More on globalization

There is a definite advantage in rereading your old books that have for so long occupied place in the bookshelves (and which your wife has many times urged you to finally throw away). It is not in the minor gain in not spending more money on new books (which probably are not any better than the old ones), or in the feeling of satisfaction of at last having fulfilled the promise of reading them again on pension (which was the official reason of not throwing them, while the real reason was that throwing books is a abhorrent). No, the real advantage is that today one can better understand them, or understand where the authors were wrong. Most authors of a certain genre of books try to predict the future, and very often fail. Also the facts and their explanations as stated by the author frequently leave the reader doubting how much is true and how much are simple lies or elaborate propaganda. Both of these problems are easier to address when reading the books 10-20 years after their publication, or even more, as was the case by my books on quantum field theory from 1980s.

            This time I read three books from early this millennium and all on globalization. The books were Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine (2007), George Soros’ The Bubble of American Supremacy (2004) and Michel Chossudovsky’s War and Globalization (2002). I also glanced at Naomi Klein’s Fences and Windows (2002) and Katja Boxberg’s and Taleni Heikka’s Lumedemokratia (illusional democracy, 2009). I of course had read these books when I bought them, but at that time I must have been too young and naive. Now I am not too young, at least. At that time I did not believe much of what Chossudovsky wrote, but though his predictions for the future went all wrong, his book seems to contain most true observations.

            Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine naturally has a good point in illuminating the tactics of globalists of using (or creating) catastrophes that help to push through unpopular changes. Mostly these changes were economic: removing import taxes, freeing capital movements, cutting public spending, privatization of public firms and balancing trade as demands for receiving IMF or World Bank loans. The IMF was taken over by Milton Friedman’s students or admirers, many trained in the University of Chicago, often called market fundamentalists. Their goal was to stop Keynesian policies in all countries.

            The results of these (usually externally forced) changes were a recession, often a downright depression. An example of these Chicago medicines, and how well they worked, is the depression in Finland in 1993-94. Before the changes the Finnish economy grew with a stable rate of 3.5%, foreign debt (both state and total) were small, the balance of trade was mostly fine and investments were sufficient. After capital movements were released Finnish economy crashed. The recession lasted for seven years. After recovering economic growth was a bit higher than before the crash, at 3.7%, but it is fully explained by the low starting value. The growth lasted up to 2008 and after that there has been no growth. Foreign loans jumped to a high value in the crash of 1993. These loans were not fully paid before 2008 and after the 2009 crash they went to an even higher value. Investments have decreased and in general, the benefits of globalization over the older system were not remarkable and not lasting. Some graphs can be found in [6].

            Similar events occurred almost everywhere where economic globalization was introduced, including the era or military juntas in Latin America, the robbing of ex-Communistic countries, and the crash of the Asian Tiger economies. But though these events did happen, Naomi Klein is a bit too negative in long term prospects of global capitalism. The economies of Chile and Indonesia are currently growing quite well, not to mention China, and the IMF and the World Bank are not any more so orthodox in market fundamentalism. They have accepted reductions in poverty by governmental actions at least in Chile. Also in Finland the government has stimulated economy, thought it has not started to grow for understandable reasons: in globalization investments flow to economic centers (like New York, London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai etc.) and from these centers to the periphery, but the periphery must possess either large markets or something that is not elsewhere (like natural resources or a good location). Bad government can stop investments, but good government cannot substitute for the lack of markets or special assets.

            Naomi Klein is also correct in noticing that after natural catastrophes, like a tsunami or a hurricane, governments prefer to build a more economically productive area rather than restoring the old one. One special merit of Polish Communism is that Poland rebuilt the old city of Warsaw, but such does not happen in capitalism. Klein’s observations of the rebuilding of Iraq after the 2003 war are also illuminating. The new American military doctrine of first destroying and then rebuilding, preferably by delegating both to private subcontractors, is probably what was at that time called vertical integration. I once asked some officers what the term meant (in economy vertical integration means connection between producer and customer), they commented that maybe we should privatize the army and they would be well-paid mercenaries, first destroying and then rebuilding, all on tax payers money (That is, the army is the producer creating destruction and a market for the customer, building industry). The idea proved to be quite poor in Iraq, or of course it depends on what the real goals were.

