Why the Globalists are Demolishing the EU & What Its Replacement Will Look Like

ED Noor: Thank you, Zen. Folks, this is an essential read.
 
Commentary from Zen: It’s a very strange time energetically, and what things seem to be are rarely if ever what they are…the mix constant shifting and the awakening vibrations and apparent desperation at times on their part and it makes a very fluid dynamic. This article takes a very realistic theoretical approach that’s good to be aware of. All of this speaks to me the same, the futility of fighting them on their level on their playing ground inside the same glass box.

No matter what people try to “change” they’re still in a box, so if it appears we’ve made some major strides or victories all the better for them perhaps, provides a much needed release value and phony sense of security and empowerment. Our way out and what will bring the dissolution of the control system is our personal spiritual and vibrational transformation, moving into the unknown for the tools and spiritual technologies that disempower and dissolve the ability of the transdimensional source of all this to control us any longer. Happy trails!
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Stay grounded and centered and beware of what you put your energy into, even alt information is becoming more and more toxic. 

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By Zen Gardner 

30/06/2016

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RedefiningGod

Have you noticed how hard the controlled alternative press are working to convince you that the globalists / NWO / banksters are frightened by the BREXIT result?

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From the Drudge Report, Breitbart, and Infowars
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Well nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the collapse of the European Union is a necessary step in building the New World Order the Rockefellers and Kissinger outlined back in their late 1950’s NWO implementation plan.
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From Prospect for America: The Rockefeller Panel Reports
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Take special note of the first passage: “The hoped-for result is peace in a world divided into smaller units…” So is the EU a “smaller unit”? No, an EU superstate with its own army is a larger unit than its constituent nation-states, so it clearly wasn’t built to be part of the real New World Order. Rather, it was built as an expendable tool to help the globalists get to the New World Order.
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So what was the EU’s raison d’etre, you ask? To tie as many European nations as possible into a political and currency union, then crash the union to create political and economic chaos. And on the currency side of it, they put the planned result of this crash right on the cover of The Economist back in 1988…
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From Mainstream globalist propaganda reveals East/West conflict is a farce
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On the cover, you see national currencies burning in a bonfire (The Great Economic Crisis of 2016), as well as a phoenix arising from the flames (in 2018). This phoenix represents a new global currency, and this is what the article said about it…

THIRTY years from now, Americans, Japanese, Europeans, and people in many other rich countries, and some relatively poor ones will probably be paying for their shopping with the same currency. Prices will be quoted not in dollars, yen or D-marks but in, let’s say, the phoenix. The phoenix will be favoured by companies and shoppers because it will be more convenient than today’s national currencies, which by then will seem a quaint cause of much disruption to economic life in the last twentieth century…
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~ The phoenix would probably start as a cocktail of national currencies, just as the Special Drawing Right is today. In time, though, its value against national currencies would cease to matter, because people would choose it for its convenience and the stability of its purchasing power…
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~ The phoenix zone would impose tight constraints on national governments. There would be no such thing, for instance, as a national monetary policy. The world phoenix supply would be fixed by a new central bank, descended perhaps from the IMF…
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~ Governments are far from ready to subordinate their domestic objectives to the goal of international stability. Several more huge exchange-rate upsets, a few more stock-market crashes and probably a slump or two will be needed before politicians are willing to face squarely up to that choice.
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Pencil in the phoenix for around 2018, and welcome it when it comes. 

As the article suggests, national currencies will not disappear after this year’s crisis (although the Euro will). But they will become increasingly disused as the banksters make it more attractive to use the new global currency. As for the euro, it is a component of the IMF’s SDR, so the IMF might make arrangements to allow its member nations to exchange their worthless Euros for a special allotment of SDRs (the citizens would trade their Euros for their new national currencies, then their governments would trade the amassed Euros for IMF SDRs). This would turn the world’s existing euro reserves into SDR reserves in a single stroke, thus aiding the new global currency in its rise.
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It is worth noting that the “evil Western globalists’” supposed opponents, the Chinese, are fully cooperating in this “SDR to phoenix” plot. Just have a look at a 2009 speech from China’s central banker, Zhou Xiaochuan, titled Reform the International Monetary System. Here are some key excerpts:

