Empire amok, Starmer on the ropes

The sun never set on it – at once both literal truth and vainglorious boast

Caitlin’s post today took stock of differences between the British and US empires – direct rule colonialism versus indirect rule by an imperialism I define broad brush as global north to south export of monopoly capital, south to north repatriation of profits. Such differences matter, but so do their shared features. Both forms of grand larceny oversee eyewatering wealth transfers – right up to that point, reached by all empires, where rising overheads surpass falling gains – and both deploy violence with variable levels of fraud; fraud with varying levels of violence.

The US-centralized empire is also held in place by brute force, but its primary weapon is psychological manipulation. It has the most sophisticated propaganda machine that ever existed, which trains the minds of its subjects to support all its agendas of capitalism, militarism, imperialism and global domination under the guise of news media, Hollywood productions, and Silicon Valley tech services. Disobedient nations find their information ecosystems awash with National Endowment for Democracy reeducation media informing them why their current government doesn’t serve their interests, and if that doesn’t work there will be a “revolution” which decades later the CIA will admit to having fomented and armed.

The US empire is a larger, stronger, sneakier, bitchier, less honest, more manipulative version of the British Empire …

It’s a three minute read, tops. You’ll have finished it before you’re halfway through your coffee, after which you might pencil into your weekend a 43:44 slot for the fullest appraisal I’ve so far encountered of the empire at work in Venezuela. A point Caitlin misses in her splendid post is that, more even than European colonialism, US imperialism needs a comprador class within the plundered country. Ideally with one of its own as head of state. Juan Guaidó, recall, bombed like a lead balloon. Now it’s the turn of María Corina Machado, up there with Barack Obama …

… as one of the most gas-lightingly Kafkaesque recipients to date of a Nobel Peace Prize. Perish the thought that intense lobbying from the US State Department swayed the Oslo panel! Who more worthy than one calling for armed invasion of her own country by a foreign power – and promising the mother of all paydays when its newly privatised assets are turned over to the big oil and other interests which, behind a fast thinning veil of democratic accountability, must now decide whether to rein in or urge on the 47th president of said foreign power? ¹ 

My weekly sarcasm ration spent, let me recommend Ben Norton on Venezuela and the woman who would be its Washington installed queen.

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Kyrgizstan’s President Askar Akayev, ousted in the ‘tulip revolution’ of 2005

Meanwhile and not entirely unrelated, a Kit Klarenberg piece surfaced a week ago, on the US backed tulip revolution in Kyrgyzstan, 2005. In its use of a National Endowment for Democracy seen at the time as benign (an overexposed CIA having switched to the plausible deniability of arms length cut-outs) do feel free to regard that forgotten coup as illustration of the truth that armed invasion, directly as in Iraq or by proxy as in Syria, is not the only way the most powerful empire in history may capture a country for its assets or geostrategic position. ²

Kit begins:

October 5th marked the 25th anniversary of the world’s first “colour revolution”, in Yugoslavia. A lavishly-funded, multi-pronged CIA, NED and USAID campaign exploited civil society actors, in particular youth groups, to dislodge President Slobodan Milosevic from power. Such was the effort’s success, US officials and media openly boasted about Washington’s central role. A slick ‘documentary’ on the unrest, Bringing Down A Dictator, was even produced. Milosevic’s fall also provided a blueprint for countless future ‘soft coups’, which continue to this day.

So it was, one by one in the early 2000s, insufficiently pro-Western governments throughout the former Soviet sphere were toppled using strategies and tactics identical to those deployed against Belgrade. A common ruse was for the US to fund, via local NGOs, a “parallel vote tabulation” to project an election’s outcome in advance, and publicise the data before results were officially announced. As in Yugoslavia, PVT figures differing from formal tallies were the spark that ignited Georgia’s 2003 ‘Rose Revolution’, and Ukraine’s 2004 ‘Orange Revolution’.

