- How The US Spent Billions To Change The Outcome Of Elections Around The World: A Review
Authored by Danny Haiphong via BlackAgendaReport.com,
The U.S. military state overthrows democratically-elected governments that it deems to be a threat to corporate interests.
“There is plenty of evidence that the United States is the most depraved and dangerous “meddler” in the affairs of other nations that history has ever known.”
Dan Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer, but most of all he is an anti-imperialist and an author of three books. Kovalik’s first two books tackled the specific US war drives against Russia and Iran. His third installment, The Plot to Control the World: How the US Spent Billions to Change the Outcome of Elections Around the World, addresses the broad scope of US election meddling abroad. The book provides much needed political and ideological life support to an anti-war movement in the U.S that has been rendered nearly invisible to the naked eye.
The Plot to Control the World is as detailed in its critique of U.S. imperialism as it is concise. In just over 160 pages, Kovalik manages to analyze the various ways that the U.S. political and military apparatus interferes in the affairs of nations abroad to achieve global hegemony. He wastes no time in exposing the devastating lie that is American exceptionalism, beginning appropriately with the U.S. imperialist occupations of Haiti and the Philippines at the end of the 19thcentury and beginning of the 20th. The U.S. would murder millions of Filipinos and send both nations into a spiral of violence, instability, and poverty that continues to this day. As Kovalik explains regarding Haiti, “While the specific, claimed justifications for [U.S.] intervention changed over time- e.g., opposing the end of slavery, enforcing the Monroe Doctrine, fighting Communism, fighting drugs, restoring law and order — the fact is that the interventions never stopped and the results for the Haitian people have been invariably disastrous.”
“Kovalik wastes no time in exposing the devastating lie that is American exceptionalism.”
US expansionism has relied upon the ideology of American exceptionalism to silence criticism and weaken anti-war forces in the United States. American exceptionalism claims that the U.S. is a force for good in the world and completely justified in its wars of conquest draped in the cover of spreading “democracy and freedom” around the world. Kovalik challenges American exceptionalism by showing readers just how much damage that US expansionism and militarism has caused for nations and peoples in every region of the planet. Russia, Honduras, Guatemala, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Vietnam and many other nations have seen their societies devastated by U.S. “election meddling.” In Honduras, for example, a U.S.-backed coup of left-wing President Manuel Zelaya in 2009 made the nation one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist, indigenous person, or trade-union/environmental activist. Thousands of Hondurans have been displaced, disappeared, or assassinated since the coup.
Another important aspect of The Plot to Control the World is its exposure of U.S hypocrisy surrounding the subject of “election meddling.” Since the end of the 2016 Presidential elections, the U.S. military, political, and media branches of the imperialist state have accused Russia of virtually implanting Donald Trump into the Oval office. The U.S. public has been fed a steady dose of anti-Russia talking points in an apparent effort on the part of the elites to beat the drums of war with the nuclear-armed state. No evidence has been presented to prove the conspiracy, as a recent National Public Radio (NPR) analysis states plainly. However, there is plenty of evidence that the United States is the most depraved and dangerous “meddler” in the affairs of other nations that history has ever known.
“The author shows readers just how much damage that US expansionism and militarism has caused for nations and peoples in every region of the planet.”
Just ask the much-vaunted Russians. Kovalik devotes an entire chapter to the 1996 Presidential election in Russia that re-elected the wildly unpopular Boris Yeltsin. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 began an era of “shock therapy” in the newly erected Russian Federation, a euphemism for the wholesale theft and transfer of socialized wealth into the hands of oligarchs and multinational corporations. Millions would perish in Russia from an early death due to the sudden loss of healthcare, housing, jobs, and other basic services. In 1996, President Bill Clinton ensured that Yeltsin maintained his near total grip on state power in Russia by providing the Russian President with a team of U.S. political consultants and over a billion dollars’ worth of IMF monies directly to the campaign. U.S. political and monetary support allowed Yeltsin to rig the election in his favor despite his dwindling popularity. Kovalik shows that if anyone should worry about election meddling, it should be the people of Russia and not the US elites that control Washington.
The Plot to Control the World takes readers into the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the CIA’s coup of revolutionary Patrice Lumumba continues to haunt the resource rich nation in the form of endless US-backed genocide. It travels to Guatemala, where the CIA overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz led to a U.S.-backed slaughter of a quarter million Guatemalans under the auspices of several military dictatorships. Kovalik shows us that the election of the fascistic Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil was no aberration, as the U.S. was primarily responsible for the rise in fascism in Brazilthrough its direct role in placing the nation under the control of a military dictatorship in 1964. The military dictatorship predated the CIA’s ouster of Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973, which handed the once socialist state to Augusto Pinochet’s murderous and repressive leadership.
“The mission is always the same: to destabilize independent nations that refuses to bow down to the dictates of U.S. imperialism.”
The entire skeleton of the U.S. military state is on full display in The Plot to Control the World. The U.S. military state utilizes an array of tools to overthrow democratically-elected governments that it deems to be a threat to corporate interests. These tools include the U.S. intelligence agencies, so-called Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) such as the National Endowment for Democracy, and the various branches of the military itself, to name a few. Regardless of the tools employed, the mission is always the same: to destabilize independent nations that refuses to bow down to the dictates of U.S. imperialism.Thus, while Nicaragua, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Vietnam may possess unique histories, their economic and political development has been shaped by the destructive interference of the United States.
Dan Kovalik is not likely to be reviewed in the New York Timesor other corporate outlets. That’s because Kovalik unapologetically speaks out against U.S. empire and all that upholds it. In doing so, Kovalik’s The Plot to Control the World walks in the footsteps of anti-imperialists such as Michael Parenti and William Blum. Blum, a former State Department employee, spent his post-State Department life providing humanity with knowledge about how US imperialism operates on the global stage. The New York Timeswasted no time in slandering Blum in their obituary . This showed the great lengths that the ruling elites will go to discredit, defame, and condemn critics of the military industrial complex and how important it is for those who oppose war let go of any expectation that the corporate media will cover Kovalik’s work or anyone else who speaks out against war.
“White supremacy is the biggest lie of all and is completely embedded in the ideology of American exceptionalism.”
With that said, one of the reasons that the left in the U.S. is so weak is because it has been numerically and politically isolated by the lies of the Empire. White supremacy is the biggest lie of all and is completely embedded in the ideology of American exceptionalism. Despite the ruthlessness of the austerity and incarceration regimes, many Americans continue to be convinced that the U.S. is the most exceptional nation in the world and do not balk when its military wages wars abroad at the expense of U.S. tax dollars and civilian lives. U.S. imperialism has made sure that Americans feel that they are special colonizers who see the victims of the U.S. military state as savages worthy of slaughter. The Plot to Control the World is based on a different premise: internationalism. The book links the struggle against US imperialism to the needs of the oppressed and working class living in the heart of empire, making it an essential read for those who are sick and tired of the prevailing narrative of American exceptionalism and want to be armed with knowledge that is essential toward changing it.
