Western Media Smear President Xi’s “Aggressive China” As CIA Front Holds Secessionist Summit in Taiwan

Beijing might be better taking Taiwan now – once and for all – before it festers anymore under American influence.

by Finian Cunningham / October 26th, 2022

President Xi Jinping’s re-election for a record-breaking third term as China’s leader was promptly ambushed by Western media smears.

Xi becomes the first Chinese leader since Chairman Mao to hold three terms in office after he was re-elected by delegates at the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing last weekend.

Western media rushed to predict that China would become more autocratic and repressive, without providing any substantiation for its lurid claims, and while ignoring the phenomenal economic and developmental successes of the People’s Republic under Xi during the past decade.

The U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations cited the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace which predicted that China would become “more assertive and aggressive” in its foreign relations over the next five years.

The BBC ran a particularly scurrilous hit piece by its veteran anti-China apparatchik, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, which alleged that President Xi’s policies are “creating the hostile world that he claims he is defending against”.

Quoting Susan Shirk, a “China expert” dredged up from the Bill Clinton administration in the 1990s, the BBC accused China of “self-encirclement”, “picking fights” with neighboring countries, “ramping up tensions with Taiwan” and “taking on America and trying to run it out of Asia”.

“It is a kind of self-encirclement that Chinese foreign policy has produced,” the so-called China expert obligingly commented for the BBC.

The negative focus on China’s government sounds absurdly misplaced coming from U.S. and British media whose own nations are assailed with political crises over governance. Polls show unprecedented numbers of American citizens losing faith in their political parties and election system. In Britain, the country is reeling from the sacking of a third prime minister in as many years.

But what’s asinine about the smears against Xi purportedly turning China into a more aggressive power is that they turn reality on its head.

This week sees the U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED) holding a summit for “world democracy” in Taiwan. The event is being attended by over 300 activists and policymakers from some 70 nations to “promote freedom” and other virtue-signaling causes.

The NED describes itself as a “non-governmental organization” even though it is bankrolled by the U.S. government and works closely with the Central Intelligence Agency. As American author, the late William Blum pointed out, the NED took over the CIA’s covert roles in the 1980s because it was more politically palatable given the agency’s notoriety for fomenting deadly coups and assassinations.

Taiwan is officially recognized under international law as an integral part of China, albeit having an estranged relationship since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. The One China Policy is recognized legally by the United Nations and by most governments including the United States since the late 1970s.

Washington nevertheless maintains a policy of “strategic ambiguity” whereby it proclaims to support Taiwan’s defense from China’s ambitions to incorporate the island territory under Beijing’s sovereign authority.

President Joe Biden has stretched this duplicity to breaking point by declaring on four occasions since he took office in January 2021 that the US would intervene militarily to defend Taiwan in the event of an invasion from the Chinese mainland. Despite subsequent White House denials, Biden’s utterances are a flagrant violation of the One China Policy and a brazen attack on Chinese sovereignty.

Since the strategic Pivot to Asia in 2011 taken by the Barack Obama administration, Washington has ramped up arms sales to Taiwan. The flow of arms and covert stationing of U.S. military trainers to Taiwan continued under Trump and now Biden.

The calculated signals from Washington are promoting a more secessionist political climate in Taiwan, which feels emboldened that it has America’s backing to declare independence from China. Beijing has repeatedly warned against U.S. incitement in its backyard.

When Democrat House of Representatives Leader Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August, the incident infuriated Beijing to mount massive military exercises in the Taiwan Strait. For a few days, it looked as if an invasion could take place.

Since President Xi was first elected in 2013, he has strongly asserted China’s historic right to rule over Taiwan, preferably by peaceful means but also through force of arms if necessary. He repeated that aim during a keynote address to the 20th Congress.

Any reasonable observer can see that Beijing’s resolve is being cynically provoked by Washington’s interference in China’s internal affairs with regard to Taiwan’s sovereign status. Arming the island to the teeth with American missiles and thumbing noses at Beijing with pro-separatist political delegations would be not tolerated in the slightest if the shoe were on the other foot. Indeed, the U.S. would have gone to war against China already in a reverse scenario.

For the Western media to make out that Xi is taking China in a more aggressive direction is a ludicrous distortion that conceals who is the real aggressor – the United States and its NATO partners who relentlessly accuse Beijing of expansionism. The only “expansionism” China is engaging in is building mutual trade and commerce with other nations through its global Belt and Road Initiative.

The National Endowment for Democracy [read “Destabilization”], the CIA’s very own Trojan horse, is this week calling on “activists” in Taiwan to overthrow autocracy. It is a veritable call to arms by the CIA conducted on Chinese sovereign territory.

Not only that, the NED summit declares that Taiwan and Ukraine are “two major frontlines of the struggle for democracy”.

NED was a major driver of the coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014 which ushered in a fascist anti-Russia regime in Kiev and which led to the current war with Russia. The Americans are blatantly using the same playbook for Taiwan.

And yet China and President Xi are being smeared as the aggressors!

