(Slavoj, senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and a professor at the European Graduate School, Violence, p. 1-4)
If there is a unifying thesis that runs through the bric-a-brac of reflections on holds true for violence .
violence that follow, it is that a similar paradox
At the forefront of our minds, the obvious signals of violence are acts of crime and terror, civil unrest, international conflict . But we should learn to step
back , to disentangle ourselves from the fascinating lure of this directly visible “subjective” violence, violence performed by a clearly identifiable agent.
We need to perceive the contours of the background which generates such outbursts. A step back enables us to identify a violence that sustains our very efforts to fight violence and to promote tolerance.
This is the starting point, perhaps even the axiom, of the present book:
subjective violence is just the most visible portion of a triumvirate that also includes two objective kinds of violence.
First,
there is a “symbolic” violence embodied in language and its forms, what Heidegger would call “our house of being.” As we shall see later, this violence is not only at work in the obvious—and extensively studied—cases of incitement and of the relations of social domination reproduced in our habitual speech forms: there is a more fundamental form of violence still that pertains to language as such, to its imposition of a certain universe of meaning.
Second, there is what I call
“systemic” violence, or the often catastrophic consequences of the smooth functioning of our
economic and political systems .
The catch is that
subjective and objective violence cannot
be perceived from the same standpoint : subjective violence is experienced as such against the background of a non-violent zero level. It is seen as a perturbation of the
“normal,” peaceful state of things.
However,
objective violence is precisely the violence inherent to this “normal” state of things. Objective violence is invisible since it sustains the very zero-level standard against which we perceive something as subjectively violent.
Systemic violence is thus something like the notorious “dark matter” of physics, the counterpart to an all-too- visible subjective violence .
It may be invisible, but it has to be taken into account if one is to make sense of what otherwise seem to be “irrational” explosions of subjective violence.
When the media bombard us with those “humanitarian crises” which seem constantly to pop up all over the world, one should always bear in mind that a particular crisis only explodes into media visibility as the result of a complex struggle. Properly humanitarian considerations as a rule play a less important role here than cultural, ideologico-political, and economic considerations. The cover story of Time magazine on 5 June 2006, for example, was “The Deadliest War in the World.” This offered detailed documentation on how around 4 million people died in the Democratic Republic of Congo as the result of political violence over the last decade. None of the usual humanitarian uproar followed, just a couple of readers’ letters—as if some kind of filtering mechanism blocked this news from achieving its full impact in our symbolic space. To put it cynically,
Time picked the wrong victim in the struggle for hegemony in suffering. It should have stuck to the list of usual suspects:
Muslim women and their plight, or the families of 9/11 victims and how they have coped with their losses. The Congo today has effectively re-emerged as a Conradean “heart of darkness.” No one dares to confront it head on. The death of a West Bank
Palestinian child, not to mention an Israeli or an American, is mediatically worth thousands of times more than the death of a nameless Congolese. Do we need further proof that the humanitarian sense of urgency is mediated, indeed overdetermined, by clear political considerations
? And what are these considerations?
To answer this, we need to step back and take a look from a different position.
When the U.S. media reproached the public in foreign countries for not displaying enough sympathy for the victims of the 9/11 attacks, one was tempted to answer them in the words Robespierre addressed to those who complained about the innocent victims of revolutionary terror: “Stop shaking the tyrant’s bloody robe in my face, or I will believe that you wish to put Rome in chains.”1
Instead of confronting violence directly, the present book casts six sideways glances.
There are reasons for looking at the problem of violence awry.
My underlying premise is that
there is something inherently

mystifying in a direct confrontation with it: the overpowering horror of violent acts and empathy with the victims inexorably function as a lure which prevents us from thinking
. A dispassionate conceptual development of the typology of violence must by definition ignore its traumatic impact. Yet there is a sense in which a cold analysis of violence somehow reproduces and participates in its horror. A distinction needs to be made, as well, between (factual) truth and truthfulness: what renders a report of a raped woman (or any other narrative of a trauma) truthful is its very factual unreliability, its confusion, its inconsistency. If the victim were able to report on her painful and humiliating experience in a clear manner, with all the data arranged in a consistent order, this very quality would make us suspicious of its truth. The problem here is part of the solution: the very factual deficiencies of the traumatised subject’s report on her experience bear witness to the truthfulness of her report, since they signal that the reported content “contaminated” the manner of reporting it. The same holds, of course, for the so-called unreliability of the verbal reports of Holocaust survivors: the witness able to offer a clear narrative of his camp experience would disqualify himself by virtue of that clarity.2 The only appropriate approach to my subject thus seems to be one which permits variations on violence kept at a distance out of respect towards its victims.
MARTIN
pp. Sage Online, KEL
, Charles Darwin University, Australia, “Gambling, Capitalism and the State: Towards a New Dialectic of the Risk Society?,” Journal of Consumer Culture,
The rise of aleatory consumption presented the state with a dilemma. On one hand it stood to benefit from the liberalization of an economically lucrative industry while, on the other, this change was potentially impeded by moral objections to gambling that had held sway since the Victorian era and which were institutionalized within the practice of the state, particularly with regard to gambling regulation (Reith, 1999, 2007). In other words, there emerged a tension between gambling as a celebrated form of consumption and the existing ideological basis of governance. As a consequence, the state was pressured to reconfigure the ideology of gambling consumption to align it with the emerging economic relations between consumers and the state associated with the transition to a consumer society (Husz, 2002;
Kingma, 2004). It became necessary to overturn the criticism of gambling as a morally questionable or economically unproductive activity in favour of its re-incorporation into the social world in terms of a morally-sound consumptive practice (Husz, 2002; Wilk, 2001). Consequently, an industry–state partnership
was formed that reconstructed and promoted the notion of alea as a consumer product, an entertainment, a desirable expression of consumer sovereignty and choice (Neary and Taylor, 2006; Nibert, 2006).
This involved the recasting of alea as a recreational and leisure choice through the commodification of gambling, particularly through en masse rebranding and relabelling of products (Cosgrave and Klassen, 2001). Indeed , the fantasy of the big win is perhaps the ultimate capitalistic product,
one that offers realization of all consumer dreams . Such fantasies are highly marketable and increasingly form the basis of media campaigns advertising both private and state-run gambling products (McMullan and Miller, 2008, 2009). For example, in Sweden the investment by gambling companies in advertising increased four fold in the decade up to
2006. One company, Svenska Spel, a large state-owned company that operates lotteries and sports betting, spent 25 million Euros on advertising, an outlay that placed it in the top six largest advertisers in the Swiss mass media (Binde, 2010).
(Slavoj, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies, The Sublime Object of Ideology, page 3-4)
It is upon the unity of these two features that the Marxist notion of the revolution, of the revolutionary situation, is founded : a situation of metaphorical condensation in which it finally becomes clear to the everyday consciousness that it is not possible to solve any
particular question without solving them all - that is, without solving the

fundamental question which embodies the antagonistic character of the social totality. In a 'normal', pre-revolutionary state of things, everybody is fighting his
own particular battles (workers are striking for better wages, feminists are fighting for the rights of women, democrats for political and social freedoms, ecologists against the exploitation of nature, participants in the peace movements against the danger of war, and so on). Marxists are using all their skill and adroimess of argument to convince the participants in these particular struggles that the only real solution to their problem is to be found in the global revolution: as long as social relations are dominated by Capital, there will always be sexism in relations between the sexes, there will always be a threat of global war, there will always be a danger that political and social freedoms will be suspended, nature itself will always remain an object of ruthless
exploitation. . . . The global revolution will then abolish the basic social antagonism, enabling the formation of a transparent, rationally governed society.
(Adrian, interdisciplinary research fellow in psychoanalysis at Emory, The Cynic’s Fetish: Slavoj Zizek and the Dynamics of Belief, Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society)
Perhaps the absence of a detailed political roadmap in Žižek’s recent writings isn’t a major shortcoming
. Maybe, at least for the time being, the most important task is simply the negativity of the critical struggle, the effort to cure an intellectual constipation resulting from capitalist ideology and thereby to truly open up the space for imagining authentic alternatives to the prevailing state of the situation
. Another definition of materialism offered by Žižek is that it amounts to accepting the internal inherence of what fantasmatically appears as an external deadlock or hindrance ( Žižek, 2001d, pp 22–23) (with fantasy itself being defined as the false externalization of something within the subject, namely, the illusory projection of an inner obstacle, Žižek, 2000a, p 16).
From this perspective, seeing through ideological fantasies by learning how to think again outside the confines of current restrictions has, in and of itself, the potential to operate as a form of real revolutionary practice
(rather than remaining merely an instance of negative/critical intellectual reflection). Why is this the case?
Recalling the analysis of commodity fetishism, the social efficacy of money as the universal medium of exchange
(and the entire political economy grounded upon it) ultimately relies upon nothing more than a kind of ‘‘magic,’’ that is, the belief in money’s social efficacy by those using it in the processes of exchange. Since the value of currency is, at bottom, reducible to the belief that it has the value attributed to it
(and that everyone believes that everyone else believes this as well), derailing capitalism by destroying its essential financial substance is, in a certain respect, as easy as dissolving the mere belief in this substance’s powers. The ‘‘external’’ obstacle of the capitalist system exists exclusively on the condition that subjects, whether consciously or unconsciously, ‘‘internally’’ believe in it – capitalism’s life-blood, money, is simply a fetishistic crystallization of a belief in others’ belief in the socio-performative force emanating from this same material
. And yet, this point of capitalism’s frail vulnerability is simultaneously the source of its enormous strength: its vampiric symbiosis with individual human desire, and the fact that the late-capitalist cynic’s fetishism enables the disavowal of his/her de facto belief in capitalism, makes it highly unlikely that people can simply be persuaded to stop believing and start thinking (especially since, as Žižek claims, many of these people are convinced that they already have ceased believing).
Or, the more disquieting possibility to entertain is that some people today, even if one succeeds in exposing them to the underlying logic of their position, might respond in a manner resembling that of the Judas-like character Cypher in the film The Matrix
(Cypher opts to embrace enslavement by illusion rather than cope with the discomfort of dwelling in the ‘‘desert of the real’’): faced with the choice between living the capitalist lie or wrestling with certain unpleasant truths, many individuals might very well deliberately decide to accept what they know full well to