- S&P Downgrades PG&E To Junk, Launching Countdown To $800 Million Collateral Call
One of the biggest surprises involving the ongoing collapse of troubled California utility PG&E is how it was possible, that with the company reportedly contemplating a DIP loan ahead of a possible bankruptcy filing which sent PCG stock plunging and its bonds cratering to all time lows, that rating agencies still had the company rated as investment grade.
Late on Monday, this question got some closure after S&P became the first rating agency to take a machete to its rating for PG&E, when it downgraded the company by five notches, from BBB- to B, the fifth-highest junk rating; S&P warned that more cuts are imminent.
As we reported previously, PG&E’s shares plunged as much as 25% then as much as another 17% on Tuesday, to their lowest level since 2003, as investors worried about the potential for the company to file for bankruptcy as California investigators have been looking into whether the utility’s equipment ignited the deadliest blaze in state history in 2018 as well as fires in 2017, probes that could leave the company with legal liabilities topping $30 billion.
A spokesman for PG&E said in an email Tuesday the company’s board is “actively assessing” operations, finances, management, structure and governance while maintaining a commitment to improving safety.
As Bloomberg notes, PG&E’s record-low bond prices underscore how much more the company will have to pay to borrow in the future, even if California comes up with a legislative bailout. “It also highlights how vulnerable even highly regulated, traditionally dependable stocks like utilities can be to natural disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes.”
Meanwhile, as we discussed last Friday, whatever PG&E ultimate fate, it “will ultimately increase costs to California ratepayers and taxpayers, which already face a high cost of living,” S&P analyst Gabriel Petek, who rates the state of California, not PG&E, said in an email Monday. “The important takeaway to me is that these fires and how the ‘fire season’ is virtually a year-round phenomenon now represent a material consequence of climate change.”
In addition to the plunge in the utility’s notes due in 2034, the company’s 3.5% bonds due next year are currently yielding more than 9.9%, far above where most high-yield securities are paying and a level reserved for deeply distressed credits. As shown in the chart below, B-rated debt, the mid-tier of junk bonds, yields on average 7.5% as of Monday’s close, according to Bloomberg index data.
But while S&P took the axes to its ratings of PG&E, Fitch and Moody have yet to slash the company’s investment grade. And when they do, the next major headache will emerge for both management, shareholders and bondholders, as a similar “junking” by Moody’s to high-yield would result in a rerun of the AIG death sprial, as at least once cash collateral call for PG&E of at least $800 million – to guarantee power contracts – will be triggered according to a regulatory filing (according to Bloomberg no other ratings triggers have been disclosed, although as AIG demonstrated, these tend be hidden deep inside ancillary contracts and only a downgrade will reveal just how insolvent the company is).
An $800 million collateral call would be a major problem for PG&E, as the company only had $430 million of cash on its books at the end of September. To preserve liquidity, PG&E suspended its dividend and fully drew its lines of credit, an event which we said is the first flashing red light that a liquidity crisis now appears inevitable. Meanwhile, as reported last Friday, the company is considering filing for bankruptcy as soon as February.
And while state lawmakers and regulators are looking at options including allowing the company to issue bonds to pay its liabilities, or breaking up the utility, no decision had been reached yet.
At the end of the day, however, even the $800 million urgent cash need would merely be a milestone on the company roads to assured bankruptcy if PG&E is ultimately held responsible for the Camp Fire, as that would put it on the hook for billions of dollars of potential liabilities, by some calculations far more than the company has access to. Yet because the company has filed for bankruptcy before, it and lawmakers would probably try to avoid a repeat, said Ryan Brist, head of global investment-grade credit and portfolio manager at Western Asset Management, who however likely understands that a bankruptcy may be inevitable.
“That was a disastrous time for all participants involved,” Pasadena, California-based Brist said. “It would be my guess that the same parties would want to pursue a much less volatile solution this go around when faced with the tough problems of statewide wildfires.”
However, with about $18.6 billion of long-term debt as of the end of September, PG&E may be incentivized to file for bankruptcy, CreditSights analyst Andy DeVries said in a report Monday. Such a filing would give the company bargaining power with insurance companies as it tries to settle customer claims at a discount, he said.
But before any possible filing, the next immediate step will be more downgrades by rating agencies, perhaps as soon as tomorrow.
Fitch analyst Philip Smyth said that a determination by California regulators that PG&E’s equipment was involved in the Tubbs Fire in 2017 or last year’s Camp Fire would be the strongest impetus to cut the rating.
“Right now, there is no investigation that says with any clarity that has determined that their equipment was the catalyst,” Smyth said in an interview Monday. “Since we downgraded in November, I don’t think things have gotten meaningfully worse since then.”
Finally, the imminent – and aptly called – fall from grace for PG&E is just the harbinger of the mass downgrade wave among investment-grade rated companies, expected to hit once the economic cycle turns, potentially flooding the more than $1.19 trillion high-yield market with new issues (as Jeff Gundlach discussed earlier today). The silver lining here, if any, is that PG&E’s relatively small debt load on its own wouldn’t bring the flood that strategists at Morgan Stanley have warned could exceed $1.1 trillion.
Xerox was the most recent company to join the “fallen angel” ranks, while Altria was downgrade from single A to BBB. Whether PG&E avoids bankruptcy remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: the California utility will be the next prominent “Fallen Angel.”
- How The BBC Manufactured 'Hate' – An Insider's Story
Authored by Jack Krak via American Renaissance,
Editor’s Introduction: This article is about events that took place in 2012, but anyone who follows the news closely knows that nothing has changed. This is a remarkable account by someone who had an inside look at deliberate falsifications by what was once one of the most respected names in journalism.
In May of 2012, the BBC Panorama program broadcast a documentary about “racism” in the host countries of the 2012 European soccer championship: Poland and Ukraine. Those two countries were about to stage the second biggest event in the sport after the World Cup, and legions of journalists had arrived to cover it. The purpose of the BBC program—aired strategically one week before the opening match—was to argue that neither country was qualified to host the tournament because of their “hateful” soccer cultures. The message: All-white countries are hotbeds of violent racism, and non-white fans and players would be in danger.
