U.S. fiscal failure warrants a de-Americanized world + Baba Beijing’s Belly Laugh Felt Round the World

U.S. fiscal failure warrants a de-Americanized world
Liu Chang (xinhuanet.com)

BEIJING, Oct. 13 (Xinhua) — As U.S. politicians of both political parties are still shuffling back and forth between the White House and the Capitol Hill without striking a viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world.

Emerging from the bloodshed of the Second World War as the world’s most powerful nation, the United States has since then been trying to build a global empire by imposing a postwar world order, fueling recovery in Europe, and encouraging regime-change in nations that it deems hardly Washington-friendly.

With its seemingly unrivaled economic and military might, the United States has declared that it has vital national interests to protect in nearly every corner of the globe, and has been habituated to meddling in the business of other countries and regions far away from its shores.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government has gone to all lengths to appear before the world as the one that claims the moral high ground, yet covertly doing things that are as audacious as torturing prisoners of war, slaying civilians in drone attacks, and spying on world leaders.

Under what is known as the Pax-Americana, we fail to see a world where the United States is helping to defuse violence and conflicts, reduce poor and displaced population, and bring about real, lasting peace.

Moreover, instead of honoring its duties as a responsible leading power, a self-serving Washington has abused its superpower status and introduced even more chaos into the world by shifting financial risks overseas, instigating regional tensions amid territorial disputes, and fighting unwarranted wars under the cover of outright lies.

As a result, the world is still crawling its way out of an economic disaster thanks to the voracious Wall Street elites, while bombings and killings have become virtually daily routines in Iraq years after Washington claimed it has liberated its people from tyrannical rule.

Most recently, the cyclical stagnation in Washington for a viable bipartisan solution over a federal budget and an approval for raising debt ceiling has again left many nations’ tremendous dollar assets in jeopardy and the international community highly agonized.

Such alarming days when the destinies of others are in the hands of a hypocritical nation have to be terminated, and a new world order should be put in place, according to which all nations, big or small, poor or rich, can have their key interests respected and protected on an equal footing.

To that end, several corner stones should be laid to underpin a de-Americanized world.

For starters, all nations need to hew to the basic principles of the international law, including respect for sovereignty, and keeping hands off domestic affairs of others.

Furthermore, the authority of the United Nations in handling global hotspot issues has to be recognized. That means no one has the right to wage any form of military action against others without a UN mandate. Apart from that, the world’s financial system also has to embrace some substantial reforms.

The developing and emerging market economies need to have more say in major international financial institutions including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, so that they could better reflect the transformations of the global economic and political landscape.

What may also be included as a key part of an effective reform is the introduction of a new international reserve currency that is to be created to replace the dominant U.S. dollar, so that the international community could permanently stay away from the spillover of the intensifying domestic political turmoil in the United States.

Of course, the purpose of promoting these changes is not to completely toss the United States aside, which is also impossible. Rather, it is to encourage Washington to play a much more constructive role in addressing global affairs.

Baba Beijing’s Belly Laugh Felt Round the World by Jeff J. Brown (44days.net)

The Smart Money’s on China’s Seat at the Head of the 21st Century Roundtable

China’s leadership includes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the many thousands of government representatives, from the 300 person State Council, which is at the pinnacle of a very broad hierarchal administrative pyramid, down to the level of village mayors in rural areas across this vast, continent sized country. Because this massive system of governance maintains a firm, patriarchal mien, due to 2,500 years of Confucian thought imbuing all levels of Chinese society, I affectionately call this powerful, mindful system Baba Beijing. Baba in Chinese, as in many other languages means father.

This month, Caucasian pundits and the usual gaggle of media toadies are kowtowing like the craven Mandarins they innately are, to help the Princes of Power maintain the Washington/London/Paris consensus. We the people are supposed to cower under the shock and awe of this Official Western Narrative. This system of crowd control has worked like a hypnotic talisman for the better part of 500 years: slavery, colonialism, wars of lust for lucre, fascism, corporatocracy, market bubbles and the gang rape of Mother Nature. This rigged casino table that guarantees usurious house profits for the 1% has recently and forever been tilted in the opposite direction towards the 99%. It was done with the stroke of an oriental calligraphy brush and there is no turning back now.

