' is. Maar het koloniale terrorisme van de blanke, christelijke cultuur wordt nog steeds gezien als een onvermijdelijke historische ontwikkeling, want zoals Stolwijk opmerkt is het
[a]fgelopen jaar het honderdjarig jubileum van een van de grootste oorlogen uit de Nederlandse (en Atjehse) geschiedenis, eentje die naar schatting aan ruim honderdduizend mensen het leven kostte, opmerkelijk stilletjes voorbij gegaan.
Dat wil zeggen: 'opmerkelijk' voor kritische individuen, maar niet 'opmerkelijk' voor de mainstream-journalistiek en het grote publiek. De geschiedenis herhaalt zich alleen maar. In hetzelfde nummer van De Groene bedriegt H.J.A. Hofland zijn publiek door te stellen dat 'de Amerikaanse verkiezingen [misschien] de laatste kans [bieden] om achter de Nederlandse waarheid in Irak te komen. Dat wil zeggen: achter ons aandeel in de wereldgeschiedenis die tot de puinhopen van vandaag heeft geleid.' De Nederlandse commerciële media gaan aan de meeste controversiële zaken 'opmerkelijk stilletjes voorbij.' Dat is juist typerend voor mijn Nederlandse collega's in de journalistiek. Terug naar 'de beruchtste excessen.' Stolwijk geeft het volgende citaat:
'De vrouwen, kinderen en weerloozen vluchtten in drommen in groote, vierkante kuilen, in de hoop dekking te vinden tegen de projectielen uit onze karabijnen,' beschrijft een luitenant de bestorming van het afgelegen dorpje Tampeng in 1904. 'Nu kregen de brigadecommandanten den last om beurten naar die kuilen op te rukken en daar een salvo in af te geven. Sprongen enkelen in doodsangst uit de kuilen, dan stonden andere marechaussees klaar hen met hunne karabijnen op te vangen en zoo werden allen tot den laatste afgemaakt. Eén der brigadecommandanten vertelde ons na afloop: Luitenant, mijn kerels maakten er gewoon een lolletje van.'
In een paar jaar tijd worden meer dan twintigduizend Atjehers gedood — vier procent van de totale bevolking. Veel acties zijn uitgebreid gedocumenteerd en soms zelfs gefotografeerd: het beeld van overste Van Daalen in een met lijken bezaaid dorp — met een klein kind als enige overlevende — is misschien wel het bekendste van de hele Atjeh-oorlog.
Dit laatste mag dan wel het geval zijn, het weerhield dominee Catrinus Mak er niet van om twee decennia na het einde van de zogeheten 'oorlog' tegen de inheemse islamitische bevolking het 'monument voor overste Van Daalen' te bezoeken dat was opgericht 'Ter herinnering aan onze gevallen helden tijdens den tocht van Overste van Daalen' in 1904. Hoewel een Tweede Kamerlid al in 1903 Van Daalen de 'Alva van Atjeh' had betiteld, toonde Catrinus in 1928, toen hij op Sumatra voet aan wal zette, geen enkele moreel bezwaar tegen de slachtpartijen die slechts veertien jaar eerder waren gestopt, zoals de serieuze lezer van de bestseller De eeuw van mijn vader (1999) van zijn zoon Geert zal zijn opgevallen. Ondanks het feit dat Van Daalen's misdadige 'optreden tot in de Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal toe [omstreden]' was, 'werd' hij door het protestants-christelijke volksdeel 'uitbundig geprezen om zijn militaire prestaties.' Dat is in het geval van de godsvruchtige Catrinus Mak, op zijn mildst gesteld, nogal opmerkelijk, aangezien hij zich in de jaren dertig in een auto met inheemse chauffeur door dit gebied liet rondrijden en zijn woonplaats Medan op slechts 160 kilometer van Tampeng lag, terwijl sommige van de 'naar schatting vijfhonderd Atjehse dorpen,' die door toedoen van de koloniale 'helden,' in 'vlammen' waren 'opgegaan,' nog dichterbij dan Tampeng lagen. Tegenover Stolwijk verklaarde Paul Bijl 'assistant professor at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam and an affiliated fellow of KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies' dat 'Nederland een eigenaardige relatie [heeft] met' de foto van Van Daalen, omringd door de stoffelijke overschotten van de slachtoffers in Tampeng. Als auteur van Emerging Memory. Photographs of Colonial Atrocities in Dutch Cultural Remembrance (2015) viel het Bijl op dat
[t]elkens als de foto ergens opduikt men weer opnieuw geschokt [is] of beschaamd. Maar de Atjeh-oorlog hoort voor veel mensen niet bij de Nederlandse geschiedenis, en zo blijft het een ver-van-mijn-bed-show. Volgens mij komt onze verhouding met de Atjeh-oorlog dus niet voort uit vergeetachtigheid, maar uit een soort afasie. De kennis is er wel, maar er wordt geen betekenis aan gegeven.