I know a lot about the Panorama program because I helped produce it. I saw what is arguably the world’s most famous and trusted media organization fabricate a false, sensationalist story. Through outright distortion – and by using only those pieces that fit its predetermined views – the BBC “documented” the vicious attitudes of people who live in countries that are not sufficiently “diverse.” The program had a scripted conclusion before a single camera was turned on.
Panorama is the BBC’s flagship investigative program. It is the longest-running such production in the world, having been on the air since 1953. The closest thing to it on American television is probably 60 Minutes. Panorama enjoys a reputation for hard-hitting and serious investigative journalism.
About three months before the tournament began, a BBC journalist got in touch with me through mutual media contacts and asked me to help with the part to be filmed in Poland. He said the program would be about aspects of the football culture—hooliganism, trouble at stadiums, etc.—that could cause problems for players and fans alike. This topic is something of a hobby of mine, and I have followed it carefully during my time in Poland. The BBC wanted me to be a “fixer”—the person on the ground who arranges things in advance for the production team. That meant setting up interviews, scouting filming locations, getting press passes and access to events, arranging transport, and a hundred other odds and ends. I was also expected to contribute ideas based on my knowledge.
I suspected right from the start that they wanted things that make for good television rather than a true investigation—conflict, tension, etc.—but I was somewhat reassured because this was the BBC. Despite my reservations, I never thought they would make the television equivalent of sensationalist trashy tabloid headlines.
The producer and a cameraman made their first trip to Poland in March 2012. They had asked me to arrange an interview with Aviram Baruchian, an Israeli who played with Polonia Warsaw. They said the interview was supposed to be about “his experience as a football player in Poland,” but the fact that they asked for him by name suggested they assumed he would have horror stories about being mistreated by fans because he is Jewish.
The press officer for Polonia was very accommodating, something I found again and again when dealing with officials from football clubs. People automatically trusted the BBC and went to extraordinary lengths to give them what they wanted.
I met the production crew for the first time the day after the interview. When I asked how it went, they joked about how useless it was. I was confused by their dismissive attitude and felt a bit responsible, but they told me not to worry. I learned later from the Polonia media spokesman that Mr. Baruchian had nothing but appreciative things to say about the fans and his experience in Warsaw—which is exactly why he isn’t in the final program.
There is a curious “Jewish” angle to Polish football that is easily misunderstood. Fans chant nasty things about Jews, but, strange as it may seem, it’s not accurate to call it serious anti-Semitism.
Many of the older clubs originally had or are thought to have had Jewish financial backing. This is almost certainly true of the team in Lodz—called Widzew Łódź—since that city had a large Jewish population before the Second World War. These origins have become a source of cheap name calling for people who seize on any excuse to trade insults. When fans chant “death to the Jews,” it sounds shocking—and it certainly is brutish—but this is mainly a way of attacking the other team rather than Jews.
There has been a similar situation with the London football club Tottenham Hotspur, which has had Jewish owners. Fans of rival clubs started chanting about the “Jewish” team. Tottenham supporters eventually embraced this and some even call themselves the “Yid Army.” The fans of one Polish club, Cracovia, were in the same position and did the same thing, now proudly calling themselves the “Jewish Sons of Bitches.” When I told the BBC about that, they weren’t interested.
Needless to say, there is a lot of anti-Jewish chanting in the final Panorama program, but it is presented without explanation. It falsely makes the fans look as though they want to send Jews to the ovens.
The Star of David is now used so much in soccer graffiti that a Polish teacher I met told me that the children in his class associate it with the sport. He also had a friend from Israel, so this seemed like gold for the BBC: a poignant combination of children, the star of David, racism, and a chance to talk to another Israeli and get what they missed from Aviram Baruchian.
I set up the interview, but it was another disaster. Both the teacher and his Israeli friend said that, yes, while there certainly are boorish people, just as there are in every country, most Poles are very nice etc. Again and again, the Israeli put a positive spin on things, even when asked melodramatic questions about the Second World War. It was another “useless” interview that didn’t make the final cut. I remember that when we got back to the van everyone burst out laughing about what a complete waste of time it had been.
The first actual match we went to film was Legia Warsaw vs. Polonia Warsaw. This contest had an excellent chance of including all the things that make for great television, and it was before I understood what the real focus of the program was, so I was sure the BBC crew would not be disappointed. For about five hours, they filmed an army of police in full riot gear, flares and firecrackers being thrown around the stands and onto the field, an enormous banner unfurled by the home Legia fans declaring that Warsaw belonged to them, and a reply spelled out by the small but brave contingent of visiting Polonia supporters, who held up cards to form one big reply: “FUCK LEGIA.” There was a hooligan with a bullhorn on an elevated platform and countless examples of a well-known hand gesture delivered straight into the camera. A section of the stadium was burned black by a flare that set fire to a banner.
The entire contingent of Polonia fans was still in that blackened section after the match, surrounded by hundreds of security guards who would escort them out of the stadium perhaps an hour or two later. This was to minimize the chance of contact with Legia hooligans who might be waiting for them. It was easy to capture the violent atmosphere of the game, and I was confident the production team was happy. As we made our way back to the van, I asked the assistant producer if he was pleased. He made a face that said “not really,” and then out of nowhere asked, “Did you hear any racist or anti-Semitic chants?” He was visibly disappointed when I said I hadn’t.
Boring
The lead producer said he was more or less satisfied with the “visuals” but was disappointed with the “substance.” He asked again about something I had been unable to do: get one of the more committed hooligan types to go on camera. This time he explicitly said he wanted someone involved in “right-wing politics” as well as hooliganism.
I said it wasn’t easy to get inside a violent crime syndicate. The higher-ups in any hooligan organization are wanted by the police, and anyone further down is too scared to speak to the media for fear of the “leaders.” Believe me, anyone who goes on camera and says he’s a hooligan is either a wannabe or gets a very personal lesson in media relations from his former friends. I did the best I could, striking up awkward and even dangerous conversations on dark streets, and I visited dodgy clubs in four different cities, but I never delivered. The closest I got was a conversation with the head of one club’s “supporters organization,” who demanded a “fee” for “security.” To its credit, the BBC refused to pay.
Time to get serious
The team went back to London, and I continued to look into leads. I began to realize that what they wanted was bananas thrown at black players, Nazi salutes from the stands, and maybe some brutal beatings to add color.
In a phone conversation with the assistant producer at the end of March, I detected a note of urgency and in April, I got an e-mail message from him that said, “Our Executive Producer, Karen Wightman [who was in charge of the entire Panoramaseries], wants us to film black players and their experience of racism in Poland as a priority.”
The BBC had dropped all pretense about what they were after—at least with me—though they kept up the charade of a neutral investigation with others.