Beijing might be better taking Taiwan now – once and for all – before it festers anymore under American influence.

As Russia is finding out, to its cost, delaying the disease can lead to more fatal conditionsFacebookTwitterReddit

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Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Read other articles by Finian.

What is China’s Political System?

Explained

by Dongsheng News / October 22nd, 2022

The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China is currently taking place and Dongsheng will be publishing a series of videos in order to better understand this political event. China is at the center of the world’s economy and geopolitics, however little is known about its internal politics.

So, what is China’s political system? Is it really a dictatorship like the Western media claims?

The Gaslighting of the Masses

by C.J. Hopkins / October 22nd, 2022

For students of official propaganda, mind control, emotional coercion, and other insidious manipulation techniques, the rollout of the New Normal has been a bonanza. Never before have we been able to observe the application and effects of these powerful technologies in real-time on such a massive scale.

In a little over two and a half years, our collective “reality” has been radically revised. Our societies have been radically restructured. Millions (probably billions) of people have been systematically conditioned to believe a variety of patently ridiculous assertions, assertions based on absolutely nothing, repeatedly …

(Full article …)

20th CPC National Congress Report

News on China No. 119

by Dongsheng News / October 22nd, 2022

This week’s News on China in 2 minutes.

• 20th CPC National Congress report
• China’s EV battery supplies to the US
• Rice growing in salty, alkaline soil
• Physical growth of rural children in a decade

A Political Solution for Assange: Jennifer Robinson at the National Press Club

by Binoy Kampmark / October 23rd, 2022

It was telling.  Of the mainstream Australian press gallery, only David Crowe of the Sydney Morning Herald turned up to listen to Jennifer Robinson, lawyer extraordinaire who has spent years representing Julian Assange.  Since 2019, that representation has taken an even more urgent note: to prevent the WikiLeaks founder from being extradited to the United States, where he faces 18 charges, 17 confected from the archaic Espionage Act of 1917.

In addressing the Australian National Press Club, Robinson’s address, titled “Julian Assange, Free Speech and Democracy”, was a grand recapitulation of the political case against the WikiLeaks founder.  Followers of this ever darkening situation would not have found anything new.  The shock, rather, was how ignorant many remain about the chapters in this scandalous episode of persecution.

Robinson’s address noted those blackening statements from media organisations and governments that Assange was paranoid and could leave the Ecuadorian embassy, his abode for seven years, at his own leisure.  Many were subsequently “surprised when Julian was served with a US extradition request.”  But this was exactly what WikiLeaks had been warning about for some ten years.

In the Belmarsh maximum security prison, where he has resided for 3.5 years, Assange’s health has declined further.  “Then last year, during a stressful court appeal hearing, Julian had a mini stroke.”  His ailing state did not convince a venal prosecution, tasked with “deriding the medical evidence of Julian’s severe depression and suicidal ideation”.

The matter of health plays into the issue of lengthy proceedings.  Should the High Court not grant leave to hear an appeal against the June decision by Home Secretary Priti Patel to order his extradition, processes through the UK Supreme Court and possibly the European Court of Human Rights could be activated.

The latter appeal, should it be required, would depend on the government of the day keeping Britain within the court’s jurisdiction.  “If our appeal fails, Julian will be extradited to the US – where his prison conditions will be at the whim of intelligence agencies which plotted to kill him.”  An unfair trial would follow, and any legal process citing the First Amendment culminating in a hearing before the US Supreme Court would take years.

The teeth in Robinson’s address lay in the urgency of political action.  Assange is suffering a form of legal and bureaucratic assassination, his life gradually quashed by briefs, reviews, bureaucrats and protocols.  “This case needs an urgent political solution.  Julian does not have another decade to wait for a legal fix.”

Acknowledging that her reference to the political avenue was unusual for a lawyer, Robinson noted how the language of due process and the rule of law had become ghoulish caricatures in what amounts to a form of punishment.  The law has been fashioned in an abusive way that sees a person being prosecuted for journalism in a hideously pioneering way.  Despite the UK-US Extradition Treaty’s prohibition of extradition for political offences, the US prosecution was making  much of the Espionage Act.  “Espionage,” stated Robinson, “is a political offence.”

The list of abuses in the prosecution is biblically lengthy.  Robinson gave her audience a summary of them: the fabrication of evidence via the Icelandic informant and convicted embezzler and paedophile Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson; the deliberate distortion of facts; the unlawful surveillance of Assange and his legal team and matters of medical treatment; “and the seizure of legally privileged material.”

Much ignorance about Assange and the implications of his persecution is no doubt willed.  Robinson’s reference to Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, was apt.  Here was a man initially sceptical about the torture complaint made by Assange and his team.  He had been convinced by the libel against the publisher’s reputation. “But in 2019, he agreed to read our complaint.  And what he read shocked him and forced him to confront his own prejudice.”

Melzer would subsequently observe that, in the course of two decades working “with victims of war, violence and political persecution, I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law”.

The concern these days among the press darlings is not press freedoms closer to home, whether they be in Australia itself, or among its allies.  The egregious misconduct by Russian forces in the Ukraine War or China’s human rights record in Xinjiang are what counts.  Villainy lies elsewhere.

