Yesterday, Bernie endorsed Hillary. Body language experts across the Web came to the same conclusion: They don’t like each other. They saw Hillary as uncomfortable, even vulnerable. They observed Bernie as resentful, doing something he didn’t want to do. Hillary and the DNC had to cough up a lot of concessions to get Bernie’s endorsement. And it was equally painful for Bernie to agree to it. While endorsing, he recited his campaign proposals and then declared Hillary was now supporting them. A brilliant move on Bernie’s part. What used to be a meaningless piece of paper—the Democratic Party Platform—is now publicly tied to Hillary. It’s hers to betray and everyone will know when she does.

Tonight, Bernie delegate Jen Ranes reported on a conference call he held with his delegates. She said:

• He has NOT suspended his campaign.
• He is taking this to the convention.
• He needs his delegates there.
• He will call for a role call vote.

Even though Bernie endorsed Hillary, this is not yet a done deal. Chances are quite high she will be the nominee, but Bernie will keep his options open all the way to the convention.

This has not gone down as Hillary had planned. What should have been an easy and short glide to the nomination turned into a long, humiliating trek. While she struggled to fill high school gymnasiums, Bernie filled football stadiums. She was forced to take time off to beg billionaires for money, while Bernie took two minutes to ask for donations at campaign events. Ever loyal to power, the corporate media maintained its blackout on Bernie’s campaign. They refused to cover the massive crowds and the extraordinary, historic nature of his run. They ignored that he had turned modern politics on its head.

Bernie exposes the establishment

What the media didn’t see coming was Bernie outing the Party leadership as not giving a rat’s ass about the rest of us. He was relentless in calling out the “Democratic establishment” and the “media establishment,” as servants of the 1%. Distracted by the incestuous, never-ending DC money game, and used to pretending to be progressive for the rubes back home, party elites were blindsided by Bernie’s spectacular success. People didn’t know they were hungry for Bernie’s message until they heard it, and found themselves overwhelmed and moved by his honesty, his integrity, and his humane proposals. Especially for younger people struggling to get an education and find a job, Bernie’s Democratic socialism seemed sane and sensible. The Party freaked out. It had lost control. A rumpled 74-year-old socialist was the Democratic rock star of 2016, not Hillary Clinton, their handpicked heir to the throne. They regrouped and pulled it off with the help of local party hacks, vote rigging, scheduling as few debates as possible, and a loyal corporate media relentlessly ignoring and/or undermining Bernie. And Yay! It worked! A damaged Clinton limped across the finish line and prematurely claimed victory.

Clinton baggage

Because Wall Street and the Deep State trust her to do their bidding, the DNC put Hillary forward as the Democratic Party candidate. Claiming to be neutral they blatantly tipped the scales in her favor. They ignored her high negatives—knowing both Democrats and Republicans view her as dishonest and unlikable. They ignored Bill’s smarmy past, and his/their terrible economic policies that led to the 2008 meltdown. They ignored their racism—the gutting of welfare programs, the buildup of the for-profit prison system, and, in 2008, Hillary’s 3 AM ads against Obama. They ignored the ravages of NAFTA. The Clinton’s personal and political baggage would fill a semi. The Party picked a familiar but terrible candidate.

If she is nominated at the convention, Hillary will go up against Trump in November and the polling doesn’t look good. Bernie has endorsed her and agreed to campaign for her. Thanks to his integrity and tenacity, she has inherited the most progressive Democratic platform in the history of the Party. It’s not everything he or we wanted, but it’s dramatically better than anything she and the Party would have typed up only to forget as soon as the convention ended. By using his considerable leverage, and forcing his progressive platform on the Party, Bernie may have rescued her from defeat. If she is the nominee and genuinely runs on that platform, she may squeak out a win against Trump.

A Democratic Party split?

Bernie could have deliberately blown up the Democratic Party, split it in two. But, even though the Party doesn’t deserve it, he graciously offered to save it from itself. That isn’t to say that the Party won’t split anyway. The installation of Hillary Clinton as the nominee may cause the party to implode—progressives taking off in one direction and corporate shills in the other.

Unlike other “loser” candidates, and it’s not clear that he has officially lost, Bernie will refuse to go quietly into the night. He plans to help elect progressive down ticket candidates, many at odds with the current Democratic establishment. He has announced that, if she is elected, he will organize his supporters to hold her feet to the fire, and to hold all Democrats feet to the fire. She knows that and he knows that. No matter what happens, the future is going to be contentious, because the revolution Bernie started is just beginning. And we should be forever grateful to him for that.

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The Town Hall meetings with the candidates in 2015-16 have been outstanding. They provide a real opportunity to hear from the candidates when they are far more relaxed than in the debates. With Democrats, we get the bonus of real discussion on important topics.

I was watching the CNN Town Hall meeting on Tuesday, February 24, from Columbia, SC. Up until that point, I had been leaning in favor of Bernie Sanders, and I probably still am. But Hillary Clinton really impressed me with her presentation, her demeanor, and the specialness of her comfort with the large number of African-Americans in the audience.

But when moderator Chris Cuomo asked her about the transcripts of her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms, she seemed to tense up. It was interesting, because in the conversation, the name of President Richard Nixon (“I’m not a crook.”) came up. It struck me that Clinton was giving non-answers to questions in a way that was similar to Nixon’s answers when he was under fire.

Cuomo referenced Clinton’s lack of disclosure about the transcripts as the “temptation of the unknown.” Forty-three years ago. American citizens were curious about what happened on the morning of June 17, 1972 in the Watergate complex in Washington, DC. They were also interested in what went on in Richard Nixon’s White House in the days just before and after the break-in. This temptation, this curiosity, set off investigative reporting that perhaps has never been paralleled, as well as possibly the most riveting Congressional hearings ever.

With Clinton, the reporting has been aggressive, but to date no journalist has publicly revealed the contents of any of her remarks to the titans of Wall Street. So long as there is mystery, there will continue to be interest. To use another phrase from Cuomo, this means that the “drip, drip, drip” will continue.

In a prelude to a question to Clinton, Cuomo showed a clip from Hillary Clinton’s recent appearance on the Stephen Colbert Show. In it, Colbert ask Clinton if she has ever told a lie. Clinton said that as a public figure she has never lied to the people and she never will in the future. Colbert, and later Cuomo, were a little bit miffed that she didn’t “just say no,” as in she has never lied.

