Franz J.T. Lee, August, 2009

Is Barack Obama steering a healthy ship out of turbulent titanic global waters?

Is the capitalist world economic crisis over? Are we coming to grips with the financial scandal and banking fiasco?

Have we saved world capitalism and can we now peacefully get down to big business, to big wars again?
Although lately. very little was reported from Wall Street, are its 'Crash, Crack and Slump' really just nightmares of the remote past?
Is US President Barack Obama steering a healthy ship of State out of the turbulent titanic waters of the Bermuda Triangle?
When will the 'Obamania' stop ... when will we see imperialism as a global reality?
At least, about all this, it seems that our international mass media is trying very hard to inform us about our current development, our progress towards a good neoliberal capitalism, towards the best of all possible worlds.

Well, nothing else is more further away from the global truth than such ideological fabrications and deliberate manipulatory machinations.

Let us just pay a visit to some hot spots in the global burning crucible. Let us start on Wall Street!

Dow Jones just registered a 2% crash, its greatest loss over the last six weeks, ending up with 9,135.26 points. Most stock markets are reporting similar losses, even Shanghai reported a loss of 5.8%; Ford stocks fell 5.87%; Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae dropped 9.22 and 9.71%, respectively. *1)

Hence, in the same tempo as the next G20 summit meeting to be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is approaching, the threatening dialectical economic contradictions within the metropolitan countries are deepening. Slowly but surely, inexorably the noisy grinding economic mills of the current super depression are spelling planetary doom for humanity, not only for the super powers, but even more so for millions of international impoverished workers.

Consequently, daily, millions and millions of wage slaves of all categories are being caught up by the voracious tentacles of unemployment, bail-outs, budget cuts, cutbacks, wage cuts, down-sizing and layoffs.

This viral, pandemic, capitalist  piggery is infecting the while globe. 

Not so long ago, within a relatively very short period of time, within less  than two decades ... 1929-1945 ... capitalism, severely threatened,  showed its true fascist, racist grimace. Fascism ended up with the  annihilation of large sectors of capital and labor, with the destruction of  cities, human resources and infrastructures, of Marxists, communists,  gypsies, Jews and 'blacks,' especially of millions of physical labor forces  in Europe, America, Asia, Africa and elsewhere.

The current global war economies, the military industrial complexes, the  dollarization of the world, the rise and fall of the super power, the USA,  began with nuclear Thanatos, with the launching of the infamous  Manhattan Project, which produced the atomic bombs which were  thrown on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thus, for mankind the only real Via  Crucis of our epoch has already commenced with capitalist lies,  imperialist myths and corporate hoaxes, like the typical cases of "Pearl  Harbor", the fake "AMDs" in Iraq or the ideological mysticism around  "9/11."

It continued with electoral fraud and economic corruption, concentration  camps, Bantustans, apartheid, Gaza, torture chambers, body, mind and  thought control, patriot acts, full spectrum dominance, Moscow trials,  genocide, gulags, nuclear war, militarization of the planet and of space.

Now, Mirror, Mirror on the Wall of Woe, what will our corporate future  bring us?

Arms of Mass Destruction, again fox-hunting, to shoot down rabbits or  Bushmen, to quarter black slaves?

Again Western, Christian Culture?

Perhaps, gadgets electro-magnetically to roast demonstrators, women,  philosophers and scientists on the stake; who knows, in a huge black  pot to make a delicious transgenic, cloned missionary soup?

Or, will we continue to hunt phantoms, Bin Laden, Mars creatures, or ...

Yes ... in capitalism everything is possible, also in the land of trillions of  golden opportunities, of greenbacks!

Could bail-outs, national or continental chauvinism, protectionist trade  policies, 'national socialism' or even economic nationalism still salvage  a crumbling dollar, a rumbling savage economy ... the United States of  America and many other countries in severe recession?

What is happening de facto?

What is the crux, the golden calf, of the matter?

Simply: super power rivalry, economic conflicts, intra-class struggle  between the USA and Europe for a future hegemonic place under the  scorching, scourging sun. According to Stefan Steinberg today, more  than before, "the German and French governments, in particular, have  been waging a concerted campaign against Anglo-American domination  of the world’s financial markets." *2)

On the verge of the raging international class struggle, even "leftist"  parties, organizations and trade unions participate in this European  depressive brawl, in the ruling class vendetta: "The most pernicious role  in this outburst of protectionism and nationalism is being played by the  Social Democratic and nominally Communist organizations in Europe, in  alliance with the trade unions. These parties and unions, in turn, have  the backing of a host of petty-bourgeois 'left' organizations." *3)

Strange enough, but very logical, global imperialism is retreating  towards the fascist forties and fifties of the previous century, towards  "trade war, colonial war and 'beggar-thy-neighbor' economic nationalism  ... which many thought were peculiar to the first half of the twentieth  century -- is the surest sign of the crisis and decay of the capitalist  system." *4)

In which way the above global contradictions concern Venezuela?

