In the mineral-rich, dirt-poor Congo, the promise of democratic elections now offers to ignite a glorious future for the country - or a final conflagration.
The rich understand that capitalism is a game of musical chairs. It's systemic class warfare conducted on a grand scale to discourage solidarity across lines that might otherwise threaten the system, and with each market re-set arranged by the Federal Reserve, more of the country's resources fall into wealthy hands. Examining what happens when a society favors old money over new and breaks all the rules to make the world safe for finance, author Jeanne Haskin predicts increasing volatility and violence in the United States if we do not significantly change course. For a preview of what lies ahead for the U.S., the author takes us for a quick exemplary trip through Central America. A society that is reared on competition will face unsettling challenges to authority if it doesn't set certain functions outside the arena of battle, via systematic enrichment of the affluent minority that has always had the power to topple and ruin the system. Today's preoccupation with America's revolutionary history is not just a piece of theater. At the heart of America's outrage is an inability to lash out and demand redemption from the source of its distress because the pain is inflicted, not by hatred, but by the fundamental lack of stability built into our way of life. Now that a fifth of the population is suffering job loss, foreclosures, or exclusion from employment due to prejudice, poor credit, a lack of skills or education, a glut of competition and insufficient opportunity, the failure to provide for the helpless majority means the system is at an impasse. Because the system can't—or won't—perform, the Tea Party's rise was preemptive—with all its implied violence and real American theater—as the means to channel our anger into voting out Obama so reform can proceed unimpeded...with all its inherent dangers. After reviewing some foreign examples that erupted in the environments of colonialism and post-colonialism, neoliberalism, militarism and oligarchies, the author filters through the head-spinning social and political noise that stands in for responsible debate in America today. Ms. Haskin's richly documented essay sees a bonfire prepared as social tensions are increased and inter-group pressures are encouraged to mount. So much for One nation...
Using eye-witness accounts to narrate the terrifying, failed efforts at communication during the standoffs at Ruby Ridge and in Waco, TX, Haskin offers a psycho-social theory for militant white movements influenced by political economics. The heart-stopping dialogues as the authorities in both cases make their erroneous calculations are dramatic, but so is the idea that such events can furnish essential clues to success for those who are responsible for de-fusing such conflicts. The Ruby Ridge standoff and the Branch Davidian siege were symptoms of a broader battle between the goals of Corporate Governance and the hatred of white supremacists. Haskin show that by instilling insecurity, the Corporate power makes a mockery of citizens' free will. Bred by a different set of goals and grievances, white supremacists would use and sacrifice anyone (whites included) to achieve their "whites-only" world. What if white supremacists and those who favor Corporate Governance find common ground? The worst of both their goals--grotesque levels of deprivation, debt peonage, survival slavery, ethnic cleansing, and racial and religious violence--may be our future.
Could we, should we, have prevented the break up of Yugoslavia? Can genocide be prevented or halted? The author examines the dire consequences of the rapid economic reforms demanded by the West and asks where responsibility lies when external pressures destroy a nation and lead to genocide. Bosnia and Beyond: The "Quiet" Revolution That Wouldn't Go Quietly is, in part, the story of how the West destroyed a country through the imposition of economic and political reform. Promoted as a way to modernize Yugoslavia and bring it into the mainstream, the program was in fact meant to bring down the Communist government in a "quiet revolution" of the type that was envisaged for other former Soviet bloc countries. Showing how Western plans for the liberalization of the country resulted in ethnic polarization and the election of ethno-nationalist leaders, the book then goes on to describe the events of the war. The struggle of the republics for independence was yet another proxy war, which the West encouraged in order to chastise Milosevic and nudge him into becoming the man that they wanted him to be. While no formal plan has surfaced to show that the whole thing was engineered to provide a base for US/NATO troops, on the other hand, the situation was so egregious that intervention was highly sought and that the West had an obligation to clean up its mess, which it finally did. Many have been emotionally manipulated into being grateful for NATO intervention, and then it was quite convenient that a NATO base existed. But how does one say that intervention was needful, and then point the finger at the intervening forces? One can claim that Germany, Austria and the Vatican were in favor of Croatian and Slovenian secession and the United States came late to the game to demand Bosnian independence. It can also be claimed that Britain and France did not stand in the way of Serbian secession within Bosnia and Croatia but rather promoted their goals. Yugoslavia was a case of secession within secession, raising the question of who was supported by whom in either case. The work considers the research and views of a wide range of scholars, historians, journalists and humanitarian writers such as Cohen and Reisman, Udoviki and Ridgeway Eds, Norman Cigar, Laura Silber and Alan Little, Danielle Sremac, Michael Walzer, Ed Vulliamy, Peter Maas, Samantha Power, Peter du Preez, Lawrence Freedman, Hoffman, Johansen and Sterba, Ervin Staub and Thomas Mockaitis.
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