The Conflict between Russia & the West

This conflict is noteworthy for the concerted effort by the West to dominate the narrative and exclude everything the Russians have to say about it. One should always listen to both sides of any conflict if there is to be a fig-leaf of impartiality.



One of the first documents that should be read and confronted concerning the crisis in Ukraine is the following letter signed and published in 1997. It is testimony to the fact that notable diplomats and historians knew back then that NATO expansion would elicit a backlash from Russia, and that U.S. President Clinton's rush to push NATO eastwards would turn a once compliant and reformist Russia into an implacable enemy.:

As for the nature of the situation in Ukraine, the West has pushed back against accusations that there exist significant fascist elements in Ukraine, something which has been documented beyond a shadow of a doubt:

On 16 February 2020, the U.S. State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism arrived in Ukraine.[1] The agenda was not announced. The hope is that he discussed at least some of the issues discussed in this report with his Ukrainian counterparts. Five years ago the threat of ultranationalist-neofascist Ukrainian terrorism (UNUT) should have been clear to all, but it was not.[2] Things have not gotten any better. The threat has grown, and there remains no acknowledgement of the UNUT threat. The threat remains one both to Ukraine as well as Europe, Russia and the United States and is part of a larger ultranationalist-neofascist international movement and terrorist threat. Identitarian violence and terrorism is deeply embedded in the nationalist, ultranationalist, and neofascist strand of Ukrainian political culture. Contemporary UNUT is inherited largely from Galicia and the Nazi-allied Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Partisan Army (UPA) of World War II and thus is a near century-long tradition. Not only did the OUN assassinate officials, including Polish and perhaps more understandably Soviet officials and NKVD officers, OUN members also tried to assassinate US President Delano Roosevelt, according to archival documents.[3] The UNUT tradition is being carried forward by Ukraine’s ultranationalist and neofascist groups, such as Right Sector, the Svoboda Party, Right Sector, Azov, the National Corps (Natsional’nyi Korpus) or NatsKorpus, and C14. This is no coincidence as it these groups that have fostered a cult of personality surrounding Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevich, the OUN’s and UPA’s respective founders. in the nationalist, ultranationalist and neofascist subculture of Ukraine, helping to establish them as officially recognized national heroes.

Notice that even the Atlantic Council concurs!

As for the lead up to the 2022 Russian "Special Military Operation" in Ukraine, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Monitoring Mission had documented a marked increase in Ukrainian armed forces shelling of the Donbass (Ukrainian territory where there is a predominance of Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens) in February of 2022:

...the OSCE’s daily report of 18 February...That same report records numerous violations of the ceasefire agreement by the Ukrainian government in moving heavy weaponry in to menace separatist held areas and in keeping weaponry outside agreed storage facilities. It equally reports precisely the same kind of violations by separatist rebels. None of which balance has been recorded by the same western media which loves to give detailed accounts of troop movements within Russia.

If none of this suffices to convince you that the Russians have a point, then perhaps you should listen to former Swiss intelligence officer, senior United Nations official, and NATO advisor Jacques Baud:

The culmination of "Jazz"

Nothing surpasses this.

The West's "Soft Power"?

Good to see more evidence of the premature end of what was arguably supposed to be the American Century. As far as I'm concerned, its demise couldn't arrive too soon. There were already signs at the beginning of the current century that this was the case, given the inauguration of the infamous "war on terror" following the 9-11 attacks. In my opinion, the USA's "upholding" of human rights was always overblown. How could you lay claim to that after flattening North Korea, or devastating Vietnam to no end? Nevertheless, one of the USA's (arguably) least destructive Presidents made a good case for this being an essential pillar to what has been dubbed the USA's "soft power". Well..., even that has now been jettisoned!

Patrick Armstrong, in a February 4, 2021 column titled The West Is Losing Its Soft Power, explains why whatever "soft power" the USA may have had is fast disappearing. He starts out by delineating the basis for what may have been the USA's "soft power":

I would argue that American soft power stood on four pillars: the attractiveness and excitement of its popular culture, its reputation for efficiency, rule of law and the “American Dream”. Every American could expect that his children would be better off – better off in every respect: healthier, longer-lived, better educated, happier, richer – than he was.

