Luc Brunet – 05 October 2015
Now a long time since I wrote my latest Letter in May. Many things happened in between. The on-going PR campaign against Russia, more instability and blood in Ukraine, Daech capturing the symbolic city of Palmyra in Syria, more black people killed by the Police in the US, and of course the recent flow of migrants and/or refugees into Europe. I did not write anything on such events, at the exception of a few posts on Facebook, as most comments would be either useless or a simple repetition of arguments I used and elaborated long ago. The overall feeling is that the radical geopolitical shifts happening in front of us cannot and shall not be managed by reason but shall be left developing in a chaotic way. This letter is more of a top-down development about how the old world created the monsters that shall ultimately kill it.
“Do you realize what you have done?” – V. Putin, 29/09/2015
This phrase use by V. Putin during his speech at the UN in New York is on my view the most simple, concise and emotional summary of what happened in several countries of the Middle-East, but I would extend it to many other aspects of the evolution of the world since the end of WWII. Do you realize what have you done with the sense of Responsibility? The political and economic worlds may not be the best environment to breed people with a high sense of responsibly and honor, but examples of blatant lack of both qualities are every day more numerous. In the economic world, and while most early days capitalists had their blood and money in the game, large corporations are led by hired CEOs who may fail, bring the company to bankruptcy and still get away with a 7 digit golden parachute and start again a few months later. Carly Fiorina, Leo Apotheker are only few examples of people who were disastrous CEOs. Carly is now trying to use her brilliant skills in politics. In politics, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld or Blair never had any problems to explain they were right in starting an illegal war in Iraq, although the main reason given at that time was the presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction ready to be used by Saddam, weapons that never could be found. Not only none of those individuals had to respond in front of a court for what they did, but all still claim they were right to do it… only Collin Powell seems to have some decency and disappeared from the public arena after what happened in 2003.
Sarkozy, Hollande, Fabius and Cameron all the same did not have to pay for their mistakes in Libya and Syria. It is no surprise for Fabius who already managed to escape responsibilities in France when he was Prime Minister, and thousands of people got infected by HIV tainted blood after transfusions in French hospitals in the 80’s. He used a still famous phrase to explain that he may be “responsible but not accountable”, in French “responsable mais pas coupable”… The phrase is very nice indeed. Responsible people take decisions, but if something goes wrong, they cannot be held accountable for what they decided. Create Al-Qaida to fight against Soviet troops in Afghanistan? Not accountable.
Send millions and millions of dollars to help Ukrainians and the money volatized? Not accountable. Not accountable and not learning from previous mistakes.
Do you realize what have you done with Education? Probably one of the major and most dramatic failure of the western world (may be the mother of all failures) is the degradation of the education system that started early in the US with the generalization of MCQ (multiple choice questionnaires), and low priority given to subjects helping indiviuals to think by themselves, like History or Politics. Europe has followed and all countries with a very few exceptions, have decreased budgets for education across the board. The recruitment of teachers has become less selective and the level of state funded schools has gone down to an alarming level, with children of the elite more and more moving to the private education sector. Low level of education (in quality, not in % of people with degrees, which is something very different) creates something the system is keen to have, crowds of consumers easy to manipulate, thus hardly able to revolt. But on the other side it also generates people easier to indoctrinate and turn into believers of new ideologies.
The failure is not limited to the crowd of consumers, and also spreads to the elites. A few recent anecdotes are inspiring, like that Canadian candidate in local elections (Alex Johnstone, also a school trustee!) who made a joke about a polish camp called Auschwitz, and had to apologize saying that she did not know until now what Auschwitz actually was! To her credit she recently resigned from her school trustee position – seems she somehow felt accountable! In general I suggest you listen to some leaders like F Hollande, N Sarkozy, B Obama, H Clinton and others… do they really give the impression to even understand what they say? Do you feel really led by someone who knows what to do and how? Would you hand them your kids for a sailng week-end?
Do you realize what have you done with the sense of Analysis? While the West so often criticized the USSR for its pre-formatted and repetitive slogans, the West itself is now turning in an ideological circle. The new laws are as rigid as the principles of Maxism-Leninism. The new laws are above all, and people daring to express doubts become enemies of the system and need to be neutralized. Of course they are not sent to working camps, not shot, but they have absolutely no access to the mainstream media and are virtually isolated. The news laws are the ones of God Market. There are many of them, but some are more famous or infamous than others: – the Market should decide unregulated, and rule the world of Finance and Economy – influence and control by the State should be reduced to a small minimum – big Banks cannot fail – everything should be privatized (the army is not an exception!) – free move of capital, goods and investments across the borders – country regimes or individuals not respecting the rules have to be “changed” or shut-up The sovereign country has obviously no place in that world.