be a false pseudo-reality, a deceptively comforting fiction
(‘‘Capitalist commodity fetishism or the truth? I choose fetishism’’).

/Jean, Fragments, 106-111/
On the necessity of Evil and Hell There is no longer any irrevocable damnation today. There is no longer any hell. We may concede that we are still within the mongrel concept of Purgatory, but virtually everything falls within the scope of redemption. It is clearly from such an evangelism that all the manifest, promotional signs of well-being and fulfilment derive that are offered us by a paradisaical society subject to the Eleventh Commandment ('Be happy and give all the signs of contentment!') - the one that cancels out all others. But we can also read this demand for salvation and universal atonement in the way that not only all current violence and injustices, but also, retrospectively, all the crimes and contradictory events of the past are now coming in for condemnation.
The French
Revolution is put in the dock and slavery is condemned , along with original sin and battered wives , the ozone layer and sexual harassment . In short, the pre-trial investigation for the Last Judgement is well under way. We are condemning, then pardoning and whitewashing, our entire history, exterminating the Evil from even the tiniest crevices in order to present the image of a radiant universe , ready to pass into the next world. A gigantic undertaking. One that is inhuman, superhuman, too human? As
Stanislaw Lee says, 'We no doubt have too anthropomorphic a view of man.' And why feed this eternal repentance factory , this chain reaction of bad conscience ? Because everything has to be saved. This is what we have come to today: everything will be redeemed, the entire past will be rehabilitated, polished to the point of transparency . As for the future, there's even better in store, and even worse: everything will be genetically modified to achieve biological perfection and the democratic perfection of the species. Salvation, which was defined by the equivalence of merit and grace, will, once the abscess of evil and hell has been drained, be defined by the equivalence between genes and performance. Actually, once happiness becomes purely and simply the general equivalent of salvation, there is no further reason for heaven. No heaven without hell, no light without darkness. No one can be saved if no one is damned (by definition, but we also know this intuitively: where would the elect find pleasure, except in the contemplation of God, were it not for the spectacle of the damned and their torment?). And once everyone is virtually saved, no one is. Salvation no longer has any meaning. This is the fate in store for our democratic enterprise: it is vitiated from the outset by the neglect of necessary discrimination, by the omission of evil. We therefore need an irrevocable presence of Evil, an Evil with no possible redemption, a definitive discrimination, a perpetual duality of Heaven and Hell, and even in a way a predestination to Evil, for no destiny can be without some predestination. There is nothing immoral in this. By the rules of the game there is nothing immoral in some losing and others winning, nor even in everyone losing. What would be immoral would be for everyone to win. Now, this is the contemporary ideal of our democracy: that everyone be saved. And this is possible only at the cost of a perpetual upping of the stakes, of endless inflation and speculation, since ultimately happiness is not so much an ideal relationship to the world as a rivalry with, and a victorious relation to, others. And this is good: it means that the hegemony of
Good, of the individual state of grace, will always be thwarted by some challenge or passion, and that any kind of happiness, any kind of ecstatic state, can be sacrificed to something more vital, which may be of the order of the will, as Schopenhauer has it, or of power, or of the will to power in Nietzsche's conception, but something which, in any event, is of the order of Evil, of which there is no definition, but which may be summed up as follows: that which, against any happy intended purpose
[destination heureuse}, is predestined to come to pass. Beneath its euphoric exaltation, this imperative of optimum performance, of ideal achievement, certainly bears evil and misfortune within it, then, in the form of a profound disavowal of such fine prospects, in the form of a secret, anticipated disillusion ment. Perhaps even this is again just a collective form of sacrifice - a human sacrifice , but a disembodied one, distilled into homeopathic doses . Wherever humans are condemned to total freedom or to ideal fulfilmen t , this subversion seeps in - this automatic abreaction to their own good and their own happiness. When they are ordered to get the maximum efficiency and pleasure out of themselves, they remain out of sorts and live a split existence. In this strange world, where everything is potentially available (the body, sex, space, money, pleasure) to be taken or rejected en bloc, everything is there; nothing has disappeared physically, but everything has disappeared metaphysically. 'As if by magic or enchantment', you might say. Only the fact is, it is more by disenchantment. Individuals, such as they are, are becoming exactly what they are. With no transcendence and no image, they pursue their lives like a function that is useless in respect of another world, irrelevant even in their own eyes.
And they do what they do all the better for the fact that there is no other possibility. No instance, no essence, no personal substance worthy of singular expression. They have sacrificed their lives to their functional existences . They

coincide with the exact numerical calculation of their lives and their performances. An existence fulfilled , then, but one at the same time denied, thwarted, disavowed . The culmination of a whole negative countertransference. This imperative of optimum performance at the same time comes into internal contradiction with the democratic moral law which ordains that everyone be perpetually re-set to equality and everything re-set to zero, on the pretext of democracy and an equal sharing of opportunity and advantage. Given the prospect of salvation for all and universal redemption, no one has the right to distinguish himself, no one has the right to captivate [siduire }. For justice to be done, all privilege must disappear; it is for all to rid themselves voluntarily of any specific qualities , to become once again an elementary particle2 - collective happiness, based on levelling down and repentance, leading to the coming of the lowest common denominator and basic banalities . This is like a reverse potlatch, with everyone outdoing each other in minimalism and victimhoo d, while fiercely cultivating their tiniest differences and cobbling together their multiple identities. Repentance and recrimination are all part of the same movement : recrimination means going back over the crime to correct its course and effects. This is what we are doing in going back over the whole of our history, over the criminal history of the human race, to do penance here and now as we await the Last Judgement.
For God is dead, but his judgement remains . Which explains the immense syndrome of resipiscence and (historical) rewriting (with the future genetic and biological rewriting of the species still to come) that has seized the twentieth century's end; with an eye, as ever, to deserving salvation and - with the prospect of the final accounting before us - to presenting the image of an ideal victim. Naturally, we are not speaking of a real trial or of genuine repentance. It is a matter of fully enjoying the spectacle of one's own misfortune : 'Mankind, which in Homer's time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order' (Walter Benjamin).3 This is but the latest episode in a heart-rending process of revisionism - running down not just the history of the twentieth century, but all the violent events of past centuries, to subject them to the new jurisdiction of human rights and crimes against humanity (just as every action today is subjected to the jurisdiction of sexual, moral or political harassment). As part of the same trend by which all works of art (including the human genome) are listed as world heritage sites, everything is put on the list of crimes against humanity . The latest episode, then, of this revisionist madness has been the proposal to condemn slavery and the slave trade as crimes against humanity. An absurd proposal to rectify the past in terms of our Western humanitarian consciousness or, in other words, in terms of our own criteria, in the purest traditions of colonialism. This imperialism of repentance really is the limit!
The idea is, in fact, to enable the 'peoples concerned' to put this tragedy behind them thanks to this official condemnation and, once their rights have been restored and they have been recognized and celebrated as victims, to complete their work of mourning and draw a line under this page of their history in order to become full participants in the course of modernity . It might be seen, then, as a kind of successful psychoanalysis. Perhaps the Africans will even be able to translate this moral acknowledgement into damage claims , using the same monstrous measure of equivalence from which the survivors of the Shoah have been able to benefit. So we shall go on compensating, atoning and rehabilitating ad infinitum, and we shall merely have added to raw exploitation the hypocritical absolution of mourning; we shall merely, by compassion, have transformed evil into misfortune.
From the standpoint of our recycled humanism, the whole of history is pure crime - and, indeed, without all these crimes there quite simply would be no history: 'If we eliminated the evil in man, ' wrote Montaigne, 'we would destroy the fundamental conditions of life .' But, on this basis, Cain killing Abel is already a crime against humanity - and almost a genocide (there were only two of them!), and isn't original sin already a crime against humanity? All this is absurd, all this humanitarian, retrospective fakery is absurd . And it all stems from the confusion between evil and misfortune. Evil is the world as it is and as it has been, and one may look upon this with lucidity. Misfortune is the world as it never should have been - but in the name of what? - in the name of what should be, in the name of God or a transcendent ideal, of a Good it would be difficult indeed to define. We may take a criminal view of crime - that is the tragic view - or we may take a recriminatory view - and that is the humanitarian view, the pathos-laden, sentimental view, the view which constantly calls for reparation . We have here all the ressentiment dredged up from the depths of a genealogy of morals, and requiring in us reparation for our own lives. This retrospective compassion, this conversion of evil into misfortune is the twentieth century's most flourishing industry . First as a mental blackmailing operation, to which we all fall victim , even in our actions, from which we can now hope only for the lesser evil (keep a low profile, do everything in such a way as anyone else could have done it - decriminalize your existence!). Then as a profitable operation with gigantic yields, since misfortun e (in all its forms: from suffering to insecurity, oppression to depression) represents a