Then Mr. Armstrong proceeds to deal a devastating blow to the notion, with quotes from several articles by formidable analysts, commencing with two by Stephen Walt in the USA's foremost foreign policy journal:

America's History of Luck Is Running Out The Death of American Competence

Next, Mr. Armstrong demolishes the "American Dream" pillar of said "soft power" by citing just one graph. I will leave it to you to read what he writes about inequality in the article. The next pillar Mr. Armstrong aims his guns at is probably the "rule of law", but I deem it "freedom of expression". Here, he cites the Director of the Center for the Study of Digital Property at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, James V. DeLong, about Amazon’s decision to deplatform the 'Parler' networking service:

If 6 January was a new Pearl Harbor, extraordinary reactions will be said to be justified. But this is becoming the Western norm: where exactly is the rule of law with Meng in Canada, Sacoulis and Assange in the UK, or Butina in the USA? Will more lawfare against Trump strengthen the image of stability and rule of law? Neither will the 2020 U.S. election and its consequences advance the American reputation of democratic leadership. Some cheerleaders of “American leadership” like Richard N. Haass are quite despondent:

No one in the world is likely to see, respect, fear, or depend on us in the same way again. If the post-American era has a start date, it is almost certainly today [6 January].

Wow! Speak about schadenfreude! In summary, Mr. Armstrong points out:

Popular culture, competence, justice and values and the dream of betterment may have been the pillars on which the USA’s soft power was based, but the ground upon which those stood was success. Success made the others attractive; success is the most powerful attraction. The West is losing its aura of success – endless wars, divisive politics, COVID failure, financial crises, debt. And ever more desperate attempts to hold power against ever bolder dissent. It’s just beginning. And not just the USA, the West doesn’t present well any more: protests in Amsterdam, London, Berlin; a year of gillets jaunes in France. The world is watching. Not efficient, not attractive, not law-based. Not successful.

Patrick Armstrong ends by offering some brief highlights of the contrasting success of China, followed by a warning from the USA's "nemesis" from Russia. Go read the whole thing!

Oh! ... and Happy New Year!

As the November 3 Election Approaches, I recall Buckley's "Napalm Love"

"Time catches up with kingdoms, and crushes them..." J.B.

An historical marker:

Letter from #CORONAVIRUS to Humanity

Quod ratio non quid, saepe sanavit mora

I wasn't really sure how to title this post, which is chiefly about what I believe was the final 'column' of Consortium News founder Bob Parry, before his untimely death on January 27, 2018. It is an outstandingly honest, determinative, yet at the same time very disquieting, manifesto on the demise of journalism in the United States which requires a complete reading from start to finish (easily done in one sitting). If I were to go against my better judgement and highlight a small piece of the manifesto, it would be the following:

What is perhaps most alarming about the past year of Donald Trump is that the mask is now gone and, in many ways, all sides of Official Washington are revealed collectively as reflections of Donald Trump, disinterested in reality, exploiting “information” for tactical purposes, eager to manipulate or con the public. While I’m sure many anti-Trumpers will be deeply offended by my comparison of esteemed Establishment figures with the grotesque Trump, there is a deeply troubling commonality between Trump’s convenient use of “facts” and what has pervaded the Russia-gate investigation.

It isn't just the narrow issue of Russia-gate, nor for that matter Ukraine-gate, which has supplanted or perniciously extended the former, that concerns me here. It even extends beyond the mostly "bi-polarized" political context that Parry refers to in his excellent manifesto on journalism. In fact, Parry hints at it when he mentions Seymour Hersh, and the staging of the chemical weapons attacks in Syria. Perhaps one positive (and accidental) outcome of the whole Trump affair is the sudden return to prominence of the term "Deep State". While necessarily ambiguous a term, the amorphous and secretive "Deep State" manifests itself concretely and precisely through journalism - that of the establishment or "mainstream" media.

