PHASE ONE
You may not have heard it on the news, but fundamental reform has already come to Western Europe: Iceland just had a completely nonviolent revolution against the crony capitalists and bankers whose collusion had poisoned their political system, which has opened many other Europeans' eyes to the possibility that a popular uprising could also succeed elsewhere. As the income gap widens, living conditions become worse for almost everyone, while a privileged few enjoy ever greater opulence. European Union leaders' response is to impose austerity measures which squeeze the working and middle classes even further, but they refuse to address the cronyism that is the root cause of the rampant injustice, social unrest, and debt plaguing these nations.All but the EU's rapidly shrinking plutocratic elite are fed up with political corruption, but they face the same problem as the United States: the majority of their elected officials belong to that very elite. What most citizens want has become all but irrelevant to the power structure, because the electorate is forced to choose between Corporatists most of the time. These candidates may appear to differ on social issues, but are uncannily similar when it comes to their agenda for trade, finance, taxation, regulation, and white collar crime. Instead of much-needed reforms, most EU leaders insist on a disastrous policy of getting deeper in debt to banking cartels, while attempting to quell social unrest with increasingly brutal state repression. Something's gotta give, but it looks like it will take time for them to get the ball rolling.
Iceland's incredible achievements notwithstanding, the most promising hotbeds of revolution can be found further to the South. For starters, the push for systemic reform is already well underway in the Middle East and Northern Africa, where a youth-driven mass movement dubbed the "Arab Spring" has mobilized against inequality and political corruption. This movement has expressed itself in a number of popular revolts in which citizens demand an end to militant regimes propped up by Western Capitalist oligarchs, and call instead for an independent, egalitarian government. After seeing the wholesale persecution wrought by despotic strong-men who are puppets for foreign powers, they realize that the vicious cycle of poverty, sectarian hostilities, and endless war will only end when the government serves the interests of all its citizens. In this spirit, they are demanding that their leaders protect citizens' fundamental human rights, condone peaceful coexistence between people of all belief systems, and resist imperialistic meddling by the major Western powers.
It may soon become apparent that first two years of the Arab Spring were only a preview of what's come, although (to paraphrase Gil Scott-Heron) the revolution may not be televised. For instance, the media hype which tells us that the Arab Spring will produce only dangerous Islamist theocracies is completely bogus. Many people living in majority-Islamic countries—including a large contingent of Muslims—recognize the benefits of establishing a form of government that is both secular in the First Amendment sense of the word, and free from the shackles of American and European domination. Nor can we rely on mainstream Western media for accurate reporting of where revolutions are occurring, considering how shameless they have been in their favoritism toward stalwart Western allies (to say nothing of the media blackout on Iceland).
Western media have been tools of U.S. and European expansionism in their coverage of the protest movement which has taken the Islamic world by storm, focusing on Egypt and Tunisia but burying the story of ongoing state repression in countries friendly to Western interests. Specifically, CNN, MSNBC and Fox, along with mainstream periodicals like the New York times, have selectively ignored human rights abuses perpetrated by US-backed Islamist regimes in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and yet they fervently beat the war drum when Western leaders pushed to invade Syria—a government which affords its citizens a much higher standard of liberty than the aforementioned regimes on issues such as labor laws, freedom of religion, and women's rights. On top of that, they lionized the Syrian rebels until courageous journalists like Ben Swann broke the story that the supposed "good guys" in Syria are actually al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists who may have access to chemical weapons. This sort of gross hypocrisy is becoming ever more transparent in the Age of Communication, since people today can log onto the Internet and verify what's actually happening around the world by visiting reputable alternative news outlets such as Democracy Now and TruthOut.