The obscene conduct by US authorities, whose officials contemplated abducting and murdering a publisher, is an inconvenient smudge of history best ignored for consumers of news down under.  The Albanese government, which has continued to extol the glory of the AUKUS security pact and swoon at prospects of a globalised NATO, has shelved any “political solution” regarding Assange, at least in any public context.  The US-Australian alliance is a shrine to worship at with reverential delusion, rather than question with informed scepticism.  The WikiLeaks founder did, after all, spoil the party.

On a cheerier note, those listening to Robinson’s address reflected a healthy political awareness about the tribulations facing a fellow Australian citizen.  The federal member for the seat of Kooyong, Dr. Monique Ryan, was present, as were Senators Peter Whish Wilson and David Shoebridge.  As Ryan subsequently tweeted, “An Australian punished by foreign states for acts of journalism?  Time for our government to act.”

Others were those who have been or continue to be targets of the national security state.  The long-suffering figure and target of the Australian security establishment, Bernard Collaery, put in an appearance, as did David McBride, who awaits trial for having exposed alleged atrocities of Australian special service personnel in Afghanistan.

Such individuals have made vital, oxygenating contributions to democratic accountability, of which WikiLeaks stands proud.  But any journalism that, as Robinson puts it, subjects “power to scrutiny, and holding it accountable”, is bound to incite the fury of the national security state.  Regarding Assange, will that fury win out?
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 Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne and can be reached at: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

Wicked Leaks, Part 1: How The Media Quarantined Evidence On Nord Stream Sabotage

by Media Lens / October 26th, 2022

Last week, Alex Nunns, author of The Candidate – Jeremy Corbyn’s Improbable Path To Power and former Corbyn speechwriter, described the current assault on democracy within the Labour Party:

‘What’s happening in the Labour Party is new. The Labour right, having had the shock of their lives in 2015, are now intent on eradicating the left entirely. This isn’t how their predecessors thought. It’s a new departure in Labour history that’ll have long term consequences.’

So why the change?

‘Previous generations of Labour right bureaucrats accommodated the left not because they were nicer than the current lot but because 1) the left was part of a power bloc which they needed to advance their own ends & 2) they were confident in containing the left within that bloc.

‘This generation of Labour right bureaucrats acts differently because 2) has changed, but 1) hasn’t. Their predecessors weren’t all stupid, so there will be a long-term cost.’

In other words, the Labour right is ‘eradicating the left entirely’ because, as the Corbyn near-miss in 2017 showed, the level of public support for left policies is now so high that it threatens to surge uncontrollably through any window of opportunity.

This rings true, and not just for the Labour Party. What we have often called the ‘corporate media’, but which in truth is a state-corporate media system, has followed essentially the same path for the same reasons.

Where once the likes of John Pilger, Robert Fisk and Peter Oborne were granted regular columns in national newspaper and magazines, and even space for prime-time documentaries, their brand of rational, compassionate dissent has been all but banished. Pilger commented recently:

‘In recent years, some of the best journalists have been eased out of the mainstream. “Defenestrated” is the word used. The spaces once open to mavericks, to journalists who went against the grain, truth-tellers, have closed.’

In October 2019, Peter Oborne published an article on ‘the way Boris Johnson was debauching Downing Street by using the power of his office to spread propaganda and fake news’.¹. The media response:

‘This article marked the end of my thirty-year-long career as a writer and broadcaster in the mainstream British press and media. I had been a regular presenter on Radio 4’s The Week in Westminster for more than two decades. It ceased to use me, without explanation. I parted company on reasonably friendly terms with the Daily Mail after our disagreement…

‘The mainstream British press and media is to all intents and purposes barred to me.’ (p. 132 and p. 133)

As with the Labour Party, the reason is that the game – and it always was a game – has changed. In the age of internet-based citizen journalism – heavily filtered by algorithms and ‘shadow-banning’ though it is – elite interests can no longer be sure that the truth can be contained by the ‘free press’ and its obedient ranks of ‘client journalists’.

In our media alert of 26 July 2002, we wrote:

‘This does not mean that there is no dissent in the mainstream; on the contrary the system strongly requires the appearance of openness. In an ostensibly democratic society, a propaganda system must incorporate occasional instances of dissent. Like vaccines, these small doses of truth inoculate the public against awareness of the rigid limits of media freedom.’

That was true two decades ago when we started Media Lens. But, now, the state-corporate media system relies less on inoculation and more on quarantine: inconvenient facts, indeed whole issues, are simply kept from public awareness. We have moved far closer to a totalitarian system depending on outright censorship.

An example was provided by a remarkable leading article in the Observer, titled, ‘The Observer view on the global escalation of Russia’s war on Ukraine’. The title notwithstanding, this October 9 article made no mention at all of the terrorist attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines just two weeks earlier, on September 26. But why?

