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I address below in the form
of “Critical Comments” the historical and theoretical aspects of the
Speech by President Bush (London, 19, November 2003) at Buckingham
Palace to the British ruling classes and politicians.
The "Comments" on his
Speech expose his ignorance or/and deception regarding history and
the logical fallacies and theoretical premises in the first part of
his Speech. I think that this is sufficient to get the reader into a
critical mode.
President Bush:
Thank you all. Thank you very much. Secretary Straw and Secretary
Hoon, Admiral Cobbold, and Dr. Shipman, distinguished guests, I want
to thank you for your very kind welcome that you've given to me and
to Laura. I also thank the groups hosting this event, the Royal
United Services Institute and the International Institute for
Strategic Studies.
Lil Joe: This "kind
welcome" by the representatives of the British ruling classes and
Labour Party's government elites are in sharp contrast to the
hostility of the millions of British rank and file trade unionists,
workers and political activists represented by hundreds of thousands
in opposition.
Here is what the
Guardian Unlimited Press reports:
March organisers
claim 200,000
Simon Jeffery and
agencies
Thursday November 20,
2003
Tens of thousands of
protesters today converged in central London to demonstrate against
US president George Bush.
The Stop the War
Coalition, the organizers of the march and a Trafalgar Square rally,
said it was the UK's biggest ever weekday demonstration and put the
numbers attending at over 200,000.
-----------------
Noisy but well-disciplined,
the protesters carried banners with the single word "Bush" printed
above a splatter of blood, blew whistles and chanted "George
Bush, terrorist."
Some had customised the
placards or brought their own. One read: "Get the hint, go home."
Others waved Palestinian flags. http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,1088898,00.html
These British workers and
political activists know that the British and American ruling
classes and their governments are the major enemies of peace and
freedom, round the world.
See, for instance British
"Labour Against the War": http://www.labouragainstthewar.org.uk/
The protesters
against Bush presence soiling their country also recognize that the
U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq are not just about the
economics of oil, but politically also about U.S.
imperialism's unconditional support for Israeli Zionism, attacking
the enemies of Sharon’s Zionist state.
For instance:
Israel continues
land-bulldozing campaign against Palestinians
Palestine-Israel,
Military, 11/15/2003
An elderly
Palestinian citizen (Hamdan Al Arameen, 81 ) was killed Friday night
as a Jewish settler ran over him with a truck and fled the crime
scene, while the Israeli occupying forces continued its
land-bulldozing campaign in the areas south of Gaza City," the
Palestinian news agency IPC reported today. http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/031115/2003111523.html
Meanwhile:
Hamas
representative left Sudan under American pressure
Sudan-Palestine,
Politics, 11/15/2003
Hamas's
representative had left Sudan in a move about which Palestinian
sources said was the result of US pressure on Sudan for hosting the
representative of the movement. Washington lists Hamas being a
"terrorist" group and Sudan "being a terrorism sponsor
country."
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/031115/2003111506.html
The U.S. terrorist
invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq must be regarded
in this geopolitical context. Not only do American capitalists
sell tanks, missiles, and bulldozers to the Israeli government, paid
for by American tax dollars ostensibly as "foreign aid" to Israel,
but now U.S. troops are stationed in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and
occupation forces in Afghanistan and Iraq fighting countries which
supported the Palestinian cause.
But let’s return to Bush's
Speech.
President
Bush: We're honored to be in
the United Kingdom. And we bring the good wishes of the American
people.
It was pointed out to me
that the last noted American to visit London stayed in a glass box
dangling over the Thames. A few might have been happy to provide
similar arrangements for me.
I thank Her Majesty, the
queen, for interceding. We're honored to be staying at her
house.
Lil Joe:
In other words, Bush may be a
terrorist when it comes to sending American soldiers to kill Muslims
and Arabs, and maybe a coward, but not a fool! While he mealy
mouthed about being "welcomed" in England by the English "people,"
he knows that his welcome is really among the British Lords and
capitalists, and the political elite of the Labour Party, only. Bush
is not so stupid as to make himself visible "in a glass box dangling
over the Thames"!
President Bush:
Americans traveling to England
always observe more similarities to our country than differences.