symbolic capital, the exploitation of which - even more than the exploitation of happiness - is endlessly profitable from the economic standpoint . It's a gold-mine, as they say, and there is an inexhaustible source of ore, because the seam lies within each of us. Misfortune commands the highest prices, whereas evil cannot be traded. It is impossible to exchange. To transcribe evil into misfortune and then to transcribe misfortune into commercial, or spectacular, value - most often with the collusion or assent of the victim himself. But the victim's collusion with his own misfortune is part of the ironic essence of Evil. It is what brings it about that no one wants his own good, and nothing is for the best in the best of all worlds

- Prof Intl Affairs National War College, visiting Prof at Chinese National Defense University (Paul, Washington Journal of Modern China, “China's Defense Modernization: Aspirations and Capabilities” http://www.ndu.edu/inss/symposia/pacific2000/godwinpaper.htm
)
Although definitely a menacing capability, China confronts approximately 8,000
U.S. strategic weapons deployed on 575 ICBMs, 102 strategic bombers, and 17
SSBN. A single Trident-armed U.S. SSBN carries 24 multiple-warhead missiles capable of delivering 144 extremely accurate weapons. Thus, just one American
SSBN can carry more than seven times the total number of warheads carried on all of China’s D-5 ICBMs -- and at a much higher degree of readiness. Deterrence under these conditions would seem to be assured.

– Geopolitical and economic theorist (Jeffrey R., “China’s Military Strategy,” 3/9/7, http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2007/0309.html
)
In October 1991, China’s paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, went to watch the test flight of the Jian-9 fighter in Sichuan. After watching the fighter’s takeoff, Deng said that the recent changes in Eastern Europe were due to economic behind their country’s economic opening to the West.
In statement after statement, the Chinese Communists affirmed that they were taking a page out of Lenin’s playbook. In the early 1920s Lenin initiated the Soviet Union’s New Economic Policy (NEP), opening Russia to capitalist investment. As one might expect, the Soviet economy prospered during the NEP period and Russia was able to lay the foundations of its military industry.
Due to its proven track record, something akin to Lenin’s NEP has problems. The key was that the [Soviet] economy had long been in bad shape. On its side, said Deng, China had solved its economic problem. The People’s Republic was growing, and so was its capacity for building advanced weapons. Soon China would be able to build a powerful air force. During the 1980s Chinese leaders often revealed the strategy been adopted by China. The Chinese leaders assured the Communist Party elite that this policy was ideologically correct. Learning from capitalism and drawing foreign capital to China would be the basis for China’s future military superiority. It took a long time for Deng’s ideas to win acceptance in China .
At one point he was demoted from his leadership position. For many years, Chairman Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic, attempted to build Chinese industry with slogans and half-baked schemes. On 28 June 1958 he told his generals, “We must build big ships, and be prepared to land in Japan, the Philippines, and San Francisco.” He hoped that his new socialist China would be able to produce an enormous fleet. “The
Pacific Ocean is not peaceful,” he said. “It can only be peaceful when we take it over.” Mao even asked the Russians for help. Soviet leader
Nikita Khrushchev tried to dissuade him. “Build submarines and light ships armed with missiles,” said Khrushchev. “A big warship is a steel coffin.” The Russians tried to explain the costs and technical difficulties of warship construction. Mao was irritated by their tedious explanations and humiliated by Moscow’s suggestion that China could ill afford large warships. “I don’t need a fleet, then,” he sourly interjected during a meeting with Khrushchev. “I know guerrilla warfare. China can always retreat from the coast and fight a guerrilla war.” Mao was possessed by a grand dream. “We must control the earth,” he told his associates. But China was economically weak. The People’s Liberation Army was equipped with obsolete weapons.
Mao’s Great Leap Forward and his Cultural Revolution produced economic chaos. It was not possible to catch up with America through ideological slogans and political enthusiasm. And so, Mao realized that Deng Xiaoping was correct after all.
As the People’s Daily later explained, “whether a socialist country should make use of capitalism or not is a question which has long been resolved both in theory and practice. It is of even greater importance for an economically backward socialist country to solve the question correctly.” Mao was in a hurry and got nowhere. Deng Xiaoping was patient. He was the tortoise to Mao’s hare. In some situations an attempted shortcut is self-defeating. The Chinese leadership saw the wisdom of Deng’s strategy. “For a relatively long time,” said Gen. Mi Zhenyu, “it will be absolutely necessary that we quietly nurse our sense of vengeance”. We must conceal our abilities and bide our time.” And that is what the Chinese Communists have done. Mao’s dream of controlling the Pacific Ocean and landing in San Francisco isn’t as farfetched as it was in 1958. China has prepared a large merchant fleet. It was Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev who first advised Mao on this matter. “We believe one should build a merchant fleet with the view of using it for military goals.” And why should China build such a fleet? “To resolve the issue of America we must be able to transcend conventions and restrictions,” said Chinese Gen. Chi Haotian in a secret speech to
Party cadres. “In history when a country defeated another country or occupied another country, it could not kill all the people in the conquered land, because back then you could not kill people effectively with sabers or long spears, or even with rifles or machine guns.” According to Gen.
Chi, “Only by using non-destructive weapons that can kill many people will we be able to reserve America for ourselves.
There has been rapid development of modern biological technology, and new bio-weapons have been invented one after another. Of course we have not been idle; in the past years we have seized the opportunity to master weapons of this kind. We are capable of achieving our purpose of “cleaning up” America all of a sudden.” Like all prospective mass murderers, the Chinese Communists see themselves as humanitarians.
And so, it is only natural for them to have qualms.
Chi Haotian described the inevitable fight between America and China is a tragic necessity.
He spoke of the horror and cruelty of the work ahead. “Biological weapons are unprecedented in their ruthlessness,” he acknowledged, “but if the Americans do not die then the Chinese have to die, and that figure would be more than 800 million people
!”
The Chinese land cannot support 1.3 billion inhabitants indefinitely. The eco-system of China is already collapsing. So China has no choice. “From a humanitarian perspective,” said Chi, “we should issue a warning to the American people and persuade them to leave America”
to the Chinese people. Of course, such a warning would hardly be effective.
Therefore China has only one choice. “That is,” said Chi, “use decisive means to “clean up” America, and reserve America for our use”. Our historical