That strikes me as an unrealistic standard; we all tell lies when we find something else to be so compelling that it temporarily takes precedence over the truth.

Perhaps what we really seek is reasonableness. For Clinton, or anyone else, to say they never have lied is rather preposterous. Why not be straightforward and say: “Yes, I have lied and probably will again, but I hope that whenever I do it is because ‘the greater good’ requires me to do so.”

When answering questions about her speeches to Wall Street, why not simply say that because she was getting paid, she said things that probably made the audiences happ,y but which do not reflect her real views on the relationship between Wall Street and Washington. In other words, she was paid to lie.

While some would deplore that, most would understand how that could come to be. Most importantly, she would get out in front of the issue. No more “drip, drip, drip” on this one.

Richard Nixon committed impeachable offenses, and before he resigned, he was on his way to being impeached. In the Hillary Clinton cases that have been fully examined, such as Whitewater and the death of Vince Foster, she has come out squeaky clean. Releasing the Wall Street transcripts could cause immediate damage, but that could be somewhat offset if she said that she now understands why the American people want her to be independent of the Street, and that she will no longer accept their money, and even better, return the money from the speeches (which she could now afford).

With the exception of her “rope-a-dope” responses to legitimate questions about her relationship with Wall Street, Clinton left a very positive impression in that Town Hall meeting. She has some distinct advantages over Sanders. He will never rise to the level of knowledge and confidence that she has when speaking about foreign affairs. While he has a very positive record on civil rights, her life experiences on the vanguard of change seem a little stronger than his. And it is Sanders, not Clinton, who does “the dance” when it comes to gun control.

Whether this is politically correct or not to say, it strikes me that Hillary Clinton looks a hell of a lot younger than the six years that separate their ages. She also has a calmer temperament.

Maybe Clinton will never change on the disclosure issues. There are observers who say that many people like to live on the edge. Two people who readily come to mind are Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. If that is where Hillary Clinton wants to be, then she has to accept the skepticism that comes with it. But I think that what millions of Americans would like would be for Clinton to get more in touch with her walks in the danger zone, and for her to learn the easy path back to a more trustworthy road. It’s not too late.

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Hillary Clinton finds herself on the defensive, doing rope-a-dope, against certain charges from both the media and Bernie Sanders. Where Sanders is concerned, Clinton’s Achilles heel is her relationship with Wall Street. Specifically, Clinton is vulnerable with her contention that she has never been influenced by the money from Wall Street that has been paid to her as speaking fees or cash contributions to her campaign and associated SuperPACs.

Clinton contends that there is no evidence that she has never changed a vote or a policy position because of money from Wall Street. There is some validation to this because so far no one, including those on the right wing, have been able to relate any policy positions that she takes to the millions that she has received from Wall Street.

But a real question is whether her contention passes the giggle test. The fact that there are people giggling may help explain why her support is so poor among young voters. According to the New York Times,

Some 87 percent of likely New Hampshire primary voters ages 18 to 29 said they would vote for Mr. Sanders in the state’s primary on Tuesday, compared with 13 percent for Mrs. Clinton, according to a UMass-Lowell poll conducted Feb. 1 to 3.

The conundrum for Clinton is that even if it may be true that she has never been influenced by Wall Street, it’s too big a stretch for young voters to believe. It’s as if the university president at an SEC university said that the scholar-athletes were among the university’s most serious students.

So here’s a suggestion to Hillary Clinton and her campaign. Simply say that while it is her belief that she has never been influenced by Wall Street money, she understands that there is a wide-spread perception that she has been. Furthermore, she is as determined as Bernie Sanders to reign in the excesses of Wall Street and she knows that she will be taken more seriously if she is no longer taking money from either Wall Street or other big corporate interests.

If Clinton would take this step, there would be several clear benefits. First, she would have much “cleaner arguments” in her effort to curb Wall Street abuses. Second, she would be building immunity to Sanders’ charges that she still is too cozy to the Street. Third, it would counter the argument that she’s always “late to the party” when it comes to acknowledging her mistakes.

It took her thirteen years and two presidential campaigns to finally apologize for her 2002 Senate vote endorsing President George W. Bush’s already-failed strategy with Iraq. And who can forget the pain, all through the summer of 2015 and into the fall, until Clinton acknowledged that she had made a mistake in how she handled her e-mails while Secretary of State. And her initial answer to Chuck Todd’s question about whether she will release the transcripts of her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs seems to indicate that we’re in for a long wait before they see the light of day.

For progressives, Clinton is often “right” on the issues, but in far too many cases it takes time for her to get there. It would be great if she could catch up with Sanders on Wall Street. What if she went a step further and was able to get President Obama to say that if he was running now, he too would not accept Wall Street donations. What a coup!

Like many, I currently prefer Bernie Sanders on the issues. However, I respect Clinton’s experience and also think that it is time for the United States to have a female president. I just hope that she can quickly move to reform her campaign to bring more credibility to her progressive ideas.

The post What Hillary Clinton might say to help herself appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In a recent interview in Jacobin, linguist, philosopher, and political activist Noam Chomsky gave an interesting answer to a question about the American capitalist system. He basically said we don’t have one. We have something else, more akin to “state capitalism.”

And by not being engaged and involved in the political process, we’ve allowed corporations and banks to “run things,” to take over government. We’ve felt powerless to effect change, and we’ve allowed them to suck up resources that should be going to fund projects and policies that directly help us and the communities where we live.

Chomsky’s comment on our so called “capitalist system:”

What’s called “the capitalist system” is very far from any model of capitalism or market. Take the fossil fuels industries: there was a recent study by the IMF, which tried to estimate the subsidy that energy corporations get from governments. The total was colossal. I think it was around $5 trillion annually. That’s got nothing to do with markets and capitalism.

I think Chomsky is saying that our form of capitalism is not one Adam Smith would recognize. In our version, fossil fuel companies fund politicians, who then vote for industry subsidies. Even though the industry is a big contributor to climate change, the government continues to promote fossil fuels. Bought senators and congressmen continue to give away money to a highly profitable industry that doesn’t need it. Money in politics has a life of its own, and it’s not benign. If a senator or congressperson stops voting for subsidies, there’s hell to pay when he or she is up for reelection. Not only will they no longer get campaign donations, they will have money being spent against them. We live under the illusion that  we have a “free-market” economy, when its more akin to a mafia-run protection racket.