I've been here only a short time, but I've noticed the tradition of
free speech exercised with enthusiasm is alive and well here in
London.
Lil Joe:
Here, Bush acknowledges the
anti-war demonstrators that greeted his arrival in England, after he
snuck in landing his helicopter in the Buckingham Palace backyard.
It is interesting that the British and American capitalist press did
not do the same denunciation of the Queen of England parasitically
living off the taxpayers in a lavished palace, the way they talked
about the 3rd rate “palaces” of Saddam Hussein and for
that matter, Mugabwe in Zimbabwe.
President Bush:
We have that at home too. They
now have that right in Baghdad as well. The people of Great Britain
also might see some familiar traits in Americans.
Lil Joe:
Is this man delusional, or
what? Is Bush so stupid not to realize that other than Americans
duped by the propaganda of capitalist and state owned media there
are who believe that America has brought "democracy" to Iraq and
that the rest of the world is also so duped?
The U.S. invasion and
occupation of Iraq are not about "democracy" and "free speech."
Iraqis are under the same oppressive conditions of military
occupation, curfew, and restrictions in Iraq as that which the
Palestinians have imposed on them in the Territories by the Israeli
occupation Gestapo military forces.
The Americans in Iraq are
not a force for “liberation,” as was the case, in a limited sense,
in German Nazi occupied France. In World War II, the American
imperialists worked with the bourgeois faction of the French
resistance in “liberating” the French from the iron boot of Nazi
Gestapo occupation. In Iraq, today, the American forces are
the occupying Gestapo suppressing the Iraqi resistance!
President Bush:
We're sometimes faulted for a
naive faith that liberty can change the world. If that's an error,
it began with reading too much John Locke and Adam Smith.
Lil Joe:
Bullshit! None have ever
"faulted" U.S. imperialism for having a "naïve faith that liberty
can change the world"! U.S. imperialism is recognized the
world over as a repressive world rogue superpower that is the enemy
of "liberty." It is only the "naïve" in America who believe
that U.S. foreign policies are motivated by a desire to promote
"liberty." America has historically, both domestically and
internationally, been a bastion of capitalism and slavery, chattel
slavery and wage-slavery.
As far as Bush claims to
have read and internalized the works of John Locke and Adam Smith,
as the motivation of U.S. imperialism to wage wars of aggression,
and occupy and colonize countries, Bush's speech writers are as
ignorant as he is. John Locke and Adam Smith advocated the
exact opposite!
John Locke, to the extent
that he was a political philosopher advocated Tolerance, whereas
George Bush is a reactionary Christian fundamentalist who claims
that God told him to wage war on Islamic countries. Bush
claims that his wars, and hostile foreign policy agendas against
Korea, Iran, Libya, Iraq, Syria, et al are wars against "evil," with
the ole war-god Jehovah on his side, egging him on. How in the world
does Bush derive this Christian fanaticism from the atheistic,
materialist philosophies in the works of John Locke? He
doesn't.
Adam Smith, in particular,
was an economist, and a deist. Based on empirical data and
analysis of the British economy and empire, Smith developed a
labour-time theory of value, as the basis of wealth creation and
opposed both the Physiocratic (land=wealth) theories, and the theory
and practice of British mercantilism and colonialism. Although
a bourgeois economist yet as a scientist following through on his
critiques, Adam Smith, would be in the streets together with the
anti-war protestors denouncing the Anglo-American invasion and its
occupation/colonization of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Bush doesn't know what the
hell he's talking about! Locke and Smith indeed!
President Bush:
Americans have on occasion
been called moralists, who often speak in terms of right and wrong.
That zeal has been inspired by examples on this island, by the
tireless compassion of Lord Shaftesbury, the righteous courage of
Wilberforce, and the firm determination of the Royal Navy over the
decades to fight and end the trade in slaves.
Lil Joe:
This presentation by American
capitalist and state-owned media to the American people of issues of
American capitalist's interests in terms of "right and wrong"
is here a designed for consumption back home. No one in the
world has ever referred to the American ruling classes and
politicians as "moralists."