It is an uphill battle to effectively thwart the lies, half-truths and outright propaganda of the mainstream media. Yet it becomes a necessity in a world of false flags, used to justify innumerable wrongs. Nonetheless as difficult and "uphill" a task it may be, one must be relentless. Why? In the end, quod ratio non quid, saepe sanavit mora!

Remembering George Duke

Fabulous recording of...:

George Duke was born in San Rafael, California and raised in Marin City. At four years old he became interested in the piano. His mother took him to see Duke Ellington in concert and told him about this experience. "I don't remember it too well, but my mother told me I went crazy. I ran around saying 'Get me a piano, get me a piano!'" He began his formal piano studies at the age of 7 at a local Baptist church.

Talk about musical empathy among band members!

My message is simple: VOTE FOR BERNIE

The Outcome of the Special Counsel Investigation (ie. "Russiagate")

It is time for the final word on the Special Counsel investigation conducted by special prosecutor Robert Mueller from May 2017 to March 2019. The report, which purported to get to the bottom of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials, was finally released, hence the curtain can finally be brought down on the whole affair. In this respect, the assessment by British former diplomat turned political activist, human rights campaigner, blogger and whistleblower, Craig Murray, hits the nail squarely on the head:

Mueller, as a matter of determined policy, omitted key steps which any honest investigator would undertake. He did not commission any forensic examination of the DNC servers. He did not interview Bill Binney. He did not interview Julian Assange. His failure to do any of those obvious things renders his report worthless.

Unfortunately, we know ahead of time that the curtain most certainly won't be brought down on this whole affair. In fact it will fester and grow well into the future. The reason for that is laid out succinctly in the following *MUST-WATCH* video.



By the way, as a footnote, there is something absolutely profound that Gabor Maté says at 25:33 on the above video concerning 'disillusionment': "Would you rather be illusioned or disillusioned?". I recognized it right away as the identical point made by my mentor and friend Calvin Hernton during a discussion in one of the Black Literature classes he gave us in college back in the late seventies.

The Old and the New in the Year of the Pig

With the new year almost upon us, some green shoots are appearing to signal the renewal of the (human) spirit:

The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of humanity; the feeling of shame and dislike is the beginning of righteousness; the feeling of deference and compliance is the beginning of propriety; and the feeling of right or wrong is the beginning of wisdom. ~~ Mencius

Of course, the new "geen shoots" I am referring to are these: "Kudos to the New York Times for hiring [Michelle] Alexander as a columnist and letting her say this...:"

[Martin Luther King’s] was a lonely, moral stance. And it cost him. But it set an example of what is required of us if we are to honor our deepest values in times of crisis, even when silence would better serve our personal interests or the communities and causes we hold most dear. It’s what I think about when I go over the excuses and rationalizations that have kept me largely silent on one of the great moral challenges of our time: the crisis in Israel-Palestine.
I have not been alone. Until very recently, the entire Congress has remained mostly silent on the human rights nightmare that has unfolded in the occupied territories. Our elected representatives, who operate in a political environment where Israel’s political lobby holds well-documented power, have consistently minimized and deflected criticism of the State of Israel, even as it has grown more emboldened in its occupation of Palestinian territory and adopted some practices reminiscent of apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow segregation in the United States.
Many civil rights activists and organizations have remained silent as well, not because they lack concern or sympathy for the Palestinian people, but because they fear loss of funding from foundations, and false charges of anti-Semitism. They worry, as I once did, that their important social justice work will be compromised or discredited by smear campaigns.
Similarly, many students are fearful of expressing support for Palestinian rights because of the McCarthyite tactics of secret organizations like Canary Mission, which blacklists those who publicly dare to support boycotts against Israel, jeopardizing their employment prospects and future careers.

More HERE.

Elsewhere, however, things remain unperturbed in their darkness:

We now have proof that the U.S. has been dispatching New Zealand human intelligence officers, sending them on overseas missions. And not simply to Afghanistan or Iraq. But in one case, to infiltrate a multitude of political parties contesting the 2012 Presidential elections of an ally – France.