File: COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Groepsportret van de marechaussee met overste Van Daalen bij de vermoorde inwoners
Ik denk dat Paul Bijl geen gelijk heeft, aangezien afasie een taalstoornis is. De journalist Geert Mak en zijn vader, dominee Catrinus kunnen weliswaar allerlei hersenletsel hebben opgelopen, maar dit heeft in elk geval er niet toe geleid dat ze moeite hebben/hadden 'met het vinden van de juiste woorden of met de zinsopbouw.' Integendeel zelfs, zowel vader als zoon weten c.q. wisten precies wat ze konden zeggen en wat ze moesten verzwijgen. Men krijgt dan de volgende opmerkelijke taalconstructies in De eeuw van mijn vader voorgeschoteld:
Toen mijn vader er in de jaren dertig rondreed, werd hem trots het monument voor overste Van Daalen getoond. Hele landstreken waren nog steeds verlaten en verwoest. Veilig was het er nooit.
Medan lag daar in 1928 ver vandaan — althans ogenschijnlijk.
Wat probeert Mak junior hier te suggereren? Simpelweg het volgende: Medan, waar zijn vader was gestationeerd, lag in diens beleving ver verwijderd van het gebied waar een decennium eerder de grootscheepse Nederlandse oorlogsmisdaden zich hadden voltrokken, 'althans,' zo leek het hem toe. De onvermijdelijke vraag is dus: waarom dacht Catrinus Mak dit? Hoe is de groteske onverschilligheid te verklaren van een zielenherder die de gelovige gemeente moreel op het goede spoor moest brengen en houden? In werkelijkheid lag Medan in 1928 juist uiterst dichtbij de verschrikkingen, net zoals Auschwitz en Hiroshima nog steeds, zeven decennia later, uiterst dichtbij liggen. Zeker voor de slachtoffers, maar ook voor de daders. Die persoonlijke verantwoordelijkheid probeert Mak in al zijn boeken evenwel weg te masseren door te verzwijgen, door niet de juiste vragen te stellen, door te vergoelijken en door de taal te verkrachten. Dat maakt hem ook zo populair bij zijn mainstream-publiek. 'Hele landstreken waren nog steeds verlaten en verwoest,' maar zijn reizende vader zag niks. Waarom zag deze christen niets? Waarom stelde hij zichzelf geen vragen daarover? Net als het antisemitisme van zijn ouders dat, volgens Geert Mak, geen antisemitisme was, was ook hun racisme geen racisme. 'Mijn ouders wisten nu eenmaal niet, zoals niemand dat weet, op welke plek ze zich bevonden in de geschiedenis. En met name wisten ze één ding niet: dat hun hele leven zich afspeelde tussen een voorbij wereldoorlog en een komende,' zo tracht hij de houding van zijn ouders, en daarmee die van de Nederlandse kleinburger in het algemeen, te vergoelijken. Het is de Hollandse variant van het 'Wir haben es nicht gewusst.' Pas
[v]eel later, toen hij zijn herinneringen opschreef, sprak mijn vader van een 'schuldige tijdgebondenheid.' Achteraf schaamde hij zich diep over deze periode. Ik maakte me, schreef hij, enkel druk over de handhaving van het sabbatsgebod… Bij excessen ergerde men zich, zeker, 'maar voor de rest hadden we met de maatschappelijke structuur geen moeite.'