Do you realize what have you done with Information? In order to maintain the illusion that the Ideology is always right and that all is rosy if people follow the laws, the mainstream media of Western countries has progressively become as transparent and critical as the Pravda under the USSR. Only Internet and a few TV channels provide inquisitive information, but NEVER on prime time (check in your TV program). A brilliant British guy published an amazing video on that, I recommend to watch it, it is not very long:
https://www.facebook.com/MylesDyerOfficial/videos/10154810776221959/
Do you realize what have you done with Islam? Accusing Islam of being per-se a religion of hate and violence is totally wrong. The Quran may contain lots of violent or hateful articles, so does the Torah and the Bible. Taking those books to the letter and apply all rules as they have been written centuries ago can lead to cruelty and violence. The Inquisition period, or the way some local populations were treated during colonization unfortunately are not much more human than recent Daesh crimes. Any religion or ideology, if properly used for political and dominance purposes can be twisted and become a hate and exclusion instrument. Over the last 50 or 60 years, the west consistently used extreme Islam to counter the secular regimes they did not like, mostly because they were close to the USSR, or did not want to be “US friendly”, i.e. let US corporation control their wealth. Countries like Iran, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and more, ALL had a period of secular development, when Islam was part of each one’s private life, but public life was rules based on secular laws and practices, much like Europe in the 18th century moved from the Law of God to secular laws. In all cases, ultra-religious groups have been boosted by the west, and Syria is just the latest example. But none of it would have been possible without the help (financial and clerical) of Saudi Arabia. Wahhabism is one of the most sectarian branch of Islam and is the weapon of mass destruction used to kill secular regimes that displeased the System, sending Islam back to the middle ages.
Interestingly, in non-Muslim countries behaving against the system, alternative solutions are of course used to achieve regime change, often a local version of fascism like in Greece, Chile in the 70’s or recently in Ukraine. The recipe is the same, only ingredients vary. Do you realize what have you done with the sense of Fraternity? The word Fraternity smells like the French Revolution, but the values behind it are very valid if we want to live in a world where fear and misery is not the day life for most people. The point is not for everybody to be equal, but for everybody to be considered as a valuable element of society and have chances to realize something in her/his life. Where is Fraternity in the west now, and mainly in the US? Police shooting Black or Latinos like rabbits, the middle-class pushed to poverty, the poors pushed to misery, mass shootings almost every day… The image I would associate to such a society is very much the one of the famous computer game GTA!
Like in GTA: – if you do not like your school, buy a gun, go and shoot’m all – do not arrest guys, kill them, just in case (by the way if you watch videos of police shootings in the US, you shall realize that most of the ones being shot behave very nervously and aggressively like in GTA, almost asking to be shot,..) – lost your job? go and shoot’m all – after that, go to the only place of happiness: the shopping mall! – go to war? do what you cannot do at home: rape, torture, go and shoot’m (really) all Have we reached the perfect homo-capitalismus? The ultimate consumer, addicted to gadgets and ready to kill for them? Shall we see the next wars happening between brand fanatics (we also need some humor)?
More seriously, all aspects of the domestic and foreign policy of the west are on my views a total failure. While the USSR collapsed almost without a shot, the collapse of the west shall however be very chaotic. In short I foresee the following developments: – the middle-east shall see a wave of military and political successes from the Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon-Russia-China axis – a second wave of violence may erupt between the countries above and Saudi Arabia, who supported the Wahhabi gangs in Iraq and Syria. Unless the US starts a nuclear war to save their minions, Saudis have no chance in such a confrontation – Europe shall continue to be submerged by migrants, many of them ISIS fleeing Syria and Iraq. Because of the tensions between countries due to opposite views on what to do with them, I expect a split of the EU, eastern countries like Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia, Slovakia and Poland making a U-turn and getting closer to Russia and the Eurasian Union – western Europe has however high chances to be engulfed in a series of terrorist violence and quasi-civil wars, ending up in brutal regime changes. Chaos is unpredictable. – the US shall hardly digest the loss of leadership and may, like the EU, split in several countries, based on differences in ideology and social/racial policies.