The pipelines are multi-national projects operated by Swiss-based Nord Stream AG, with each intended to supply around 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from Russia to Europe through pipelines laid beneath the Baltic Sea connecting to a German hub. Completed a decade ago, Russian gas giant, Gazprom, has a 51 percent stake in the project that cost around $15 billion to build. US media watch site, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), made the key point:

‘Any serious coverage of the Nord Stream attack should acknowledge that opposition to the pipeline has been a centerpiece of the US grand strategy in Europe. The long-term goal has been to keep Russia isolated and disjointed from Europe, and to keep the countries of Europe tied to US markets. Ever since German and Russian energy companies signed a deal to begin development on Nord Stream 2, the entire machinery of Washington has been working overtime to scuttle it.’

The evidence for this is simply overwhelming. For example, FAIR noted that during his confirmation hearings in 2021, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told Congress he was ‘determined to do whatever I can to prevent’ Nord Stream 2 from being completed. Months later, the US State Department reiterated that ‘any entity involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline risks US sanctions and should immediately abandon work on the pipeline’.

If that doesn’t make US hostility to the pipelines clear enough, President Joe Biden told reporters in February:

‘If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.’

Asked by a reporter how the US intended to end a project that was, after all, under German control, Biden responded:

‘I promise you, we will be able to do that.’

No surprise, then, that, following the attack, Blinken described the destruction of the pipelines as a ‘tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy,’ adding that this ‘offers tremendous strategic opportunity for years to come’.

Former UN weapons inspector and political analyst Scott Ritter commented:

‘Intent, motive and means: People serving life sentences in U.S. prisons have been convicted on weaker grounds than the circumstantial evidence against Washington for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines.’

In a rare moment of ‘mainstream’ dissent echoing Ritter’s conclusion, Columbia University economist, Jeffrey Sachs, surprised his interviewer by saying:

‘I know it runs counter to our narrative, you’re not allowed to say these things in the West, but the fact of the matter is, all over the world when I talk to people, they think the US did it. Even reporters on our papers that are involved tell me, “Of course [the US is responsible],” but it doesn’t show up in our media.’

Sachs added: ‘there’s direct radar evidence that US helicopters, military helicopters that are normally based in Gdansk were circling over this area’.

Despite all of this, FAIR reported of US corporate media coverage:

‘Much of the media cast their suspicions towards Russia, including Bloomberg (9/27/22), Vox (9/29/22), Associated Press (9/30/22) and much of cable news. With few exceptions, speculation on US involvement has seemingly been deemed an intellectual no-fly-zone.’

Thus, the possibility of US involvement has been intellectually quarantined. Instead, US media have been tying themselves in knots trying to find alternative explanations. The New York Times wrote:

‘It is unclear why Moscow would seek to damage installations that cost Gazprom billions of dollars to build and maintain. The leaks are expected to delay any possibility of receiving revenue from fuel going through the pipes.’

In Britain, the Guardian affected similar confusion:

‘Nord Stream has been at the heart of a standoff between Russia and Europe over energy supplies since the start of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, but it is not immediately clear who stands to benefit from the destruction of the gas infrastructure.’

If not ‘immediately clear’, it surely becomes clear after a moment’s honest reflection. Another Guardian report commented:

‘Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic states and the US – including its former president Donald Trump – have been fierce critics of the Nord Stream pipeline, and Germany has announced its intention to wean itself off Russian gas completely and Gazprom has wound down deliveries to almost zero.

‘For a Nato ally to have carried out an act of sabotage on a piece of infrastructure part-owned by European companies would have meant much political risk for little gain, but for Russia to destroy its own material and political asset would also seem to defy logic.’

The risk is not, in fact, that great in a world where politicians and media like the Guardian refuse to point the finger of blame at the world’s sole superpower. As we have seen, the assertion that an attack by a Nato ally would be ‘for little gain’ was publicly contradicted by Blinken’s own comment that the destruction of the pipelines ‘offers tremendous strategic opportunity for years to come.’

The Guardian added:

‘Some European politicians suggested Russia could have carried out the blasts with the aim of causing further havoc with gas prices or demonstrating its ability to damage Europe’s energy infrastructure.’

But as the Guardian acknowledged, this ‘logic’ seemed ‘to defy logic’ and suggested journalists were burying their heads in the sand at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. A further Guardian report noted:

‘A senior Ukrainian official also called it a Russian attack to destabilise Europe, without giving proof.’

Or any reasoning. The report continued:

‘British sources said they believed it may not be possible to determine what occurred with certainty.’

How convenient. The Telegraph reported:

‘Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said that if it was confirmed it was an act of sabotage by Russia it would be “in nobody’s interest”.’

Again, a statement directly contradicted by Blinken himself. His ‘in nobody’s interest’ comment was the main focus of most media coverage.

FAIR discussed a tweet from a Polish member of the European Parliament, Radek Sikorski – a one-time Polish defence minister as well as a former American Enterprise Institute fellow, who was named one of the ‘Top 100 Global Thinkers’ in 2012 by Foreign Policy. FAIR reported:

‘Sikorski tweeted a picture of the methane leak in the ocean, along with the caption, “As we say in Polish, a small thing, but so much joy.” He later tweeted, “Thank you, USA,” with the same picture.’