Chomsky turns the conversation to banks:

And the same is true of other components of the so-called capitalist system. By now, in the US and other Western countries, there’s been, during the neoliberal period, a sharp increase in the financialization of the economy. Financial institutions in the US had about 40 percent of corporate profits on the eve of the 2008 collapse, for which they had a large share of responsibility.

There’s another IMF study that investigated the profits of American banks, and it found that they were almost entirely dependent on implicit public subsidies. There’s a kind of a guarantee—it’s not on paper, but it’s an implicit guarantee—that if they get into trouble they will be bailed out. That’s called too-big-to-fail.

And the credit rating agencies of course know that, they take that into account, and with high credit ratings, financial institutions get privileged access to cheaper credit, they get subsidies if things go wrong and many other incentives, which effectively amounts to perhaps their total profit. The business press tried to make an estimate of this number and guessed about $80 billion a year. That’s got nothing to do with capitalism.

It’s clear that without massive subsidies and bailouts, the banks would be insolvent. In a real capitalist system they would have been failed businesses. Chomsky is not the first to point this out. For nearly imploding the world economy, banks were rewarded with access to free money, which they use, not for repairing the damage they did to main street, but for speculation. Thanks to Bill Clinton removing the wall between traditional and investment banking, big banks continue to operate like gambling casinos.

Corporations, too, have been borrowing money at very low, or no interest for stock buy-backs, which raises stock prices and CEO pay. Profits are off-shored and tax-sheltered. Nothing big banks and big corporations are doing right now is helping middle class and working people. Chomsky continues:

It’s the same in many other sectors of the economy. So the real question is, will this system of state capitalism, which is what it is, survive the continued use of fossil fuels? And the answer to that is, of course, no.

By now, there’s a pretty strong consensus among scientists who say that a large majority of the remaining fossil fuels, maybe 80 percent, have to be left in the ground if we hope to avoid a temperature rise which would be pretty lethal. And, unfortunately, that’s not happening. Humans may be destroying their chances for a decent survival. It won’t kill everybody, but it would change the world dramatically.

This is Chomsky’s conclusion if the current situation were to continue. But there’s a rebellion brewing against the status quo. Bernie Sanders in the US, Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, Alex Tsipris in Greece, and Pablo Iglesias in Spain are openly challenging the corporate/bank/billionaire grip on their respective governments. And in Canada, the Liberal Party just won back control of Parliament after nine years of the conservative Harper government. So, there’s reason for hope.

Getting a person or party elected is not enough

We can’t pin all our hopes on another Wall Street-funded candidate. Chomsky thinks it will take pressure from a large popular movement to effectively challenge the grip of money and power on government. The job of activists and organizers, he says, is to help people understand they have power, and even though they feel powerless, they’re not powerless. “People feel impotent, but that has to be overcome.”

About Bernie Sanders, Chomsky feels it’s pretty unlikely in a system of bought elections that he could win. And even if he won, he would be abandoned by both corporate parties, In other words, he couldn’t get much done. But, even if he loses he will have made a positive contribution. Chiomsky says:

In fact, the Sanders campaign I think is valuable—it’s opening up issues, it’s maybe pressing the mainstream Democrats a little bit in a progressive direction, and it is mobilizing a lot of popular forces, and the most positive outcome would be if they remain after the election.

It’s a serious mistake to just to be geared to the quadrennial electoral extravaganza and then go home. That’s not the way changes take place. The mobilization could lead to a continuing popular organization, which could maybe have an effect in the long run.

A little history

In 2009, newly elected President Barack Obama could have nurtured and expanded his extremely effective Obama for America organization to be exactly the kind of popular organization Chomsky calls for—one standing behind him and supporting him in demanding real change—but he funneled everyone into the newly formed “Organizing for America.” Organizing for America served to neutralize and eventually shut down the enthusiasm and populist energy stirred up by his campaign, thwarting any threat to the big money interests that bankrolled his election. As Gloria Bilchik wrote in 2010, OFA became a propaganda machine for the President and a subsidiary of the Democratic National Committee.

The best outcome of the coming election will be if Bernie’s followers form a truly progressive organization independent of the Democratic Party. It’s purpose would be to keep pressure on politicians to do the right thing for the American people.

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At a recent conference of media and tech influencers, a member of the audience asked Elizabeth Warren a simple question. Her spontaneous and passionate answer was breathtaking. It’s always breathtaking to me when someone speaks the truth—that Washington DC, the White House, and Congress, primarily serve the rich and powerful.

Warren says, with great emotion, that we don’t have a functioning government and we don’t have a functioning democracy. She wants us to know that our so called “representatives,” with a very few exceptions, serve the rich and powerful, and that ordinary people have no influence in Washington. (This is not just her opinion. a recent Princeton study reached the same conclusion.) Warren, before becoming a United States senator, worked in the White House with Obama and later under Tim Geithner in Treasury. She took on Wall Street. She knows up close and personal how money and access to power corrupts elected officials. She has been a fierce critic of Obama’s trade deals, which would be windfalls for banks and corporations but devastating for working families. Warren says: The only way we get change is when enough people in this country say I’m mad as hell and I’m fed up and I’m not going to do this anymore.

Where do we start?

We can start by confronting both Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush on their false and vague claims that, if elected, they will rebuild the middle class, reign in Wall Street, reduce defense spending, rebuild our infrastructure, provide better healthcare, increase funding for education and create jobs. They won’t and we let them know we aren’t buying their false promises. Instead, as Warren suggests, we push them to go on record advocating specific programs and ask how they plan to make them a reality. We ask them how they are going to serve the interests of donors and those of us who elect them when those interests are most often diametrically opposed.

Next, we support Bernie Sanders in the primary over Wall Street candidate Hillary Clinton, and demand that the media cover his campaign. We demand substantive televised debates on the issues.

No matter how “populist” Hillary Clinton sounds, no matter how many focus-group-tested cliches she repeats, or how many diners she frequents to convince you that she is “just like you,” she is not just like you. She is not going to represent you, or the needs of your friends and family members. She is going to represent the rich and powerful as she has as senator from New York, and as secretary of state. It’s a done deal. The rich and powerful are going to give her billions and she is going to serve their interests. If she has permission, and there is anything left over, she may do something for you.