For those who find studies of imperialism worthy but dull, I recommend his post. Ditto those now asking, in light of Gaza, how well served they are by Guardian, Economist and BBC on such as Tiananmen Square, Slobodan Milosovic, Bashar al-Assad, Zelensky or Pussy Riot – to name but a few of the people and things we’re invited to love or loathe as the case may be.

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Now to aspects of the Epstein saga which just might have passed you by. If they did, that’s likely because for our lovely media, embarrassing the Donald, a Prince Andrew stripped of titles – the Windsors didn’t get to the top by misplaced scruples when wayward kin jeopardise the brand – or a Lord Mandelson is one thing; a trail leading to the door of Mossad another entirely. ³

Let me turn a second time to Disgusted of Melbourne:

One of the craziest things happening right now is how there’s been report after report confirming that Jeffrey Epstein really was an Israeli intelligence operative, based on publicly available documents, and yet it’s had no measurable impact on mainstream media or politics.

Over the last month and a half, Drop Site News has published four reports about Epstein’s intelligence ties under the headlines Jeffrey Epstein helped broker Israeli Security Agreement with Mongolia … Jeffrey Epstein and the Mossad: how the sex trafficker helped Israel build a back channel to Russia amid Syrian civil war … Jeffrey Epstein helped Israel sell a surveillance state to Côte d’Ivoire … and the most recent, Israeli spy stayed for weeks at a time with Jeffrey Epstein in Manhattan. ⁴

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My final item closes the loop to bring me to my own country, hub of the British empire I began with. As its media focus on frantic briefings by ‘power behind the throne’ Morgan McSweeney, of plots to oust the most unpopular prime minister since polls began, an Owen Jones clearly enjoying himself takes to the webcam:

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1. As Trump’s stock plummets – both with east coast liberals who fled a Democrat Party tainted by Ukraine and now wonder why they bothered; and a MAGA base to whom Mr Tangerine Man had promised less overseas meddling, more rust belt jobs – America’s real rulers may  conclude that, yet again, regime change in Caracas is off the menu for the foreseeable. Me, I wouldn’t want to call it either way at this juncture.
2. My earlier and broad brush definition of modern imperialism – north to south export of monopoly capital, south to north repatriation of profits – focuses on extracting surplus value, for conversion on valorisation to super profits, from labour pools cheaper and more pliant than the West’s, but should not be read as excluding straight up asset grabs. Nor should it be read as always applying at the level of individual states. In a 2019 review of his book, Israel: a beachhead, I quote Stephen Gowans as follows:

   The ultimate purpose of dominating another country is to secure opportunities for big business to accumulate wealth. The dominated country may provide direct opportunities for wealth accumulation, or be a stepping stone to profit-making opportunities in a third country, without offering attractive opportunities of its own. Such a country may become the target of an imperialist power because favorably placed. Perhaps it bounds important shipping lanes and is prized as a naval base from which the movement of goods can be protected from rival imperialist powers that might choke off the flow. Or perhaps the aim is to position military power at a shipping choke point. Or maybe the territory is close to enticing targets that could be absorbed through military coercion. Maybe the dominated country is close to another imperialism and attractive for encircling it. There are scores of reasons why an imperialist power might dominate a country that offers no immediate or direct economic benefit, but all are traceable to a perceived economic advantage for the dominating country’s major investors.

3. Just hours after I first posted this, Owen Jones picked up on the Epstein-Mossad trail in a useful twelve minute podcast.
4. Next day update. On November 14, one day after this post, Caitlin Johnstone returned to the Epstein-Mossad theme:

   The way the press have been covering Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Trump while completely ignoring far more significant revelations of Epstein’s ties to Israeli intelligence is such a perfect example of how western media ignore anything that doesn’t fit neatly into the two-party worldview. If there’s not some kind of partisan angle to it that Democrats can use to attack Republicans or Republicans can use to attack Democrats, it tends to get conspicuously overlooked.

   Which just so happens to align nicely with the objectives of the US empire.

   The empire doesn’t want people looking too closely at the evil things the US and Israel have been doing together regardless of who is in office, so the western press tend to ignore these things wherever possible.

   Full piece here …