These comments were occasionally reported in the UK press, but Sikorski later tweeted against the pipeline, noting:

‘Nord Stream’s only logic was for Putin to be able to blackmail or wage war on Eastern Europe with impunity.’

He added:

‘Now $20 billion of scrap metal lies at the bottom of the sea, another cost to Russia of its criminal decision to invade Ukraine. Someone…did a special maintenance operation.’

This was clearly an ironic reference to the term ‘special military operation’ used by Russia to describe its illegal invasion of Ukraine.

Significantly, the Telegraph reported some but not all of this:

‘Sikorski posted a photo of the Nord Stream methane bubbling to the Baltic’s surface, with the brief message: “Thank you, USA.”

‘Sikorski has since deleted his tweet, and has not since elaborated on it… [but] it was widely seized upon by pro-Russian media seeking to make the case for American sabotage.’

But as we have seen, Sikorski certainly had elaborated on it; and media didn’t need to be ‘pro-Russian’ to believe the comments pointed towards Western sabotage.

The Daily Mail also struggled to understand:

‘On Twitter Radoslaw Sikorski posted a picture of a massive methane gas spill on the surface of the Baltic Sea with the comment: “Thank You USA”. The hawkish MEP later tweeted that if Russia wants to continue supplying gas to Europe it must “talk to the countries controlling the gas pipelines”.

‘Whatever did he mean?’

In fact, Sikorski had been very clear about what he meant.

In a single, casual comment in the Mail on Sunday, Peter Hitchens may be the only ‘mainstream’ journalist to actually affirm the likely significance of Sikorski’s comments:

‘Radek Sikorski may have given the game away. First, he tweeted “Thank you, USA” with a picture of the gas bubbling up into the Baltic. Then, when lots of people noticed, he deleted it. That made me think he was on to something.’ ²

Curiously, non-corporate journalists like Jonathan Cook, Caitlin Johnstone, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, Bryce Green, even hippy Russell Brand, were able to find all the evidence and arguments omitted by ‘mainstream’ journalists supported by far greater resources.

And this makes the point with which we began this alert: there is now so much high-quality journalism exposing the establishment outside the state-corporate ‘mainstream’, that the task of the ‘mainstream’ now is to protect the establishment by acting as a buffer blocking citizen journalism from public awareness.

The Observer editorial which failed to even mention this major terror attack on civilian infrastructure talked of a ‘Putin plague’, describing the Russian leader as ‘a pestilence whose spread threatens the entire world. Ukraine is not its only victim’. That’s the Bad Guy. So who are the Good Guys in this fairy-tale? The editors added:

‘In this developing confrontation, much more is at stake than Ukraine’s sovereignty. On life support, it seems, is the entire postwar consensus underpinning global security, nuclear non-proliferation, free trade and international law.’

It is easy to understand why the Observer would prefer to quarantine the possibility of US involvement in a terror attack that would make a nonsense of the editors’ lofty rhetoric about a ‘postwar consensus’ based on ‘international law’.

Also no surprise, the Observer once again found answers in the favoured, fix-all solution beloved of the Western press – regime change:

‘If the Putin plague is ever to be eradicated, if the war is ever to end, such developments inside Russia, presaging a change of leadership, full military withdrawal from Ukraine and a fresh start, represent the best hope of a cure.’

• Part 2 to follow shortly.

1. Peter Oborne, The Assault on Truth, Simon & Schuster, 2021, p. 130 []
2. Hitchens, ‘How could I know…’ Mail on Sunday, 2 October 2022. [FacebookTwitter

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Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. The most recent Media Lens book, Propaganda Blitz by David Edwards and David Cromwell, was published in 2018 by Pluto Press. Read other articles by Media Lens, or visit Media Lens's website.

Battle Royal: Robots, Transhumans, and Humans

by Allen Forrest / October 27th, 2022

Amazing robot sci-fi stories from the 1960s that spell out what we are about to go through with transhumanism and robotics. The Creation of the Humanoids

Isaac Asimov’s
Little Lost Robot

Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot by BBC Radio 4Facebook

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Allen Forrest is a writer, painter, graphic artist and activist. He has created covers and illustrations for literary publications and books, is the winner of the Leslie Jacoby Honor for Art at San Jose State University's Reed Magazine for 2015, and his Bel Red landscape paintings are part of the Bellevue College Foundation's permanent art collection in Bellevue, WA. He lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Read other articles by Allen, or visit Allen's website.

“Free-Market” Education Is Ineffective and Discredited

by Shawgi Tell / October 28th, 2022

Education and other public services and social programs have been under attack by major owners of capital and “free market” ideologues for several decades. To be sure, the privatization of all spheres and sectors continues at a brisk rate at home and abroad. Public-private “partnerships” and other pay-the-rich schemes carried out under the veneer of high ideals are multiplying rapidly and intensifying problems everywhere. Few countries are unaffected.