experience has proven that as long as we make it happen, nobody in the world can do anything about us. Furthermore, if the United States as the leader is gone, then other enemies have to surrender to us.”
Of course, this plan of battle is very dangerous.
The
Chinese strategists are therefore prepared for two scenarios: (1) A successful surprise attack on America, with little loss to China; (2) Full-blown U.S. nuclear retaliation that would kill 650 million Chinese.
In facing this situation, explained Gen. Chi, the Communist leadership must be fearless. “In Chinese history, in the replacement of dynasties, the ruthless have always won and the benevolent have always failed.” One must not be deterred by the human cost. Modern warfare is mass destruction warfare. It involves the mass killing of human beings.
“Maybe we can put it this way,” explained Gen. Chi: “death is the engine that moves history forward. During the period of the Three Kingdoms, how many people died? When Genghis Khan conquered Eurasia, how many people died? When Manchu invaded the interior of China, how many people died?” Chi then admitted, “
It is indeed brutal to kill one or two hundred million
Americans. But that is the only path that will secure a Chinese century, a century in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leads the world. We, as revolutionary humanitarians, do not want deaths. But if history confronts us with a choice between deaths of Chinese and those of Americans, we’d have to pick the latter. That is because, after all, we are Chinese and members of the
CCP.” The outline of China’s military strategy is clear. The Chinese are building a large navy with many merchant ships because they want to control the Pacific
Ocean and transport millions of colonists to a depopulated North American shore. The biological weapons for “cleaning up” America have already been built.
The destruction of America’s early warning system and the decapitation of the
U.S. government can be achieved through “terrorist” strikes (i.e., by special forces commandos). There is also an economic dimension to the attack plan. First, do everything possible to hasten America’s financial collapse. (To this end the
Americans have made their own special contribution). Second, the bankruptcy of the U.S. government naturally brings about the spontaneous strategic disarmament of the American military; third, use the Arab terrorist threat as a diversion so that the Americans will react against the wrong countries when they are attacked with biological weapons; and fourth, finish off the Americans when they are defenseless and disoriented.
Once China has vaccinated its own soldiers the biological assault can begin.
The plan has many risks, and the average American would readily dismiss such a plan as madness. But we all should be reminded of the madness of Hitler, who attempted to exterminate the Jews in Europe. It is hard to believe that someone would exterminate people who were quite harmless.
However, that is exactly what happened. The Nazis built their edifice on the myth of Jewish malevolence. This served as their justification. The
Nazis merely projected their own malevolence onto their intended victims.
Today the agents of Communism have constructed their justification for the extermination of America.
The Russians and Chinese, together with their allies in the Third World, have carefully laid out their case. We have all heard the anti-American propaganda. It is everywhere.
According to this propaganda the Americans are imperialist aggressors. The Americans are murdering millions of people. The Americans are stealing the world’s resources. The Americans are the cause of global warming. The planet itself is doomed unless the Americans are eradicated.
Here we find a variation on Hitler’s theme. Instead of blaming the Jews, it blames the Americans (and their Zionist allies).
Instead of gas chambers and ovens the perpetrators will use nuclear and biological weapons. Instead of looting a minority community in the midst of Europe, an entire continent will be looted. The plan of war aims at plunder in the form of empty buildings, infrastructure, machines and real estate. With that plunder comes global dominance. I end this column with one last thought supplied by the Wall Street Journal on March 7. In a column titled “China’s Military Mystique” we read of China’s rapidly increasing defense budget. The Bush administration wants an explanation.
Why is China building so many ships and guns and planes? Everyone assumes that China is building up to attack
Taiwan. “But China’s military advances are no longer just about attacking
Taiwan,” says the Journal. Having tantalized us with an intriguing tidbit of geopolitical algebra the Journal trails off in the direction of China’s anti-satellite weaponry. The American mind has yet to wrap itself around the concept of a genocidal WMD assault. We watch as the Chinese prepare to slaughter us. We blink and avert our gaze.

– Geopolitical and economic theorist (Jeffrey R., “Recent China Revelations,” 3/9/7, http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2005/0701.html
)
On June 9 the Washington Times published a story by Bill Gertz titled Analysts Missed Chinese Buildup. When root assumptions are wrong, basic information will be processed incorrectly.
According to Gertz, a “highly classified intelligence report has concluded that American intelligence missed several key developments in China in the past decade.”
Of course, U.S. intelligence has missed the entire context of the controlled changes in Eastern Europe, the economic strategy of China, the transformation of Venezuela into a hostile beachhead, the shifting of mineral rich South Africa from the capitalist camp to the socialist camp, the arming of rogue dictators by Russia and China (who are bound by a
“friendship treaty” that amounts to a military alliance). These items are parts in a larger whole, even if American analysts refuse to see a work in progress.
China’s war preparations are deliberate, and the implications should not be passed over lightly. China is a highly secretive country, like all communist countries. The objective of communism is world revolution, the overthrow of global capitalism, the destruction of the free market, the elimination of the international bourgeoisie and the disarming of the United States. We should be puzzled, indeed, if Chinese policy did not follow the communist line (however deviously). Given all this, it is difficult to account for the dismissive attitude of
U.S. intelligence experts when regarding Chinese intentions. The China problem is a serious one
. “The people of the countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America should unite,” said Chairman Mao in 1964. “The people of all continents should unite and so form the broadest united front to oppose the U.S. imperialist policies of aggression and war and to defend world peace.” In terms of today’s peace movement, Mao’s sentiments are up-to-date. They are, I think, a founding inspiration.
The supposed “death of communism” may have eliminated a few soiled terms, but not the main idea. The label on old hatreds may be changed, but the content remains the same. And because America is asleep, and the market is buzzing with Chinese goods, the U.S. government has turned a blind eye. The truth about China is worse than inconvenient. It is painful. So a special context has been devised for dismissing inconvenient facts.
This context is inculcated at graduate schools, think tanks and in government. The context for understanding international affairs must not admit the existence of a coordinated, secretive and dangerous combination of countries motivated to overthrow the United States.
In other words, the existence of a “communist bloc” cannot be admitted. And China’s role within this bloc above all must be rated as a crackpot notion. And yet, the existence of something identical to the old communist bloc— whatever we choose to call it –is indicated by actions across the board by Russia, the East European satellite countries, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba and China.
Some ideas fall from fashion. But truth is always true, fashion or not. U.S. experts failed to connect the dots regarding China’s development of a long-range cruise missile, a new attack submarine, new ground-to-air missiles, a new anti-ship missile (for sinking U.S. aircraft carriers) and more. China is preparing for war against the United States, specifically. As absurd as it sounds to the economic optimists who think trade with China guarantees peace, the U.S. and China are bound to collide. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t have a sense of history, doesn’t understand communist thinking or the overall policy Beijing has consistently followed since 1949.
Communist countries periodically experiment with capitalism, they always seek trade with the West, and they always sink the money and technology they gain thereby into a military buildup. Ultimately, they don’t care about the prosperity of their people, the state of the national infrastructure, personal or press freedom. Some believe that we mustn’t say that China is a threat. Such a statement would be akin to self-fulfilling prophecy. But an honest appreciation of Chinese actions should not be disallowed by an appeasing diplomacy or wishful thinking. The job of the analyst is not to guarantee good

relations with countries that are preparing for destructive war. The job of the analyst is to see war preparations, diplomatic maneuvers and economic policies and draw a common sense conclusion about them.
If world peace depends on hiding China’s military buildup, then world peace is like your fat uncle dressed in a Santa Claus suit. Saying it’s your fat uncle may ruin Christmas for your little sister, but Santa Claus isn’t a real person and never will be. On June 27 we read another Washington Times article by Bill Gertz: “Beijing devoted to weakening enemy U.S., defector says.” According to Gertz, a former Chinese diplomat named Chen
Yonglin says that top Chinese officials consider the United States to be “the largest enemy, the major strategic rival” of China. There is no reason to doubt
Mr. Chen’s testimony. He is doubtless telling the truth, which helps to explain
China’s rapid military buildup. Chen’s statement underscores a certain lack of symmetry between Beijing and Washington. Top U.S. officials do not consider
China to be America’s largest enemy or major strategic rival. Instead, China is viewed as a major trading partner, and U.S. economic interests generally prefer the appeasement of China.
Consequently, you will not find the U.S. Congress cutting off favored trading status for China.
The White House has carefully avoided any hint that China is considered an “enemy country.” Growing Chinese involvement in Latin America is not viewed with alarm.
Politicians refuse to acknowledge that China is building a military alliance with Russia, Cuba, Iran and others
. Gertz further tells us that China is engaged in a massive military intelligence-gathering operation against the United States. Chinese agents are working day and night to monitor its enemies as well as Chinese nationals living abroad. Chinese agents are working to influence the military, trade and foreign policies of key countries like Australia, Canada and the United States. China is playing a game of “divide and conquer,” seeking to drive a wedge between America and its traditional allies. In fact, Beijing’s influence operations are so successful that Chinese diplomat Chen’s request for political asylum in Australia was turned down by the Australian government. The Chinese penetration of Canada has been outlined by a joint RCMP-CSIS report titled Sidewinder. According to this report, “Hand in hand with their ethnicity and their commercial obligations, the financial network of the Chinese entrepreneurs associated to the organized crime and to the power in Beijing has grown exponentially and very rapidly in Canada. Their influence over local, provincial and national political leaders has also increased. In the game of influence, several of these important Chinese entrepreneurs have associated themselves with prestigious and influential Canadian politicians, offering them positions on their boards of directors. Many of those companies are China’s national companies." It is difficult for an open democratic society to counter such methods.
Those who believe that
China is democratizing, by way of capitalism, will be disappointed. Diplomatic defector Chen told the Washington Times that the ruling Communist Party of
China has not changed or softened its Marxist-Leninist views. China’s swing toward capitalism is a tactic for building communist military power, not a foundation for Chinese democracy.
Americans who invest in China have made a foolish bargain. In a two-part series by Gertz (see Chinese Dragon Awakens) we find that China could be ready for war in two years.
China has developed advanced weapons systems through the theft of U.S. technology. America appears unable to secure its military secrets. The attitude of Americans in government as well as in the private sector may be characterized as unwary, sleepy or downright sloppy. The Chinese have not only stolen the secret of America’s most advanced nuclear warhead, they have also stolen the secret of our Aegis anti-air weapon system. In a war with China U.S. servicemen will be killed by U.S. technology in Chinese hands.
[
(renowned expert in geopolitics and international relations, [JR Geopolitical Global Analyst "Recent China Revelations" WeeklyColumn July 1] [ct] http://www.financialsense. com/stormwatch/geo/ pastanalysis/2005/0701.html
]
China’s war preparations are deliberate, and the implications should not be passed over lightly
. China is a highly secretive country, like all communist countries.
The objective of communism is world revolution, the overthrow of global capitalism, the destruction of the free market, the elimination of the international bourgeoisie and the disarming of the
United States
. We should be puzzled, indeed, if Chinese policy did not follow the communist line (however deviously). Given all this, it is difficult to