Bush and Americans are
arrogant enough to think of themselves as “God's elect,” and
America's enemies as not just "wrong," but "evil." This
moral/fundamentalist rhetoric has been, and is now being used by the
American capitalist media to mobilize Americans to support the U.S.
aggression in Middle Asia as a war of "good versus evil," predicated
upon the false assumption that America is the representatives of
"good," and that the Iraqis, Palestinians, Germans, French, Syrians,
Libyans and on and on are "evil."
As far as Shaftesbury and,
in particular Wilberforce, are concerned, it is particularly
hypocritical of George Bush to use the struggle in Britain against
the slave trade as an American capitalist heritage, because at the
time it was American slavery that the anti-slave traders
fought.
President Bush:
It's rightly said that
Americans are a religious people. That's in part because of the good
news that was translated by Tyndale, preached by Wesley, lived out
in the example of William Booth.
Lil Joe:
Here again Bush reveals his
Christian fundamentalism and fanaticism. The American ruling classes
and politicians push Christianity in this country, and ideologically
use it to justify their aggression against, and hostility toward
other peoples of other religions in other countries. Bush is
here stating his version of the "White Man's Burden." For the
victims of British and American "zeal," the Gospel is not "good
news," but bad news.
President Bush:
At times Americans are even
said to have a puritan streak. And where might that have come from?
Well, we can start with the Puritans.
Lil Joe:
Was Bush expressing his
"puritan streak" when he dodged the Vietnam War, snorted coke and
gut busted drunk driving? But that's only significant as far as
hypocrisy is concerned.
The Puritan movement in
England was a political history of bourgeois democratic opposition
to the monarchy. I like the way Trotsky summed it
up:
“The lower house
represented the nation in that it represented the bourgeoisie and
thereby national wealth. . . . The army gradually concentrated in
its ranks all the most active, courageous and resolute elements. As
a direct consequence of this, parliament capitulated to this army.
We say: as a direct consequence of this. By this we mean that
parliament capitulated not simply to armed force (it had not
capitulated to the king's army) but to Cromwell's puritan which
expressed the requirements of the revolution more boldly, more
resolutely and more consistently than did parliament.
"The adherents of the
Episcopal or Anglican, semi-Catholic Church were the party of the
court, the nobility and of course the higher clergy. The
Presbyterians were the party of the bourgeoisie, the party of wealth
and enlightenment. The Independents, and the Puritans especially,
were the party of the petty bourgeoisie, the plebeians. Wrapped up
in ecclesiastical controversies, in the form of a struggle over the
religious structure of the church, there took place a social
self-determination of classes and their re-grouping along new,
bourgeois lines” (Leon Trotsky Two Traditions: The
Seventeenth-Century Revolution and Chartism). http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/britain/ch06.htm
What Bush has in common
with the Puritans in England is presenting bourgeois class interests
in religious eschatological images.
The Puritans in America (in
New England, for instance) are known not so much for democratic
proclivity but for intolerance and burning alike both "heretics" and
strong women, the latter as "witches." Is this not the
"puritan streak" Bush is in the tradition in his self-proclaimed
"war against evil"?
President Bush:
To this fine heritage,
Americans have added a few traits of our own: the good influence of
our immigrants and the spirit of the frontier.
Lil Jo: Is Bush "adding" to the Puritan traits of
intolerance and murdering of women, the forced "immigration" of
millions of Africans into brutal slavery? The pogroms against Jewish
and Catholic immigrants, the genocidal wars against Native Americans
in the "frontier"? Is this the "heritage" that U.S. imperialism
wants to carry out in Afghanistan, and Iraq? Seems so!
President Bush:
Yet there remains a bit of
England in every American. So much of our national character comes
from you, and we're glad for it. The fellowship of generations is
the cause of common beliefs.
Lil Joe: Is this not pure White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
(WASP) American racism pure and simple? The Africans, the Native
Americans, the Mexican Americans, the Asian-Americans, and for that
matter immigrants from Italy, and other non-Anglo Europeans are
excluded from the American "heritage," and legitimacy.
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President Bush:
We believe in open
societies ordered by moral conviction. We believe in private
markets humanized by compassionate government. We believe in
economies that reward effort, communities that protect the
weak and the duty of nations to respect the dignity and the
rights of all. And whether one learns these ideals in County
Durham or in West Texas, they instill mutual respect and they
inspire common purpose.