Ook hier duikt het woord 'excessen' op, alsof het, alsof het moordende, uitbuitende en verkrachtende kolonialisme geen 'exces' op zichzelf was. 'Was er bij ons enige pijnlijke gedachte of ongerustheid, dat wij ondanks de zegeningen van ons bewind, in feite hun overheersers waren en vaak hun uitbuiters? In het minst niet!' Vlak na de oorlog vonden bijna alle Nederlanders het nog vanzelfsprekend dat de oude posities zonder slag of stoot weer zouden worden ingenomen. 'Zelfs was ik ook zo naïef.' Pas daarna zou hij wakker worden,
zo schrijft zoon Geert meer dan een halve eeuw later, geheel in de traditie van: na de zonde komt het berouw en tenslotte de vergeving. Eind goed, al goed, tot de nieuwe generatie zich weer met veel geweld aandient en tot de conclusie komt dat de VS na al 'onze' koloniale misdaden 'decennialang als ordebewaker en politieagent' in de de wereld heeft gefungeerd, en Mak junior straks op zijn beurt 'wakker' wordt en dit in een bestseller aan zijn volgelingen meedeelt. Misschien zal ook hij zijn collaboratie dan 'schuldige tijdgebondenheid,' noemen, de schuld gebonden aan de tijd. Niet ik was schuldig, maar de tijd. 'Vader, vergeef het ons, we weten niet beter, en daarom zijn we onschuldig.' Zo weet de lafaard altijd te ontsnappen aan de eigen verantwoordelijkheid.
Er is maar weinig in dit universum dat 'vanzelfsprekend' is, en zich 'zonder slag of stoot' overgeeft.
Catrinus Mak: 'Schuldige Tijdgebondenheid.'
The Global Economic Crisis, The Great Depression of the XXI Century.
Global Research, June 02, 2015
Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-global-economic-crisis-the-great-depression-of-the-xxi-century-2/19025
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-global-economic-crisis-the-great-depression-of-the-xxi-century-2/19025
The following text is an excerpt of the Preface of The Global Economic Crisis. The Great Depression of the XXI Century, Montreal, Global Research, 2010.
Click here to buy the book!
In all major regions of the world, the economic recession is deep-seated, resulting in mass unemployment, the collapse of state social programs and the impoverishment of millions of people. The economic crisis is accompanied by a worldwide process of militarization, a “war without borders” led by the United States of America and its NATO allies. The conduct of the Pentagon’s “long war” is intimately related to the restructuring of the global economy.
We are not dealing with a narrowly defined economic crisis or recession. The global financial architecture sustains strategic and national security objectives. In turn, the U.S.-NATO military agenda serves to endorse a powerful business elite which relentlessly overshadows and undermines the functions of civilian government.
This book takes the reader through the corridors of the Federal Reserve and the Council on Foreign Relations, behind closed doors at the Bank for International Settlements, into the plush corporate boardrooms on Wall Street where far-reaching financial transactions are routinely undertaken from computer terminals linked up to major stock markets, at the touch of a mouse button.
Each of the authors in this collection digs beneath the gilded surface to reveal a complex web of deceit and media distortion which serves to conceal the workings of the global economic system and its devastating impacts on people’s lives. Our analysis focuses on the role of powerful economic and political actors in an environment wrought by corruption, financial manipulation and fraud.
Despite the diversity of viewpoints and perspectives presented within this volume, all of the contributors ultimately come to the same conclusion: humanity is at the crossroads of the most serious economic and social crisis in modern history.
The meltdown of financial markets in 2008-2009 was the result of institutionalized fraud and financial manipulation. The “bank bailouts” were implemented on the instructions of Wall Street, leading to the largest transfer of money wealth in recorded history, while simultaneously creating an insurmountable public debt.
With the worldwide deterioration of living standards and plummeting consumer spending, the entire structure of international commodity trade is potentially in jeopardy. The payments system of money transactions is in disarray. Following the collapse of employment, the payment of wages is disrupted, which in turn triggers a downfall in expenditures on necessary consumer goods and services. This dramatic plunge in purchasing power backfires on the productive system, resulting in a string of layoffs, plant closures and bankruptcies. Exacerbated by the freeze on credit, the decline in consumer demand contributes to the demobilization of human and material resources.