account for the dismissive attitude of U.S. intelligence experts when regarding Chinese intentions.
The China problem is a serious one
. “The people … of the countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America should unite,” said Chairman Mao in 1964. “The people of all continents should unite … and so form the broadest united front to oppose the U.S. imperialist policies of aggression and war and to defend world peace.” In terms of today’s peace movement, Mao’s sentiments are up-to-date. They are, I think, a founding inspiration.
The supposed “death of communism” may have eliminated a few soiled terms, but not the main idea. The label on old hatreds may be changed, but the content remains the same. And because America is asleep, and the market is buzzing with Chinese goods, the U.S. government has turned a blind eye. The truth about China is worse than inconvenient. It is painful
. So a special context has been devised for dismissing inconvenient facts. This context is inculcated at graduate schools, think tanks and in government. The context for understanding international affairs must not admit the existence of a coordinated, secretive and dangerous combination of countries motivated to overthrow the United States.
In other words, the existence of a “communist bloc” cannot be admitted. And China’s role within this bloc – above all – must be rated as a
“crackpot notion.” And yet, the existence of something identical to the old communist bloc – whatever we choose to call it – is indicated by actions across the board by Russia, the East European satellite countries, North Korea, Vietnam,
Cuba and China.
Some ideas fall from fashion. But truth is always true,
fashion or not.
U.S. experts failed to connect the dots regarding China’s development of a long-range cruise missile, a new attack submarine, new ground-to-air missiles, a new anti-ship missile (for sinking U.S. aircraft carriers) and more. China is preparing for war against the
United States, specifically. As absurd as it sounds
to the economic optimists who think trade with China guarantees peace, the U.S. and China are bound to collide. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t have a sense of history, doesn’t understand communist thinking or the overall policy Beijing has consistently followed since 1949. Communist countries periodically experiment with capitalism, they always seek trade with the West, and they always sink the money and technology they gain thereby into a military buildup. Ultimately, they don’t care about the prosperity of their people, the state of the national infrastructure, personal or press freedom. Some believe that we mustn’t say that China is a threat .
Such a statement would be akin to self-fulfilling prophecy.
But an honest appreciation of Chinese actions should not be disallowed by an appeasing diplomacy or wishful thinking.
The job of the analyst is not to guarantee good relations with countries that are preparing for destructive war
. The job of the analyst is to see war preparations, diplomatic maneuvers and economic policies and draw a common sense conclusion about them.
If world peace depends on hiding China’s military buildup, then world peace is like your fat uncle dressed in a Santa Claus suit.
Saying it’s your fat uncle may ruin Christmas for your little sister, but Santa
Claus isn’t a real person – and never will be.

( Professor of Political Science, Boston College (Robert S., Navigating the Taiwan Straight: Deterrence,
Escalation Dominance, and U.S.-China Relations International Security, Vol. 27, No. 2 Fall, pp. 48–85)
Chinese leaders acknowledge that U.S. capabilities would be particularly effective against Chinese forces operating in the Taiwan theater
. A senior Chinese military ofªcer has lectured his troops that
China’s likely adversary in a local war would possess hightechnology equipment that could neutralize China’s ability to rely on manpower to defeat the enemy
. A civilian analyst has noted that, in a war in China’s coastal region, it would be difªcult for the People’s Liberation Army
(PLA) to take advantage of its superior numbers—as it did during the KoreanWar—and that the adversary could “make full use of its superiority in air and naval long-range, large-scale, high-accuracy weaponry.” 53 A military analyst was more direct, explaining that not only would such superior capabilities seriously restrict
China’s ability to seize and maintain sea control around a “large island,” but they would also pose a majorthreat to China’s coastal political, economic, and military targets.54 Experts at China’s Air Force Command College have concluded that an “air-attack revolution has occurred and that a “generation gap” exists between the hightechnology airattack capabilities of the United States and the “stagnant” air defense capabilities of less advanced countries, causing a “crisis” in air defense.
55 Thus China assumes that if the United States intervened in a mainland- Taiwan war, the PLA could not protect its war-fighting capabilities, nor could it prevent U.S. penetration of
Chinese airspace. It must also assume that the prospect of victory would be close to nil and that the costs of war and defeat would be massive. Once war began, the
United States could target China’s large but backward navy . Even China’s advanced Russian destroyers equipped with highly capable missiles would not contribute to its war-ªghting capability, because they lack sufªcient stand-off range to challenge U.S. offensive forces.
Indeed U.S. capabilities would be even more effective in targeting
Chinese surface assets at sea than they have been in targeting enemy assets in deserts, as in the Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan.56 Moreover, China’s air force would likely remain grounded, because neither its pilots nor its aircraft could challenge U.S. air superiority. A U.S. defeat of the PRC, however, would entail more than the loss of Chinese military assets. China’s modernization effort would be set back decades. War with the United States would compel China to switch to a wartime econ-omy, requiring the reallocation of resources away from civilian infrastructure development to the large-scale acquisition of outdated military hardware; it would also cost China access to international markets, capital, and high technology. The resulting economic dislocations would defer
China’s ability to achieve great power status well into the second half of the twenty-first century. 57 Most important, the combination of a military defeat over
Taiwan and a domestic economic crisis would challenge the leadership’s core value—continued leadership of China by the CCP. Nationalism and economic performance, the twin pillars of CCP legitimacy, would collapse, bringing down with them party rule .

Walden
Philippines University Sociology Professor, December
, Should the WTO be
Abolished," http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2465/is_9_30/ai_68742882/print
Your method of arguing is to set up a straw man: opponents of the WTO are opponents of the growth of trade. This is silly
.
Trade can be good or bad
for national development - it all depends on the rules that guide it. The relative flexibility of the old GATT has disappeared under the WTO
, which imposes policies which advance the interests of superpowers
. Your most prominent example of the benefits of liberalisation -- South Korea - proves the opposite. Far from being a paragon of free trade, South Korea systematically subordinated trade to developmental goals. The recent paucity of foreign cars in Korea was a key condition for the emergence of its car industry.
The 'South Korean miracle' was based on protectionist
/mercantilist trade practices
, not
on the doctrinaire free trade
principles that undergird the WTO. I had expected a more reasoned reply than a doomsday scenario asserting that without the WTO, the international economic order would degenerate into anarchy or hostile regional blocs. The history of the international economy in the last 55 years refutes this hysterical contention. The seventeen-fold increase in global trade between 1948 and 1997 took place without a powerful trade bureaucracy, without an all-encompassing system of trade rules. Five years into the WTO, hardly any developing countries claim it has benefited them. Just look at the record: US and EU dumping of subsidised grain and meat is destroying agricultural industries, like the poultry industry in the Philippines. The US and other trade superpowers have scarcely implemented the lifting of quotas on textile and garment imports of interest to the developing countries, as stipulated by the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing. The Ministerial Decision approved at Marrakech in 1994 to take measures to counteract the negative effects of trade liberalisation on the net food importing countries (NFID) has never been implemented.
These are among the reasons why the majority of developing countries oppose a new trade round. So why are they in the WTO
? In the case of most, it is not from the prospect of gain but out of fear that the rate at which they are being marginalised would increase if they were not members
. You can hardly blame them: in 1994, Washington stampeded Third World governments to ratify the WTO by saying they would otherwise be isolated 'like North Korea'. You say that the function of the WTO is to provide rules to protect the weak from the strong. Do you really believe this
? It is power
, Philippe, not justice, which is the currency of unequal international economic arrangements
like the IMF, World Bank, and WTO.
The main rationale for the WTO's existence is to reduce the cost of policing the less powerful and less developed economies that would be incurred by the hegemonic power if there were no system of rules backed up by a bureaucracy with coercive powers
. This is the reason Washington's academic point man on trade, C Fred Bergsten, could tell the US Senate that what was not possible under GATT was possible under the WTO: '[W]e can now use the full weight of the international machinery to go after those trade barriers, reduce them, get them eliminated,'
The WTO is the incarnation of a paradigm that subordinates almost every other good - environment, development, food security, culture - to free trade
.
Shot through with this fundamental flaw, it cannot be reformed
. Instead, it must be disempowered
, if not abolished, and replaced by a system of global economic governance that regards the market as a mechanism to be controlled and guided to achieve social priorities.