Lil Joe:
Just as Bush clearly
expressed his WASP racism above, saying "a bit of England in
every American", so now he clearly identifies "open society"
as the capitalist market system of based on capitalist
monopoly of ownership of the means of production and
distribution. |
This is the economic system
Americans want to force the world to participate in, with
Anglo-American capitalist dominate (as in occupied Iraq).
President Bush:
More than an alliance of
security and commerce, the British and American peoples have an
alliance of values. And today this old and tested alliance is very
strong.
Lil Joe:
There is no justification for
the Saturday attacks on Jewish Synagogues in Turkey. However, Bush’s
statement and the applause he received referring to the joint
British and American wars on Afghanistan and Iraq as an "alliance of
security and commerce," "alliance of values" in waging wars on
Muslim and Arab countries, make attacks, such as those today, on
British political offices in Turkey inevitable. It is
significant that these assaults on Britain coincided with the Bush
visit with the British ruling classes and political
establishment.
Meanwhile, in America, the
government and Santa Barbara police arranged at this time to arrest
Michael Jackson for sexual deviance. Puritans have always had sex
hang-ups about what other people are doing. The news media in
the United States have practically ignored the hundreds of thousands
of British workers and political activists who demonstrated against
Bush in England and the attacks on the British embassy in Turkey.
The American media focused the American peoples attention mostly on
Michael Jackson's homosexual interracial sex life.
President Bush:
The deepest beliefs of our
nations set the direction of our foreign policy. We value our own
civil rights, so we stand for the human rights of others. We affirm
the God-given dignity of every person, so we are moved to action by
poverty and oppression and famine and disease.
Lil Joe:
This statement by Bush on
behalf of the American ruling classes must be interpreted in context
of what was said before about private (capitalist) property, the
market, and so on. "Civil rights" and "human rights," and "values"
are ideological terms, the meaning of which is the capitalist
"right" to purchase human labor power of the propertyless masses,
and thus own the wealth produced by those propertyless
workers.
As pointed out above, Bush
made references to John Locke and Adam Smith. This
understanding of bourgeois rights was first articulated by Locke and
Smith, and further developed by David Ricardo and Karl Marx to
demonstrate mathematically the exploitation of wage-labor by
capital.
The clap trap about
"values" and "god-given dignity" and so on is laughed at by
atheistic and class conscious workers in Europe, who recognize that
Bush colored economic greed with religious mumbo jumbo. But American
workers, who have been inundated with such rhetoric, now believe in
it. Bush’s fundamentalist rhetoric is not so much directed to
the representatives of British landlords and capitalists at
Buckingham Palace, but rather toward American media
consumption.
President Bush:
The United States and Great
Britain share a mission in the world beyond the balance of power or
the simple pursuit of interest. We seek the advance of freedom and
the peace that freedom brings.
Lil Joe: As the British say, Balderdash! By "advance of
freedom," the U.S. and British capitalists, whose material economic
interests Bush and Blaire represent, is meant neo-liberal (Smithian)
"free trade," which is the "mission" of Anglo-American troops in
Afghanistan, and Iraq. By "peace," what Bush means is the
suppression of opposition to U.S. global domination, the
"Pax-Americana."
President Bush:
Together our nations are
standing and sacrificing for this high goal in a distant land at
this very hour. And America honors the idealism and the bravery of
the sons and daughters of Britain.
Lil Joe:
Translated from demagogic
rhetoric, what Bush is doing is praising the American and British
soldiers, who are fools enough to sacrifice their lives and health
for British and American capitalists to seize control of Iraqi oil
fields.
President Bush:
The last president to stay at
Buckingham Palace was an idealist without question. At a dinner
hosted by King George V in 1918, Woodrow Wilson made a pledge. With
typical American understatement, he vowed that right and justice
would become the predominant and controlling force in the
world.
Lil Joe:
Again, nothing but demagogic
rhetoric that is seen through by workers and peasants in Europe,
Asia, Africa and Latin America, but lapped up by teary Americans
back home. Wilson's questionable "idealism" was nothing but
the entry of U.S. imperialism into the affairs of the Old
World. And, at this meeting, the U.S. and British imperialists
discussed how the British Empire, bringing poverty, injustice,
exploitation, and military repression to the 3rd world would be
safeguarded.