Another area where the pace of change has been accelerating is Latin America. I anticipate that in coming years, there will be a series of popular revolts in Right-leaning (translation: "U.S.-controlled," as with Colombia and Honduras) nations in Central and South America. Left-wing socialist governments in Latin America that have become increasingly undemocratic will also fall under the weight of their own oppression. Eventually, popular resistance to the extreme Left and extreme Right will meet halfway and become a collective force to be reckoned with. As Latin American countries break away from the long legacy of veritable serfdom at the hands of U.S. corporations and the CIA, the emerging sociopolitical ideologies will coalesce into a formidable Southern Bloc, with the power and resources to give plutocratic trade organizations like the Trans-Pacific Partnership a run for their money.
By pooling resources and finances, Southern Bloc member nations will have an opportunity to create a new breed of international bank that eschews the exploitative style of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, in favor of economic development strategies that foster prosperity for all. The new monetary entities' presence on the global stage will severely weaken the stranglehold that the old Neoliberal finance entities—a thinly veiled front for U.S. and British economic expansionism—had once exerted over developing nations around the globe.
Trade Blocs and ethically geared monetary organizations will be a game-changer in the coming global revolution, because they will offer impoverished countries with abundant natural resources a viable path to economic divestment from the United States and Britain. After nearly a century of Neoliberal domination, poor countries will finally have an alternative to begging for high-interest loans in exchange for unfavorable trade deals or inhuman demands like privatizing their drinking water supply.
After the ongoing humiliation of being forced to jump through hoop after hoop for these imperialists, developing nations in the Global South will find that they are now the ones with the bargaining power. The growing Southern Bloc's onetime abusers will be faced with an ultimatum: "Reform your economic, environmental and human rights policies, or we will slap you with crippling economic sanctions and cut your nation off from the raw materials that fuel your largest industries." It's almost a foregone conclusion that when faced with such a choice, America's leaders would opt out, lest they make binding agreements which constrain their capacity for militarism, exploitation, torture, indefinite detainment, and environmental degradation. To those for whom phrases like "Whatever it takes" and "Keep all options on the table" have been elevated to the level of religious dogma, the word "ethical" roughly translates to "neutered."
PHASE TWO
On a country-by-country basis, it is difficult to predict what will happen in Western Europe over the next couple of decades. That being said, EU nations aren't nearly as conservative in their ideological orientation as the proto-fascist United States. On the whole, Western Europe is far more progressive than America and some close U.S. allies, which has allowed for innovative political directions such as Germany's construction of a massive renewable energy infrastructure.
There is also the issue of national pride to consider: though many European Union member nations currently do the bidding of the U.S. and England, their citizens are fed up with being treated as serfs to an unjust empire. Even their s leaders are getting tired of being treated as lapdogs whose master lives high on the hog while they get scraps from the table. Many of them would like to break ties with the most oligarchical nations, but are waiting for a moment when it seems politically and economically expedient to do so. This has earth-shattering implications for the future of the United Kingdom. Considering the vibrant populist and anti-authoritarian sentiments among the people of Ireland and Scotland, it is possible that the last vestiges of the British Empire will soon be in tatters, which would add to the regional power of the breakaway nations and significantly weaken the influence of corporate/proto-fascist ideologies in the region.
Emboldened by the ever-expanding trade and finance coalition in Latin America and Africa, European countries that had been on the fence will decide that it's time to say no to militarism and corporate oligarchy, and will jump on the Southern Bloc bandwagon. The resultant diplomatic ties and trade deals will add to the new monetary entities' power to support social and economic equity in developing nations. Taken together, all of these new partnerships will pave the way for a transcontinental coalition of nations united in defense of ideals that had once seemed unrealistic on a global scale: peace, prosperity, social justice, environmental sustainability and civil liberties. The growing coalition will necessarily have to withdraw from inequitable and draconian alliances such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade pact written exclusively by transnational corporate entities which, as it stands, would set laws for about 1/3 of the nations on Earth and impact 40% of the world's economy.