The desirable goal of reforming the international monetary system, therefore, is to create an international reserve currency that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies…
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The scope of using the SDR should be broadened, so as to enable it to fully satisfy the member countries’ demand for a reserve currency.
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~ Set up a settlement system between the SDR and other currencies. Therefore, the SDR, which is now only used between governments and international institutions, could become a widely accepted means of payment in international trade and financial transactions.
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~ Actively promote the use of the SDR in international trade, commodities pricing, investment and corporate book-keeping. This will help enhance the role of the SDR, and will effectively reduce the fluctuation of prices of assets denominated in national currencies and related risks.
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~ Create financial assets denominated in the SDR to increase its appeal. The introduction of SDR-denominated securities, which is being studied by the IMF, will be a good start.
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~ Further improve the valuation and allocation of the SDR. The basket of currencies forming the basis for SDR valuation should be expanded to include currencies of all major economies, and the GDP may also be included as a weight. The allocation of the SDR can be shifted from a purely calculation-based system to a system backed by real assets, such as a reserve pool, to further boost market confidence in its value.  

Isn’t it remarkable how the Chinese are calling for the very same role for the SDR that the “evil Western globalists” have been planning all along? 
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Can you think any others who’ve been screaming about the need to move away from “credit-based national currencies” in favor of currencies “backed by real assets, such as a reserve pool” and gold? That would be practically all of the alternative media, right? This is because practically all of the alternative media either work for the globalists or parrot the globalist message out of lack of discernment.
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Now if we look at the political side of the EU collapse, I wrote about what would happen last year during the globalists’ aborted attempt to start the collapse using the Greek debt crisis.

“…the globalists intend to take down the EU central government and break Europe into smaller units bound by a new regional multilateral framework.” ~ From: The Greek “People’s Revolution” and the New European Renaissance, brought to you by the NWO

And wouldn’t you know it, George Soros chimed in over the weekend to talk about “thoroughly reconstructing” the EU.
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From Fortune
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So what form will the new “EU” take, you ask? It will no longer be a strong federalizing force for its member nations; most likely, it will be a relatively weak “multilateral framework for cooperation” that offers a-la-carte conventions onto which the nations of the region can sign (if they so wish). And getting them to wish to participate in the new framework is where the “smaller units” concept comes into play.
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As we go forward, the globalists will go beyond merely breaking up the EU. They’ll also be breaking many EU nations into smaller units. This is what I wrote about it last year in The globalist plan to break up the great nations

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The globalists want the NWO 
to consist of “smaller units”

because smaller nations are less likely

to be self-sufficient in maintaining their security

and a modern standard of living.

They want all the nations to be dependent

on the multilateral framework

for their security and economic well-being.
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Besides the Rockefellers’ NWO architects, can you guess who else is talking about “smaller units”? Ron Paul (in this interview on RT)

“I happen to believe in smaller units of government; the larger the unit of government, the worse things are…
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So I think people should have the right to leave a larger unit of government.”

And what else is Ron Paul talking about? Secession in the US.
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  Note that he gave this speech at a Mises Institute conference called Breaking Away: The Case for Secession…

[Starting from the 1:20 mark] ~ “I would like to start off by talking about the subject, and the subject, of course, is secession and nullification ~ the breaking up of government. And the good news is it’s gonna happen. It’s happening. And it’s not gonna be because there will be enough people in the US Congress to legislate it ~ it won’t happen. It will be de facto.”

So we know the globalists are aiming to break up the EU (which is the Interim World Order in Europe), and Greece is where that will begin. But will they also break up the USA so it can never rise again as the power it once was? Will Russia and China meet the same fate at some point?

ED Noor: Of course they are aiming to break up the United States. It is already divided into ten regions for future disintegration. America is scheduled for total destruction to bring it down to third world status as has been the plan since the onset of “globalization”. When it comes to international communism, all gentile slaves must be equally broken.
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With that last question in mind, have a look at an Economist article I ran across today:
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UNDER Vladimir Putin’s presidency, Russia is seen in the outside world as an expansionist power trying to revise post-Soviet borders and rebuild an empire. But what if Russia itself ~ a country of nearly 200 nationalities that stretches across 11 time zones ~ is in danger of crumbling?”

It is quite interesting to see this coming out of the Economist. If we look back to the their infamous cover from early this year, we see Putin (and other major leaders including America’s Obama, China’s Xi, and India’s Modi) presented in the color of ash.
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~ which is the color of the phoenix eggs on the woman’s hat. This would indicate that those leaders will be part of the ash heap from which the NWO phoenix will rise.

ED Noor: Hillary? Of course how old is this picture? Is it a pre-Trump vintage? Why is the half of Obama's face along with his upraised hand on the right? 
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After seeing the Economist article, I decided to check into China and came across this Wall Street Journal article.