The crew decided to come see a match in the city of Łódź between ŁKS Łódź and Widzew Łódź. Like the previous game in Warsaw, this was a derby, that is to say, a contest between two clubs in the same city. Derbies typically have the most intense atmosphere, and thus an elevated chance of the kind of incident the BBC was looking for.
Widzew had two Nigerian players, Princewill Okachi and Ugo Ukah, and the BBC wanted first-hand accounts of mistreatment. Mr. Ukah was of particular interest because he had played for Queens Park Rangers in London and could compare his treatment in diverse, tolerant, multicultural England with that of all-white, wicked Poland. Also, there would be two black men on the visiting team in a contest famous for its wild fans. Everything was lined up perfectly to provide the missing “substance.”
I asked the BBC specifically what they wanted me to tell the press officer of Widzew and they told me to say we were interested in Poland’s preparation for the Euro 2012 tournament. Someone else on the production team, who had also been in contact with Widzew by e-mail, sent me this note:
They don’t know at this stage we want to specifically talk about racism in Polish football and their [the black players’] own personal experiences of abuse, so be prepared to schmuz [sic] and impress.
“At this stage” was after the club had agreed to make the players available—on Easter Sunday, no less, to fit our tight schedule. We were supposed to “schmuz and impress” rather than be forthright about the reason for the interview. I remember wondering how often the BBC gets access and interviews under false pretenses. To my shame, I was helping set the trap.
Łódź was the BBC’s last chance to find anti-black “racism.” The broadcast date for the final program was already booked and Panorama was fully committed to a headline-grabbing account of the dark, racist side of what was soon to be Europe’s biggest sporting stage. But they had no racism.
It was in Łódź that the host, Chris Rogers, finally parachuted into his own program. He was the one who had sold the BBC on the idea months earlier, and the entire Panorama episode is presented as “his” investigation. Mr. Rogers made something of a name for himself in 2007 with an undercover investigation of Romania’s orphanages, and he has been dining out on it ever since.
He flew in to interview the two Nigerian players and to do PTC’s (pieces to camera) the following day at the match to add to footage shot in Warsaw without him. He came across as a typical media type who was good at fake sincerity and spent a little too much time on his hair.
We went to the Widzew Łódź office to interview Mr. Okachi and Mr. Ukah. Mr. Rogers started with softball questions, such as how long the players had been in Poland, where else they had played professionally, etc. He turned things up a notch by asking about the reception they had received in Poland. Both players gave positive answers. Time and again Rogers dangled the carrot and time and again no one reached for it. Suddenly Rogers put on his best journalist Serious Face, turned to Mr. Ukah, and said “Why has Polish football been hijacked by racism?”
There was nothing in the interview up to that point to justify that question. It was so unexpected that Mr. Ukah was taken aback for a moment before he was finally able to give a suitably noncommittal answer. The next few minutes consisted of both Mr. Ukah and Mr. Okachi repeatedly stating that though they had heard of things happening to other people, they had never heard or seen anything that could be interpreted as racist abuse in Poland.
This went on for a few more minutes until both players had run out of nice ways to say “no” to the same question. Mr. Rogers had no choice but to wrap it up.
“For the hundredth time: No.”
The players left quickly to enjoy what was left of Easter. I distinctly remember Mr. Rogers and the producer agreeing that they had “material to work with.”
If you watch the final version of the program, you will see how they “worked” with it. They made it sound as though the players were talking about horrible things that happened to them. I was in the room the whole time, paying careful attention, and those bits were taken from rambling answers they gave about things they had heard happened to others. I was amazed at how editing and voice-overs transformed the interview into something I couldn’t recognize. Needless to say, those were the only parts of the interview that were used.
I heard it. Trust me. Let’s go.
The next day was the match. After filming the police using water cannons on fans, we went inside the stadium. We set up a camera behind one of the goals and a microphone at midfield in front the home fans. Mr. Rogers instructed me to be on the lookout for “anything good,” and by then I knew what he meant. He also told me to keep an eye on the Nigerian players and look for any nastiness from the crowd. He constantly disappeared to sneak cigarettes and text his friends in England. He wasn’t even there for the kickoff. When he finally reappeared he asked if I had seen or heard anything useful. When I said I hadn’t, he disappeared again.
About 30 minutes in to the first half, we were still waiting for “something good,” and Mr. Rogers was visibly anxious. He paced back and forth, checking his phone more than he watched the crowd or the match. Once, just to break the silence between us as we stood on the sidelines or maybe to vent his frustration, he actually said out loud “Come on! Sing some Jewish songs!”
At halftime, the five of us who were there got together to trade notes and suggestions, and we decided to switch places to maybe improve our “luck.” I was with the producer and one cameraman; the other cameraman was high above the crowd on the opposite stand. Chris Rogers was . . . somewhere.
The second half kicked off and we went back to work. There was plenty of thuggishness in the stands—you see a lot of it in the final version—but still not what they wanted. There was a palpable feeling of frustration and hopelessness as another 30 or so minutes passed.
That’s when Chris Rogers walked up and said he had heard monkey sounds coming from the crowd. No one knew quite what to say, but this certainly wasn’t greeted with the kind of relief and interest you would have expected. For a moment it seemed as though we were just waiting for someone to say “Um . . . really?” but we just waited for Mr. Rogers to tell us exactly what happened. All he said was that the microphone at midfield had probably picked it up, and he told the producer to get ready to do a PTC about it. Thirty second later he was in Serious Face mode, intoning that he had just heard monkey sounds directed at a black player. I kept waiting for him to tell our cameramen what part of the stands the sounds came from so they could zoom in on it. Surely he wanted to watch those fans in the hopes that they would do it again, this time on camera?
No. Chris Rogers made no effort to get visual material for what was to be a key moment in a television program. And it wasn’t as if we were in a massive stadium with 60,000 people, where it would be hard to pinpoint where sounds came from. The photo below is of the stadium, and the picture captures about 80 percent of the length of the stand from which the monkey sounds allegedly came. The banner says “This is how we have fun in Łódź.” Not one of the BBC crew said, “OK, Chris, where should we look?”
The recording from the microphone is in the final version of the program, and I challenge anyone to detect what Chris Rogers claims to have heard. You might be at a loss to describe exactly what the noise is, but “monkey sounds” is way, way down on the list of possibilities.
In the broadcast version, this part of the recording is played over a shot they had taken earlier in the match of Ugo Ukah attacking the ball. However, the audio is from a microphone planted at the edge of the field. When they went back and “found” those sounds, they had no idea what was going on in the match at that moment. But in the program, the sounds start the moment Mr. Ukah is on the ball. The BBC took the audio from one moment and played it over a video from another moment. I would expect that from the North Korean press, not the BBC.