Hillary and Bill have already profited, obscenely, from Wall Street kickbacks in the form of speaking fees, because they have served the elite very well. This is how the official bribery in Washington works. Yet starry eyed Democrats and misguided feminists identify with her, and “really like her.” They believe what she says, and think having a “woman in the White House” will usher in an era of “real change,” just like we believed electing an African-American would bring “change we can believe in.” Elizabeth Warren is pleading with us to look at what is starting us in the face. She is saying “your elected officials don’t represent you” and won’t represent you, and you need to know that and deal with it.

How do we deal with corruption in government?

First, we have to understand how it happens. We need to read progressive sources outside of mainstream media and educate ourselves on how the rich and powerful have highjacked our democracy. We have to understand the ways in which they buy government and elected officials. We have to understand the “shadow government” hidden from view, the military/intelligence complex, that serves corporate and banking interests domestically and world wide. We need to explore how the elite exert tremendous control over the media, and therefore control our domestic and foreign policy narratives,

Back on the campaign trail, I think it’s important to confront Hillary Clinton in town hall meetings, and in question and answer sessions, about her record as secretary of state in approving arms sales to various countries in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation. We can ask about the failure of the Clinton foundation programs in Haiti and the rampant corruption surrounding them, and we can ask her about making $250,000 a pop for half hour speeches at Wall Street banks and what she did to earn such lucrative fees?. We can ask about her warmongering and how she thinks reducing once prosperous Libya to rubble served you and me, and other ordinary Americans.

Rather than getting sucked in to the media-driven election charade where we are manipulated into cheerleading our party’s candidate and demonizing the other, all the while avoiding serious issues—it’s time to digest what an emotional and passionate Elizabeth Warren is telling us. It’s time for us to stop buying into these Wall Street pre-selected presidential “candidates,” and corporate-backed senators and congressmen, and demand the right to have real representation in Washington.

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On May 12, Joseph Stiglitz and the Roosevelt Institute published a new report titled “Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity.” You can download the report and watch a two-hour presentation and panel discussion on it here.

Guest speakers at the report launch were Senator Elizabeth Warren and Mayor of New York city, Bill DeBlasio, along with a slew of really interesting panelists. I started watching the event over breakfast, thinking I would turn it off after I finished off my smoothie, but I kept watching—all two hours of it! Stiglitz offered one of the best explanations of what went wrong with the economy I have heard to date. And he offers a clear path for making it work for the majority of Americans.

Bernie Sanders entering the race for president and Joe Stiglitz launching this report on how to fix the economy are truly hopeful events. I’m talking real hope here, something I have not felt in a long time. There’s been no shortage of ideas on how to fix the economy—break up the big banks, raise the minimum wage, raise the cap on Social Security taxes, raise taxes on companies that offshore jobs. But this slingshot approach is inadequate to what is really a systemic and structural problem. Stiglitz offers a fresh look at the causes of our economic downturn, and puts forward a comprehensive list of solutions, all of which have to be addressed, if the economy is to work for everyone.

Stiglitz’s list of the causes of growing income inequality:

• More market power, less competition
• The growth of the financial sector
• The ‘shareholder revolution,’ the rise of CEO pay, and the squeezing of workers
• Lower taxes for the wealthy
• The end of full-employment monetary policy
• The stifling of worker voice
• The sinking floor of labor standards
• Racial discrimination

Stiglitz’s solutions for rebalancing the economy:

• Make markets competitive
• Fix the financial sector
• Incentivize long-term business growth
• Rebalance the tax and transfer system
• Make full employment the goal
• Empower workers
• Expand access to labor markets and opportunities for advancement
• Expand economic security and opportunity

The report, clearly written and easy to read, goes in-depth on each topic. It refutes the idea that there is a mysterious market force, or “invisible hand” or “natural” business cycle, or changes in the global economy that is causing unemployment and stagnant wages. The economy is in shambles, Stiglitz says, because, for the last thirty years, the rich and powerful have written the rules that govern the economy. Both Republicans and Democrats have participated in this orgy of “rule making for the rich,” which has resulted in the systematic destruction of the middle class, and the increasing impoverishment of the working poor.

Inequality has been a choice, he says, made by the few and foisted on the majority who were sold a bill of goods. It is within our power to reverse those rules. Here’s an excerpt from the report, my emphasis:

Rules are the regulatory and legal frameworks that make up the economy, like those affecting property ownership, corporate formation, labor law, copyright, antitrust, monetary, tax, and expenditure policy, and other economic structures. They also include the institutions that perpetuate discrimination, including structural discrimination—an entire system of rules, regulations, expenditure policies, and normative practices that exclude populations from the economy and economic opportunity. Unequal socio-economic outcomes for women and people of color are rooted in this kind of structural discrimination, in addition to other forms of bias. . . .

Our challenge, then, is to rewrite the rules to work for everyone. To do so, we must re-learn what we thought we knew about how modern economies work. We must also devise new policies to eliminate the distortions that pervade our financial sector, our corporate rules, our macroeconomic, monetary, tax, expenditure, and competition policies, our labor relations, and our political structures. It is important to engage all of these challenges simultaneously, since our economy is a system and these elements interact. This will not be easy; we must push to achieve these fundamental changes at a time when the American people have lost faith in their government’s ability to act in service of the common good.

The problems we face today are in large part the result of economic decisions we made—or failed to make—beginning in the late 1970s.

The changes occurring in our economy, politics, and society have been dramatic, and there is a corresponding sense of urgency in this report. We cannot afford to go forward with minor tweaks and hope that they do the trick. We know the answer: they will not, and the suffering that will occur in the meantime is unconscionable. And, as we explain, this is not just about the present, but the future. The policies of today are “baking in” the America of 2050: unless we change course, we will be a country with slower growth, ever more inequality, and ever less equality of opportunity. Inequality has been a choice, and it is within our power to reverse it.

The good news is that Stiglitz’s report is not just an intellectual exercise. Along with the Roosevelt Institute, he will be releasing a series of specific proposals to help rewrite the rules of the economy in favor of ordinary Americans. As the presidential campaign heats up, I have no doubt that Bernie will be onboard, but will Hillary or Jeb Bush? Joe Stiglitz is one of many official advisors to the Clinton campaign, but I’m not holding my breath that she will embrace the kind of changes he envisions.