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”Despite appearances, China’s political system is badly broken, and nobody knows it better than the Communist Party itself. China’s strongman leader, Xi Jinping, is hoping that a crackdown on dissent and corruption will shore up the party’s rule. He is determined to avoid becoming the Mikhail Gorbachev of China, presiding over the party’s collapse. But instead of being the antithesis of Mr. Gorbachev, Mr. Xi may well wind up having the same effect. His despotism is severely stressing China’s system and society ~ and bringing it closer to a breaking point.”
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Interesting.
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Upon checking into India, I came across this academia.edu paper from Arshi Saleem Hashmi. Here is a germane passage…

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(from pages 38-39)

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It makes sense that the globalists will want to break up the large nations because it fits in to their PR strategy of restoring the appearance of sovereignty (while actually undermining sovereignty by making the divided peoples less able to resist the power of the globalist institutions). 
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Once separated from their central governments, the newly-minted nations will need assistance in getting started, and to whom will they turn for guidance and help? To the United Nations and the multilateral institutions of course!
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ED Noor: "The United Nations is nothing but a trap-door to the Red World's immense concentration camp. We pretty much control the U.N." ~ Harold Wallace Rosenthal, Zionist, The Hidden Tyranny
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They will turn away from the old power centers of Washington, Moscow, Beijing, and New Delhi and turn towards the new power center, the UN Complex. And this predictable dynamic gives us a clue as to the timeframe during which the breakups will occur.
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Common sense suggests that the great nations will be broken up once the multilateral institutions and agreements that will pick up the pieces are finalized. That way, when they break up into their smaller components, those components will be offered continued membership in the multilateral institutions their former central governments set up. And since they’ll need help, they’ll accept that continued membership and thus become dependent on the UN and the regional and functional multilateral institutions (just like the Rockefellers planned back in the 1950’s). Given that the BRICS institutions have been rushed into existence this year, I would expect the breakups to occur sometime between September of this year and 2020, with most of it done by 2018.

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Now that we’ve seen that the globalists intend to break up the federalist EU and replace it with a “sovereignty-respecting” multilateral framework of cooperation, it’s time to look back at the other statement from the Rockefeller Reports:
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As you can see, it talks about regional institutions, “an international body of growing authority,” and how the combination of the two will be able to deal with problems the separate nations can’t solve alone. Now if we put this together with what we’ve already covered, a very clear vision of the real New World Order takes shape.
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The globalist will use this year’s big crisis to begin separating the nations into smaller, less independent units. Scotland will leave the UK, Catalonia will leave Spain, Texas will leave the United States, and so on and so forth all over the world. 
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So why, again, are they doing this?
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Take a moment to think of the United States. If the US has a drought in California, Americans don’t starve because the country is so big that other agricultural areas can pick up the slack. But what if California were broken off as a “smaller unit” and became its own nation? How would the Californians avoid starving in such a drought? They’d have to turn to globalist-controlled international trade and the globalist-run multilateral institutions for help, wouldn’t they?
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A big country like the US is capable of being independent when it comes to food, military security, border control, and many other things, but a smaller nation is less capable of that. The smaller the nation, the more problems it “will not be able to solve alone.” That is why the globalists want smaller units.
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The NWO builders want the smaller, more numerous nations of the post-crisis world to flock to the globalist-controlled regional institutions instead of the federal governments they used to turn to. But as the Rockefeller Reports point out, these regional groupings will not be the ultimate authority; they will be “under an international body of growing authority,” which the Reports identify as…
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The United Nations 
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So a more powerful UN will be the centerpiece of the New World Order, but for it to openly become the ultimate authority in our world, two things need to happen:

1) Any potential rivals must be eliminated. There can be no super-powerful nation-states like America, a federal EU, China, or Russia that can defy the UN.
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2) The UN must get an image makeover to distance itself from its checkered past.

This is where the EU takedown and the globalist-created BRICS alliance come in…

1) Just like the BREXIT is meant to inspire other EU nations to jump the sinking federalist ship, the “people’s revolution” that demolishes the EU is meant to inspire the people of other federalist super-states to secede from their unions. 

But the coming worldwide “people’s revolution” is not what it seems.  

ITS CLARION CALLS WILL COME
 FROM THE GLOBALIST-DOMINATED 
ALTERNATIVE PRESS, 
AND ITS GREAT DEMONSTRATIONS 
WILL BE LED BY AGENTS-PROVOCATEUR 
PAID BY NGOS 
LIKE THOSE OF GEORGE SOROS.

In the great “Global People’s Revolution,” the people will just be along for the ride. And when it’s all over, the New World Order will be standing, and people will think that it’s something we won, not something that was forcefully or sneakily imposed upon us. Why shove a New World Order down people’s throats when you can convince them that it’s something they wanted and created for themselves?