I seem to recall officials of the U.S. government accusing another government of precisely this behavior.

What more can we witness amidst this darkness?:

A further WikiLeaks release shows that the U.S. weren’t only involving New Zealand in spying on France for political reasons alone. They were ordering us to steal commercial and trade secrets as well.

Oh, really?

Wasn't a foreign firm accused in the U.S.A. of doing just that?

According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, U.S. federal prosecutors are preparing a criminal indictment against Huawei for stealing trade secrets. The report, which cites sources with knowledge of the indictment, specifically mentions Huawei’s actions surrounding a T-Mobile smartphone testing tool known as “Tappy.” The report notes that the current investigation is far enough along that an indictment may come soon.

Pot bottom calling the kettle black? Whence will renewal be complete?

The Coming War on China - A film by John Pilger

U.S. Imperialism doesn't sleep.

John Pilger’s 60th documentary is both a warning and an inspiring story of resistance.

And on the "other end" you have a modernized version of Halford Mackinder's Heartland Theory:

Mackinder is best known for his doctrine of the “Heartland.” Geopolitical strategy was about the endgame of controlling the Heartland—or the enormous transcontinental land mass of Eurasia, encompassing Eastern Europe, Russia through Siberia, and Central Asia. The Heartland, together with the remainder of Asia and Africa, made up the World Island. The Heartland itself was defined by its inaccessibility to sea, making it “the greatest natural fortress on earth.”7 The Columbian Age dominated by sea power, Mackinder argued, was coming to an end to be replaced by a new Eurasian age in which land power would be decisive. The development of land transportation and communication meant that land power could finally rival sea power. In the new Eurasian Age whoever ruled the Heartland, if also equipped with a modern navy, would be able to outflank the maritime world—the world controlled by the British and U.S. empires.

Monthly Review

Remembering the Attacks on the Twin Towers

No words necessary...

Central Asia

I had been planning to visit Central Asia with much enthusiasm for quite a while and I managed a first incursion into Kyrgyzstan for an academic conference in Bishkek during the early part of the summer of 2017. That visit only whetted my appetite to see more (especially since I hadn't been able to visit the neighboring countries of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan).



Hence, upon my return, I began planning for my trip to Western China as an ambitious follow-up. My trip took me to Ürümqi, Kashgar, Turpan, Dunhuang and partially down the Chinese side of the famed Karakoram Highway. It was everything I had hoped it would be.

My interest was twofold. First of all, I had been following closely the details surrounding the unfolding of the One Belt-One Road Initiative as part of my academic research agenda. I particularly wanted to see the China-Pakistan Friendship Highway, but I eventually became intrigued with the history of the region. I bought Peter Frankopan's "The Silk Roads: A New History of the World", and devoured as much of the book as I could during the 14 hour flight from the United States' East Coast to Beijing. I couldn't put the book down, even after landing in China:

"Urban centers spurred each other on, with rivalry between rulers and elites prompting ever more ambitious architecture and spectacular monuments. Libraries, places of worship, churches and observatories of immense scale and cultural influence dotted the region, connecting Constantinople to Damascus, Isfahan, Samarkand, Kabul and Kashgar. Cities such as these became homes to brilliant scholars who advanced the frontiers of their subjects. The names of only a small handful are familiar today--men like Ibn Sīnā, ... Al-Bīrūnī, and al-Khwarizmi--giants in the fields of astronomy and medicine; but there were many more besides. For centuries before the modern era, the intellectual centres of excellence of the world, the Oxfords and Cambridges, the Harvards and Yales, were not located in Europe or the west, but in Baghdad and Balkh, Bukhara and Samarkand." --- Peter Frankopan, "The Silk Roads: A New History of the World", Vintage Books, March 2017.

Ürümqi


Kashgar


Karakoram Highway


Turpan


I must say, I'll be back in the near future.

Media On Trial in Leeds ...and other Sunday musings.