            But I have a problem with Naomi Klein’s explanations. I recently read books by five well-known critics of globalization and IMF: Joseph E. Stiglitz, John Perkins, Naomi Klein, Michel Chossudovsky, and Georg Soros. With the exception of John Perkins all are Jewish, well Chossudovsky is a half-Jew. In fact, Perkins is a critic of the abuse of the Keynesian policy of IMF by the USA (experts American firms writing on purpose too high economic growth predictions in order to get projects paid by the IMF, i.e., largely American tax payers). The others blame IMF’s policy in the Milton Friedman era.  These all critics of globalization assure that there is no conspiracy. Indeed, if there were a conspiracy, it very easily might be interpreted as the old Judeo-Masonic conspiracy, without Freemasons as they stopped long ago, but with Zionists. Let us just remember that the Freemason conspiracy can be very well demonstrated from the 19th century and they must have had economic support for revolutionary activities: then as now, no money, no activity. I understand that any hint to such a conspiracy evokes old fears. Katja Boxberg and Taneli Heikka in [5] p. 172 write: “Anti-Jewish and anti-foreigner hints have been used also in other cases to silence discussion openings of the management of the history” (p. 172 in [5]). (They argue in the book that globalization has no role in the problems of Finnish economy, instead it is caused by Finland not being a Western democracy.) But the fact is that the conspiracy existed in the 19th century and it can be tracked up to the end of the Second World War, it was never destroyed and we should not be surprised that it still exists.

            It is useful to take a closer look at the robbery of Russia when the Communism collapsed. Jeffrey Sachs, financed by George Soros, went to help Russia. Sachs wrote the transition program, which as all transition programs accepted by the IMF of that time, demanded privatization. Anatoly Chubais realized the privatization during Yeltsin’s time and most of Soviet property was sold very cheaply to oligarchs. Naomi Klein mentions (p. 446) some of the oligarchs and their close circles, notably Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Leonid Nevzlion and Vladimir Gusinsky. I looked at the Wikipedia for a list of the most important oligarchs of Yeltsin’s and Putin’s era. They were Boris Berezovsky, Mikhail Fridman, Vladimir Gusinsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vladimir Potanin, Roman Abramovich, Alexander Abramov, Oleg Deripaska, Mikhail Prokhorov, Alisher Usmanov, German Khan, Viktor Vekselberg, Leonid Mikhelson, Mikhail Fridman, Pyotr Aven, Vitaly Malkin, Alexander Smolensky, Vagit Alekperov, Vladimir Potanin, and Vladimir Vinogradov. It is not that all these oligarchs are Jewish, Israeli, partially Jewish (like Khodorkovsky), or married to a Jew (Usmanov). The last four of the twenty are not, but the last one, Vladimir Vinogradov, did have connections to the Rothschild Bank and possibly to the the Jewish mafia boss Semion Mogilevich.

We can take another example: in Soros’ book p. 7 there are the signers of a declaration of the Project for the New American Century, i.e., neocons who wanted to attack Iraq already in 1998. I calculated that 8-9 of the 25 signers are Jewish, about 1/3, like in Venona documents. This means that neocons were not all Jews, but there was a Jewish aspect. Neocons are by many authors characterized as people to whom Israel security is more important than US security. Jews relate to this group like Italians relate to Cosa Nostra or Muslims relate to Islamic terrorists. It is not so that all Italians are in mafia or all Muslims are terrorists, nor that all mafias are Italian or all terrorists are Muslim. Yet, there is a valid meaning in the terms Italian mafia and Muslim terrorism.

            Naomi Kein, when discussing those times, mentions two main architects of the scheme: the US Federal Reserve director Allen Greenspan (whom she calls the most powerful man at that time, p. 268 in [1]) and the IMF director Lawrence Summers (who was the second most powerful, later the lead of the Israel central bank). As Naomi Klein tells the story, Jeffrey Sachs, today a critic of globalization and a defender of the poor, really tried to help Russia, but the evil IMF (probably the USA) did not give any aid to Russia. The other books I read tell it a bit differently. Russia got lots of loans from the IMF, only that the money moved fast to private accounts in Switzerland.

            Naomi Klein, Jeffrey Sachs, Allen Greenspan and Lawrence Summers are all Jewish, and none of the critics of globalization finds any conspiracy, as it supposedly might start a pogrom. Yet, it is known who pushes globalization. It is not only Jews: David Rockefeller was a very prominent globalist. Very clearly, globalization is driven by Wall Street and London financial circles. The IMF, World Bank and WTO are used as tools and the USA provides the military power behind it. Multinational companies, especially angloamerican oil companies and large US military suppliers, support globalization. Finally, Israel always has a role in this scheme, as it had a role in the Iran-Contral scandal. 