Charter schools and vouchers are the two main forms of privatization in the sphere of American education. Both have wreaked havoc on public education and the public interest for decades. Together they have lowered the level of culture and education, misled parents and the public, greatly enriched a handful of people along the way, and damaged the economy. These privatized education arrangements have not served the national interest in any way.

Extensive information and analysis of school privatization in its various forms can be found in many places, including at the Network for Public Education, Tultican, In The Public Interest, Common Dreams, and Truthout. Hundreds of scholarly peer-reviewed articles and books also expose many serious problems with school privatization.

The main theory behind the privatization and deregulation of public education is “free-market” theory, which maintains that treating education as a commodity, as a business, as an exchange phenomenon in a dog-eat-dog world where everyone fends-for-themselves, is the best of all worlds and the most effective, civilized, and fair way to save children, the economy, society, and the nation.

“Free-market” theory openly promotes a survival-of-the-fittest ethos for schools, families, and individuals, which ends up consolidating inequality and reinforcing a system of winners and losers. In practice, “school choice” leaves many children and families behind. In this connection, it is important to appreciate the segregationist origins of “school choice”.

Such a dog-eat-dog system is anachronistic and negates arrangements based on the affirmation of basic human rights that belong to all by virtue of being human. In the “free market” you may end up in a great school or you may not, which is often the case. It is on you alone to find a school that serves the needs of your children, and to do so in an environment that is increasingly complex and confusing. And “buyer beware” because when your school closes, often without warning, there is no way to secure redress. You have to live and die by the “free market.” Nothing is guaranteed.

Indeed, privately-operated charter schools close every week, leaving many low-income black and brown families feeling violated. A recent example of this disaster comes from Philadelphia (August 26, 2022) where a news headline reads: Families left scrambling after 2 Philadelphia charter schools announce closure days before start of school. Many Philly families say that they are shocked and at a loss for what to do. Another recent example (September 24, 2022) comes from Florida: ‘Devastated’: Weeks after opening, Red Hills Academy charter school set to close. Financial malfeasance, mismanagement, and poor academic performance are the three most common reasons privately-operated charter schools close every week.

Such upheavals and chaos are common in the crisis-prone charter school sector. They are a salient feature, not just a bug, of charter school arrangements. In some cases parents receive only a short cold email from charter school operators informing them that their charter school is closing abruptly—and at the worst possible time. It is an irresponsible approach to education in a modern society. And with no sense of irony, “free market” ideologues present such “churn” and disorder as a good and normal thing, as the way things are supposed to be.

Charter schools now have a 31-year record of failure, corruption, fraud, controversy, scandal, and closure. So do vouchers. Poor accountability and low transparency are hallmarks of the crisis-prone charter school sector. However, none of this has stopped charter school promoters from working tirelessly to oversell and prettify charter schools. Charter schools have become notorious for over-promising and under-delivering. Intense advertising and marketing are central to this business-centric drive. The nation’s 100,000 public schools, on the other hand, spend nothing on advertising and marketing because they are not businesses or promoters of consumerism, competition, and the “law of the jungle.” They do not view students and parents as customers shopping for a school. Education is not seen as a commodity or as something provided to society by private interests obsessed with maximizing profit as fast as possible.

“Free-market” theory does not recognize education as a modern human social responsibility. It does not view education as a collective responsibility in the 21st century. It does not consider education to be a basic human right that government must guarantee in practice. It does not accept that public schools in a society based on mass industrial production need to be universal, well-organized, world-class, fully-funded, integrated, locally-controlled by elected individuals accountable to the public, and available for free in every neighborhood.

Education in a complex society such as ours cannot be left to chance and a fend-for-yourself outlook. Such an orientation is at odds with contemporary conditions and requirements. The “law of the jungle” is not fit for human beings. For centuries, humans have needed and wanted a society fit for all, not a society for “the fittest.”

If private schools wish to exist—and thousands do in America—that is perfectly fine. They simply should not have access to any public funds, assets, facilities, services, or resources because these belong legitimately and wholly to the public alone and no one else. Only schools that are public in the proper sense of the word should receive public funds. Calling charter schools “public” 50 times a day does not automatically make charter schools public. Over the years courts in many jurisdictions have even ruled that charter schools are not public schools. Unlike public schools, charter schools are not state agencies. There is ultimately no justification for funneling public wealth to deregulated charter schools run by unelected private persons. The private sector has no valid or legitimate claim to public funds and resources produced by working people.

Public and private are antonyms and should not be mixed up. They are different categories with distinct characteristics. The public sphere and the private domain have different features and embrace different aims, roles, and agendas, which is why they cannot be reconciled. They are also governed by different laws. The rich and their representatives continually blur the critical distinction between these different realms for self-serving reasons. For example, if they can get away with calling privately-operated deregulated charter schools “public schools,” then they can lay false claim to public funds and resources, which is really nothing more than private parasitic expropriation of public property under the banner of high ideals. Such self-serving claims make the rich richer while wrecking public education and the public interest.