When we packed up to leave, we had to walk through the part of the stadium where the post-match press conference was to be held. It hadn’t started, but print and video journalists were waiting. The BBC producer saw this, and asked Mr. Rogers if we should stop and ask about what he had heard at the match. What more perfect, made-for-television scene could there be? He could have walked into the after-match press conference and announced dramatically, “I’m Chris Rogers from the BBC and I want to know how it’s possible that a black player was racially abused in a country that will be hosting the European Championships.” That would be the dramatic moment they were looking for. But no, Mr. Rogers said we needn’t waste the time. He wanted to go back to the hotel for dinner. He did not speak with Ugo Ukah after the match or the following day while we were still in Lodz.
Mr. Ukah never said anything about hearing monkey noises. No player from either team ever did. Nor did any of the many journalists from the Polish media, nor did a German television crew that was there.
I cannot say what Chris Rogers did or did not hear. However, I do know that in a stadium of around 5,000 people the only person who claims to have heard monkey sounds was the one person who flew to Poland for three days with the sole purpose of finding “racism.”
The final version of the program stretches the truth in other ways. For example, Mr. Rogers says he has spent months on location studying local football culture, whereas he spent just a few days in the country. There is also a scene in which a British “anti-racist” named Nick Lowles is shown scanning the crowd with binoculars, looking for “hate.” The voiceover says that “he has flown out to see what British fans can expect in Poland,” and he obligingly gives an interview. The program makes it look as though the camera crew just stumbled onto him in the stands. In fact, the BBC flew him in just for that scene.
The team certainly didn’t mind spending money. I was with the producer when he got a message from London telling him that they were well over budget. He said they had spent around £150,000 pounds (about $230,000). They stayed in expensive hotels and never thought about costs. I was amazed by how much they spent in restaurants and hotel bars. Remember: This is the BBC, to which mandatory payments of £150 pounds a year must be made if you own a television set in Britain. It is a criminal offense not to pay.
The results
Just days before the broadcast, the BBC showed some of the footage to Sol Campbell, son of Jamaican immigrants and former captain of the English national football team. They happily filmed him claiming – predictably – to be shocked. He said it was enough to convince him not to go to the tournament and to warn other non-whites not to go.
This was brilliant publicity for Panorama. Polish and Ukrainian media picked up Mr. Campbell’s comments, which pushed “racism” to the forefront of any British discussion of the tournament. The program cast a pall over the tournament before the first match was even played, and put a small army of journalists on alert, scanning the stands for “hate.”
I watched the show when it first aired at the end of May. I had been dreading it, but my dread turned to shock when I heard what the episode was called: “Stadiums of Hate.” They had come up with a suitably provocative title for their contrived, deliberately misleading fairy tale about a football culture permeated with vile racism.
The program has disappeared from YouTube; it appears to be available only this much less trafficked site. But when it was broadcast, it made national headlines in Poland. The country’s biggest television channel took the extraordinary step of broadcasting it just days later, dubbed in Polish.
Many Poles were outraged at what they recognized as a vicious smear. It is worth noting that within a week or so, every single person who appeared on camera in the Polish part of the program claimed publicly to have been misrepresented. This includes Jonathan Ornstein, the director of the Jewish Community Center of Krakow. I was present for the interview with him, and he gave thoughtful answers to all of Chris Rogers’ questions, always emphasizing that ugly graffiti and idiots making trouble at stadiums do not represent larger Polish attitudes. In the program, however, he seems to be leading the charge against horrible, hateful, anti-Semitic Poland. Mr. Ornstein told me personally how disgusted he was by how his interview was cut apart and stitched back together.
Even Jacek Purski, director of Never Again, an organization dedicated to monitoring racism in Poland, says the program was one-sided. When a “watchdog” group calls a television program “one-sided,” you can be sure it was outrageous.
The Polish government demanded a clarification from the BBC, and even the foreign minister complained. Newspapers throughout Europe expressed skepticism, and reader comments left online were overwhelmingly outraged. The BBC took the very unusual step of publicly responding to criticism.
Then the BBC got a huge break from Barack Obama, of all people. During a ceremony at the White House honoring someone who had survived Auschwitz, Mr. Obama referred to it as a “Polish death camp” rather than a Nazi death camp in occupied Poland. Angry demands for an apology from the US government pushed “Stadiums of Hate” off the front page. After that, the relentless media cycle quickly relegated the whole affair to yesterday’s news.
Today, criticism of the “Stadiums of Hate” episode takes up more space on the Wikipedia page for Panorama than any other episode in its history. As the doubts and questions mounted, the BBC seems to have taken pains to get copies off the internet. There are any number of other full episodes of Panorama on YouTube, but not this one.
I was the least important man on the production crew and had no editorial influence, but I still felt responsible the episode that millions of people ultimately watched. At the height of the furor I got in touch with the Polish and foreign press. Their reaction was always the same: intense initial interest that quickly faded after a better understanding of what was involved. The explanation I heard over and over was that attacking a program that attacked racism looks like you’re defending racism.
One editor of a major UK newspaper told me it was hard to attack Panorama without a smoking gun. When I asked for an example, he said one would be someone who admitted he was paid by the BBC to pretend to be a “racist” hooligan. The man seemed jaded and not at all surprised by what I told him; he also said he simply could not risk coming across as defending “racism.”
As time goes by, doubts about the program’s credibility fade. All anyone will remember is that the great Chris Rogers exposed horrible racists in Poland and Ukraine. You will have to dig pretty deep to get the real story. That is the power of the biggest name in news.
Mr. Krak does not expect to get any more work from the BBC.
- "A Soft Coup Against Donald Trump Is Underway" Declares Major Turkish Daily
Turkey is going on the attack against John Bolton following his weekend antics in the Middle East, which most recently included being snubbed by Erdogan in the Turkish capital. Bolton has now gone “rogue” and tried to undercut Trump’s Syria pullout decision by setting his own preconditions, writes the editorial board of Turkey’s most visible pro-government English language daily newspaper.
The pro-Erdogan, AKP-supporting Daily Sabah says “a soft coup against Donald Trump” is underway, but that Trump’s “rogue” National Security Adviser got a “rude awakening” upon visiting Turkey yesterday:
If U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton thought yesterday’s visit was going to be a walk in the park, he must have had a rude awakening thanks to the lukewarm reception in the Turkish capital Ankara. In retrospect, it was probably a bad idea for Bolton to go rogue and try to impose conditions on the United States withdrawal from Syria. Keeping in mind that Turkey was already getting ready to send its troops to northern Syria before U.S. President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement last month, it is time for Washington to accept that it isn’t negotiating with Turkey from a position of power.