(Phillipe, University of Paris 1 Pantheon—Sorbonne, Paris School of Economics, and Centre for
Economic Policy Research; Thierry MAYER, University of Paris 1 Pantheon—Sorbonne, Paris School of Economics, CEPII, and Centre for Economic Policy Research, Mathias THOENIG, University of Geneva and Paris School of Economics, The
Review of Economic Studies 75)
Does globalization pacify international relations ? The “liberal” view in political science argues that increasing trade flows and the spread of free markets and democracy should limit the incentive to use military force in interstate relations. This vision, which can partly be traced back to Kant’s Essay on Perpetual Peace (1795), has been very influential:
The main objective of the European trade integration process was to prevent the killing and destruction of the two World
Wars from ever happening again.1 Figure 1 suggests2 however , that during the 1870–2001 period , the correlation between trade openness and military conflicts is not a clear cut one. The first era of globalization , at the end of the 19th century, was a period of rising trade openness and multiple military conflicts, culminating with World War I . Then, the interwar period was characterized by a simultaneous collapse of world trade and conflicts . After World War II, world trade increased rapidly , while the number of conflicts decreased ( although the risk of a global conflict was obviously high).
There is no clear evidence that the 1990s, during which trade flows increased dramatically, was a period of lower prevalence of military conflicts , even taking into account the increase in the number of sovereign states.
—
Professor Emeritus (Research) in the Stanford University School of Engineering and a senior fellow with the Institute for International Studies at
Stanford University. Former co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. Principal Investigator for the DHS. (Michael, “The
U.S.-China Strategic Relationship,” September 2005, http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2005/Sep/maySep05.asp)
However important and beneficial this interdependence may be from an economic point of view, it is not likely to be a significant factor for strategic stability. Famously, economists before World War I sounded
clear warnings that Europe had become economically interdependent to an extent that war
there would ruin Europe. The war was fought nevertheless
, Europe was duly ruined, and the ensuing political consequences haunted Europe to the end of World War II. Other cases exist. Modern war has been an economic disaster.
Economic realities, including economic interdependence, play little role in whether a country goes to war
or not. Economic myths certainly do and they usually affect strategic stability quite negatively. This is another reason why domestic perceptions matter: they determine which myths are believed
(Jessica Tuchman, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace + former employee in the executive and legislation branches of the USFG, 12-29, Carnegie,
“The World in 2011” http://carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=42207#china , jj)
Will it be a tough year for the global economy? Is there a danger that a currency or trade war could break out? People felt that the threat in 2010 was enormous and that we would see
tit for tat trade sanctions and barriers—but we didn’t. This is partially because the world remembers how devastating that was during the period between the two world wars.

[http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/04/200852518574910602.html Dr. Vandana Shiva is a physicist and ecologist, “A recipe for food rights,” April 14,2008]
Al Jazeera: One of the causes of the huge rises in India's food prices is the soaring rate of inflation. India is experiencing its highest rate of inflation in three years. What is behind this increase?
Dr Shiva: There are a number of reasons why the prices of food commodities are rising in India
. The first is related to economic policies – the policies of integrating India with global markets. There is a huge agrarian crisis but it's not from the beginning of our freedom, it's not a leftover of feudalism.
The agrarian crisis is a result of globalisation .
The farmers who are committing suicide in India are precisely in those areas where genetically engineered cotton is being grown by Monsanto [a chemicals and agricultural science corporation]. This is a new crisis. A small farmer could make a living in this country a few years ago. Today, as a result of globalisation, agriculture is being run down. We have grown enough wheat in the last few years – 74 million tonnes. We are still self-reliant in food, but we are being forced to import; both under the multilateral globalisation free trade agreements as well as under bilateral arrangements
like a crazy treaty called the Agriculture Knowledge Initiative between the US and India. It was signed at the same time as the nuclear treaty was signed. The nuclear agreement has had a lot of political attention. The agriculture treaty has had absolutely no attention. Indian farmers are being paid 8,000 rupees [$200] for a tonne of wheat. When the farmers ask for more, to make a viable living, the government says it will cause a rise in inflation. So the government goes to Cargill [a transnational agricultural corporation] and the United States because of this bilateral agreement and buys wheat at $400 dollars a tonne, which is 16,000 rupees a tonne – twice the price that Indian farmers can produce wheat for. What effect is that having on ordinary people in India? It's having a huge impact. Already, about half of India was not eating full meals; going through days without food.
With the price rise
, I can see about 70 to
80 per cent of India will be pushed into hunger and starvation
. There are two other additional issues that have come up in recent years. Last year, both the European government and the US government made a 10 per cent blending requirement and put huge subsidies into biofuels, diverting food from feeding the hungry to running automobiles. This has driven up prices of food.
Climate change is creating instability in agriculture. Unfortunately the UN representative said the new green revolution in Africa would solve these problems. It is going to make it worse. A green revolution based on nitrogen fertilisers in 2008 is a recipe for emissions of nitrogen oxides, further instability of the climate and further hunger and starvation.
We need to localise food systems. We have enough farmers to produce enough food in
this country
[ India], if we were not being forced to integrate with a speculative market
. There are now calls for some sort of co-ordinated response to the problem – by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the UN. Is there any short term solution?
There is a very short term solution
– give up the industrial agriculture using fossil fuels, high cost imports.
Give up the forced linking with an international commodity market. Allow farmers to grow and give them a just price. We can solve the problem tomorrow
. I work with 400,000 farmers in India growing organic food. We have doubled yields and doubled output on farms. Nobody is dying of starvation in the villages where there is organic farming. But do you think governments will look at that as a solution? What has the government in India done? It has to be the solution. The Third World does not need charity; the Third World needs food sovereignty. It needs freedom to produce it own food. Let's just recognise the ecological endowments – it is Africa and Asia that have the best soils, the best sun, the best biodiversity.
Never
, ever have we had this
scale of a problem, except during the great Bengal famine, which also was driven by
so-called free trade
. I'd like to just mention: free trade is not free. Every one of the problems we have … have been triggered by
government policy.
Globalisation
is government policy. Trade liberalisation is government policy. Biofuels is government policy. Climate change is triggered by government subsidies for fossil fuel use. If the governments
have caused the problem, they cannot now throw up their hands and say that they cannot intervene. They have created the price rise, they need to intervene in creating a fair market for famers and ensure the rights of all
. Food is about life, and the right to life is protected in our constitution.
If those solutions are not taken, where do you think this will end? Will there be more food riots in
Africa and Asia?
If the governments continue to make interventions on behalf of the rich, they can bail out the banks in their absolute unwinding of the financial crisis – then they can intervene in the market. But if they refuse to intervene in the market to ensure food prices are regulated, we will see more riots. Either governments will fall because of riots or they can become enlightened and not see the pseudo free trade as a sacred cow that has to be protected. Food rights of people have to be protected; the rights of the poor have to be protected. That is the only obligation governments have. Any democratic government that fails in that duty will only be part of the problem of creating food wars and food riots.

[http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2009-12/29/content_9240189.htm Fu Yong, PhD in Economics, “Free trade easy to swear by but hard to pratice” China Daily, Dec 29 2009]
But the truth is that the theory works only if several assumptions are met . The crucial assumptions of this theory are: the international market should be a perfect competitive market, and price should be the only factor influencing competition .
But we know reality is different
.
Transnational enterprises are always affected by other factors . Competitions of national interests play an important role in international trade, and it is not rare to see political or military intervention
. Why does free trade face such difficulties? First, even if free trade is a mutually beneficiary and multi-win game, there will be tough negotiations on prices among different sectors .
And even if all trade participants can benefit from exchange , the proportion of interest each of them can gain is crucial
. That's why the question "who will gain more from the trade?" leads to endless bargaining among traders.
The results of talks always depend on the negotiating skills of each country, which are directly determined by their relative strengths. And restrictions on imports are usually the most powerful weapon in negotiations, given that governments can easily use it to intervene in the market.