This process of economic decline is cumulative. All categories of the labor force are affected. Payments of wages are no longer implemented, credit is disrupted and capital investments are at a standstill. Meanwhile, in Western countries, the “social safety net” inherited from the welfare state, which protects the unemployed during an economic downturn, is also in jeopardy.
The Myth of Economic Recovery
The existence of a “Great Depression” on the scale of the 1930s, while often acknowledged, is overshadowed by an unbending consensus: “The economy is on the road to recovery”.
While there is talk of an economic renewal, Wall Street commentators have persistently and intentionally overlooked the fact that the financial meltdown is not simply composed of one bubble – the housing real estate bubble – which has already burst. In fact, the crisis has many bubbles, all of which dwarf the housing bubble burst of 2008.
Although there is no fundamental disagreement among mainstream analysts on the occurrence of an economic recovery, there is heated debate as to when it will occur, whether in the next quarter, or in the third quarter of next year, etc. Already in early 2010, the “recovery” of the U.S. economy had been predicted and confirmed through a carefully worded barrage of media disinformation. Meanwhile, the social plight of increased unemployment in America has been scrupulously camouflaged. Economists view bankruptcy as a microeconomic phenomenon.
The media reports on bankruptcies, while revealing local-level realities affecting one or more factories, fail to provide an overall picture of what is happening at the national and international levels. When all these simultaneous plant closures in towns and cities across the land are added together, a very different picture emerges: entire sectors of a national economy are closing down.
Public opinion continues to be misled as to the causes and consequences of the economic crisis, not to mention the policy solutions. People are led to believe that the economy has a logic of its own which depends on the free interplay of market forces, and that powerful financial actors, who pull the strings in the corporate boardrooms, could not, under any circumstances, have willfully influenced the course of economic events.
The relentless and fraudulent appropriation of wealth is upheld as an integral part of “the American dream”, as a means to spreading the benefits of economic growth. As conveyed by Michael Hudson, the myth becomes entrenched that “without wealth at the top, there would be nothing to trickle down.” Such flawed logic of the business cycle overshadows an understanding of the structural and historical origins of the global economic crisis.
Financial Fraud
Media disinformation largely serves the interests of a handful of global banks and institutional speculators which use their command over financial and commodity markets to amass vast amounts of money wealth. The corridors of the state are controlled by the corporate establishment including the speculators. Meanwhile, the “bank bailouts”, presented to the public as a requisite for economic recovery, have facilitated and legitimized a further process of appropriation of wealth.
Vast amounts of money wealth are acquired through market manipulation. Often referred to as “deregulation”, the financial apparatus has developed sophisticated instruments of outright manipulation and deceit. With inside information and foreknowledge, major financial actors, using the instruments of speculative trade, have the ability to fiddle and rig market movements to their advantage, precipitate the collapse of a competitor and wreck havoc in the economies of developing countries. These tools of manipulation have become an integral part of the financial architecture; they are embedded in the system.
The Failure of Mainstream Economics
The economics profession, particularly in the universities, rarely addresses the actual “real world” functioning of markets. Theoretical constructs centered on mathematical models serve to represent an abstract, fictional world in which individuals are equal. There is no theoretical distinction between workers, consumers or corporations, all of which are referred to as “individual traders”. No single individual has the power or ability to influence the market, nor can there be any conflict between workers and capitalists within this abstract world.
By failing to examine the interplay of powerful economic actors in the “real life” economy, the processes of market rigging, financial manipulation and fraud are overlooked. The concentration and centralization of economic decision-making, the role of the financial elites, the economic thinks tanks, the corporate boardrooms: none of these issues are examined in the universities’ economics programs. The theoretical construct is dysfunctional; it cannot be used to provide an understanding of the economic crisis.
Economic science is an ideological construct which serves to camouflage and justify the New World Order. A set of dogmatic postulates serves to uphold free market capitalism by denying the existence of social inequality and the profit-driven nature of the system is denied. The role of powerful economic actors and how these actors are able to influence the workings of financial and commodity markets is not a matter of concern for the discipline’s theoreticians. The powers of market manipulation which serve to appropriate vast amounts of money wealth are rarely addressed. And when they are acknowledged, they are considered to belong to the realm of sociology or political science.