We are entering an interesting time in history, when the majority of voters are aware that, despite cheery statements from the Obama administration to the contrary, there has been no economic recovery for ordinary Americans. Also, the majority of voters know that banks and corporations will be spending obscene amounts of money to elect Hilary Clinton, or the GOP candidate, who will continue to write rules that favor the elite.

The time is ripe for genuine progressive ideas to take hold because, for once, they have a chance to resonate with people across the political spectrum. Bernie Sanders and Joe Stiglitz, together, offer real solutions to an economy, and a country, gone off the rails.

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Since 2009, the Obama administration has been negotiating the Trans-Pacific Parnership (TPP) trade agreement in secret. Only lawyers and advisors representing banks and corporations, and trade representatives from other nations are allowed to participate. Until recently, senators and congressmen had been left in the dark. Under protest, Obama gave them very limited access to the document. He told them they are forbidden, under threat of government prosecution, from discussing the trade deal with the public.

Rep. Alan Grayson said “Having seen what I’ve seen, I would characterize this as a gross abrogation of American sovereignty. And I would further characterize it as a punch in the face to the middle class of America. I think that’s fair to say from what I’ve seen so far. But I’m not allowed to tell you why!”

Obama, trying his best to sell a pig in a poke, is pushing the TPP as promoting “free trade,” which he equates with creating more jobs and prosperity for the American people. He claims it will be “good for the middle class.” This. of course, is exactly what Bill Clinton said about NAFTA in 1993.

A report published by Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch in 2014 reviews the promises and failures of NAFTA:

Like the TPP, NAFTA was sold to the U.S. public in 1993 with grand promises. The deal would create hundreds of thousands of good jobs here–170,000 jobs within the pact’s first two years, according the Peterson Institute for International Economics. U.S. farmers would export their way to wealth. NAFTA would bring Mexico to a first-world level of economic prosperity and stability, providing new economic opportunities that would reduce immigration to the United States. Environmental standards would improve.

Twenty years later, the grand projections and promises made by NAFTA’s proponents remain unfulfilled.

The report details how destructive NAFTA has been for the citizens of the United States and Mexico:

The data show that NAFTA proponents’ projections of broad economic benefits from the deal have failed to materialize. Instead, millions have suffered job loss, wage stagnation, and economic instability from NAFTA. Scores of environmental, health and other public interest policies have been challenged. Consumer safeguards, including key food safety protections, have been rolled back. And NAFTA supporters’ warnings about the chaos that would engulf Mexico, and a new wave of migration from Mexico, if NAFTA was not implemented have indeed come to pass, but ironically because of the devastation of many Mexicans’ livelihoods occurring, in part, because NAFTA was implemented.

What exactly is “free trade?”

Independent political writer, “Gaius Publius,” explains the meaning of the term “free trade” in the context of the TPP.

[I]n essence “free trade” means one thing to most of us and another thing to people with money. For us, “free trade” is about exchange of goods. Not for those with almost all the money in the world. For them, “free trade” is and always has been this:

“Free trade” means “unrestricted capital flow.” It’s the right of money to flow anywhere it wants, seeking any profit it can, unrestricted by any government, and then flow back out again on a whim.

Before FDR, this is what “liberalism” meant; it’s why people like the infamous free-market economist Friedrich Hayek are considered “classic liberal economists.” FDR so changed the definition of “liberal,” in fact—by allowing a place for government in the management of the economy—that it led people like Hayek to object that the name had been misappropriated:

In 1977, Hayek was critical of the Lib-Lab pact, in which the British Liberal Party agreed to keep the British Labour government in office. Writing to The Times, Hayek said, “May one who has devoted a large part of his life to the study of the history and the principles of liberalism point out that a party that keeps a socialist government in power has lost all title to the name ‘Liberal’. Certainly no liberal can in future vote ‘Liberal'”.

This “free market” stuff has been with us for centuries in the West, and it’s always about capital and the rights of capital to be free of government. Guess who that benefits? If you said “capitalists and the politicians who serve them,” you’d be right. You can’t have a predatory Industrial Revolution without that kind of “philosophy” in place as a cover story.

Needless to say, the cover story is still in place. Welcome to the world of TPP.

The TPP “free trade” deal, up close and personal

Besides losing your job to someone in one of the TPP countries, there are other ways the TPP could directly impact your life. For example, the TPP will free banks and corporations from the constraints of government laws and regulations—both here and in other signatory countries—by setting up a corporate-run legal tribunal that would supersede all government jurisprudence. What exactly does that mean?

Lambert Strether, writing at Naked Capitalism, gives us examples of how this form of absolute rule by corporations enshrined in the TPP could play out in your state or your neighborhood.

So, if you were a corporate lawyer, sitting in judgement on a TPP tribunal, totting up the damages some hapless government had wreaked against a corporation by, oh, providing its citizens with single payer health care, or preventing an oil company from poisoning their groundwater through “excessive regulation,”—or halting development to protect a historic site under local zoning ordinances, or halting the East-West Corridor to protect the Penobscot—what would you consider “distinct, reasonable, investment-backed expectations”? I’d guess it would be the Net Present Value (capitalization) calculations done by the wounded corporation itself, eh? Like on an Excel spreadsheet. What could be more credible? Or more just?

In other words, TPP elevates capitalization—the expectation of profit—as a principle to the level of, say, the Bill of Rights, or the Declaration of the Rights of Man. And then, government, when it provides concrete material benefits to its citizens, must “compensate” capitalists whenever their calculated, immaterial expectations—capitalization—have been “expropriated.” What a racket! TPP is the biggest enclosure in the history of the world!

“Arbitrary control”—absolutism—in service of capital as a global change in the constitutional order, and all done in secret. What could go wrong?

It’s no wonder Obama wants to keep this deal secret from the American people. It is written by and for corporations, it undermines national sovereignty and nullifies your voice as a citizen.

Elizabeth Warren, who has been highly critical of Obama negotiating the TPP in secret, had this to say on her blog:

Have you seen what’s in the new TPP trade deal?

Most likely, you haven’t – and don’t bother trying to Google it. The government doesn’t want you to read this massive new trade agreement. It’s top secret.

Why? Here’s the real answer people have given me: “We can’t make this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it.”

If the American people would be opposed to a trade agreement if they saw it, then that agreement should not become the law of the United States.

Well said, Senator Warren! And shame on you President Obama.