NatSec adviser John Bolton, Gen. Joe Dunford and Amb. Jim Jeffrey departing from the presidential compound in Ankara after briefer than expected meetings with Turkish defense counterparts, via Vivian Salama The op-ed declares case closed for any doubts about a fierce resistance seeking to subvert Trump within his own administration:
If there was ever any doubt that the resistance within the Trump administration wasn’t real, what happened in light of Trump’s decision to leave disproved the skeptics. Bolton and several other members of the Trump administration are committing a serious crime by preventing the current president of the United States from reversing his predecessor’s misguided decisions in the Syrian theater. What is happening today isn’t a policy debate, but a direct challenge to American democracy by unelected paper-pushers. Indeed, “many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate” President Trump’s agenda.
Bolton is pushing for Trump to hold off on withdrawing 2,000+ US troops from Syria until it had received assurances from Turkey that the Turks wouldn’t attack US-backed Kurds in the region. Bolton revealed the change in direction during a Sunday interview, ahead of a planned trip abroad where he will visit Turkey and Israel to discuss the terms of the US withdrawal; however, the degree to which Trump has personally signed off on Bolton’s “preconditions” remains unclear, and for the past week contradictory messages have been issued from both Pentagon and admin officials.
Instead of meeting with Bolton, Erdogan used a prescheduled speech in parliament to criticize American proposals that the Kurdish group play a key role in Syria after the US withdraws, according to Bloomberg.
Turkey goes on the attack against Bolton: accuses him of going “rogue” and seeking to undercut Trump’s decision to pull out of Syria by setting his own conditions. “A soft coup against Trump is underway.” https://t.co/cTCQB5x64i
— Liz Sly (@LizSly) January 8, 2019
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Notably, on Monday President Trump slammed a New York Times piece that heavily quoted Bolton, suggesting new preconditions on the announced Syria draw down, and that Bolton had effectively “rolled back” Trump’s decision to “rapidly withdraw from Syria.”
Trump blasted the Times via Twitter, saying the newspaper published “a very inaccurate story on my intentions for Syria,” and that the policy that remains is “No different from my original statements, we will be leaving at a proper pace while at the same time continuing to fight ISIS and doing all else that is prudent and necessary!”.
The Failing New York Times has knowingly written a very inaccurate story on my intentions on Syria. No different from my original statements, we will be leaving at a proper pace while at the same time continuing to fight ISIS and doing all else that is prudent and necessary!…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2019
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The Daily Sabah continues, declaring a “soft coup is underway”:
A soft coup against Trump is underway in the United States. In recent days, anonymous U.S. officials, like the author of the infamous op-ed in The New York Times, have repeatedly lied to the American people in an attempt to force Trump to walk back from his comments about Syria.
And further, the op-ed declares the writing is on the wall in terms of US failing influence in Syria and over the Kurdish question, and calls on resistors within the administration to “wake up”:
Bolton and other leaders of the “resistance” must stop beating a dead horse and wake up to the fact that they are not negotiating with Turkey from a position of power. The Turkish government had unveiled its plan to target PKK/YPG targets in northern Syria long before Trump decided to withdraw from Syria. If senior U.S. officials keep making up new rules as they go, the Turks will run out of patience.
The observation that US negotiators have lost any position of power certainly played out yesterday when a defeated looking and frowning US delegation, appearing disunited among themselves, was photographed exiting the presidential compound in Ankara.
The astute geopolitical blog Moon of Alabama rightly concluded, “And with that, Bolton was humiliated and the issue of the U.S. retreat from Syria kicked back to Trump.”
- India Begins Paying For Iranian Oil In Rupees
Three months ago, in Mid-October, Subhash Chandra Garg, economic affairs secretary at India’s finance ministry, said that India still hasn’t worked out yet a payment system for continued purchases of crude oil from Iran, just before receiving a waiver to continue importing oil from Iran in its capacity as Iran’s second largest oil client after China.
That took place amid reports that India had discussed ditching the U.S. dollar in its trading of oil with Russia, Venezuela, and Iran, instead settling the trade either in Indian rupees or under a barter agreement. One thing was certain: India wanted to keep importing oil from Iran, because Tehran offers generous discounts and incentives for Indian buyers at a time when the Indian government is struggling with higher oil prices and a weakening local currency that additionally weighs on its oil import bill.
Fast forward to the new year when we learn that India has found a solution to the problem, and has begun paying Iran for oil in rupees, a senior bank official said on Tuesday, the first such payments since the United States imposed new sanctions against Tehran in November. An industry source told Reuters that India’s top refiner Indian Oil Corp and Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals have made payments for Iranian oil imports.
To be sure, India, the world’s third biggest oil importer, has wanted to continue buying oil from Iran as it offers free shipping and an extended credit period, while Iran will use the rupee funds to mostly pay for imports from India.
“Today we received a good amount from some oil companies,” Charan Singh, executive director at state-owned UCO Bank told Reuters. He did not disclose the names of refiners or how much had been deposited.
Hinting that it wants to extend oil trade with Tehran, New Delhi recently issued a notification exempting payments to the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) for crude oil imports from steep withholding taxes, enabling refiners to clear an estimated $1.5 billion in dues.
Meanwhile, in lieu of transacting in dollars, Iran is devising payment mechanisms including barter with trading partners like India, China and Russia following a delay in the setting up of a European Union-led special purpose vehicle to facilitate trade with Tehran, its foreign minister Javad Zarif said earlier on Tuesday.
As Reuters notes, in the previous round of U.S. sanctions, India settled 45% of oil payments in rupees and the remainder in euros but this time it has signed deal with Iran to make all payments in rupees as New Delhi wanted to fix its trade balance with Tehran. Case in point: Indian imports from Iran totalled about $11 billion between April and November, with oil accounting for about 90 percent.
Singh said Indian refiners had previously made payments to 15 banks, but they will now be making deposits into the accounts of only 9 Iranian lenders as one had since closed and the U.S has imposed secondary sanctions on five others.
- "I Hope They Learn" – Seattle Council Members Warn NY Over Amazon Impact
It seems the presence of the world’s largest listed company in your city is not as ‘awesome’ as CNBC’s six-month HQ2-seacrh series and Bezos’ PR would suggest.
As we noted previously, New York taxpayers will shell out $61,000 for each of the 25,000 jobs to be created over the next 15 years from Amazon’s new split-model HQ2 plan. This works out to nearly double the $32,000 in tax incentives that Virginia residents will shoulder for the same number of jobs, according to Bloomberg.