Held recently was an event that should be much more commonplace throughout the western world than is currently, especially after the Iraq debacle. I couldn't help thinking that as it runs out of opportunities for investment, capitalism is accentuating its destructive imperialist phase where it seeks to destroy countries through war just so it can invest (among other things) in the "reconstruction" (yes, I'm admittedly a neophyte in my analysis, lacking in any ideological rigor). Anyway, participating in the "event", known as Media On Trial, were Sheila Coombes, Professor Piers Robinson, independent researcher Robert Stuart, journalist Patrick Henningsen, former UK ambassador to Bahrain and Syria Peter Ford, and investigative journalist and photographer Vanessa Beeley. The talks are also available as a 21st Century Sunday Wire podcast. Well worth taking a couple of hours (grab yourself a cup of coffee or tea) and listening.

Also interesting is a lecture by Dr. Prabhat Patnaik, entitled The State under neo-liberalism. To the question he poses of - "How do you preserve the social legitimacy of the state in the face of its submission to the powers of finance capital?", he respondes - "by locating a common enemy or a fifth column", this in the interests of diverting the public's attention. The war on terror is just one of those diversions. Interesting thoughts by an Indian Marxist economist and political commentator who taught at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning in the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, from 1974 until his retirement in 2010. He was also the vice-chairman of the Planning Board of the Indian state of Kerala from June 2006 to May 2011.

Hurricane season precautionary reading...

As the 2018 hurricane season rapidly approaches, I delve into the past. In particular, I'm motivated to recall the introduction to my late father's doctoral dissertation (it is worth noting that his description differs somewhat from historical reports):

On the eleventh of September, 1928, the radio operator of the freighter "Commack" wired a message describing a well-formed tropical disturbance which had been located at longitude 50 ° W., and latitude 15° N. This was the first notice concerning a large and powerful hurricane which was moving across the middle Atlantic from the direction of the Cape Verde Islands. On the following day this hurricane broke with savage fury across the feeble land barrier of islands separating the Caribbean from the Atlantic. The center of the hurricane passed slowly over the northern part of the French island of Guadeloupe during the morning of the twelfth. It was moving in a west-northwesterly direction at a speed of about ten miles an hour. Not only Guadeloupe but also St. Kitts and Montserrate informed the outside world of the great damage of property and high loss of life occasioned by the creature of nature.

Another freighter, "Matura," out of Trinidad, found itself in the path of the winds and registered a low barometer reading of 27.50 at sea level. The position of the ship when taking this reading was about ten miles to the south of St. Croix, one of the largest of the Virgin Islands. The storm kept to its west-northwest course and penetrated into the island of Puerto Rico at the southeast corner near the town of Guayama early in the morning of the thriteenth of September. Moving at a speed of about 13 miles per hour, the storm, known as San Felipe by the Puerto Ricans, ripped the island diagonally from its southeast corner to the northwest area between Isabela and Aguadilla.

From Puerto Rico the storm moved on to the north of Santo Domingo and into the Bahamas, passing south of Nassau and Turk Islands. Finally on the morning of the sixteenth it entered Florida near West Palm Beach. Here it changed direction and moved northward. Spending its force as it advanced up the Atlantic coast, it disappeared finally around Lake Ontario. However, in Florida, particularly in the Lake Okeechobee area, it did a great deal of damage. The losses were calculated in the thousands of dollars and the Red Cross estimated that nearly two thousand people lost their lives in the storm.

This hurricane has been regarded as one of the strongest to sweep across the West Indies. Its intensity did not diminish from the time it broke into the Caribbean until the seventeenth, five days later, when it was moving up the Atlantic coast. All authorities on the tropical storms which have hit Puerto Rico agree that San Felipe was the most powerful in modern times. The strength of its winds as it passed through Puerto Rico is doubtful, because the cups of the anemometer were carried off with the fury of the high winds which lashed the island. The estimate of the velocity of these winds varied from 160 to 190 miles an hour over the period of three to four hours during which the storm was at its peak. San Felipe was accompanied by heavy rains. In the mountainous area of Adjuntas, where heavy rain can normally be expected, the questionable reading of 29.6 inches for a 48 hour period was recorded.