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I watched Hillary’s slick ad announcing her 2016 presidential campaign. If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it here. Left writer and thinker Paul Street summed it up in a recent Facebook comment:

This is about as disingenuously fake-progressive as a candidacy announcement could be. A very slick production, combining a subtle undercurrent of pretend populism with less subtle appeals to racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender identity.

Still, the very Wall Street-friendly Hillary’s late entrance claiming to care that “the deck is stacked for those at the top” (or whatever the exact words were) is stiff and unconvincing. She just doesn’t have the magic and flair for the campaign trail, for the “manipulation of populism by elitism” that the formerly left [Christopher] Hitchens once identified as “the essence of American politics.”

Hillary’s ad vs. her record

Let’s just start with this. When Bill Clinton was in office, Hillary and Bill functioned as a powerful political team. She was intimately involved in, and approved of, his administration’s policy decisions. If and when she becomes president, we will get the same team. So let’s look at their record together, her record as a previous presidential candidate, and her record as a senator.

First of all, Hillary is no friend of children and families in need. In 1996, with Hillary’s encouragement, Bill Clinton signed a bill that destroyed the major federal program to help poor people and poor families—Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Seventy percent on that program were children. Thanks to the Clintons, poor children have dropped off the radar.

In a 2013 article in Dissent Magazine, Fred Block and Frances Fox Piven describe what happened to the poor under the Clintons:

The new legislation completely eliminated the AFDC program along with the entitlement to assistance that it had created, and replaced it with a new program called “Temporary Aid to Needy Families” that was administered at the state level, with substantial federal restrictions on how the money was to be spent. The program imposed a strict five-year time limit on welfare receipt, and states were encouraged (with both carrots and sticks) to set even more stringent limits. The biggest incentive was a guaranteed fixed-block grant from the federal government; if they moved recipients off the rolls, states could repurpose the grant funds to pay for other things. Now monies that once went to poor moms in the form of welfare checks go to for-profit companies.

This is just one example of what corporate Democrats like the Clintons have done to destroy the progressive legacy of the Democratic Party.

Hillary’s Goldman-Sachs problem. In Bill’s administration, Hillary was equally close to the action on economic policy. Ex-Goldman chairman, Robert Rubin, and his protege Lawrence Summers, were the people in the Clinton administration who deregulated Wall Street, a direct cause of the economic meltdown of 2008 and the misery that followed. Hillary Clinton was in full support of Bill signing the Wall Street friendly legislation that led to the Great Recession—the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, the Financial Services Modernization Act, which gutted Glass-Steagall. Rubin was also the architect of NAFTA, and other job killing trade deals.

No surprise that Goldman has donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation. In 2013, Hillary, who carried water for Wall Street as a senator, gave two paid speeches to Goldman Sachs audiences at around $200,000 a pop.

Hillary’s buddies at Goldman hardly exemplify the values and principles she puts forward in her ad. In 2011, a senate investigative report concluded that Goldman had misled clients by selling complicated securities to customers that were secretly designed to fail.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission’s report also described Goldman as a first-class predator. It described the firm as knowingly peddling junk to suckers who trusted them. One expert compared Goldman’s wheeling-and-dealing to “buying fire insurance on someone else’s house and then committing arson.”

Last year, the New York Times reported that Goldman Sachs and other financial firms conspired to rig the aluminum market, costing consumers billions of dollars, and adding to the burden of already struggling middle-class families.

Remember, these are Hillary’s friends.

A year ago Hillary gave a policy speech at the New America Foundation in DC, where she talked about the financial plight of Americans who “are still barely getting by, barely holding on, not seeing the rewards that they believe their hard work should have merited. She talked about the “shadow-banking system” that caused the financial crisis. No surprise, she sounded a lot like Elizabeth Warren, because at that time Warren was seen as a threat to her candidacy. Yet she has very deep ties to Wall Street CEOs who will fund her campaign.

This is the cynical side of politics. She has to sound populist to get elected and Wall Street knows that, which is why you have to take what she says, how ever well-written and passionately delivered, with a grain of salt. The proof will be in who she brings into her administration, her actual policies, and who those policies serve.

On foreign policy and national security. One of my worst fears about Hillary is her simpleminded, warmongering attitude toward the rest of the world, and her unthinking dedication to the perpetuation of U.S. economic and military hegemony. During the 2008 presidential primary, the Guardian quoted her comments on Iran:

“In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

My question is: What kind of human being talks about “totally obliterating” another country? And what will she do when she is “commander-in-chief, when she will have the power to do so?”

No surprise that after becoming a senator, Hillary voted for the Iraq war. Since then, she has worked tirelessly to build her cred as a hawk. As Doug Henwood writes at Harper’s:

She backed an escalation of the Afghanistan war, lobbied on behalf of a continuing military presence in Iraq, urged Obama to bomb Syria, and supported the intervention in Libya. As Michael Crowley wrote in Time, “On at least three crucial issues — Afghanistan, Libya, and the bin Laden raid — Clinton took a more aggressive line than [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates, a Bush-appointed Republican.”

Hillary’s terrible record on civil liberties. When in the Senate, she voted for the Patriot Act and its reauthorization. She has defended NSA surveillance and accused whistleblower Edward Snowden of supporting terrorism.

Robert Sheer, in an interview with Democracy Now! comments:

She didn’t trust the State Department with her email, but she never told us that the State Department, the CIA and the NSA were spying on the emails of all Americans. No, but she thinks that’s fine. She’s just going to keep her email in her garage, you know, so I find her to be a center of cynicism and opportunism, and really quite reckless.

Should progressives vote for Hillary Clinton?

Her vicious record notwithstanding, I think we should consider voting for her for two important reasons: A) The Supreme Court will have vacancies to be filled, and B) a Republican president actually will be much worse.

I’ve grown to hate this notion, but, I think we have to vote for the “lesser of two evils.” I’m not using this phrase as a figure of speech. Both Democrats and Republicans hobnob with the power elite, take their billions, and do their bidding. Both candidates will lie and use populist rhetoric to manipulate us into voting for them. So, yeah, I think this constitutes “evil.” Unfortunately, we have a two-party system, and we have to struggle within that reality. Things are bad under corporate Democrats but they would be really bad under a Republican presidency.

We don’t have to be slavish, adoring groupies to vote for Hillary or to work for her campaign. We can engage strategically and pressure her on issues to force her to the left.