Additionally, while the New York regional subway, bus and commuter lines handle over 8 million people every day – the additional 25,000 Amazon workers planned for the company’s Long Island expansion will put a specific strain on a system with an already-crumbling infrastructure, reports Yahoo!.
And as if that was not enough, Bloomberg reports that two politicians from Amazon’s hometown of Seattle traveled across the country to New York to deliver a cautionary message about the company’s expansion in the city.
Members of the Seattle City Council, Lisa Herbold and Teresa Mosqueda, are urging elected officials in New York to pass legislation now that will address potential housing and transportation issues that will inevitably follow in the wake of Amazon’s decision to build a major new campus in Queens.
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Amazon’s pitch to cities highlighted the company’s economic contribution to its hometown of Seattle. However, there is a growing backlash against Amazon in Seattle, where its turbocharged growth has exacerbated traffic, led to skyrocketing housing prices, and helped push homelessness to crisis levels.
Last year, the Seattle City Council was forced to reverse a tax on workers after a public rebuke from the e-commerce giant. The council had initially approved the tax of $275 per employee unanimously in an effort to combat rising homeless. Mosqueda was one of two council members who later opposed the repeal.
“This isn’t about being anti-growth or anti-corporation. It’s about corporate accountability and shared responsibility,” Mosqueda said in an interview with Bloomberg ahead of the event.
“These companies do well because of our workforce and infrastructure, and they’ll continue to do well if they invest in that infrastructure.”
Mosqueda said New York must act now with new taxes to generate revenue that will be needed for affordable housing. She also cautioned against letting philanthropic gestures pass as being adequate to address complex and costly problems of housing and transportation.
Ironically, it is not like the New York council members are unaware of the problems.
When the deal was announced, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, were quick to hail it as a huge money maker for the state and the city. Amazon is promising to bring 25,000 jobs to New York over 10 years and up to 40,000 in 15 years.
“This is a big moneymaker for us. Costs us nothing,” Cuomo said when the agreement was announced.
But, as Fox5NY reports, the council members, who have no vote on the project and no apparent path to block it, demanded to know why the city and New York state were offering Amazon up to $2.8 billion in tax breaks and grants to build the new headquarters in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens.
“We have a crumbling subway system, record homelessness, public housing that is in crisis, overcrowded schools, sick people without health insurance and an escalating affordable crisis,” raged New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, a Democrat, as council members grilled Amazon executives about the company’s plan to build a secondary headquarters in New York during a contentious hearing Wednesday that was interrupted several times by jeering protesters.
“Is anyone asking if we should be giving nearly $3 billion in public money to the world’s richest company, valued at $1 trillion?”
But the last word goes to Seattle City Council member, Lisa Herbold, who said in an emailed statement ahead of the event.
“I hope they can learn from Seattle’s experiences and create a set of new expectations for corporate responsibility that can benefit the working poor who work for Amazon and other people priced out of housing in high cost cities everywhere.”
Still, who can argue with the stock market’s omniscience?
Amazon is involved “in a long-term listening and engagement process to better understand the community’s needs,” a company spokeswoman said in a statement. “We’re committed to being a great neighbor — and ensuring our new headquarters is a win for all New Yorkers.”
- Harvard Law Prof: Trump Is A "National Emergency"
Authored by Jon Street via Campus Reform,
Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig said Sunday that President Donald Trump is a “national emergency.”
Lessig’s comments came on the heels of Trump saying that he “may declare a national emergency” if Congress does not act to appropriate enough money for his proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Some congressional Democrats raised legality questions after Trump made the comment. Lessig was not pleased by the statement, either.
“Unfortunately, the reality is the statutes of the United States give the president an extraordinary amount of power, which we presumed would be exercised by a president with extraordinary judgment,” Lessig said.
“And that is not the case right now so, constitutionally, he wouldn’t have the power to do what he claims he wants to do, but the question is, under these statutes whether he could create enough uncertainty to be able to dislodge the presumption, the very strong presumption, that building a wall on the border requires an act by Congress, which he’s just not going to get.”
“So what type of powers would he have if he were to declare a state of emergency?” the MSNBC anchor then asked.
“Well, the problem is that the man is using words that have no connection to reality. He says we have a national crisis, a national security crisis. A national emergency. I agree we have a national emergency,” Lessig added, “but the emergency is this president.”
“I think ultimately he has no constitutional authority to exercise the power to build this wall without Congress’ approval, and these statutes were certainly not written with the intent to give a man like Donald Trump the power that he’s now claiming but it’s not an efficient process to check him and that’s the uncertainty I think Congress now has to face,” he said.
- "Imminent Collapse": Oregon's Pot Glut Drives Prices Even Lower
Approximately three years after Oregon lawmakers signed a recreational cannabis law, the state is now experiencing a massive glut in its marijuana supply, collapsing prices and putting dozens of the industry’s licensed growers and retailers on borderline bankruptcy.
For the second year in a row, cannabis farmers harvested more than 2.5 million pounds of pot in October. Of that, the so-called wet harvest, 1.3 million in usable marijuana was logged into the Oregon Liquor Control Commission’s cannabis tracking system as of December.
The state of about 4 million people harvested a half pound of marijuana per every resident, which raises concern that there are too many growers. According to government data, there are 1,107 licensed active producers and another 900 producers seeking licenses from the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC).
While there is no cap on the number of licenses issued by the state, the OLCC placed a temporary freeze on new applications in the second half of 2018.
Cannabis farmers statewide reduced the amount they planted, while some did not plant at all, and others surrendered their licenses, said Don Morse, a Portland, cannabis consultant. In the first week of 2019, 70 grower licenses expired, and 57 grower licenses were surrendered, according to OLCC data.
“Everyone is concerned about this,” said Adam Smith, Craft Cannabis Alliance executive director.
“You’ll see people going out of business in the spring when it’s planting time. There are far too many in the industry in distress. No one is making money here.”
Beau Whitney, senior economist and vice president of New Frontier Data, a cannabis market research firm, said there would be more pain in the legal cannabis industry this year.
“Because of the federal illegality, there is not a balance between suppliers and demand,” Whitney said. “If it was an open market and it was legal throughout the United States, there would be demand and prices would stabilize.”
“Last year we saw prices plunge up to 50 percent,” Whitney said. “This year prices could drop by 35-50 percent more.”
“There is no short-term fix for this,” he said. “You have a lot of supply in the system, and it will take a while for it to flow through the system.”
With an abundance of pot, The Bulletin indicates that Oregon’s cannabis market is limited to sales within the state’s borders.
According to the Statesman Journal, in 2019, Oregon lawmakers have proposed legislation that would be the first significant step towards legalizing interstate exports of pot, a possible solution to the oversupply conditions.