The loss of life and property in Puerto Rico was high. Over 300 persons lost their lives. Without the radio warnings, many more would have perished. Property damage was difficult to estimate. Calculations varied from $50 million to $85 million. The impoverished little island, ... was little prepared to meet such a catastrophe.

...from Mathews, Thomas G., Puerto Rican Politics and the New Deal, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1960: pp. 1-2.

A Tale Of Two Islands, by Vijay Prashad

Yes, we've been through hell and back:

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season was a hyperactive, deadly, and extremely destructive season, featuring 17 named storms, ranking alongside 1936 as the fifth-most active season since records began in 1851. The season also featured both the highest total accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) and the highest number of major hurricanes since 2005. All ten of the season's hurricanes occurred in a row, the greatest number of consecutive hurricanes in the satellite era, and tied for the greatest number of consecutive hurricanes ever observed in the Atlantic basin since records began in 1851.

But the point of this post is to contrast the approaches of two islands to the threats, and it's done effectively by Vijay Prashad. I'll let him "speak":

one island, a poor socialist state with infrastructure in grave need of modernisation, has slowly emerged out of the chaos caused by a hurricane’s wrath, while the other, a territory of the richest country in the world, cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel.

You should read the entire article for yourself. Here is just a piece:

While Cuban journalists and brigades fanned Cuba to provide information to the authorities about destruction and reconstruction, Puerto Rico went dark. Communications collapsed and information about the damage was not easily available. While in Cuba the authorities tried to get exact information of the damage done to each home, in Puerto Rico the numbers thrown about were the price tag for recovery—between $40 billion and $85 billion is the estimated insurance claims that will likely be triggered by the devastation. It says a great deal about the different approaches to disaster: one makes sure each person is tended to and the other worries about the cost of the recovery.

READ IT!

*****

Oh, and a footnote related to Puerto Rico's fiscal crisis.

The extraordinary Ethiopian philosopher Zär’a Yaqob

Not only because of the advanced thoughts of Zar'a Yaqob, which must be attributed to his personal insight and no direct influence of a school or stream, his treatise is important for historical research. Especially in Hegel's philosophy of history, which ascribes no philosophical ambitions to Sub-Saharan Africa, Zar'a Yaqob offers a perfect counterexample, since he lived about 200 years before Hegel. Other racial theories find in him a counterexample. Wikipedia: Die freien Enzyklopädie

Casa del Libro:

Zar'a Yaqob means "Scion of Jacob" and is the name of a man who must be regarded as a significant thinker of the 17th century. He lived from 1600 to about 1693/94 u.Z. in the Ethiopian highlands. In this time of fierce religious conflict between the Catholic and Coptic churches, Zara Yaqob posed the question of truth and found in the human mind the only relevant instance of knowledge. At the request of his pupil Waldä Heywat ("son of life") he wrote his insights as a Hätäta ("essay") in the form of an autobiography. Waldä Heywat continued the book of his teacher with his own Hätäta. Zar'a Yaqob could not fall back on a rich tradition of science and philosophy in formulating his thoughts as did his contemporaries in Europe. Precisely for this reason, it is important to mention that the study of his essay by Claude Sumner results in a comparison of Zär'a Yaqob with Rene Descartes, which also shows that modern philosophy began in Africa at the same time as in Europe

Read more about this extraordinary African HERE, of which I will only highlight the following quote:

In chapter five, Yacob applies rational investigation to the different religious laws. He criticises Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Indian religions equally. For example, Yacob points out that the Creator in His wisdom has made blood flow monthly from the womb of women, in order for them to bear children. Thus, he concludes that the law of Moses, which states that menstruating women are impure, is against nature and the Creator, since it ‘impedes marriage and the entire life of a woman, and it spoils the law of mutual help, prevents the bringing up of children and destroys love’. In this way, Yacob includes the perspectives of solidarity, women and affection in his philosophical argument. And he lived up to these ideals. After Yacob left the cave, he proposed to a poor maiden named Hirut, who served a rich family. Yacob argued with her master, who did not think a servant woman was equal to an educated man, but Yacob prevailed. When Hirut gladly accepted his proposal, Yacob pointed out that she should no longer be a servant, but rather his peer, because ‘husband and wife are equal in marriage’.