What progressives can do

Hillary is a political animal, and like all political animals, she responds to political pressure. What we progressives can do is educate ourselves on the power elites, how they function, and how she will be working with them. We can start by looking at her campaign advisors and whose interests they represent. We can be vocal in our criticism of her Wall Street alliances, and her record of undermining working people and the poor.

There is always the fear that criticism of a Democratic candidate from the left will cause him or her to lose, but that view comes from the all-or-nothing mentality of the personality-driven, groupie crowd that populates campaign offices. It’s time for grown-up, hardball politics. It’s not only OK to criticize a corporate Democratic candidate, it’s essential if we are to restore anything resembling a democracy.

It would not harm but rather strengthen Hillary’s candidacy if we call her on her fake populism and demand that she commit to real progressive policies—like, for starters, Medicare for all, the expansion of Social Security to an income the elderly could live on, raising the income cap on Social Security taxes, or the development of a national infrastructure bank. A genuine progressive would get a disengaged public to the polls. It would strengthen her candidacy if we call her out on her hawkish foreign policy and her support for Wall Street proxy wars, like the one being fought in Ukraine. We need to ask her, publicly, why the billions spent on defense (a form of government handouts to corporations and CEOs) would not be better spent on a peace economy that would benefit everyone. Finally, after she is elected, we can vow to be a constant thorn in her side until she delivers for the American people.

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In case you haven’t noticed, U.S. mainstream media has been spewing out anti-Russian, anti-Putin propaganda since the U.S. backed coup in Kiev last year. If you believe the lies on TV and in the New York Times, an emboldened Putin is planning to take over the world, one country at a time. First, they report breathlessly, he is determined to take over Ukraine, then he’s after the former Soviet nations, and then, who knows? Scary isn’t it? Obviously, Russia wants to take over the world. Oh, wait a minute. . . that’s what the United States is trying to do.

If the rebels in the Eastern Provinces really are Russian soldiers, (rather than Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens who refuse to accept the corrupt, U.S. stooge government in Kiev) you would think the Ukrainians in the West would eagerly join the army to fight Putin’s soldiers invading from the East. But they know better. They are refusing to be drafted to fight and kill their fellow Ukrainians in a war that they know is being run by the corrupt, U.S. backed government in Kiev. The photo is of Ukrainian soldiers surrendering to the rebels in Eastern Ukraine

On February 10, the Guardian reported that Ukrainian journalist:

Ruslan Kotsaba posted a video addressed to the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, last week in which he said he would rather go to prison for five years for draft-dodging than fight pro-Russia rebels in the country’s east. Now he faces 15 years in jail after being arrested for treason and obstructing the military.

Justin Raimondo, reports at Antiwar.com about the growing anti-war movement in Ukraine:

Draft resistance is at an all-time high: a mere 6 percent of those called up [to fight the rebels in the eastern provinces] have reported voluntarily. This has forced the Kiev authorities to go knocking on doors—where they are met either with a mass of angry villagers, who refuse to let them take anyone, or else ghost towns where virtually everyone has fled. In the Transcarpathia region of western Ukraine, entire villages have been emptied, the inhabitants fleeing to Russia to wait out the war—or the fall of the Kiev regime, whichever comes first. “It may seem a paradox,” says Transcarpathia’s chief recruitment officer, “but from the western Ukrainian region of Ternopyl people have fled to Russia in order to escape army conscription.” The frantic [U.S backed] Ukrainian regime is now contemplating conscripting women over 20.

Poroshenko’s military mobilization is due not only to numerous setbacks in the east – Ukrainian troops are being pushed back on all fronts by highly motivated rebels defending their own towns and villages – but also because thousands are deserting, throwing down their arms and fleeing to Russia. In response, the Ukrainian parliament has passed a law authorizing local commanders to shoot deserters on the spot.

Raimondo continues:

With [Ukrainian president] Poroshenko’s war looking like a major disaster, one that could easily topple his EU/US-installed regime, the War Party in the US is turning up the heat, demanding that Washington provide Kiev with arms. Sen. John McCain is – naturally – leading the charge, but prominent liberals are also in the front ranks, with leading scholars of the Brookings Institution recently calling for heavy weapons to be sent. That provoked a response from a dissident within Brookings, former State Department official Jeremy Shapiro, who argues that the Ukrainian conflict is a civil war that cannot have a military solution, and is more than likely to provoke a dangerous military confrontation with Russia.

Ya think? Raimondo nails it:

All this [fomenting a coup and a civil war in Ukraine] was done in the name of sticking a finger in Vladimir Putin’s eye, whose great sin has been kicking out thieving oligarchs and opposing US pretensions to global hegemony. Washington’s ultimate goal is regime-change in the Kremlin, and the reinstallation of a Yeltsin-like sock puppet who, when Washington says “Jump!” will answer: “How high?”

The truth about the United States is this: anyone who challenges U.S. global economic and/or military hegemony will be taken out. The standard playbook includes the demonization, in the media, of whatever leader is in the U.S.’s crosshairs in order to justify an illegitimate war against the country in question for the economic gain of banks and corporations. And so, in corporate-owned media, Putin is mocked and vilified by “journalists” who regurgitate the false narratives fed to them by the White House, State Department, intelligence community and military. This, of course, is to legitimize regime-change in the eyes of U.S. citizens as well as the obscene sums our Wall Street/ corporate-backed government spends on war.

That they’re [President Obama and the military/industrial/intelligence complex] willing to risk World War III in order to achieve their goal underscores the sheer craziness of US foreign policy. The latest official US “National Security Strategy” puts the new cold war at the center of Washington’s military-diplomatic vision—an emphasis so monstrously misplaced that it’s hard to believe they’re serious.

Yet you had better believe it: this is what we can expect from a future Democratic administration, if one should come to pass, with Hillary Clinton taking her husband’s Slavophobia—remember the Kosovo war?— to new heights of unreason.

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For me, 2014 was a year of profound revelation. It’s the year I came to fully understand the depth of the corruption of the United States government and its elected officials. The revelations came after I cut my cable, stopped relying on the New York Times and other mainstream print media as a source of information, and turned to independent, left-leaning investigative journalists who are not beholden to a corporate/bank paycheck.

I also broadened my reading beyond the U.S. to journalists and news sources from other countries. My eyes were opened and, I have to say, my stomach was turned. It became clear to me that the United States is the main source of violence in the world—and without a doubt, the most ruthless nation on the planet.