While legalizing interstate exporting of pot could be years away, expect in the near term, a possible imminent collapse of small producers throughout Oregon. It seems like the pot bubble has already started to deflate.
- We Don't Need Neoliberalism – We Already Have Liberalism
Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
In recent years, an entire literature has sprung up over the various uses of the word “neoliberalism.” As many have already pointed out, it is largely used as a term of derision by doctrinaire leftists against both moderate leftists and advocates for free markets.
Those who use the term in a pejorative way (which is nearly everyone) blame neoliberalism for all the world’s poverty and inequality. Most of the time, neoliberal simply means “capitalist,” although to varying degrees, depending on the pundit. For example, in a new interview with economics writer Steven Pearlstein, neoliberalism is apparently a type of hard-core libertarianism, and nothing less than “a radical free market ideology.”
But neoliberalism isn’t just held by a mere few eccentrics. Neoliberals include nearly everyone to the right of Bernie Sanders, including Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Theresa May, Rand Paul, and Emmanuel Macron.
We’re Neoliberal, and Proud?
Given its sinister undertones, few actually use the term to describe themselves. Nevertheless, there has been an unfortunate trend in recent months in which organizations and writers claiming to support freedom and free-markets have begun self-identifying as “neoliberal.”
This likely is borne out of the fact that many who use the term neoliberal are harsh critics of markets. They don’t like capitalism, and they’d like to see less of it. They want to see more socialism and more social democracy. And soon.
Given this, some conclude that, if those people hate neoliberalism it can’t be a bad thing.
Thus, we see articles like this one, titled “Actually, ‘Neoliberalism’ Is Awesome” written by a staff member of the free-market Mercatus Center. More famously, there was an article titled “Coming Out as Neoliberals” published by the Adam Smith Institute in which the author, Sam Bowman, encouraged everyone who’s more or less in favor of property rights to self-identify as “neoliberal.”
Other copycat articles followed, such as one written by Jordan Williams of the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union.
The gist of all of these is this: “Are you a decent human being who supports freedom and opposes tax rates that are too high? Well, my friend, you’re a neoliberal!”
This attitude is a mistake for three reasons.
One: “Neoliberalism” Is Too Vague a Term
Both Hillary Clinton and Ron Paul have been described as neoliberals by critics of neoliberalism — as have both Tony Blair and Donald Trump. But if your ideological terminology includes all of these people in the same category, your terminology isn’t very useful.
Yes, it’s true that in the mind of a die-hard Leninist, both Clinton and Paul would be considered members of a decadent bourgeoisie, devoted to capitalist imperialism.
Similarly, since neither Bill Clinton nor Ron Paul support Venezuela-like economic policies, they are both denounced as neoliberals by the hard-left advocates for “equality.”
In reality, of course, many so-called neoliberals differ so completely on the particulars of policy, that to put them together in the same category is next to useless. If the definition of neoliberal is little more than “not a communist” then we need to look elsewhere for a better term.
Two: “Liberalism” (Without the “Neo”) Is Better
While Americans — and too a lesser extent, Canadians — are often confused about the meaning of the term “liberal,” many of the world’s educated people are still acquainted with both the term and the ideological movement it describes.
In most of the world, liberalism has always been the ideology we continue to associate with the American Revolutionaries, the free-trade, anti-war Manchester school, and the French liberals like Frédéric Bastiat. It was also, of course, the ideology of the Austrian free-market economists like Ludwig von Mises and Carl Menger.
Historian Ralph Raico has defined this movement as such:
“Classical liberalism” is the term used to designate the ideology advocating private property, an unhampered market economy, the rule of law, constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and of the press, and international peace based on free trade. Up until around 1900, this ideology was generally known simply as liberalism.
The movement, in a recognizable form we might call “libertarianism” goes back at least as far as the Levellers of 17th century England. That movement was instrumental in introducing many of the political rights that were then outlined in the US Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
This same ideological tradition also influenced liberals in France, Switzerland, England, and even Poland. The free-market, free-trade, free-migration reforms that swept across Europe in the 19th-century were a product of a rapidly liberalizing Europe.
As with so many other ideological, movements, of course, liberalism has waxed and waned in influence. But it has never totally disappeared, in part because it is so successful at bringing economic prosperity wherever it is tried.
Although many today confuse liberalism with various types of conservatism, liberalism has always been distinct in that it has viewed individuals and civil society as capable of thriving without requiring a class of government-created and government-sustained elites.
Liberals oppose societies that are shaped, planned, guided, or coerced from above. They believe, in other words, in spontaneous order that grows out of countless, decentralized groups of households, individuals, businesses, and communities. While conservatism (like most authoritarian ideologies) takes the view that people are naturally lacking in the ability to govern themselves — and thus require “leadership” from politicians — liberals believe that people can be left alone to live their lives in peace. In this view, the only people who require coercion are violent criminals.
Three: Neoliberalism Is Often the Opposite of Liberalism
And yet, bizarrely, modern-day liberals are being saddled with the epithet of “neoliberal” although neoliberalism embraces so much of what liberalism rejects.
After all, we are told that organizations like the European Union, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization all are part and parcel of the “radical free market ideology” — to use Pearlstein’s term — that is neoliberalism.
In truth, these institutions most closely associated with neoliberalism — which also include central banks like the Federal Reserve — stand in stark contrast to the laissez-faire world envisioned by the free-market liberals.
All of these global “neoliberal” organizations depend either on tax revenues, or on government-granted monopolies. They rely on various types of government meddling, manipulation, and coercion to accomplish their missions.
This stands in stark contrast to everything that liberals have stood for.
Indeed, Ludwig von Mises opposed organizations like these in his day, precisely because they were illiberal. as David Gordon notes:
For Mises, schemes for international organization were intended only as means to promote the free market. When Mises realized that in the statist climate of the day, these plans could not work, he for the most part abandoned them. In Omnipotent Government, e.g., he says: “Under present conditions an international body for foreign trade planning would be an assembly of the delegates of governments attached to the ideas of hyper-protectionism. It is an illusion to assume that such an authority would be in a position to contribute anything genuine or lasting to the promotion of foreign trade.”
Mises also devoted a sizable portion of his career to opposing central banks and central banking.
For critics of neoliberalism to now claim that neoliberalism is the ideology of radical laissez-faire, and that Mises was himself a neoliberal — as has been often claimed — ignores what the real ideology of laissez-faire has always been. Neoliberalism is really just a throwback to the mercantilism of old, in which government-controlled monopolies push state-sponsored agendas on everyone else. In other words, neoliberalism is exactly the thing liberalism has always attempted to destroy.
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