This means that the policy and institutional framework behind this global economic system, which has been shaped in the course of the last thirty years, is rarely analyzed by mainstream economists. It follows that economics as a discipline, with some exceptions, has not provided the analysis required to comprehend the economic crisis. In fact, its main free market postulates deny the existence of a crisis. The focus of neoclassical economics is on equilibrium, disequilibrium and “market correction” or “adjustment” through the market mechanism, as a means to putting the economy back “onto the path of self-sustained growth”.
Poverty and Social Inequality
The global political economy is a system that enriches the very few at the expense of the vast majority. The global economic crisis has contributed to widening social inequalities both within and between countries. Under global capitalism, mounting poverty is not the result of a scarcity or a lack of human and material resources. Quite the opposite holds true: the economic depression is marked by a process of disengagement of human resources and physical capital. People’s lives are destroyed. The economic crisis is deep-seated.
The structures of social inequality have, quite deliberately, been reinforced, leading not only to a generalized process of impoverishment but also to the demise of the middle and upper middle income groups.
Middle class consumerism, on which this unruly model of capitalist development is based, is also threatened. Bankruptcies have hit several of the most vibrant sectors of the consumer economy. The middle classes in the West have, for several decades, been subjected to the erosion of their material wealth. While the middle class exists in theory, it is a class built and sustained by household debt.
The wealthy rather than the middle class are rapidly becoming the consuming class, leading to the relentless growth of the luxury goods economy. Moreover, with the drying up of the middle class markets for manufactured goods, a central and decisive shift in the structure of economic growth has occurred. With the demise of the civilian economy, the development of America’s war economy, supported by a whopping near-trillion dollar defense budget, has reached new heights. As stock markets tumble and the recession unfolds, the advanced weapons industries, the military and national security contractors and the up-and-coming mercenary companies (among others) have experienced a thriving and booming growth of their various activities.
War and the Economic Crisis
War is inextricably linked to the impoverishment of people at home and around the world. Militarization and the economic crisis are intimately related. The provision of essential goods and services to meet basic human needs has been replaced by a profit-driven “killing machine” in support of America’s “Global War on Terror”. The poor are made to fight the poor. Yet war enriches the upper class, which controls industry, the military, oil and banking. In a war economy, death is good for business, poverty is good for society, and power is good for politics. Western nations, particularly the United States, spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year to murder innocent people in far-away impoverished nations, while the people at home suffer the disparities of poverty, class, gender and racial divides.
An outright “economic war” resulting in unemployment, poverty and disease is carried out through the free market. People’s lives are in a freefall and their purchasing power is destroyed. In a very real sense, the last twenty years of global “free market” economy have resulted, through poverty and social destitution, in the lives of millions of people.
Rather than addressing an impending social catastrophe, Western governments, which serve the interests of the economic elites, have installed a “Big Brother” police state, with a mandate to confront and repress all forms of opposition and social dissent.
The economic and social crisis has by no means reached its climax and entire countries, including Greece and Iceland, are at risk. One need only look at the escalation of the Middle East Central Asian war and the U.S.-NATO threats to China, Russia and Iran to witness how war and the economy are intimately related.
Michel Chossudovsky, Montreal, May 2010
The book can be ordered directly from Global Research
The contributors to this book reveal the intricacies of global banking and its insidious relationship to the military industrial complex and the oil conglomerates. The book presents an inter- disciplinary and multi-faceted approach, while also conveying an understanding of the historical and institutional dimensions. The complex relations of the economic crisis to war, empire and worldwide poverty are highlighted. This crisis has a truly global reach and repercussions that reverberate throughout all nations, across all societies.
In Part I, the overall causes of the global economic crisis as well as the failures of mainstream economics are laid out. Michel Chossudovsky focuses on the history of financial deregulation and speculation. Tanya Cariina Hsu analyzes the role of the American Empire and its relationship to the economic crisis. John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff undertake a comprehensive review of the political economy of the crisis, explaining the central role of monetary policy. James Petras and Claudia von Werlhof provide a detailed review and critique of neoliberalism, focusing on the economic, political and social repercussions of the “free market” reforms. Shamus Cooke examines the central role of debt, both public and private.