BUNNAM SREPHICHET, University of California, Hastings College of the Law, Juris
Doctor Candidate, 30 Hastings Comm. & Ent. L.J. 139 2007-2008, “Pirates of the
Caribbean: Offshore Internet Gambling Sites Cursed by the Unlawful Internet Gambling
Enforcement Act”
Other concerns were voiced by the banking industry over whether compliance with the added regulation will justify the time and expense required by banks in monitoring
Internet gambling transactions and that the burden will drain the limited resources currently engaged in complying with anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering regulations.2 62 Although a valid concern, the UIGEA's statutory language specifically addresses these concerns such that regulation of most payment systems will not involve new technology or unreasonable expenses. 263 For example, the credit card industry, including American Express and Discover 24 and other commonly used credit card companies such as MBNA, Capital One, and Providian Financial,265 already have the technology in place to block Internet gambling transactions.266 The same is true for most banks and financial institutions, including Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo.
267 These banks currently have procedures for blocking fund transfers and restricting online gambling transactions through the use of "merchant codes. 2 68 Moreover, the express language of the UIGEA instructs the Federal Reserve System to "exempt certain restricted transactions or designated payment system . . not reasonably practical to identify and block., 269 Thus, the concern associated with compliance prescribed by the UIGEA is alleviated where such expenses would be impractical.
I. Nelson Rose is a Distinguished Senior Professor at Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa,
Calif, Gambling Law Review, Volume 13, Number 1, 2009, “New UIGEA Regs Put Benefits and Burdens on States”, pg. 1
The new final regulations only apply to the UIGEA and they would not protect an online operator against prosecution by the
Department of Justice under a different federal statute. But these regulations are not only the formal position of the federal government; they were written in consultations with Justice. It took 66 pages of fine print. But in the end the federal regulators charged with making regulations to enforce the UIGEA simply gave up
. They were supposed to make rules forcing financial institutions to identify and block money transfers for unlawful Internet gambling transactions. But they were defeated by the difficulty of defining what was unlawful and the impossibility of tracking individual transactions . So they told credit card companies to come up with some additional code numbers for gambling transactions and everyone else can basically continue to do what they are now doing —oh, and financial institutions have to send a notice to all their clients telling them not to be involved in illegal gambling . As is well-known by now, the new regulations are the result of a bill rammed through Congress in 2006 by then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (RTenn.), without being read. It called for the impossible: The United States Treasury and Federal Reserve Board, in consultation with the Department of Justice, were told to make regulations requiring payment processors to identify and block restricted unlawful Internet gambling transactions. Unfortunately for these federal agencies, the UIGEA does not define what

is unlawful . Whether a particular transaction is illegal depends upon the particular facts and whether it violates some other federal, state and possibly even tribal law. As t he agencies themselves admit, they do not have the resources or ability to make that determination . So, in their proposed regulations, the agencies put the burden on the banks. The proposal was met with ridicule . If the federal government could not determine whether a particular transaction involved illegal gambling, how was a bank employee supposed to make that determination?
This was particularly ridiculous since banks do not know what is being bought with a credit card or money wire transfer. The agencies , in their final rule, gave in
. Except for calling for additional code numbers for credit card transactions, the regulations expressly tell financial institutions to not spend any time looking at individual transactions.
And they make it clear that any money sent to an individual, even by a gambling site, cannot be a “restricted transaction” under the statute or regulations . The statute does create a new crime, being a gambling business that accepts money for an illegal transaction. But by its own terms it does not apply to individual bettors or banks or other payment processors.
And the final regulations , which only apply to financial institutions, now make it clear that payment processors should not waste their time checking on where money is sent by individuals. The agencies thought about requiring banks to ask their patrons whether they were wiring money to illegal overseas gaming operators. But someone at Treasury or the Federal
Reserve had the brains to realize that the answer the banks were going to get would always be
“No.” Banks and credit card companies are required to put some new procedures into place. They have until Dec. 1, 2009.
The original proposed regs would have impacted 253,368 small businesses and an unknown number of large companies. The final rule has been so cut back that only 12,267 small businesses, or less than five percent of the original estimated number , are subject to the regulations . Although very few companies will spend much time with these new regulations, it’s still an enormous waste of time. The agencies estimated that the recordkeeping burden on financial institutions “to develop and establish the policies and procedures required by the Act and this final rule” will add up to “approximately one million hours.”4 The federal agencies still put the burden on the financial institutions to do due diligence. But what this means is banks have to do the same amount of “know your customer” work with new commercial accounts that they now do to prevent money laundering: basically ask the company owners what their business is and do a little checking to confirm they are telling the truth . If the new commercial customer proves it is not in the gambling business, there’s nothing more to do. If it is in the gambling business, the bank then has to ask questions to see if it falls into one of the safe harbor categories. There aren’t a whole lot of illegal gambling Web sites operating out of the United States, so the new rule will have almost no impact , other than opening opportunities for states, tribes and gaming operators. What about licensed and unlicensed overseas gambling operator s? If there are any left with direct business relationships with U.S. banks—and I doubt that there are—they will have to start using foreign banks , like every other foreign operator. American banks are not expected to ask their foreign correspondent banks about their commercial customers . The one change that will affect online operators , and therefore players, is the addition of new transaction codes for credit card companies . For illegal and gray market operators, there is probably going to be little change. Credit card companies already have a merchant code for gamblin g, 7995, and American banks already refuse to let their credit cards be used for 7995 purchases. Overseas banks are not subject to the UIGEA .
The agencies admit companies issuing cards in other countries are not about to ask their merchants if they are illegally taking bets from Americans. But the bright spot for this new rule is that it calls for new credit card codes for legal online gaming. The federal agencies repeatedly and emphatically refused to create a list of Web sites that were to be avoided because they conducted illegal Internet gambling. The agencies also would not provide a list of sites that were deemed to be legal. But the new safe harbors and the call for new credit card codes will have the effect of letting everyone know that a gaming operation is being conducted by a state, or licensed by a state or tribe, or has a reasoned legal opinion declaring that it is not involved in restricted transactions.

Robert
, Professor in the Department of Political Science and School of
International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, December 2011, “Force in Our
Times,” Survival, Vol. 25, No. 4, p. 403-425
Even if war is still seen as evil, the security community could be dissolved if severe conflicts of interest were to arise. Could the more peaceful world generate new interests that would bring the members of the community into sharp disputes? 45 A zero-sum sense of status would be one example, perhaps linked to a steep rise in nationalism. More likely would be a worsening of
the current economic difficulties,
which could
itself produce greater nationalism, undermine democracy and bring back oldfashioned beggar-my-neighbor economic policies
.
While these dangers are real
, it is hard
to believe that the conflicts could be great enough to lead
the members of the community to contemplate fighting each other. It is not so much that economic interdependence
has proceeded to the point where it could not be reversed
– states that were more internally interdependent than anything seen internationally have fought bloody civil wars.
Rather it is that
even if the more extreme versions of free
trade and economic liberalism become discredited , it is hard to see how
without building on a preexisting high level of political conflict leaders and mass opinion would come to believe that their countries could prosper by impoverishing or
even attacking others
.
Is it possible that problems will not only become severe, but that people will entertain the thought that they have to be solved by war?
While a pessimist could note that this argument does not appear as outlandish as it did before the financial crisis
, an optimist could reply (correctly
, in my view) that the very fact that we have seen
such a sharp
economic down-turn without
anyone suggesting that force
of arms is the solution shows that
even if bad times bring about greater economic conflict , it will
not make war thinkable.
(3-6, The decoupling debate http://www.economist.com/node/10809267, jj)
MANY nasty words begin with the letter D: death, disease, depression, debt (when you drown in it) and deflation.
“Decoupling”, on the other hand, has a nicer ring to it, even if it is the source of a great deal of controversy. Economists continue to argue about whether or not emerging economies will follow America into recession. The most pessimistic claim that “it makes no sense to talk about decoupling in an era of globalisation”: economies have become more intertwined through trade and finance, which should make business cycles more synchronised, not less. The slide in emerging stockmarkets on
Wall Street's coat-tails appears to endorse their view. Yet recent data suggest decoupling is no myth. Indeed, it may yet save the world economy . Decoupling does not mean that an American recession will have no impact on developing countries . That would be daft. Such countries have become more integrated into the world economy (their exports have increased from just over 25% of their GDP in 1990 to almost 50% today). Sales to America will obviously weaken. The point is that their GDP-growth rates will slow by much less than in previous American downturns . Most enjoyed strong growth during the fourth quarter of last year, and some speeded up, even as America's economy ground to a virtual halt and its non-oil imports fell . One reason is that while exports to America have stumbled, those to other emerging economies have surged (see chart 1). China's growth in exports to America slowed to only 5% (in dollar terms) in the year to January, but exports to Brazil, India and Russia were up by more than 60%, and those to oil exporters by 45%. Half of China's exports now go to other emerging economies. Likewise, South Korea's exports to the United States tumbled by 20% in the year to February, but its total exports rose by 20%, thanks to trade with other developing

nations . A second supporting factor is that in many emerging markets domestic consumption and investment quickened during 2007 . Their consumer spending rose almost three times as fast as in the developed world. Investment seems to be holding up even better : according to HSBC, real capital spending rose by a staggering 17% in emerging economies last year, compared with only 1.2% in rich economies. Sceptics argue that much of this investment, especially in China, is in the export sector and so will collapse as sales to America weaken. But less than 15% of China's investment is linked to exports. Over half is in infrastructure and property. It is not just
China that is building power plants, roads and railways; a large chunk of the Gulf's petrodollars are also being spent on gleaming skyscrapers and new airports—not to mention ski-domes in the desert. Mexico, Brazil and Russia have also launched big infrastructure projects that will take years to complete. The four biggest emerging economies , which accounted for two-fifths of global GDP growth last year, are the least dependent on the United States: exports to
America account for just 8% of China's GDP, 4% of India's, 3% of Brazil's and 1% of Russia's.
Over 95% of China's growth of 11.2% in the year to the fourth quarter came from domestic demand. China's growth is widely expected to slow this year—it needs to, since even Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, warned this week of overheating—but to a still boisterous 9-10%.