Why is the Obama administration throwing coals ... sorry, oil, gas and  water ... on the burning Uribe-Chavez conflict?

Why the United States "indirect approach strategy" against Venezuela?

Why the provocation, the planned construction of seven US military  bases in Colombia, in front of the very nose of President Chavez?

According to a recent article written by Vadim Trukhachev "PRAVDA:  USA to topple Venezuela's Chavez through 'indirect approach strategy,  "experts hold an opinion that the USA tries to discredit Chavez and  conducts an information war against him in order to topple the stubborn  Venezuelan President. It goes without saying that the USA is not going  to send troops to Venezuela ... the USA acts indirectly through its ally ...  military experts call it the indirect approach strategy." 5)

Let us move away from the US imperialist panorama to the European  colonial "backyard" to see how corporate "neoliberal savagery" is  devouring everything which can be transformed into profits, hegemony  and power.

The East European countries, especially those situated in the Baltic  region, are suffering from a severe recession; they even have to beg for  aid from the itself already bankrupt International Monetary Fund (IMF).  Economically this current eastern neocolonial backyard of the European  Union (EU), especially of Germany, is in total jeopardy. Ironically, to  exemplify the absurd reigning fiasco, some of the traditional regional  export markets, like Belarus and Ukraine, are themselves in a precarious  situation; the global downturn is forcing them also to seek solace in the  'benevolent' arms of the corporate 'fairy queen,' of the IMF.

According to an article written by Jordan Shilton, in Eastern Europe  Lithuania is now leading the economic slump, it is surpassing Latvia,  which has recorded an economic retraction of 18 percent in the first  quarter of 2009: "On July 28, Lithuania released economic figures for the  second quarter of 2009, revealing a year-on-year contraction of 22.4  percent of GDP. The data suggests that of the 27 EU members, Lithuania  will face the worst economic contraction this year." *6)

Last year when Latvia's second largest bank, Parex Banka, crashed and  was bailed out within the context of the general global economic turmoil,  it received IMF aid with its well-known exploitative conditions, already  since decades applied to the "Third World". Also, like in the case of  Iceland, all this is tantamount to a collapse of the Baltic economies.

In the same velocity as layoffs and foreclosures are mounting in the USA  and elsewhere, curtailing workers' rights, all over the Baltic region, as  mentioned before, the stereotypical 'remedies' are being administered:  budget cuts, cutbacks, wage cuts, unemployment, austerity, misery and  oppression. In Riga, Tallinn and Vilna (Vilnius), all these resulted in  economic contraction, followed by mass street protests and government  suppression.

What is the bottom line?

Soon the whole globe will be heated up with dozens of wild bush fires.  Gideon Rachman, writing in the Financial Times explains: "Despite the  region’s small size, the intensifying crisis in the Baltics cannot be  treated as a freakish local squall of little concern to outsiders. Bank  failures or plunging currencies in the three Baltic nations -- Latvia,  Lithuania and Estonia -- could threaten the fragile prospect of recovery in  the rest of Europe. These countries also sit on one of the world’s most  sensitive political fault-lines. They are the European Union’s frontier  states, bordering Russia." 7)

What he did not mention were the huge natural resources in the  Caucasus and Baku regions, the expansionist imperialist European drive  towards the Balkans, and thus the possible threat of a future Eurasia for  United States hegemony, for a future Corporate World State, as  demanded by the Club of Rome.

Similarly, the Obama administration is preparing the second conquest of  the Americas, Amazonia, the Antarctic and Artic and the Caribbean, their  oil, gas, biodiversity, water, oxygen, strategic minerals and metals.

To halt all this internationally, among others, Fidel, Che, Lenin, Trotsky  and Rosa Luxemburg told us 'What it to be Done" ... but they warned us, without true and real anti-capitalism, without philosophic theory no  emancipatory praxis.

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1) www.cronica.com.mx/nota.php?id_nota=452190
2) www.wsws.org/articles/2009/aug2009/pers-a15.shtml
3) Ibid.4) Ibid.
5) www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=82492
6) www.wsws.org/articles/2009/aug2009/balt-a11.s
7) ibid.