Part II, which includes chapters by Michel Chossudovsky and Peter Phillips, analyzes the rising tide of poverty and social inequality resulting from the Great Depression.
CLICK IMAGE TO ORDER
With contributions by Michel Chossudovsky, Peter Dale Scott, Michael Hudson, Bill Van Auken, Tom Burghardt and Andrew Gavin Marshall, Part III examines the relationship between the economic crisis, National Security, the U.S.-NATO led war and world government. In this context, as conveyed by Peter Dale Scott, the economic crisis creates social conditions which favor the instatement of martial law.
The focus in Part IV is on the global monetary system, its evolution and its changing role. Andrew Gavin Marshall examines the history of central banking as well as various initiatives to create regional and global currency systems. Ellen Brown focuses on the creation of a global central bank and global currency through the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Richard C. Cook examines the debt-based monetary system as a system of control and provides a framework for democratizing the monetary system.
Part V focuses on the working of the Shadow Banking System, which triggered the 2008 meltdown of financial markets. The chapters by Mike Whitney and Ellen Brown describe in detail how Wall Street’s Ponzi scheme was used to manipulate the market and transfer billions of dollars into the pockets of the banksters.
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In all major regions of the world, the economic recession is deep-seated, resulting in mass unemployment, the collapse of state social programs and the impoverishment of millions of people. The economic crisis is accompanied by a worldwide process of militarization, a “war without borders” led by the United States of America and its NATO allies. The conduct of the Pentagon’s “long war” is intimately related to the restructuring of the global economy.
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This book takes the reader through the corridors of the Federal Reserve and the Council on Foreign Relations, behind closed doors at the Bank for International Settlements, into the plush corporate boardrooms on Wall Street where far-reaching financial transactions are routinely undertaken from computer terminals linked up to major stock markets, at the touch of a mouse button.
Each of the authors in this collection digs beneath the gilded surface to reveal a complex web of deceit and media distortion which serves to conceal the workings of the global economic system and its devastating impacts on people’s lives. Our analysis focuses on the role of powerful economic and political actors in an environment wrought by corruption, financial manipulation and fraud.
Despite the diversity of viewpoints and perspectives presented within this volume, all of the contributors ultimately come to the same conclusion: humanity is at the crossroads of the most serious economic and social crisis in modern history.
The meltdown of financial markets in 2008-2009 was the result of institutionalized fraud and financial manipulation. The “bank bailouts” were implemented on the instructions of Wall Street, leading to the largest transfer of money wealth in recorded history, while simultaneously creating an insurmountable public debt.
With the worldwide deterioration of living standards and plummeting consumer spending, the entire structure of international commodity trade is potentially in jeopardy. The payments system of money transactions is in disarray. Following the collapse of employment, the payment of wages is disrupted, which in turn triggers a downfall in expenditures on necessary consumer goods and services. This dramatic plunge in purchasing power backfires on the productive system, resulting in a string of layoffs, plant closures and bankruptcies. Exacerbated by the freeze on credit, the decline in consumer demand contributes to the demobilization of human and material resources.
This process of economic decline is cumulative. All categories of the labor force are affected. Payments of wages are no longer implemented, credit is disrupted and capital investments are at a standstill. Meanwhile, in Western countries, the “social safety net” inherited from the welfare state, which protects the unemployed during an economic downturn, is also in jeopardy.
The Myth of Economic Recovery
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While there is talk of an economic renewal, Wall Street commentators have persistently and intentionally overlooked the fact that the financial meltdown is not simply composed of one bubble – the housing real estate bubble – which has already burst. In fact, the crisis has many bubbles, all of which dwarf the housing bubble burst of 2008.
Although there is no fundamental disagreement among mainstream analysts on the occurrence of an economic recovery, there is heated debate as to when it will occur, whether in the next quarter, or in the third quarter of next year, etc. Already in early 2010, the “recovery” of the U.S. economy had been predicted and confirmed through a carefully worded barrage of media disinformation. Meanwhile, the social plight of increased unemployment in America has been scrupulously camouflaged. Economists view bankruptcy as a microeconomic phenomenon.