According to “free market” theory, anything other than “free-market” arrangements leads to “special interests,” “politics,” “inefficiency,” “economic distortions,” “government tyranny,” and more. Government is typically the bogeyman in “free market” theory. Government is automatically and permanently evil in “free market” theory, which is ironic because government today actively imposes the neoliberal outlook and agenda of the rich on everyone and everything, leading to greater inequalities and tragedies at all levels. Like the welfare state, the neoliberal state ensures that the rich keep getting much richer. This is all consistent with the theory of private property expounded by political philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, and Adam Smith. They argued that government’s main role is to protect private property rights, which means, among other things, prioritizing individualism over the general interests of society. To be sure, states and governments intervene regularly in the “free market” to privilege big business. The rich seem to have no issues or concerns when government guarantees them even more benefits denied to others. The rich, in reality, do not like to live and die by the “free market.” They want the state and government to guarantee them profit at all times, regardless of how damaging this is to the natural and social environment.

Private property, it should be recalled, means that only one individual can use said property. All others are excluded from use of said property; the legal individual owner has the exclusive right to use it as he or she sees fit and no one else is allowed to benefit from this property. Private property is about exclusion.¹

Further, any notion of consciously planning an economy to secure stability, sustainability, and growth for all is rashly rejected as irrational by “free market” ideologues. They maintain that it is absurd and impossible to plan for the needs of all humans in a deliberate and conscious way that ensures that all parts of the economy operate in a harmonious pro-social manner. “Things are too complex or too big to be controlled or planned” say “free market” ideologues. In this way, uncertainty, chaos, instability, individualism, consumerism, and a fend-for-yourself lifestyle are normalized.

According to “free market” ideologues, if everything were just left to the “free market” we would supposedly have the best of all worlds where “the best and brightest,” “the winners,” and “the most meritorious” would rise to the top, lead, and make everything better for everyone. Talent, ability, and initiative would be properly rewarded, according to “free market” theory. All the chips would land fairly and correctly in their proper place if everyone just played by the rules of “free market” theory. “Free market” ideologues claim that everything would be high quality if we just upheld “free market” ideas.

This ahistorical and apolitical approach ignores 50 things, including the unequal distribution and control of economic and political power in a class-divided society, that is, who is already-advantaged and who is already-disadvantaged. It ignores inherited wealth, unequal access to information, differing levels of literacy, uneven cultural capital, the exploitation of workers by owners of capital, and much more. The game, as they say, is already rigged, which is why “might makes right” and “winner takes all” prevail in the “free market.” After all, since “not everyone can be excellent” in the “free market,” then not everyone can be “a winner.” Only the “fittest survive” in this obsolete set-up. Many have to fail. Put differently, competition in the “free market” is already heavily pre-conditioned by economic and other considerations.

Mountain States Policy Center

The newest entity to enter the “free market education” foray is a “nonprofit” group called the Mountain States Policy Center. According to Idaho Ed News, the Mountain States Policy Center:

advertises itself as a nonpartisan research group. Its goal is to promote the free market, individual liberty and limited government in Washington, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.

We are also told that, “Education is one of the group’s top concerns.” Indeed, “school choice” is the group’s “top education priority,” which means more school privatization (e.g., charter schools and vouchers).

The group is led by committed long-standing “free market” ideologues and claims to be “above” politics and rhetoric, even though it is heavily involved in both. Chris Cargill is the co-founder, President, and CEO of Mountain States Policy Center. He “spent the last 13 years with the Washington Policy Center, a similar free-market think tank headquartered in Seattle.”

In an ideological sleight of hand, the Mountain States Policy Center explicitly equates the “free market’ with “the people.” This is a particularly dark form of disinformation because the “free market” and “the people” are not the same. They are different categories with different qualities. The “free market” is the way commodities are exchanged in a society based on individualism, commodity production, exchange relations, and private property. It is a set-up based on profit-maximization, not one based on meeting social needs. This is why there are six vacant homes for every homeless person in the U.S. The people, on the other hand, refers to the modern polity made up of citizens with equal rights and duties. There is no necessary or automatic connection between the “free market” and “the people.”

People have lived and worked in many periods that did not have a “free market.” Entrepreneurialism, for instance, did not exist in most economic formations; it is specific to capitalism and serves as a euphemism for “rugged individualism,” fend-for-yourself, and survival-of-the-fittest. Promoters of entrepreneurialism also try to equate it with “innovation.” It should also be noted that the concept of “the people” did not exist in periods prior to the rise of capitalism. Under slavery and feudalism many humans were not even part of “the people.”

The “free market,” it should be stressed, rests on instability, uncertainty, chaos, anarchy, competition, consumerism, possessive individualism, and private property. It fosters turmoil (“creative destruction”) and blocks the rise of a self-reliant, diverse, and balanced economy whose parts work together in harmony to meet the needs of all. Humans, however, do not need or want instability, uncertainty, and insecurity in the 21st century. People in a modern society based on mass industrial production need and want a society that ensures stability, peace, security, and prosperity for all on a planned, conscious, sustainable basis. Constantly lurching from one economic crisis to another is inhumane and avoidable.