The usual Western denial, rationalization and official silence are surrounding the October 13th editorial in China’s official press organ, Xinhua: U.S. fiscal failure warrants a de-Americanized world. It is a damning, honest and unvarnished account of the West’s shameful and cowardly conduct. This commentary justly lampoons the buffoonish, Ho-Ho the clown antics inside the Washington beltway, with the neocon White House and its corporate Hessians in the halls of statecraft making utter fools of themselves. Tang Danlu is the author of A De-Americanized World. In true Chinese fashion for the appreciation of deep history, Mr. Tang harks back to the United States’ long suffering Pax Americana. We can add to this perceptive comment on what ails our Pale Blue Dot, that this global Monroe Doctrine is nothing but a geopolitical battering ram that was handed over from the United Kingdom’s Pax Britannica, which was nothing more than an European economic escutcheon for exploiting the Earth’s resources and the largely dark skinned people who were and are their rightful owners, not the power elite’s.

The Chinese know a thing or two about fascism, the 1% and their satraps who pass and sign their pre-packaged laws and regulations with Mont Blanc, 18-carat, diamond studded styluses. China to this day bemoans their century of shame, when, from the 1840s to the 1940s, American, European and Japanese colonialists plied the Middle Kingdom with opium, and tapped her resources and impoverished citizens like an overworked, underfed whore. Mr. Yan Fu was a turn-of-the-20th century Chinese scholar and celebrated translator of Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. He later was a political activist in the 1895 Gongche Shangshu movement, demanding, in part, a China rid of foreign (in this case, Japanese) exploitation. Yan Fu summed up bitterly what billions of people around the world empirically already know all too well:

The European race’s last three hundred years of evolutionary progress have all come down to nothing but four words: selfishness, slaughter, shamelessness and corruption.

Sitting here in China, thousands of kilometers from and midway between the bipolar lunacy of the United States and its shamefully spineless NATO allies in Europe, it is a sad spectacle to watch, like some nightmarish Beijing opera with a libretto written by Hades. Westerners’ blind, official denial of A De-Americanized World is just another manifestation of their five century history of hubris and megalomania. Tang Danlu did not write his editorial all by himself in a dark corner down in the basement of Xinhua’s headquarters. Baba Beijing would not have allowed it to be released, unless it was tacitly acknowledged at the highest levels of governance. Baba Beijing is too paternal and perceptive about its international relations to do otherwise.

A few years back, Baba Beijing, through various press releases and commentaries like A De-Americanized World, began a subtle campaign to reduce their dependence on the US dollar for trade, and to beef up the credibility of the RMB, China’s currency, in international markets.[*] Royal Flush Russia, being a natural resources behemoth, was keen to get the ball rolling too, not to mention Big Kahuna agricultural commodities baron, Brazil. For the last five years, the Official Western Narrative has been pooh-poohing and scoffing at the notion that the West’s ace of spades, the US dollar as the world’s reserve and trade settlement currency, could ever be considered anything but. The Washington/London/Paris consensus got out its media dog whistle and their pompom press posse went to work to relegate this heinous, heretical idea straight down Orwell’s Memory Hole. The United States bullied and bought off allies to refrain from signing currency swaps for trade settlement. In any case, these accords were signed with Baba Beijing, behind closed doors and with little fanfare, in order to avoid Washington’s wrath, the world’s supposed unipolar, superpower. My-oh-my, how fast the geopolitical zeitgeist can change. The King of the Jungle was and is turning into a paper tiger and friends and foes alike sense it. Just like now, the West talked the talk and the rest of the world rolled up its collective shirt sleeves and walked the walk. Over the last few years, these RMB currency swaps have become all the rage, even with America’s most subservient European, Asian and Middle Eastern vassals. What used to be done furtively is now splashed on the front pages of Western newspapers, since years of official and media denial have failed miserably. Baba Beijing’s persistent, patient diplomacy have normalized currency swaps into the mainstream and these deals are just too big to ignore.

Alea iacta est and the West still does not get it. Tang Danlu was the one who picked up his calligraphy pen and wrote one of the most important realpolitik editorials of the decade, a veritable shot across the bow of the Washington/London/Paris consensus, and like the ghost of Yan Fu, he had plenty of historical and timely reasons to write it. But rest assured, ever paternalistic Baba Beijing was standing there in his office, glowing with pride, like a gentle, Confucian laoshi, or teacher, chuckling with a belly laugh, and giving him a smiling, encouraging pat on the back.

The 21st century marches on. Head East and hop on board. You can’t miss the signs if you care to look.

♣ ♣ ♣

[*] BRIC summit may focus on reducing dollar dependence (China Daily)

Editor's Note (AWIP): The photo we're using here is The Laughing Buddha. This would in a narrow sense not be appropriate when trying to illustrate the essence of a culture which clearly is and always has been Confucian, never Buddhist. However, the Chinese put their stamp on Buddhism as on many other things, and as Confucius is not being associated with a "belly laugh" (by any stretch of the mind), we've settled for the Chinese Buddha this time. - May the Buddha forgive us our lack of respect ;-).