2) The BRICS alliance was created to be the controlled opposition to the “evil Western globalists,” and it is they who will give the UN a fresh new look and usher in the real NWO. 

But don’t take my word for it; just ask a Chinaman.
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From the UN News Centre
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So at some point during the climax of this year’s crisis, the BRICS will lead a revolution within the United Nations to “free it from Western domination.” The UN will then undergo reform and appear to have new management. And what will the new management do? They will strengthen the UN so that “no unilateral power like the US can ever threaten world peace again”’

From the Hurriyet Daily News
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And just like that, the Rockefellers’ dream will become reality. We’ll have the globalist-controlled, United Nations-centered New World Order lording over a world of small, dependent nations ~ it will be “One World of Nations,” as the globalists disinfo agents like to call it. But my question is this…
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If enough of us are aware of the trick, 

could it have a significant impact 

on the eventual outcome?

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I certainly hope so, and that’s why I flap my quantum butterfly wings on this blog. Whether my efforts bring a hurricane down on the NWO or merely stir up a dust devil in the desert, I do what I can and leave the rest to the Universe.
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Much love…

LATIN AMERICA: GROWTH, STABILITY AND INEQUALITIES: LESSONS FOR THE US AND EU

 

By Prof. James Petras

Global Research,

October 2, 2011

INTRODUCTION: IMAGES OF THE PAST

The image of Latin America portrayed by the mass media and held by the educated public is a region of frequent coups, periodical revolutions, perpetual military dictatorships, alternating boom and bust economies and an ever-present International Monetary Fund (IMF) dictating economic policy. 

In contrast the same opinion makers plus their academic counterparts project images of the United States and the European Union as stable societies, with steady economic growth, incremental expansion of social welfare programs, resolving issues via consensual compromises and practicing sound fiscal policies.

In recent times, the better part of the current decade, these images have taken on the character of ideological dogmas ~ they no longer correspond to reality.

In fact a good argument can be made that the roles have been reversed: the US and EU are in perpetual crises and Latin America, at least most of the major countries, have experienced stability and growth which is the envy (or should be) of Washington pundits and financial commentators. 

This ‘role reversal’ has been recognized by many US, EU and Asian investors and multinationals, even as respectable journalistic hacks for the Financial Times, NY Times and Wall Street Journal still write about vulnerabilities, imbalances and other weaknesses while grudgingly acknowledging the dynamic growth of the region. 

Progressive opinion is equally at fault, focusing on the ‘advances’ of the left regimes but overlooking the underlying dynamics affecting most of the region and thus losing sight of the new points of conflict and contention. 

We will proceed to outline the contrasting realities between the crises ridden “North” (US/EU) and the sustained growth of the “South” (South America). 

The analysis will raise questions of whether the South American experience is transferable to the North and what ‘structural adjustments’ would be necessary to pull the US and EU out of the downward spiral of stagnation and violent conflicts which have characterized these regions for the better part of the past decade.

THE LOST DECADE: US AND EU STYLE

Latin American countries during the 1980’s experienced a deep and persistent crises, manifested in negative growth, increased poverty levels and heavy indebtedness, which allowed creditors (like the IMF) to impose harsh and regressive austerity measures and “structural adjustment” policies which came to be known as ‘neo-liberalization’. 

These included the privatization of most strategic, lucrative public enterprises, and the ending of any semblance of state directed industrial strategies. For the peasants and the working and middle class the short-lived neo-liberal “boom” of the 1990’s was a continuation of the ‘lost decade’ of the 1980’s. 

The neo-liberal policies of the 1990’s were based on fundamentally flawed structural foundations and polarizing income and public expenditures involving huge transfers of income to capital and downward pressures on wages and welfare. 

The neo-liberal regimes went into a deep crisis early in 2000 provoking major popular upheavals. The outcome resulted in a new set of political configurations and social power equations, which evolved into new post-neoliberal regimes, at least in most of the major countries in Latin America. 

In contrast and in part thanks to the profitable opportunities opened by the debt crises and neo-liberalization of Latin America in the 1990’s (and in the ex-Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Baltic/Balkan states) the US and EU prospered. 

In Latin America over 5,000 lucrative extractive resource-based industries, banks, telecommunications and other industries passed into the hands of foreign private MNC and local capital. High returns on bonds and loans and rents from technology transfers enriched the Northern capitalists even as poverty multiplied in the South. 

The 1990’s was the “golden age” of Western capital as profits rose and leftist parties and the traditional urban trade unions appeared unable to withstand the ‘wave’ of predatory capitalism capturing the commanding heights of the economy. 