Also on the political
agenda in 1918 was how to intervene into the Russian Revolution, to
overthrow the infant Soviet government of Workers and Peasant's
Deputies.
Only an ignoramus and a
fool would have believed what Bush claimed Wilson stated to the
public about "right and justice" becoming the "predominant and
controlling forces in the world.” Were that their objective,
the Anglo-American capitalists would have turned the productive
forces, in Britain and the United States, over to the workers in
those countries. Were that the case, workers and farmers
governments would have been established in Britain and America, and
removed British and American forces from the colonies rather than
trying to suppress the workers revolution in Russia.
President Bush:
President Wilson had come to Europe with his 14 points for
peace. Many complimenting him on this vision yet some were dubious.
Take, for example, the prime minister of France. He complained that
God himself had only 10 commandments. Sounds familiar.
Lil Joe: Obviously
this was a swipe at the French for not capitulating to
Anglo-American domination in 1918. Along with not supporting
or participating in the Anglo-American war, invasion and occupation
of Iraq today. Incidentally, one of the "idealist" issues that
George and Wilson discussed was the British imperialist displacement
of the Ottoman Empire in the Muslim Arab world, which is the basis
of the conflicts today.
President Bush: At
Wilson's high point of idealism, however, Europe was one short
generation from Munich and Auschwitz and the Blitz.
Lil Joe: What Bush
seems not to know, or, if known, refuses to acknowledge, is that the
Munich Scheme was participated in by the "Allies"; and that
"Auschwitz" was made possible by the European and American
capitalists, and the governments that represented them. They were
supportive of the Nazi reaction initially as a "bulwark against
Bolshevism."
A recent article in a
British socialist magazine reviewing the book The
Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion, by Alvin Finkel and Clement
Leibovitz, reviewed by Paul Ursell, points out how it is documented
that
The British ruling class
was keen for Germany to re-arm because they saw in the Nazis a
natural ally and potential savior against communism. Chamberlain
wrote to the King expressing the idea that Germany and England would
be "the two pillars of European peace and buttress against
communism". When in 1936 the Rhineland was re-militarized the
cabinet actively opposed French plans to stop it. Cabinet minutes
show that they felt that if the French plans succeeded Hitler would
be overthrown and the German communists would benefit http://www.socialismtoday.org/37/chamberlain37.html
I do not have space enough
to do an informational analysis of technological, economic,
political social conditions in Germany following World War I led
directly to the rise of the Nazi nationalists in the 1930s and 40s.
The reader is encouraged to
do the research on how following World War I, war and poverty in
Russia ushered in the Russian Revolution which culminated in Soviets
of Workers and Peasants Deputies, and a revolutionary Bolshevik
workers government in 1917 in Russia, and German workers strikes and
mutinies in the failed German Revolution in 1919. Check out on
the Marxist Internet Archive: Rosa Luxemburg Order Prevails in
Berlin: http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1919/01/14.htm
In order to gain legitimacy
in the German working-class the Nazi Party had to deceptively call
itself "socialist" — "National Socialist"! Read Hitler's
Mein Kampf. The contradictions in German capitalism in
the 30s crisis was attributed to "the Jews" by deceptively pinning
on them the characteristics of money-grubbing capitalists. By
combining this fantastic "Jew," as both capitalist and communist
conspirator Hitler attacked not just Jews and Gypsies but trade
unions, social-democratic as well as the communist worker's
party.
So long as the Nazis were
getting rid of the trade unionists, socialists, and communists in
Germany, and where it expanded, the capitalist West, including
Britain and the United States, regarded the Jews as
expendable. It was not the British or Americans, but the
Soviet Red Army that liberated Auschwitz!
President Bush:
Looking back, we see the reasons why The League of Nations,
lacking both credibility and will, collapsed at the first challenge
of the dictators.