The fledgling Human Rights Bloc will vaguely resemble the United Nations, but with the salient difference that no participating countries are afforded "Platinum Membership." The United Nations advertises itself as a body of equals, but this is not the case: since its inception, the UN has allowed Britain, Israel, and the United States (the only country with veto power) to commit war crimes such as torture, border incursions, and the use of banned weapons, whereas all other nations must obey the "law" or else face harsh penalties. What could have been a venerable institution and a moral compass for the world has instead become a farce—an impotent gatekeeper that is powerless to stop three of its members from flouting extant treaties and international obligations, because it lacks the means to ever punish these unrepentant wrongdoers.
For the first time in human history, the world will have a broad-based international coalition free of cronyism, which demands that all member nations observe the same human rights standards and punish war criminals according to an agreed-upon criminal code. Now that countries can observe a modicum of morality while still remaining economically viable, many of them will opt to sever ties with the fascist trifecta (the United States, Britain, and the transnational corporations that love them). This will give the human rights revolution a foothold in much of Eastern Europe, Northern and Central Africa, and India. Japan may come along for the ride, but that's a tough call: they are quite economically dependent on the U.S., but the last time they allied themselves with empire-building fascists, it didn't work out too well.
Some of the stragglers will be found in the Far East and Eastern Europe, in countries where human rights abuses at the hands of military and police forces have become routine. Many of these nations are ruled by brutal despots who are tied to the international drug trade and are well-known CIA assets. Those nations' "undeclared exports" provide a lot of the CIA's black budget dollars, so the Cowboys will dig in their heels to preserve those funding streams, even if it means that things get really ugly and lots of people die. Nations which serve as tax havens for the ultra-wealthy and retirement homes for US-backed war criminals, such as the Cayman Islands, may also be have trouble waving goodbye to the shadow empire that has done them so many favors over the years.
Mexico and Canada could go either way; both are on the fence about whether to embrace liberty and populism, or become proto-fascist simulacra of the United States. It's possible that either of them will manage to wrest their leadership from from the yoke of U.S. control, but this seems unlikely because the three countries are so enmeshed via NAFTA and other mutually advantageous trade deals. There is also the looming specter of a U.S. ground invasion over its northern or southern border—a stick which which to bludgeon them if the carrot doesn't persuade them to abandon human rights, income equality and environmental stewardship. If this scenario ever comes to pass and either country capitulates purely out of self-preservation, it would be a Pyrrhic victory for the United States.
What will happen in Israel is anybody's guess, but the outlook right now is most dismal. Despite being home to some prolific human rights advocates and an upstart youth movement that has staged mass protests like the 2012 Tent City, Israel's progressive voices now constitute only a small fraction of the nation's Jewish population. Elections and national polls over recent years suggest that Israel is on its way to becoming a full-fledged theocratic regime—Judaism's answer to Saudi Arabia. A lot depends on whether the United States and England keep offering diplomatic cover to the Israeli government whenever it violates international law; without these protectors, Israel would never have gained such disproportionate power and influence in the world. Its prominent decisionmaking role in the United Nations is astounding, considering all of the offenses that have barred other nations from membership: border incursions, the taking of child political prisoners, mass relocations based on ethnicity, an undeclared nuclear stockpile, and the use of chemical weapons like white phosphorous on civilian noncombatants, just to name a few.
According to the most recent polling data, the Jewish population of Israel has become increasingly racist, nationalistic and theocratic over recent years. A major factor in this regressive trend is that many people in Israel's Jewish population, and especially those in the ruling Likud party, are heavily influenced by Zionist thought. Zionism is a literalistic interpretation of the Torah which asserts that God wants the Hebrew people to reclaim the historical "Kingdom of David," or Zion, by any means necessary. To be fair, not all Jews are Zionists; in fact, some of the most renowned Jewish religious scholars dispute the entire institution, saying that trying to make a prophecy happen is deeply sacrilegious because it presumes the right to force God's hand and thus questions God's supreme power and wisdom.