The selling of Wall Street driven wars

Here in the U.S., we are drowning in a sea of government-sponsored propaganda designed to get us onboard with Wall Street driven wars, genetically modified “frankenfoods,” fracking— whatever the corporate funders of political campaigns want. Fear mongering and emotional manipulation, demonization of world leaders targeted for regime change, militarization of the police, and blanket domestic surveillance are sold to a the American public as necessary to keep us safe. The lies have become grotesquely Orwellian. The mainstream media slavishly reports them as truth, and gullible Americans swallow them whole.

The ongoing New York Times reporting on Ukraine was one of the worst examples of government/media lies in 2014. We are told that Russian aggression is dangerous and has to be contained. But, what is really going on? What happened in Kiev in 2014?

The US, taking advantage of local unrest in Ukraine, fanned the flames, funded local Neo Nazi thugs, supplied U.S. mercenaries, and instigated a violent coup in Kiev. The U.S. was behind the overturning a democratically elected government and the installation of a US backed puppet regime. The U.S. was and continues to be the aggressor in Ukraine. The rest of the world knows this but clueless Americans, watching the lies on the evening news, believe Vladimir Putin has horns and is on a rampage to take over the world—the United States and NATO being the only forces willing to step up and hold back the evil Russian hoards.

What are the real reasons the U.S. is involved in Ukraine?

Plain and simple: the powers that be in this country want to stop Russian economic integration and partnership with Europe and Asia. As always, American foreign policy is about money and power—and only about money and power. It’s about government paving the way for bank and corporate exploitation. It’s about oil and gas pipelines, and the control the world and its resources. It’s about the U.S. insisting on a unipolar world where it is the sole superpower. Any country that doesn’t submit to its hegemony is destroyed as were Iraq and Libya.

The Russian-speaking people of eastern Ukraine, horrified at the Nazi infested regime installed by the U.S., showed their objection by taking over local police stations and arming themselves. The government of Kiev, under the guidance and direction of CIA director John Brennan, (who instructed them to start calling the separatists “terrorists”) marched across the country and attacked them with heavy armor and tanks. (Note: The so-called “Russian-backed separatists” did not march across Ukraine to attack Kiev.)

People suffer and die for the enrichment of U.S. banks and corporations. The stomach turning aspect of American foreign policy can be found in the photos accompanying this post.

The U.S. caused suffering in Eastern Ukraine

The Associated Press reports that as of December 15, 2014, the UN confirmed death toll in Eastern Ukraine is 4,707. These are ordinary human beings—men, women and children of Eastern Ukraine—who died in the past year, because of a U.S.-backed coup and civil war. An additional 10,322 people have been wounded. More than 5 million are facing increasing hardships as winter sets in. The most vulnerable populations, such as the elderly, children and people in state institutional care, are being affected by disruptions in social and medical services.

On December 22, 2014, The Guardian reported that according to the UN high commissioner for refugees, 514,000 people have been internally displaced in Eastern Ukraine since the fighting began. Of those, 233,000 have sought permanent refuge in Russia and smaller numbers in Poland and Belarus.

As far as I’m concerned, the blood and human suffering in Ukraine are on the hands of Barack Obama, Victoria (“fuck the EU”) Nuland and her fellow neocons in the State Department, CIA director John Brennan, as well as John McCain, who was in Kiev encouraging violence in the run up to the the coup. Blood is also on the hands of executives at Monsanto and other corporate CEOs who are salivating at the chance to profit from the resources of Ukraine, and on Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, who was given a lucrative job on the board of a Ukrainian gas company days after the coup. Blood is also on the hands of the IMF and its soul-killing, bank-friendly austerity measures implemented immediately by the U.S. backed regime.

The level of corruption in the United States is sociopathic and the willingness of those in power to kill people for corporate profit is sickening. The fact that those in government lie, routinely, to the American people to hide the true motives for war is despicable.

It was unhooking myself from mainstream media, and seeking out writers and journalists whose progressive, humanitarian values I share, that helped me see the United States more clearly. The mainstream media is a powerful force for keeping people ignorant and uninformed. But there is more going with the American people than being bamboozled by propaganda.

We like being top dog and don’t want to give it up

The most disturbing aspect of Americans, particularly of liberal Democrats, is the acceptance of US militarism as necessary for economic survival and for “safety.” Many liberals, even those who call themselves progressives, are exceedingly comfortable with the United States being top dog in the world. Even when presented with massive evidence to the contrary, most Americans cling to a fantasy of the United States as a force for good, battling against the forces of evil, always defined for them, of course, by the government and its corporate media.

Contrary to popular opinion, The U.S. is not innocent

Journalistic malpractice is a huge problem in the United States, but so is this pervasive American belief in the myth of American innocence. It keeps Americans infantile, clueless and uninformed. The ability of the government and corporate media to manipulate is made easier because the American people are so easy to manipulate. Karl Rove built his career on the gullibility of naive Americans,

At this time, at the beginning of 2015, when it comes to foreign policy, I do not trust the New York Times, or any other major US newspaper, and I consider TV news, with a few exceptions, to be basically worthless as a source of credible information. Is mainstream media overwhelmingly bad? Of course, within the vast corporate owned universe, there are many writers who communicate and report with compassion and integrity. But, I will continue to look outside the mainstream media for my understanding of the United States and the powers that control it. Even if you don’t want to give up mainstream media, I encourage you to do the same.

From a dangerous unipolar world to a peaceful multipolar world

Despite this bleak picture, I am optimistic that in the next decade the world will stand up to the United States, will reject the dollar as reserve currency, and thus curtail our bank and corporate owned government’s ability to bully the world. As I write, Russia, China, and the BRICS nations are deliberately undermining U.S. dominance by forging trade agreements to be settled outside the dollar. The president of France, in the last few days, spoke out against U.S, sanctions against Russia. These are good things, and signs that the U.S. Empire is in decline.

My hope is that we will move from a unipolar world to a multi-polar one dedicated to a peaceful, mutually beneficial coexistence, in which countries opt for fair trade rather than war, and where income and resources are shared in a more balanced way.

I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world. . . .  What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is, and can be, no moral foundations for modern civilisation.

—Vladimir Putin, speech at Munich Conference on Security Policy, February 12. 2007

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