As hooligans in Jerusalem shout anti-Arab slogans and threaten individual Arabs, giving rise to the word 'Zio-fascists', Israel prepares to invade Gaza yet again, while Kiev shells villages and towns as it prepares to besiege Eastern Ukraine's two largest cities. The Gaza invasion is clearly an effort to torpedo the Palestinian unity government, while the Ukraine offensive is just as clearly a US-led attempt to draw Russia into a shooting war with NATO. Both illustrate the increasingly fascistic nature of globalization. The question is whether Europe, which has known the horrors of fascism up close, will continue to go along with Washington's and Tel Aviv's plans.
A hopeful sign that indeed it may not, is the French Finance Minister daring to say out loud what many leaders have been thinking: that it's time for the world to stop using the dollar as its reserve currency. His remark came after a major French bank received a humungous fine for infringing US sanctions. Until now, only the BRICS countries were talking about the need for a different reserve currency, and it was easy to brush them off as incapable of making this happen. But when the second most economically important country in the EU talks this way, something is afoot. The fact that it is not Germany, Europe's biggest economy, that made the remark is irrelevant: there has always been a division of labor within the duo.
For its part, Germany is taking steps to counter U.S. snooping and spying. As the Guardian reported Tuesday, Angela Merkel considers that: "If the allegations (about Germans working for the CIA) are true, it would be ... a clear contradiction to what I consider to be trusting cooperation between agencies and partners." And today Des Spiegel writes: "In what amounts to a diplomatic earthquake, Berlin has asked the country's top CIA official to leave Germany." This unprecedented move will further strain ties with Washington, which have never been the same since revelations last year that the NSA was wire-tapping Germans - including the Chancellor herself.
Even more significantly, Merkel's declaration was made during her seventh official trip to Beijing, where economic agreements signed and the two countries compared notes the United States.
I began writing this article Thursday, and yesterday much of it was confirmed:
As President Obama is attacked for supposed inaction abroad and overreach at home, (Speaker of the House John Boehner plans to sue him over his use of executive actions), President Putin turns up in Cuba on the first leg of a trip that will also take him to Argentina and Brazil. Russia is canceling 90% of Cuba's debt, with the 10% remaining to be invested in joint development projects, and will drill for oil. One news source announced that former Soviet bases in Cuba are to be reactivated, to be verified. In any case, the comment that Putin excels at the judoist art of waiting patiently for one split-second right moment to act, is borne out:
On the eve of the BRICS summit in the Brazilian city of Fortaleza, where the location of the BRICS Development Bank will be decided, the Russian President announced that Russia would back Brazil's bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. Time recently commented that Putin allowed himself to be distracted during the Sochi Games from the birthing crisis in Ukraine. It seems he will be making up for it Sunday during the World Cup finals, when he is expected to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
It's no coincidence that while Russia and Brazil take steps to liberate themselves from American electronic systems, Germany, recognizing the power shift that is under way, moves closer to both - as well as to China.
Put all these developments together and you cannot deny that a new play is premiering on the world stage: After pretending for seventy years that it had eradicated fascism, with communism as the remaining foe of 'democratic' nations, Washington is using Islamic 'terrorism' (anything ranging from the Shi'a state of Iran to Hamas but not including ISIS, which just took control of a large swathe of the Iraq we thought we had birthed as a 'democratic' self-governing state), as a cover for total global domination that increasingly uses the tools perfected by Nazi Germany.
However, it doesn't take a degree in international relations to see that the peoples of the world are increasingly sharing the same memes, which tend toward some form of socialism and oppose frenetic consumption. (When the Chinese wake up to its downside, the movement will become unstoppable.) Last summer, while ISIS was announcing that it would set up a Caliphate, Turkish youth demonstrated for weeks to prevent Gezi Park from being turned into a shopping mall, while Brazilians did likewise against the money being spent to host the World Cup. As the games draw to a close, Dennis Trainor, Jr. shared the results of a Pew Poll: 61% of Brazilians think the World Cup is bad for Brazil, more than a million people having taken to the streets of major cities in the past year to protest corruption, rising inflation and a lack of government investment in public services such as education, health care and public transportation.) On May 29th the Guardian took a look at Turkey a year after the Gezi protests and found, among other things that: "Social movements and ideas of how to challenge power certainly emerged from the June protests in Gezi Park - neighborhood forums, politically motivated squatting, and volunteer election observers are just a few of the social experiments now under way in Turkey.
As for the Middle East, which Washington planned to remake to its advantage, it may be slipping from its grasp - but then again, perhaps not: With only ten thousand men, ISIS has taken control of a good chunk of both Syria and Iraq. While the West feigns surprise, it's hard to believe that the world's biggest intelligence apparatus, not to mention drones and just plain folks on the ground, including Embassies and their staffs, didn't know what was going on. More likely, the Caliphate is part of the well-oiled (sic) march toward "total dominance"
As the Arab spring morphs into a long, hot summer, Europe too is rethinking its situation: after seventy years of subservience, America's allies are beginning to realize that they must break with the U.S. Although their peoples strenuously opposed the Vietnam War, after the demise of the Soviet Union they allowed NATO to go back on its promises and move right up to the Russian border, while their economies became ever more subservient to Wall Street. The 'mini' depression of 2008 dealt a devastating blow to the European welfare state, forcing governments to implement austerity measures instead of continuing to meet the needs of their people. But the takeover of Ukraine engineered by the Neo-Conservative guardians of American business, and implemented by third generation storm troopers, is where the rubber is meeting the road. The French statement is not a sign of pique, but the inevitable result of America's total lack of historical perspective. Forgetting that Europeans experienced real fascism, Washington assumed they would not realize what was happening to them.
Europeans are not only determined to resist fascism, they notice the dichotomy between Obama's persistent belligerence in both word and deed, and the Russian President's consistent calls for negotiations and dialogue in each and every conflictual situation. If their hitherto pusillanimous governments finally assert their independence, the hundredth anniversary of the First World War may not coincide with the outbreak of a Third World War, as many have feared. Instead, Turkish, Brazilian, Egyptian and Ukrainian youth may become the forerunners of a global polity that rejects all forms of totalitarianism and turns its energies from mindless consumption to saving the planet.