Lil Joe:
This statement by Bush is
a-historical hogwash. The Americans are today in the role of
Nazi Germany aggression, Blitz, which it calls now "shock and awe" —
invading and occupying countries in Middle Asia. What Bush is
doing in this section of his speech is turning history upside
down. He is intimating that the reactions of the German and
French by their opposition to American international Nazis policies
of invasion and occupation are a Munich-like capitulation whereas
their opposition to U.S. aggression places is in fact standing up to
the international "dictator," the un-elected and war-mongering
nationalist, George W. Bush.
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President Bush:
Free nations failed to
recognize, much less confront, the aggressive evil in plain
sight. And so, dictators went about their business, feeding
resentments and anti-Semitism, bringing death to innocent
people in this city and across the world and filling the last
century with violence and genocide.
Lil Joe:
At the time to which
Bush refers the French and British were the world's greatest
colonizers and oppressors of the majority of the people of the
world. Hardly beacons of "freedom"!
Today, it is the
United States, Britain, and Israel that are the "aggressive
evil in plain sight." |
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The American,
British, and Israeli regimes that are going "about their business,
feeding resentments and anti-Semitism"— that is, anti-Islamic and
anti-Arab and Anti-Palestinian aggressions bringing death to
innocent people across the world and filling the century with
violence and genocide.
President Bush:
Through world war and cold war we learned that idealism, if it
is to do any good in this world, requires common purpose and
national strength, moral courage and patience in difficult tasks.
And now our generation has need of these qualities.
Lil Joe: This from
Bush is nothing but demagogic rhetoric. "Idealism," "good,"
"purpose," "moral courage" are indefinable abstractions that any one
can claim, even the low-life coward. That Bush can claim these
"qualities" is proof of that! The Palestinian, Afghan, and Iraqis
resisting Anglo-American and Israeli Blitzkriegs and occupation
exercise the real, demonstrable courage.
President Bush: On
September the 11th, 2001, the terrorists left their mark of murder
on my country and took the lives of 67 British citizens. With the
passing of months and years, it is the natural human desire to
resume a quiet life and to put that day behind us as if waking from
a dark dream. The hope that danger has passed is comforting, is
understanding and it is false.
Lil Joe:
The Anglo-American invasions
and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq has nothing to do with
September the 11th, 2002; but, rather, has everything to do with oil
and money, and protecting the garrison state of Israel.
President Bush: The
attacks that followed in Bali, Jakarta, Casablanca, Bombay, Mombasa,
Najaf, Jerusalem, Riyadh, Baghdad and Istanbul were not dreams.
They're part of a global campaign by terrorist networks to
intimidate and demoralize all who oppose them.
Lil Joe: Rather the
opposite: The attacks in those locations were engendered by and are
engendered by Israeli and Anglo-American policies of war and
occupation, which engender conditions, which engender such
actions. There may yet be time, and opportunity to prevent
complete deterioration by an immediate and unconditional withdrawal
of British, American, and Israeli occupation forces.
President Bush:
These terrorists target the innocent and they kill by the
thousands. And they would, if they gain the weapons they seek, kill
by the millions and not be finished.
Lil Joe: This
statement coming from the mouth of George W. Bush is nothing but
demagogic rant and inverted logic.
The people of the World,
including Britain if not the United States, recognize Bush as the
international terrorist, and the American and British troops that
"target the innocent and kill by the thousands." America's
military forces have already "killed by the millions"—in Japan,
Korea, Vietnam, El Salvador, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Angola, Iraq . .
.
President Bush: The
greatest threat of our age is nuclear, chemical. or biological
weapons in the hands of terrorists and the dictators who aid
them.
Lil Joe:
"Nuclear, chemical or
biological weapons" are already in the hands of terrorists!
See my piece on Nuclear Theatre
published in ChickenBones: A Journal.
President Bush: The
evil is in plain sight. The danger only increases with denial. Great
responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. We will
face these threats with open eyes and we will defeat them.
Lil Joe: This statement (by Bush) is nothing but
metaphysical mumbo jumbo directed at Christian fundamentalist
patriots back in the States. There is no such thing as "evil"
because there is no "devil" nor for that matter "gods."
What are at issue here are
material interests, and Bush represents the class interests of
American banks and transnational capital in rivalry with the
European Union. See my article PaxAmerica
in Decline on this
competition, again published by ChickenBones: A Journal.
I MUST stop here.
Space does not permit me to go further.
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