The media reports on bankruptcies, while revealing local-level realities affecting one or more factories, fail to provide an overall picture of what is happening at the national and international levels. When all these simultaneous plant closures in towns and cities across the land are added together, a very different picture emerges: entire sectors of a national economy are closing down.
Public opinion continues to be misled as to the causes and consequences of the economic crisis, not to mention the policy solutions. People are led to believe that the economy has a logic of its own which depends on the free interplay of market forces, and that powerful financial actors, who pull the strings in the corporate boardrooms, could not, under any circumstances, have willfully influenced the course of economic events.
The relentless and fraudulent appropriation of wealth is upheld as an integral part of “the American dream”, as a means to spreading the benefits of economic growth. As conveyed by Michael Hudson, the myth becomes entrenched that “without wealth at the top, there would be nothing to trickle down.” Such flawed logic of the business cycle overshadows an understanding of the structural and historical origins of the global economic crisis.
Financial Fraud
Media disinformation largely serves the interests of a handful of global banks and institutional speculators which use their command over financial and commodity markets to amass vast amounts of money wealth. The corridors of the state are controlled by the corporate establishment including the speculators. Meanwhile, the “bank bailouts”, presented to the public as a requisite for economic recovery, have facilitated and legitimized a further process of appropriation of wealth.
Vast amounts of money wealth are acquired through market manipulation. Often referred to as “deregulation”, the financial apparatus has developed sophisticated instruments of outright manipulation and deceit. With inside information and foreknowledge, major financial actors, using the instruments of speculative trade, have the ability to fiddle and rig market movements to their advantage, precipitate the collapse of a competitor and wreck havoc in the economies of developing countries. These tools of manipulation have become an integral part of the financial architecture; they are embedded in the system.
The Failure of Mainstream Economics
Combine with The Globalization of Poverty by Michel Chossudovsky for only 30$! Click image to buy!
By failing to examine the interplay of powerful economic actors in the “real life” economy, the processes of market rigging, financial manipulation and fraud are overlooked. The concentration and centralization of economic decision-making, the role of the financial elites, the economic thinks tanks, the corporate boardrooms: none of these issues are examined in the universities’ economics programs. The theoretical construct is dysfunctional; it cannot be used to provide an understanding of the economic crisis.
Economic science is an ideological construct which serves to camouflage and justify the New World Order. A set of dogmatic postulates serves to uphold free market capitalism by denying the existence of social inequality and the profit-driven nature of the system is denied. The role of powerful economic actors and how these actors are able to influence the workings of financial and commodity markets is not a matter of concern for the discipline’s theoreticians. The powers of market manipulation which serve to appropriate vast amounts of money wealth are rarely addressed. And when they are acknowledged, they are considered to belong to the realm of sociology or political science.
This means that the policy and institutional framework behind this global economic system, which has been shaped in the course of the last thirty years, is rarely analyzed by mainstream economists. It follows that economics as a discipline, with some exceptions, has not provided the analysis required to comprehend the economic crisis. In fact, its main free market postulates deny the existence of a crisis. The focus of neoclassical economics is on equilibrium, disequilibrium and “market correction” or “adjustment” through the market mechanism, as a means to putting the economy back “onto the path of self-sustained growth”.
Poverty and Social Inequality
The global political economy is a system that enriches the very few at the expense of the vast majority. The global economic crisis has contributed to widening social inequalities both within and between countries. Under global capitalism, mounting poverty is not the result of a scarcity or a lack of human and material resources. Quite the opposite holds true: the economic depression is marked by a process of disengagement of human resources and physical capital. People’s lives are destroyed. The economic crisis is deep-seated.
The structures of social inequality have, quite deliberately, been reinforced, leading not only to a generalized process of impoverishment but also to the demise of the middle and upper middle income groups.
Middle class consumerism, on which this unruly model of capitalist development is based, is also threatened. Bankruptcies have hit several of the most vibrant sectors of the consumer economy. The middle classes in the West have, for several decades, been subjected to the erosion of their material wealth. While the middle class exists in theory, it is a class built and sustained by household debt.