The very successes of the US and EU countries, the enormous easy gains from pillage, speculation, and exploitation led to the dominance of financial capital and the belief in an irrevocable “new world order”. 

The dominance of the US and EU was built on their military superiority backed by pliant, collaborative, neo-liberal client regimes. The ‘new order’ lasted less than a decade: the economic crises of 1999/2000 smashed the illusions of a century of imperial grandeur. 

As markets collapsed so too did the Latin American oligarchic electoral regimes (dubbed “democracies”) which along with the financial elite and the military formed the triple alliance that defined Western supremacy. The final blow was the economic crises of 2001-2002 in the US and EU which steeply eroded their capacity to intervene and prop up their collapsing Latin clients ousted by rebellious masses. 

The first decade of the new millennia has been the ‘lost decade’ of the North. Over the course of the past eleven years the North has witnessed stagnation and recessions which have not given way to recoveries. The capitalist states temporarily saved the bankers but were powerless to set in motion economic growth.

The credit rating of the US economy was downgraded by the risk agencies. 

Unemployment and underemployment hovers close to one-fifth of the labor force, figures comparable to stagnant Third World countries. 

Social programs are severely slashed in the US and throughout the European Union, reversing decades of incremental gains. 

Trade and budget deficits in the US have become chronic, while private and public lenders are becoming increasingly reticent to lend in the face of deep-seated recessionary tendencies. 

The financial sector in the US and EU is rife with large scale fraud, swindles, mismanagement and falsified balance sheets, conditions previously prevalent among Latin economies. 

Wars proliferate. Military spending far exceeds productive investments, draining the US economy in a fashion reminiscent of the weapons spending during the reign of the warlords of Africa and the military dictators of Latin America. 

In the EU faced with brutal cuts in wages, pensions and jobs millions of workers and unemployed youth in Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy have taken to the streets. 

General strikes threaten the stability of increasingly isolated regimes, reminiscent of the popular rebellions which resulted in regime changes in Latin America in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. 

In the US, public protests reflect deepening private discontent: over 75% of the population expresses negative views of the Congress and 60% of the White House. 

Deepening political alienation of the US electorate is comparable to the loss of popular faith in Latin governments during the “lost decades”, 1980-2000.

Both the US and the EU have been radically transformed for the worse during the ‘lost decade’ of the current century. Economically, politically and socially the ‘North’ has been “Latin Americanized’:

Social instability, economic stagnation, political alienation, growing class inequalities and poverty is presided over by corrupt political elites.

SIGNS OF THE BETTER TIMES: LATIN AMERICA:

Recently the finance minister of Brazil raised the possibility that the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) might take a hand in a “rescue plan” to prop up the crises ridden economies of Europe. 

While the statement had greater symbolic rather substantive consequences, it does reflect a certain reality: while the North plunges into deeper, unending crises, the Latin economies are doing reasonably well.

Except for the Latin countries still under US dominance, especially Mexico and most of Central America, the rest of Latin America has not only avoided the crises afflicting the North but have been growing at a healthy rate, three times that of the US over the decade.

The new millennium, especially between 2003-2011 (except for a brief interlude in 2009) has been a period of high growth, general prosperity, booming exports, rising imports, greater inter-regional co-operation, and large scale poverty reduction. 

Brazil alone has reduced the number of poor by 30 million. Regular elections, relatively honest and competitive, result in stable legitimate transfers of political power.

Except for US backed coups in Honduras and intervention in Haiti and Venezuela, violent seizures of power have disappeared, over the past decade.

Regional institution ~ building has prospered with the advent of UNASUR and a Latin American regional bank. 

Because of fiscal controls and banking regulations, both results of the lessons learned from the crisis of the lost decades (1980-2000), Latin America was only slightly affected by the US-EU financial crash of 2008-2011.

Latin American trade has doubled, especially with Asia, aided by China’s double digit growth.

Demand for agro-mineral commodities has tripled. The key to this new export powered growth is Latin America’s growing economic independence. 

This has led to the diversification of its markets, taking advantage of new opportunities and reducing their dependence on the US. Latin America’s emphasis on economic growth, new markets and investments, has led it to avoid entanglements in the proliferating and costly colonial wars which engage the US and EU. 

While the US and EU print more money and increase indebtedness to cover trade deficits, Latin America has quadrupled its foreign reserves. These cushion any downturns and avoid any dependence on the IMF, architect of the lost decades of the 1980’s and 1990’s. 

Within Latin America, the issue of poverty reduction has been tackled with varying degrees of effectiveness.