            I have some reason to suspect that Jeffrey Sachs, who planned the shock therapy in Russia, may not necessarily be all that naive as Naomi Klein thinks. It is because I do not think George Soros is that naive as a reader of his books might think. Soros become known as a speculator against the British pound, a globalist. Later he acts as a philantrop, but his book [2] has one interesting sentence on page 182. Soros explains that Osama bin Laden killed the leader of the Northern Union in Afghanistan, Ahmed Shah Massoud, just two days before the 9/11 strike because Massoud was the only commander capable of mounting an effective campaign against the Taliban. This is fairly absurd and Soros did know more. I think he knew all that Michel Chossudovsky found out, and more. If Osama bin Laden made the 9/11 strike, he must have expected that the USA attacks him and Talibans. Talibans would lose to the USA and Ahmed Shah Massoud hade been the natural head of the Afghanistan interim government, but this was not what the USA wanted as Massoud was supported by Russian. The fact that Osama’s Arab suicide bombers, the Pakistan intelligence ISI, and probably Taliban, killed Massoud, was quite according to American plans.

            Talibans had been negotiating with the USA of building an oil pipe through Afghanistan. Such a pipe was needed to connect Kazachstan oil fields to Europe without using Russian pipes or going through Iran. Soros, as a big finanzier, must have known this. Choussudovsky tells that Soros’ Open institure participated in discussions with oil companies and US government of Afghanistan. According to Choussudovsky Talibans made the mistake that they stopped opium cultivation and the CIA needed this money for dirty operations. This claim is hard to show, but opium trade has a history since the British empire, when the Jewish Sassoon family run it. Drugs are good business in fundamental capitalism. Choussudovsky explains how Pakistan’s ISI’s head Mahmoud Ahmad paid 100,000 dollars to Mohammed Atta, one of the (assumed) 9/11 terrorists. Whether any planes hit the WTC towers or not, there certainly was a connection between Osama bin Laden and the CIA through ISI.

            Actually Naomi Klein’s book may have the key to this problem. We know that Israel was involved in 9/11 as Mossad agents came to shoot a video of the airplanes hitting the towers (if there were airplanes) before anybody knew of any hijacked planes. But why did they do it? Iraq was not any realistic threat to Israel at that time, and not to the USA at any time. But Israel had been a major player in the dot.com bubble. The dot.com bubble was basically fraud and many Israel firms were among the high-tech fraud firms that finally collapsed. Even in Finland there was one such fraud firm, Smart-Trust. I saw a video made by former Smart-Trust workers in the youtube. It says: we employed Finns to manage, Russians to do coding and Jews to sell, which is the way we do it in Finland. Only, this is a very unusual way to do anything in Finland. So, that firm was fraud. When the dot.com bubble blew in 2000, Israel had a problem. The tech firms were redirected towards military needs: surveillance, security, but Israel army as the only client meant small markets. After 9/11 Georg W. Bush announced the war on terror and homeland security became a major undertaking. Israeli firms are very prominent and prospering in this field. The attack to Iraq helped American economy, including the Wall Street. It basically meant that the US government stimulated American markets with a huge sum of money. Quite following the ideas of Rosa Luxemburg, this public money was directed to the military sector so that it would not compete with the civilian sector. In order to make the stimilation effect stronger, Bush distributed the money to civilian contractors (who made a poor job in Iraq). I think this is the more correct story.

            `The critics of the Bretton Woord institutes (IMF, World Bank and GATT, now WTO) are a bit late. They started their criticism when IMF already had done the transition and could change the policy to be a bit softer. When the real transition was done there was no criticism. And what all these critics want is NGOs demonstrating freetrade agreements (like in [4]), well, Soros wants an international government, it is the old dream of the NWO conspirators. I hope it will never be realized. What happens today is something different. It may be a planned virus epidemy. It can well be so that this present coronavirus epidemy was an accident. I do not think that this epidemy could possibly have started without researchers studying highly interesting RNA viruses of bats. That is, there has been three coronavirus cases: SARS, MERS and Covid-19. Undoubtadly three different viruses of the same type can appear in a short time only because somebody is studying these viruses. But even if this epidemy is an accident (I believe it is, but does it mainly kill Europeans?) the next epidemy need not be. As it is now, every terrorist group or a rogue country, or a notorious billionaire club, has easy access to a very efficient virus. The present virus can be modified without gene technology by letting it mutate (under radiation it should go fast) until vaccines do not work. It makes a nice tool for somebody wanting to mix things up, even better than the Chicago Boys medicines.

References:

[1] Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine (2007)

[2] George Soros, The Bubble of American Supremacy (2004)

[3] Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalization (2002)

[4] Naomi Klein, Fences and Windows (2002)

[5] Katja Boxberg and Taleni Heikka, Lumedemokratia (illusional democracy, 2009).

[6] Matti Pohjola, Suomen talouskasvu ja sen lähteet 1860–2015  

https://www.taloustieteellinenyhdistys.fi/wp-content/uploads/2017

[7] Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents (2002)

[8] John Perkins, Confessions of an economic hit man (2005)