– Reporter for the Kansas City Business Journal, **Citing Brian Wesbury
– Chief Economist for First Trust Advisors and Author (James, "Economist: Ongoing rebound gives reason for optimism", January 8th 2010, May 21st 2010, http://kansascity.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2010/01/04/daily46.html)
People should start being more optimistic about the economy because it probably will continue rebounding in 2010, said Brian Wesbury, chief economist for First Trust Advisors
LP.
Wesbury was the keynote speaker at the Association for Corporate Growth Kansas City’s annual economic forecast meeting Friday morning at the Kansas City Marriott Downtown. Wesbury was also the keynote speaker for last year’s event, and many members agreed that his predictions for 2009 were accurate. Wesbury, author of “It’s Not as Bad as You Think,” told the crowd that too many people are suffering from a sort of economic
Stockholm Syndrome, where they have fallen in love with pessimism.
It’s because we just experienced the first real panic in the economy since 1907, Wesbury said, and it altered the psyche of people to the point where they expect bad things to constantly happen. But economic data show that the economy bottomed out in March 2009 and that recovery is under way , he said.
(Jedediah Royal, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense, 2010, “Economic
Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises,” in Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and
Political Perspectives, ed. Goldsmith and Brauer)
CONCLUSION The logic of ECST supports arguments for greater economic interdependence to reduce the likelihood of conflict. This chapter does not argue against the utility of signalling theory.
It does, however, suggest that when considering the occurrence of and conditions created by economic crises, ECST logic is dubious as an organising principle for security policymakers. The discussion pulls together some distinct areas of research that have not yet featured prominently in the ECST literature. Studies associating economic interdependence, economic crises and the potential for external conflict indicate that global interdependence is not necessarily a conflict suppressing process and may be conflict-enhancing at certain points. Furthermore, the conditions created by economic crises decrease the willingness of states to send economic costly signals , even though such signals may be most effective during an economic crisis. These two points warrant further consideration in the debate over
ECST and, more broadly, theories linking interdependence and peace. The debate takes on particular importance for policymakers when considering the increasingly important US-China relationship and the long-term prospects for peace in the
Asia-Pacific. Recent US policy towards China, such as the ‘responsible stakeholder’ approach, assumes that greater interdependence with China should decrease the likelihood for conflict. Some have even suggested that the economic relationship is necessary to ensure strategic competition does not lead to major war (see, e.g., Kastner, 2006). If US or Chinese policymakers do indeed intend to rely on economic interdependence to reduce the likelihood of conflict, much more study is required to understand how and when interdependence impacts the security and the defence behaviour of states. This chapter contributes some thoughts to that larger debate. NOTES I. Notable counterarguments include Barbieri (1996). Gowa (I994), and Levy and Ali I998 . 2.‘ Offi<):ial statements have focused on this explanation as well. See, for example, Bernanke (2009).
3. For a dissenting study. see Elbadawi and Hegre (2008). 4. Note that Skaperdas and Syropoulos (2001) argue that states will have a greater incentive to arm against those with which it is interdependent to hedge against coercion. This argument could be extended to include protectionism in extreme cases. Creseenzi (2005) both challenges and agrees with Copeland’s theory by suggesting that a more important indicator is the exit costs involved in terminating an economic relationship. which could be a function of the availability of alternatives. 5. There is also substantial research to indicate that periods of strong economic growth are also positively correlated with a rise in the likelihood of conflict . Pollins
(2008) and Pollins and Schweller (I999) provide excellent insights into this body of literature.

Aris I.
, 20
, MPhil/PhD student, London School of Economics and Political Science, War, democracy and capitalism, http://www.psa.ac.uk/2009/pps/Trantidis.pdf, jj
Causal spuriousness
, however, may run the other way around
. It can be said that democracies foster open private market economies which in turn allow the development of economic ties between nations. It can be argued that the constructive effect of international trade and of economic interdependency rests on democratic governments pursuing policies of relatively open markets, as these have been perceived as maximising welfare. At the same time, they abstain from developing closer ties with those authoritarian regimes which democracies perceive as aggressive and threatening. Understandably there is less trade with autocratic countries which are not ‘free market’ and ‘open to trade’ economies.
Capitalist peace theory
and democratic peace theory share the common position that both they both have been in disagreement with key realist assumptions
. Robert Keohane (1983) summarises three assumptions, which form part of the ‘hard core’ of the realist approach: 1) states are the most important actors in the international system, 2) international relations can be analyzed as if states are unitary rational actors, and 3) states calculate their interests in terms of power, as an end in itself or as a necessary means to other ends. In the realist archetype, peace reflects a balance of power between nations or alliances, or result from the presence of a hegemonic power, whose power and resources enable it to impose its ‘peace’ on its own terms. Rosato has argued about post-World War II peace that ‘one potential explanation is that democratic peace is in fact an imperial peace based on American power. The democratic peace is essentially a postWorld War II phenomenon restricted to the Americas and Western Europe. The United States has been the dominant power in both these regions since World War II and has placed an overriding emphasis on regional peace (2003:599).
C apitalist p eace t heory has also been undermined by numerous historical observations prior to American hegemony of capitalist countries fighting bitter wars despite their trade links during the 19th century up to the second half of the 20th century
.
The debate is far from closed.
The departure of democratic peace theory and capitalist peace theory from realism is that they both look inside the state for institutions, norms and actors which largely define foreign policy. They also explore links between domestic actors across nations on the basis of shared values, shared norms, and common interests. In this sense, they are both closer to methodological individualism.
According to methodological individualism groups become actors when organised and acting under shared perceptions of common interest. Actors are motivated for collective action upon calculation of expected costs and benefits.
Before taking state preferences as given, it is thus useful to trace the preferences of these groups and the ways they are shaping the domestic process of decisionmaking. Implicitly or explicitly democratic peace theory and capitalist peace theory point to two levels of analysis related to the formation of national preferences: processes embedded within states, and linkages between states as well as underlying transnational connections between social and economic groups across states.
Opposite to the capitalist peace theory stands the Marxist view of war. The assumption of Marxist arguments is that capitalist states represent the interests of the ruling class, the bourgeoisie, which wants to extend the exploitation of the labour class at home and abroad
. According to conventional
Marxist thought, war is the product of competition among capitalist states and their bourgeois elites for the expansion and intensification of exploitation of labour and material resources.
The concept of imperialism describes the alleged tendency of great powers to launch wars in order to territorially expand the exploitation of resources, human and material, beyond the boundaries of the nation state
. To explain why war between democracies had been rarer post World War II, Marxist accounts have come close to the realist argument and put forward concepts such as ‘empire’, ‘hegemony’ and ‘dependency’ (Negri and Hardt, 2000). Next to the realist emphasis on power,
Marxist accounts have put emphasis on hierarchical relations linking the advanced economies with the rest of the world by means of economic power as much as by the use of force.
There are a number of challenges the four schools of thought have confronted.
Capitalist peace theory has been asked to address the fact that civil war and domestic war-like conflicts are more frequent today, and occur among groups or regions closely tied in economic exchange
. For instance, elected leaderships in

Yugoslavia fought a series of bitter wars by fuelling nationalism in their ethnic groups despite the fact that they had resided in ethnically mixed and economically interdependent constituencies
. Democratic peace theory has to address why civil wars have often occurred between groups whose leaderships had enjoyed high degree of legitimacy, and were often elected. In particular, leaderships in ethnic civil war have been able to mobilise domestic groups into violent acts and conflict. On other occasions, ethnic and social divisions have been contained within the institutions in place, or have been tackled by peaceful institutional change establishing a modus vivendi that has secured peace and stability.
This is raising doubts on whether class or ethnic divisions trigger conflict irrespective of how the preferences of these groups have been shaped by the opportunity sets available to them.
– Visiting Fellow in the Faculty of Arts at the University of NSW (Ted, “We can't go on living like this”, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/author.asp?id=1973)
We say we want to
save the environment, and to have peace, and to eliminate poverty
. And we do - but only until we see what this requires.
The fundamental cause of the
big global problems threatening us now is simply over-consumption
.
The rate at which we in rich countries are using up resources is grossly unsustainable
. It’s far beyond levels that can be kept up for long or that could be spread to a ll people. Yet most people totally fail to grasp the magnitude of the over-shoot
. The reductions required are so big that they cannot be achieved within a consumer-capitalist society
.
Huge and extremely radical change to very systems and culture are necessary
.