With Venezuela under President Chavez leading the way the general direction has been toward increasing social payments, by increments in most cases, but with greater efforts in others.

Except for Mexico, nothing resembling the social cuts of the US-EU has taken place in Latin America.

The most striking structural advances have occurred in Venezuela and to a lesser degree in Argentina. They have significantly increased the minimum wage and pensions and increased welfare payments to the most vulnerable (single mothers, the disabled, those in extreme poverty). 

With the exception of Colombia (the US’s principle military ally in the region) which is still the murder capital of the world for human rights advocates, trade unionists and peasant activists, human rights violations have declined.

While the US-EU have vastly increased their human rights violations geometrically via multiple colonial wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and clandestine death squad ‘operations’, Latin America’s overseas human rights violations are largely limited to its occupation forces in Haiti ~ at the behest of the US and EU. 

Nevertheless repression of popular movements, especially indigenous peoples and peasant movements and students has increased in Bolivia, Chile, Brazil and elsewhere as the high growth policies on community rights and social expenditures. 

Because of Latin America’s current political stability and dynamic growth, institutional and corporate investment is pouring into the region. 

In contrast the US and EU are suffering from disinvestment and declining rates of private investment.

In other words, the development of Latin America is the other side of the coin of the US-EU underdevelopment.

LATIN AMERICA: NEW CONTRADICTIONS

The class struggle is still the motor force in the social progress of Latin America. But unlike EU-US, Latin America’s class struggle is directed at increasing social and monitory wages, even if incrementally, as part of an offensive strategy to capture a greater shares of rising income. 

In the US and EU the class struggle is ‘defensive’: an effort to stop declining income shares, limit job losses and cuts in pensions. 

While militant class action including land occupations, street demonstrations and strikes are still part of the repertory of working class social weapons, they take place within the political parameters of democratic institutions. 

In Europe the elites have increasingly ignored mass street protests and strikes, largely pursuing austerity policies dictated by non-elected domestic and foreign bankers and creditors. 

The limitations and ‘contradictions’ affecting all Latin America countries are located in the internal class inequalities. As national income has increased and exports boom, the inequalities between the ruling investor class and the mass of wage earners has increased. 

While initially the problem of class inequality was papered over by the general rise in living standards and employment, over time the employed and productive classes are no longer satisfied with incremental gains which barely surpass inflation rates. The rising standards of living have raised expectations.

The percentage of poor may have declined but subsisting just above $4 dollars a day is increasingly unacceptable.

Growth brings forth its own set of contradictions and a new set of demands. 

Formerly excluded classes included in the system, but exploited, have only their class organizations as their weapons to advance their socio-economic interests.

This is clearly the case in contemporary Chile where long term growth is accompanied by deeply entrenched inequalities comparable to the worst in the OECD. Beginning in July 2011 massive student protests over the high cost of public and private education and low levels of social expenditures have detonated mass activity from trade unions covering the gamut of economic sectors from teachers to copper miners. 

The new and explosive issue confronting rulers and ruled in most of high growth Latin America is raising incomes for whom?

Class issues are front and foremost in the current period and immediate future. 

Growth, stability and democratic class struggles characterize most of the major countries, but not all. In several countries, the authoritarian and violent legacy of the dictatorial regimes continues robust. 

Colombia’s practice of murdering trade unionists, peasant leaders, journalists and human rights activists continues unabated: over 30 trade unionists were murdered during the first 8 months of 2011. 

Honduras’ ruling regime, product of a US backed coup and its allies among the paramilitary private armies of landowners, have killed scores of peasants and dozens of pro-democracy political and social activists. 

Mexico’s killing fields are notorious: over 40,000 people have been killed by the police, military and drug gangs in a ‘war on drugs’ promoted by Obama and implemented by President Calderon. 

What these three retro-regimes have in common is that they continue to follow the dictates of Washington, remain highly militarized states, with a strong US military and police presence in the form of bases, overseas advisers, and an intrusive role in setting policy.

All three have failed to diversify markets and continue with a high degree of dependence on the stagnant US market. 

All have secured or are in the process of signing bi-lateral free trade agreements at the expense of exploring greater links with the dynamic Asian markets. 

The 3 retro-regimes have never experienced the kind of popular rebellions and resultant center-left regimes which have emerged in most of Latin America. In Mexico pro-democracy candidates were twice defrauded of electoral victories, first in 1988 and later in 2006. 

In Honduras, a progressive liberal democratic President seeking to diversify markets was ousted by a military coup backed by the Obama regime in 2010.

