Myths and reality
The propaganda continues even as crises abound with the poor continuing to suffer and civil liberties being stripped away.
It is often said that there’s a fine line between success and failure. But any evaluation depends on where you draw the line and who is actually doing the drawing. Despite upbeat public statements from the Pentagon about Afghanistan, a recently leaked CIA report says the situation there is stuck in a stalemate. Khalil Nouri, co-founder of the New World Strategies Coalition, says the position is so grim that the US might be having second thoughts about withdrawing. After almost 11 years, the occupation is a failure.
US government spokespersons and President Obama are prone to telling the public that everything is fine in Afghanistan, however -- no doubt just as ‘fine’ as things are in Iraq, plagued as it is by sectarian divisions, ongoing violence, faulty infrastructure and terrible social deprivations. Based on official US public proclamations on Afghanistan and Iraq, are we to conclude that the word ‘failure’ no longer exists.
But this type of whitewashing is not exclusive to military ventures, as it applies to many other policy areas too, where we are also led to believe by various ‘experts,’ advisors and corporate backed think tanks that all is well. It’s more than a politician’s job is worth, or for that matter a highly paid corporate executive, economist or Pentagon official, to admit to failure.
Think of those who inform us that neo-liberalism has been great for humankind and that ‘globalisation’ has brought freedom of choice, democracy and untold prosperity. Think of those who tell is outsourcing is wonderful, Forbes rich-listers are role models and that poverty is soon to be done away with. And these people will also try to convince you that the ‘war on terror’ is going to plan and the ‘war on drugs’ even more so.
This propaganda continues even as, before our very eyes, crises abound with the poor continuing to suffer, civil liberties being stripped away, drugs crippling communities throughout Europe and North America, people being made homeless, wages continuing to fall in real terms and taxpayers’ money pouring into the black hole of needless wars and the pockets of the arms companies. Yet, we are patted on the head and told that we must stick with the prevailing system because there is no ‘credible’ alternative. That’s an extremely low standard to beat people into submission with and to measure success by – the yardstick of ‘things could be worse, so life is therefore better than you think’.
But that’s the trouble with proponents of the type of predatory capitalism and associated militarism that now engulfs the word. The system is in crisis and a patent failure, but is sold to us as a success story. While it is indeed a wonderful wealth creating machine for some, capitalism cannot solve its own problems. It just has a habit of shifting around the system the many problems it creates.
Outsourcing production
Capitalism is based on the need to maximise profit and beat down competitors. In the 1960s and 70s, in the face of increasing competition from abroad, not least from Germany and Japan, the US began to outsource production to bring down costs by using cheap foreign labour. Other countries followed suit. To provide a further edge, trade unions and welfare were attacked in order to suppress wages at home. Problem solved. Or was it?
Not really. As wages in the west stagnated or decreased and unemployment increased, the market for goods was under threat - if people have no money to buy things, then what to do? New problem, new ‘solution’ -- lend people money and create a debt ridden consumer society. Of course, it produced new opportunities for investors in finance, and all kinds of dubious financial derivatives and products were created, sold to the public and repackaged and shifted around the banking system. Now all of that has hit the fan too, this time the ‘solution’ is bailouts for the banks to get them lending once again.
Some solution. Even as the Euro teeters on the brink of collapse and markets are flooded with goods due to the over accumulation of capital and low consumer spending, failures are spun by politicians as glitches that can be put right by, for example, printing more money and handing out even more debt.
And on a global level, as local democracy is usurped by the influence of international finance and powerful corporate interests, local economies are being destroyed and people booted from their land. The fact that such people can then at least swarm to some sprawling, overburdened city and, if lucky, get a few dollars a day job in an outsourced sweatshop is also passed off as some kind of success story or economic miracle.
When the media paint a rosy picture of the world and when politicians inform us that everything is okay, according to the sacred scriptures of neoliberalism, why should we believe them? They are, after all, both sides of the same coin, feeding from the same gilded trough and sucking on the same corporate teat.
Surely any evaluation of where the world is currently at should be left to the ordinary folk, many of whom have already provided their assessment of the situation through the ongoing global protests against the bankers, inequality, imperialist wars and corruption.
There is indeed a fine line between success and failure. And millions of ordinary people have already taken to the streets to show where it really lies.