In practical terms, Zionists in Israel support a policy of militarily occupying all of Palestine and invading neighboring countries, because without these specific portions of land they cannot reclaim "Greater Israel." Many fundamentalist Christians in the U.S. and Britain, based on a similar literalist interpretation of John's Revelation in the New Testament, are just as obsessed with the Hebrew people achieving this goal--in their case, because they believe it will force God to bring about the Biblical end times. In fact, Christians were working toward the reinstatement of Greater Israel since long before the United Nations and World Zionist Organization "gifted" much of this land to displaced Jewish people of the world in 1948. Many other players in the Zionist agenda are simply motivated by greed or thirst for power, such as U.S. leaders who believe that Israel's placement makes it an essential ally in preserving America's ability to control Middle Eastern oil reserves, and kowtow to their fundamentalists in order to preserve a marriage of convenience. (These are the people who dictate foreign policy... revolution, anyone?)
Apartheid notwithstanding, the Palestinian population within Israel is growing at a much higher rate than that of Jewish citizens. The prospect of an Arab majority is stirring up a most unsettling nationalism among Jewish Israelis, in which more and more are warming up to the notion of ethnic cleansing. Even with so many clear echoes of the Nazis, many fail to see the glaring hypocrisy of this virulent prejudice. Between opportunistic expansionism and racist fundamentalism, it seems all too likely that Israel will soon mount a series of bloody invasions which plunge the region even further into violent conflict. The most likely scenario would be that Israel's leaders expand settlements until they have claimed all of the West Bank and Gaza, then press on to annex and ultimately colonize much of Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan—killing Muslims on a genocidal scale in the process. None of this will be possible, however, without the aid of Israel's Big Brothers.
Some other likely holdouts are China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea, along with the African nations that have been scarred by decades of civil war. The authoritarian superpowers may form strategic partnership early on, but a reading of the last two World Wars suggests that they will sit on their hands for as long as possible before choosing sides. Will their leaders allow the Social Darwinists running the Empire to persuade them that resistance is futile, or will they invest in a more hopeful vision and agree to dispense with state repression altogether? Their leaders might be forced into the latter position by popular uprisings, but it is just as likely that they will simply bow to economic pressures and join the Human Rights Club once it is ludicrously impractical to exclude themselves from most of the world's financial and intellectual commerce.
Three guesses as to which will be the last nation on Earth to decry cronyism and embrace human rights... yes, I truly believe that America is just that "exceptional." OK, call me a cynic, but the U.S. is well along the road to becoming a corporate/fascist state whose leaders' decisions are totally divorced from popular will. Short of comprehensive campaign finance reform, an auditing of our intelligence agencies, and the mass imprisonment of all our war criminals, it looks like the regressive trend will continue to its logical conclusion. Although there is a growing unease among those Americans with the insight to see this metamorphosis taking place, very few people will speak out against fascism in time to save the country they love. Right now this tacit consent arises from a well-crafted blend of conditioned apathy, outrage fatigue, toys, and a dangerous obsession with manufactured media spectacle, but as economic disparity grows in this country, other methods will be needed to keep the rabble in line.
Soon, under the watchful eye of the nationalistically named Department of Homeland Security, Americans will live in abject terror of being "disappeared," tortured, subjected to germ warfare experiments, or vaporized by one of the thousands of Predator Drones crisscrossing the skies. Many members of the police and armed forces will be dismayed by the direction their country is taking, and will refuse to kill innocent civilians. Those patriots who are not jailed for following their sacred oath will form the heart of an underground resistance. Thee blowback from this mass defection will be that the U.S. government adopts a new paradigm of security forces: a gestapo of highly paid mercenaries from Blackwater and other private firms, supplanted by a new generation of Terminator-style killer robots that make today's drones look like antique biplanes.