In Colombia, the murder of 5,000 activists and leaders of the pro-democracy Patriotic Union between 1984-86, the subsequent assassination of several thousand social activists, blocked a democratic opening. 

The abrupt termination of peace negotiations in 2002 and the total militarization of the country (2002-2011) funded by $6 billion in US military aid precluded the emergence of the political and social changes, which have dynamized the rest of Latin America’s sustained growth and opened the door for ‘democratic class struggle’.

While most of Latin America has forged ahead, thus far largely avoiding the instability and economic crises of the US and EU, past legacies and present inequities present a new set of structural impediments to the consolidation of long-term growth and political and social stability. 

The biggest structural contradiction is found in the high growth/increasing inequalities, socio-economic model based on the “3 ½ alliance”: foreign capital-national capital-the developmental state and the co-opted trade union/peasant leaders. The profits and investments of this power configuration have been driven by the growth of agro-mineral exports, rising commodity prices, easy consumer credit and state regulation of financial markets. 

The economic returns on growth have been disproportionately appropriated by the “big three” with incremental payoffs to a minority of better paid organized workers. The ‘residuals’ are used to “lift the poor” from abject poverty to subsistence. These growing inequalities have been “papered over” by the general rise of income, easy credit and improved public services. 

But rising incomes have set in motion a new set of class conflicts which will be exacerbated when the prices of commodities decline and the governments can no longer fund incremental improvements.

Even today, severe conflicts have emerged between predator mining and timber, multi nationals and Indian/peasants in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Chile.

These sometimes violent struggles between the state/ MNC and peasants in the “periphery of the countryside” can detonate a larger conflict in the central cities, if export revenues decline. 

THE SECOND CONTRADICTION is between the “marginalized working poor” and a new class of local middle and business class investors who have invested their “savings” in shares of the foreign and locally owned mining companies. 

Conservative and closely aligned with the rapacious multi-nationals, these new middle class investors have enriched themselves on the bases of unregulated plunder of natural resources and contamination of the adjoining rural communities. 

If and when commodity prices nose dive, the regimes will face a bankrupt hysterical middle class looking for a political savior where none exist, at least among the existing civilian parties. 

The rightward drift of the center-left regimes and their opportune links to big business especially in Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay has led to corruption in high places. 

Liberalization and exorbitant executive salaries has been accompanied by “unofficial payoffs” to public officials. Corruptions has eroded the social ethic of center-left politicians and replaced it with the ethos of “bringing in new and bigger investments”, whatever shortcuts and payoffs it requires. 

Corruption at the top spreads downwards greasing the wheels for foreign investors, but certainly lowering the trust and loyalties of employees and formal and informal workers not in the ‘magic circle’ a bribe takers and givers. 

“Patronage” and poverty reduction payouts can limit the fallout from corruption in high places among poverty funded recipients. However, in time of economic downturn, it can turn social protests toward political regime change. 

THE THIRD CONTRADICTION is found between the high level of dependency on commodity exports (which heretofore have been the dynamic element of growth) and the relative and absolute decline of manufacturing exports and production. The growth of income from commodities has led to the appreciation of the currency which has lessened the competitiveness of nationally produced manufactured products, leading to a sharp decline in profits and even bankruptcy.

Asian manufacturer-exporters ~ especially in China and to a lesser extent India and Korea ~ are increasingly penetrating Latin markets with lower cost finished products “de-industrializing” the Latin economies.

In some cases, Latin American capitalists are looking to investing in Asia to lower costs and exporting back to their “home markets”. Brazilian industry which has been hardest hit, has initiated “protectionist” measures including tariffs, 65% local content rules and state subsidies to counter the de-diversification of the economy. 

THE FOURTH CONTRADICTION is found precisely in the successful economic growth and high returns, which has attracted both speculative and “takeover” capital as well as productive 

investments. Speculative capital will flee and destabilize the financial system at the first sign of slowdown. Foreign ownership will lessen the government’s ability to leverage investment decisions in time of crises.

Productive investments respond to expanding markets they do not create them.

In summary, Latin America’s decade long dynamic growth has certainly out-performed the US and EU on a whole series of important economic, social and political dimensions. 

Yet, out of this growth have emerged a new set of contradictions and the need to correct increasingly grave “imbalances”: popular demands for a shift in income distribution, industrialists’ pressure for a rebalancing of the economy from dependence on finance and commodities to manufacturing and the urban poor demand improved social services especially in public health care and crowded classrooms. 

These changes require a structural adjustment in the power structure. The economic imbalances reflect the growing concentration of political power among the extractive capitalists, bankers and local middle class investors of the major cities. 