The wealthy rather than the middle class are rapidly becoming the consuming class, leading to the relentless growth of the luxury goods economy. Moreover, with the drying up of the middle class markets for manufactured goods, a central and decisive shift in the structure of economic growth has occurred. With the demise of the civilian economy, the development of America’s war economy, supported by a whopping near-trillion dollar defense budget, has reached new heights. As stock markets tumble and the recession unfolds, the advanced weapons industries, the military and national security contractors and the up-and-coming mercenary companies (among others) have experienced a thriving and booming growth of their various activities.
War and the Economic Crisis
War is inextricably linked to the impoverishment of people at home and around the world. Militarization and the economic crisis are intimately related. The provision of essential goods and services to meet basic human needs has been replaced by a profit-driven “killing machine” in support of America’s “Global War on Terror”. The poor are made to fight the poor. Yet war enriches the upper class, which controls industry, the military, oil and banking. In a war economy, death is good for business, poverty is good for society, and power is good for politics. Western nations, particularly the United States, spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year to murder innocent people in far-away impoverished nations, while the people at home suffer the disparities of poverty, class, gender and racial divides.
An outright “economic war” resulting in unemployment, poverty and disease is carried out through the free market. People’s lives are in a freefall and their purchasing power is destroyed. In a very real sense, the last twenty years of global “free market” economy have resulted, through poverty and social destitution, in the lives of millions of people.
Rather than addressing an impending social catastrophe, Western governments, which serve the interests of the economic elites, have installed a “Big Brother” police state, with a mandate to confront and repress all forms of opposition and social dissent.
The economic and social crisis has by no means reached its climax and entire countries, including Greece and Iceland, are at risk. One need only look at the escalation of the Middle East Central Asian war and the U.S.-NATO threats to China, Russia and Iran to witness how war and the economy are intimately related.
Michel Chossudovsky, Montreal, May 2010
The book can be ordered directly from Global Research
The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century
Contents of this BookThe contributors to this book reveal the intricacies of global banking and its insidious relationship to the military industrial complex and the oil conglomerates. The book presents an inter- disciplinary and multi-faceted approach, while also conveying an understanding of the historical and institutional dimensions. The complex relations of the economic crisis to war, empire and worldwide poverty are highlighted. This crisis has a truly global reach and repercussions that reverberate throughout all nations, across all societies.
In Part I, the overall causes of the global economic crisis as well as the failures of mainstream economics are laid out. Michel Chossudovsky focuses on the history of financial deregulation and speculation. Tanya Cariina Hsu analyzes the role of the American Empire and its relationship to the economic crisis. John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff undertake a comprehensive review of the political economy of the crisis, explaining the central role of monetary policy. James Petras and Claudia von Werlhof provide a detailed review and critique of neoliberalism, focusing on the economic, political and social repercussions of the “free market” reforms. Shamus Cooke examines the central role of debt, both public and private.
Part II, which includes chapters by Michel Chossudovsky and Peter Phillips, analyzes the rising tide of poverty and social inequality resulting from the Great Depression.
CLICK IMAGE TO ORDER
With contributions by Michel Chossudovsky, Peter Dale Scott, Michael Hudson, Bill Van Auken, Tom Burghardt and Andrew Gavin Marshall, Part III examines the relationship between the economic crisis, National Security, the U.S.-NATO led war and world government. In this context, as conveyed by Peter Dale Scott, the economic crisis creates social conditions which favor the instatement of martial law.The focus in Part IV is on the global monetary system, its evolution and its changing role. Andrew Gavin Marshall examines the history of central banking as well as various initiatives to create regional and global currency systems. Ellen Brown focuses on the creation of a global central bank and global currency through the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Richard C. Cook examines the debt-based monetary system as a system of control and provides a framework for democratizing the monetary system.
Part V focuses on the working of the Shadow Banking System, which triggered the 2008 meltdown of financial markets. The chapters by Mike Whitney and Ellen Brown describe in detail how Wall Street’s Ponzi scheme was used to manipulate the market and transfer billions of dollars into the pockets of the banksters.
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