The aim of conflating the “free market” with “the people” is designed to make it seem like the “free market” is somehow pro-social and human-centered when, in fact, it stresses possessive individualism and denies the existence of society and the social relationship between individuals. “Free market” theory does not see individuals as social beings but rather as self-interested, disconnected, isolated (“independent”) beings that just want to be left alone while they “make their way” in this dog-eat-dog world that perpetuates many inequalities and tragedies. The “free market” essentially ignores social responsibility and lionizes individualism and individual responsibility. It has no dialectical conception of the relationship between individuals and society.

The Mountain States Policy Center also creates a false dichotomy between government and “the people.” This is done in an attempt to de-link “the people” from the government, even though no civilized society can exist without government. Such disinformation is meant to foster the idea that government is not and cannot be an arrangement that actually represents and serves people. Indeed, government is seen as a big nuisance. “People” for “free market” ideologues really means capitalists, entrepreneurs, business people, stakeholders, and consumers. It does not mean humans and citizens with rights that belong to them by virtue of their being and which must be upheld by a modern government. “Free market” ideologues never distinguish between a human-centered government versus a capital-centered government. They do not recognize that a government that upholds a public authority worthy of the name differs from a government that puts the narrow interests of big business in first place all the time.

The neoliberal character of the Mountain States Policy Center comes out again in this statement: “We believe that parents should have the right to use the dollars that they put into the public school system to educate their children as best as they see fit.” This is one of many versions of the worn-out neoliberal disinformation to funnel public money into private hands. The statement combines “parents” and “choice” in a way that makes it seem like the Mountain States Policy Center is simply defending some sort of benign choice and rights, when they are really promoting consumerism, individualism, a fend-for-yourself mentality, and the commodification of education. It also ignores the fact that public school funds do not belong to parents or students, per se. Public school funds are not “portable” and free for any individual to use as they wish whenever and wherever they want. This is not the premise, purpose, and function of public school money in the U.S.

It is worth recalling that charter means contract, that contracts are part of private law, and that charter schools are contract schools. Contracts are the quintessential market category; they make markets ‘work’. Contracts are the expression of exchange relations in a society based on commodity production and the social division of labor and private property underlying such an economy. Individualism, competition, utilitarianism, and consumerism are the companion ideologies of such an outdated set-up. The link between private property and charter schools cannot be overlooked, especially because such a connection negates the oft-repeated irrational claim that charter schools are public schools. In practice, the concept and practice of charter schools forsakes public control and benefit. This is why charter schools are not, in fact, open to all students and do cherry-pick their students using many different methods.

Further, like private businesses, charter schools treat teachers as “at-will” employees, which means that they can be hired and fired at any time for any reason. In addition, many states allow charter school teachers to teach without a license or certificate. This is on top of the fact that charter school teachers, on average, are paid less, are less experienced, and work longer days and years than their public school counterparts.

Moreover, widespread fraud and corruption are perhaps the most striking features of cyber charter schools and brick-and-mortar charter schools. Not a day goes by where there is not some sort of scandal, crime, or controversy in the charter school sector. Arrests, indictments, and incarceration of charter school employees are commonplace.

Charter school owners and operators are also known for manipulating student waiting list numbers to create the illusion that most, or all, charter schools have long student waiting lists, which is supposed to “prove” and signal to the public that charter schools are popular and a superior alternative to the public schools that educate 90% of America’s youth. Apparently, parents and students are clamoring to escape “dreadful” public schools as fast as possible, just to get into a privately-operated, deregulated, segregated charter school governed by unelected private persons focused on the bottom line. In reality, countless charter schools manipulate their waiting lists and many cannot meet their own enrollment targets. This is besides the never-ending problem of high student (and teacher and principal) turnover rates in charter schools. Every week, many students are pushed out of charter schools in one way or another and dumped back into the “dreadful” public schools that accept all students at all times. But, as researcher Jeff Bryant notes, No Matter What the Charter School Movement Says, Parents Like Their Public Schools (October 5, 2022).

The list of problems plaguing the charter school sector, along with the damage that this sector is doing to education, society, the economy, and the national interest is lengthy, damning, and indicting.

Today, a robust and growing body of unassailable evidence documents many serious problems in the crisis-prone charter school sector. This has had the effect of steadily and methodically strengthening the ideological, theoretical, educational, and political battle against neoliberal educational ideas, policies, and arrangements.

After two generations of failure and scandal, privatizers and neoliberals continue to push aggressively for more school privatization in order to transfer as much public wealth away from the public and into the hands of narrow private interests seeking new sources of profit in an economy that is tapped out and steadily collapsing.

Working people, students, parents, educators, public education advocates, and others have an objective interest in ending privatization in all its forms and defending the public interest. Neoliberals, privatizers, and “free market” ideologues determined to further wreck public education, society, the economy, and the national interest under the banner of high ideals can and must be stopped.

1. Private property and personal property are not the same. []FacebookTwitteRedditEmail

Shawgi Tell is author of the book Charter School Report Card. He can be reached at stell5@naz.edu.. Read other articles by Shawgi.