Public employees, labor, the urban poor, the peasants and environmentally concerned Indians and ecologists, are marginalized from the key economic posts. 

They need to once again take to the streets with new independent movements which raise two basic questions:

What kind of growth and growth for whom?

LESSONS LATIN AMERICA: LISTEN YANKEES AND EUROCRATS

Can the positive lessons of the dynamic Latin American experience provide a ‘model’ for the US and Europe? 

Is the “model”, in whole or part, transferable to the North or are the two regions so different that the lessons are not applicable?

Granted there are vast historical, cultural, economic and political differences between the regions yet some lessons from the Latin America’s decade of dynamic growth, provides new ideas to counter the negative, self-defeating economic formulas put forth and practiced by US and EU experts, economists and policymakers. 

Let us start from the beginning. 

The rise of Latin America was precipitated by a deep economic crisis, the breakdown of the economy, large scale unemployment and the impoverishment of the middle class. The crises led to the total discrediting of what has been called alternately the “free market”, “neo-liberal” and “de-regulated” capitalist model. 

So far so good: the US and EU likewise are experiencing a prolonged and deepening economic crises which has bankrupted Southern Europe, plunged the US into a double dip recession and led to a 20% un and underemployment rate. The entire “political class” in the US and Europe is largely discredited. From there forward the regions diverge. 

In Latin America, the crises led to mass protests, popular uprisings and regime changes. Post neo-liberal center-left regimes, under mass pressure, subsequently launched employment generating investments and aid poverty reducing public works programs. 

Argentina facing a financial crisis similar to Greece, Portugal and Spain today, defaulted on its foreign debt ~ channeling public revenues into reviving the economy. Because financial speculation linked to Wall Street and the City of London precipitated the crises, the Latin regimes instituted financial controls and regulations which limited financial volatility. 

The new regimes, influenced by the commodity boom, diversified their trading partners, entering dynamic Asian markets, reaping high returns and stimulating local consumption and public investments.

What lessons can the crises ridden US and EU learn from the Latin America’s successful recovery and expansion?

First, the beginning of a successful response depends on a political transformation. Regime change a complete break with the ‘neo-liberal’ free market, and the political leaders and parties who are totally embedded in failed institutions and policies. Regime change presupposes the eruption of dynamic mass organizations, new, old, improvised and organized, capably of moving from protest and resistance to political power.

The object is to rebalance the US and EU economies from ‘financialization’ and “militarism” to large scale, long term investments in manufacturing, applied technology, civilian infrastructure and social services.

Direct public investments and loans applied to concrete employment generating projects; total rejection of trickle down, monetary policies which never move from private banks to public works.

The entire militarist- Zionist-permanent war mentality is entirely vulnerable to change: doing so, will create jobs, the top priority for over two-thirds of the US public. 

The “war on terrorism”, the banner of the warlords in office, is considered a priority by only 3% of Americans. 

Once again the shift from ‘militarism’ to the civilian economy in Latin America was a result of popular civilian upheavals, via the street and the ballot box.

Of course the Latin American republics had an easier time in rebalancing their economic priorities from failed military rulers and discredited neo-liberal policies. 

Citizen movements in the US and EU imperial states will have a harder time in closing down hundreds of military bases, ousting militarist politicians backed by powerful domestic and foreign lobbies and converting the empires to productive republics. 

Yet, Latin American exporters have prospered by avoiding entanglement in overseas imperial wars.

They continue to pursue new markets in the Middle East and elsewhere instead of destroying adversaries of Israel as the EU and US have done through colonial wars in Iraq and Libya and sanctions against Iran, Syria and Venezuela.

The contrasting performance between Latin republics and Euro-American empire builders is striking.

The US and EU should shed their self-centered images of “successful” developed countries and outdated stereotype of Latin America as a collection of “volatile”, coup prone underdeveloped countries.

The US is in deep trouble and it is heading into a deeper, less manageable economic crisis with few resources to counter it.

Internationally it is increasingly isolated and in conflict with potential economic partners. 

Washington sides with Israel, alienating over 1.5 billion rich and poor Islamic peoples, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan and all points east, west and south. 

It antagonizes Brazil via financial pump priming, overpricing the real (Brazilian currency) without helping US recovery.

Domestic and international failures multiply as the crisis deepens and nothing proposed by the blighted incumbents and besotted opposition offers any programmatic solution.

As in Latin America during the first years of this decade we need a popular rebellion: 

we need a profound regime change; 

we need to think of productive public investments not monumental loss of capital via Wall Street speculation and the waste of public resources via expenditures in weapons of destruction