PHASE THREE
Whatever happens to Britain proper, it is likely that England, Israel, and the United States will soon unite under the banner of fascism—a merger that is already well underway. On the surface, this new Empire will not resemble anything so obvious as Hitler's Third Reich, but would rather present itself as a New and Improved Corporatism. In this more nuanced answer to World War II Fascism, puppet governments tout rigged "free elections" as proof that they are democratic, and claim that state violence is never arbitrary "terrorism," when nothing could be further from the truth. The Empire will be comprised of brutal, amoral regimes controlled by a centralized Orwellian intelligence apparatus and propped up by banking cartels, Monsanto, Big Pharma, all of the oil companies except for Citgo, and similarly malevolent transnationals. When you get down to it, it's not a far cry from the system that we already have here in America, except that no one will believe our leaders when they claim that we're the paragon of freedom and democracy (as of the last count, there are at least twelve people on Earth who still buy it).
The Fascist Empire will have a strong start, due to its rulers' massive hoard of wealth, weapons, and resources, but it will soon become apparent that fascists are only good at one thing: control through brutal intimidation. They categorically suck at everything else—most notably, business and infrastructure—which will turn out to be a far greater liability than they had anticipated. As the Empire delves ever deeper into this experiment in wholesale corruption, fascist-leaning nations will transform into foul cesspits where the air is polluted and there is almost no potable water, due to the dismantling and co-opting of regulatory entities like the EPA and subsequent rollback of all pollution controls. Roads, bridges, dams, rail lines and energy grids will also fall into such disrepair that it becomes unsafe to travel, further constraining these nations' competitiveness in global commerce.
Between dirty politics, state terrorism, crumbling infrastructure, and a rapidly deteriorating landscape, Fascist Empire nations will witness a mass exodus of those citizens who have the good sense and means to escape. By this point, many countries in the Human Rights Bloc will look downright utopian by comparison, having cleaned up a lot of their natural lands and instituted renewable energy grids that significantly reduce the average citizen's cost of living. The bad news is, all of Earth will have to deal with the fascist countries polluting the atmosphere and irradiating the oceans, no matter how many other nations come together in a last-ditch attempt to save the planet.
In the final hour, the rest of the world will forgive the American people for standing idly by as our leaders fomented war crimes, terrorism and environmental degradation for so many years. At this point, most of the world will come to our aid and save us from our own government... and at great cost, since the United States has 90% of the world's military might, and spends more on "defense" with every passing year. With human rights having finally achieved global ascendance, there probably won't be a repeat of the Nuremburg executions, but there will be a deeply satisfying perp-walk in which war criminals like Dick Cheney, former Intelligence chiefs like James Clapper, White Collar thieves like Jamie Dimon, and bio-terrorists like the the heads of Monsanto finally get marched off to prison... where they will remain for a long, long time.
|THE BEGINNING.|
Lucius Ringwald
REPRISE: WHAT THE REVOLUTION WILL LOOK LIKE
The main thrust of the Global Revolution will be outlawing all forms of state terrorism, and redefining the role of governments as protectors of the natural environment and defenders of universal human rights. This will mean a new ethical code that integrates elements of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights and FDR's "Second Bill of Rights." These liberties will be truly inalienable and will include free speech, peaceful assembly, gender equality, health care, housing, and education. It will also include a number of protections that Western governments currently promise their citizens but selectively enforce: freedom from state-sanctioned religion, terrorism, torture, persecution, defamation, arbitrary surveillance, and indefinite detainment.In economic terms, the Revolution will explore a range of experimental paradigms of wealth, property, and land ownership, which transcend all previous classifications but have two common denominators: [1] "From here on out, no one gets to hoard more than they could ever possibly need," and [2] "It will henceforth be considered a high crime to knowingly profit from activities that lead to death, illness, or significant environmental degradation." Communism has been an abject failure in the long arc of human history, and so, we are finding, has profit-driven Capitalism. New paradigms of finance will probably integrate some elements of both, but without getting bogged down in the juvenile sports team mentality which asserts that people always need to "pick a side."
As far as the future of business, emerging paradigms will demand that public and private entities work for the benefit of all, rather than serve a few masters to the detriment of almost everyone else. This concept of the greater good will extend to all living things, not just endangered species. At present, nearly all discussion of "rights" and "protections" only includes humankind, and ignores the salient fact that our very survival depends on coexisting with all of the plants and animals found throughout Mother Earth. We can no longer leave species interdependence out of the equation when we talk about the obligations of governments and corporations. In post-revolutionary societies, those institutions which fail to meet a basic standard of environmental sustainability will not succeed, as much from a lack of popular support than state-level intervention.