What Exactly is 'Openness'?

A friend of mine posted a riposte of Angela Merkel to Trump which went like this: “It is not isolation and the building of walls that make us successful, but open societies.” I think we need to step back for a minute and ask what exactly is this "openness"? Surely open-mindedness is something that is emulated in liberal societies and we all probably agree that to have an open mind is desirable. Close-minded individuals, on the other hand, are to be avoided along with the attribute. That said, I think something is hidden here. "Openness" is sometimes uttered by politicians in the same breath as "free trade" (open trade or globalization), but they aren't the same thing. If they were synonymous, why does free trade or "globalization" also produce losers? Open-mindedness seems to us unequivocally positive while globalization obviously isn't (or at least not under certain circumstances). Someone, as we say in Spanish, might be trying to sell us "gato por liebre". As economists, we teach the so-called "virtues" of free trade (globalization), but with a very important caveat that is so easily forgotten. In my graduate international economics class, I teach the virtues of free trade, quantifying out of a very simple model what are called the "gains to trade". The principle "virtue", I tell my students, is precisely the enlargement of the "economic pie" resulting from specialization according to the comparative advantage of nations. It all seems simple, logical and quite reasonable when I demonstrate the concept on the board with numbers. However, I am also obliged to explain the caveat, which is that *free trade* produces both losers and winners. So while on the one hand, the economic pie is made greater by free trade, the latter must be followed by a redistribution of the pie in order to compensate the losers for their dire predicament which resulted directly from te implementation of said *free trade*. This is then depicted as a "win-win" for everybody because people are thereby able to partake in said enlarged pie. All good and well, right? Well, it so happens that things sometimes don't seem to turn out that way in the real world. President Bill Clinton explained the virtues of this free-trade induced *pie enlargement* when he sold NAFTA to the US public. The problem was that the losers were never compensated or compensated inadequately! We know that the Republicans do not believe in re-distributive policies, and Democrats seem as of late to lean more and more toward Republican policies, so there doesn't seem to be much prospect for re-distribution among the main political choices in America. Hence the losers were left to fester. The garment workers whose jobs "departed" for Mexico and China were not only never compensated, but the much heralded "retraining" of laid off workers from such "sunset" industries to enable adaption and subsequent employment in the "sunrise" industries which were to replace them was inadequate. ...And the politicians of both parties went their merry ways and forgot all about the "losers". The latter, to make a long story short, became bitter and elected Trump! So my point with this little ditty is that Trump is as much the fault of Liberals as it is the fault of those "Tea Partiers" who Hillary so disparagingly called "deplorables". Food for thought which I am uniquely capable of providing instruction on since it is my profession. Further reading on the subject is provided in the following PDF.

Originally published at LinkedIn.

Nobel Lecture by Harold Pinter

The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to English playwright, screenwriter, director and actor Harold Pinter nearly twelve years ago. Although Pinter had been stricken with a serious infection at the time of the award (he died a few years later), he videotaped his Nobel Lecture, "Art, Truth and Politics", and projected it at the Swedish Academy on the evening of 7 December 2005. It should be viewed by everyone (particularly Americans) who has the opportunity to do so:



Wikipedia:

Pinter's career as a playwright began with a production of The Room in 1957. His second play, The Birthday Party, closed after eight performances, but was enthusiastically reviewed by critic Harold Hobson. His early works were described by critics as "comedy of menace". Later plays such as No Man's Land (1975) and Betrayal (1978) became known as "memory plays". He appeared as an actor in productions of his own work on radio and film. He also undertook a number of roles in works by other writers. He directed nearly 50 productions for stage, theatre and screen. Pinter received over 50 awards, prizes, and other honours, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005 and the French Légion d'honneur in 2007.