The Revolution will bring about an end to the current era of endemic corruption by ensuring that there is no more lawless ruling class. At the moment, the world is dominated by countries in which all citizens are promised freedom and equality, when really it is a crooked game which offers "Premium Citizenship" for a privileged few. Nations across the world will redefine their legal codes so that the word "criminal" is associated more with things like torture, mass murder, price-fixing, political collusion, and avoidable economic crises, and less with stuff like petty theft or smoking marijuana. It's an oligarch's worst nightmare: a world where everyone has to abide by the same rules, and there is absolutely no way to rig the game in your favor.
ADDENDA
Fun Facts
Amber Lyon, CNN and Bahrain
A classic illustration of Mainstream media bias is the story of Emmy Award-winning journalist Amber Lyon. Lyon is a cable news whistleblower who left CNN after its international arm (CNNI) buried her story on the brutal repression facing the people of Bahrain. Since leaving the network, Lyon has investigated CNN's collusion with the Bahraini leadership, most notably a history of running hour-long paid endorsements for their country that were bankrolled by the regime but passed off to viewers as independent news programming.ALTERNATE SCENARIOS|
A New Cold War in Latin America
A caveat about the possibility of a Southern Bloc: the United States has long considered any successful experiment in democratic Socialism to be a threat to American interests, and has a history of replacing such governments with fascist regimes led by CIA "assets." Latin American countries that support human rights and free elections are already halfway to forming a Southern Bloc, and considering what is at stake geopolitically, it would be unwise to rule out the possibility of meddling from the Western powers.Latin America may soon have to endure a chilling reprise to Henry Kissinger's dark vision of a developing world that exists solely to serve the whims of the United States. The worst-case scenario would involve a number of manufactured coups billed in Western mass media as "popular revolts." In their wake would be miserable but short-lived Banana Republics, whose citizens are ruled by CIA strongmen and terrorized by brutal WHISC-trained death squads and secret police. In the best-case scenario, the CIA just gives all their most progressive leaders cancer via weaponized isotopes and other nefarious methods that have been around since the 1960s (because nothing says "We believe in freedom and democracy" like using bioterrorism as an end-run around the electoral process). Oh, never mind... that may have already happened.
World War III
There is a slim chance that the Global Revolution will happen in the wake of a global-scale war. World War III, if it comes to pass, would probably center on brutal military campaigns led by America, the European Union, and Israel. China and Russia might get involved, either joining the aggressors or defending the victims, depending on their leaders' political calculations. The WWIII scenario would plunge much of human civilization into a Dark Age of mass killings, disappearances, torture, and the outlawing of free speech, which would be brief but full of atrocities the likes of which humankind has never seen.A third World War is highly unlikely, however, because the level of state repression required for the Fascists to maintain control over conquered nations would amount to economic suicide. First off, no country could enforce such restrictions on liberty without a complete lock-down on media and Internet. Combined with the ludicrous cost of blanket surveillance in terms of technology, energy, and personnel resources, a modern-day Orwellian state would pave the way for a total collapse of commerce throughout the Empire. In the 21st century, it has become impossible to remain competitive in business without participating in the free flow of information, so countries that allow their citizens free speech will have a huge information-sharing advantage over those which crack down on the media, cell phones, and the Internet.
Author's note: good luck trying to find this Google blog by using a Google search. In related news, the original version
ARTICLES & RESOURCES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EZ5bx9AyI4http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/mark-taliano/honduras-democracy_b_4267063.html
https://www.facebook.com/luciusringwald/posts/10202321104166258
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/mark-taliano/honduras-democracy_b_4267063.html
http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17898-fighting-climate-change-and-creating-green-jobs-is-hemp-the-silver-bullet
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