It would seem that the world is finally embracing the Fireaxe theory, at least in small doses. Well, to be honest I'm sure that neither man quoted above has ever heard of Fireaxe, but it's always enlightening when those who have worked within the system, benefited from the system, and then became embittered towards the system come clean, at least to some degree, about how things are done in the corridors of power. Despite the ideals of democracy which hold up the notion of a transparent government and well informed public as a way to guard against corruption and mismanagement we are still kept in the dark concerning a great number of matters, matters which I believe would greatly affect who we vote for and how we participate in our political systems. Instead we appear to be kept woefully misinformed by leaders who have breathtaking conflicts of interest and a media system which is almost equally as compromised. And although windows on the truth open periodically through a variety of reliable sources the true nature of our world remains a mystery to even the most well informed and intelligent among us. As a result our arguments, our writings, and our actions are cheapened and often reduced to being useless and irrelevant. We become the processors in the adage "garbage in, garbage out".

I haven't read Musharraf's book, but I have read Perkins' tale of exploitation and deceit and I can recommend it as a powerful insight into the workings of capitalism and how it subverts foreign policy. Few of the things that Perkins brings up in the book are things that most of us have never been heard before, such as CIA assassinations and coups in various countries, the exploitation of the indigenous workforce in the third world, and how the military-industrial-corporate complex has a firm hold on political power, but what Perkins' book does so well is tie everything together into a model which is simple to both understand and observe and which completely obliterates the notion that it is all part of a vast conspiracy. Capitalism has never been a purely benevolent economic system and has had a long history of exploitation and political subversion when left to its own devices. When reading Perkins' book it becomes clear that no conspiracy is needed, the model for modern imperialism is simply how the system of capitalism naturally functions in all of its ruthless glory.

I'll briefly describe the model that the U.S. uses to essentially enslave countries and extract their resources which Perkins details in his book. It all begins when a country is unfortunate enough to discover some valuable resource buried below its surface, such as oil, precious metals, or other scarce and valuable commodities. I say "unfortunate" because the end result for that country is often much worse than for its neighbors which lack such valuable resources. The U.S. will send what are called "Economic Hit Men", a term which the "Hit Men" themselves use in jest to describe their roles, to the country to convince that country's leaders that it is in their best interests to allow U.S. companies to come in and develop their country, adding electrical power, running water, and other basic infrastructure as well as building up the industries which will be extracting the country's valuable natural resources. The country's leaders are shown estimates of tremendous economic growth and wealth gains from these projects, estimates which are seldom anywhere close to the truth, to encourage them to cooperate. Of course, most countries cannot afford to pay for these ambitious projects, so to help get things rolling, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, both of which are controlled by the U.S., offer generous loans to the country, loans which on paper appear like they will be quickly paid off by the great economic gains of modernization but in reality will burden the country for decades to come. In exchange for receiving these loans, the country must make some radical changes to their laws in regards to foreign ownership of that country's assets, the privatization of things which were once controlled by the government, and the removal of as many regulations over business as possible. This paves the way for U.S. corporations to move in and take virtual ownership of the country.

The outcome is generally a period of strong economic growth, for a few years at least, which is what one would expect when a large amount of capital is injected into an economy. Once this injection has run its course the results are far less impressive. A wide disparity in wealth forms almost immediately with the few haves ending up much richer than the many have-nots. Without the power of collective bargaining and the guarantee of a minimum wage, things that the new laws now forbid, the poor see their salaries go into free fall. Add to this the burden of taxes that the government must impose to pay off its debts to the IMF and World Bank, and the vulnerability of being dependent on for-profit industries for their basic necessities, the have-nots are quickly driven into poverty and bankruptcy as unemployment runs rampant. The poor are disenfranchised and the rich take control of the land and resources with the result being a country which resembles a modern form of feudalism. However, if you only measure the total economic statistics for the country, where rich and poor are averaged together and where fuzzy math can be applied to tweak the numbers a few percentages points in whichever direction one chooses, there can still appear to be strong productive growth. It's an economic miracle!

When this model is described in the way that I've done above, it seems clear that it is a simple con-job but the approach is based on a very popular economic theory called Neoliberalism. Neoliberal economists believe that pure free markets, that is, ones that are not regulated in any way by government, always work to produce systems of maximum economic production. In edition 9.6 of The Burning Blade I explored the dangers of capitalism and the falsehoods of free markets, citing examples such as monopolies, collusion, and the highly disruptive bursting of speculative bubbles in the essay, but a Neoliberal would counter that market failures are caused either by too much regulation, by central bank or government intervention, or that they are merely a necessary part of the "creative destruction" inherent in capitalism that requires properly distributed capital in order to achieve peak efficiency. For anything which ails the system, the Neoliberal solution seems to be to remove what little regulation is left and leave the markets to their own devices.

Additionally, it has become a popular sport for Neoliberal theorists to examine the many economic collapses which have occurred throughout history and revise the explanations for those collapses as being the result of whatever regulation or intervention took place rather than admit any failure of the free markets themselves. I recall being taught that the Great Depression was caused by banks making excessive loans without demanding sufficient collateral which then resulted in both a stock market and real estate bubble which then burst, resulting in an extended period of either unavailable or highly priced credit (high interest rates) that restrained economic growth for years. However, those of you who learned as I did might find it surprising that many of those who are now in charge of the economy, such as the Fed chief, leading economists, and numerous politicians, are Neoliberals who are more likely to blame efforts made to prevent the bubble from continuing to grow as being the cause for the crash and its aftermath rather than the fact that a bubble was allowed to grow in the first place. They also cite post-crash government intervention as being responsible for delaying what should have been, according to them, a much quicker recovery. Recent fiscal policy at the Federal Reserve over the last few decades reflects this thinking, and the Fed has both nursed a series of bubbles using with low interest rates, easy credit, and other methods, as well as provided sufficient liquidity (cash and credit) to inflate new bubbles when the old bubbles burst. As a result, the Fed has propped up the dollar based economic system numerous times when it should have either fallen into a deep recession or collapsed altogether. In simple terms, the Fed believes that the solution to any economic crisis is to throw money at the problem, literally. And while that may sound like hyperbole, I can easily quote to you our current Fed chief, Ben Bernanke, expounding upon the wonders of the printing press as the ultimate weapon against the deflation that often occurs in the aftermath of bursting asset bubbles. Put into poker terms, due to its similarities with modern "investing", it's not the Fed's job to impose a betting cap at the table nor to encourage those low on funds to tip their hat, get up, and go home, that would be like trying to regulate the markets, which is a Neoliberal faux pas. Instead, the central bank is supposed to walk around the table with a bucket full of chips and loan them out every time someone runs out of money. It's no surprise that everyone wants a seat at the table in this kind of game, which is pretty much what has happened over the last decade, but when it comes time to cash out and people discover that the house can't cover all of the chips that have been handed out, there will be many, many losers who had thought that they were really winners. Furthermore, if the economy actually does collapse as some surprisingly learned and clear-headed economists have predicted, then we'll all be losers.

It is clear that Neoliberalism is very much an ideology, complete with faith-based accounting, falsehoods masquerading as utopian dreams, and true believers determined to spread the word across the world, by force if necessary. In Perkins' book he describes the steps that the U.S. takes when reluctant countries have the audacity to refuse the great gift of Neoliberal economics. If the Economic Hit Men fail, Perkins writes, the job is handed over to the "jackals" who are CIA agents who essentially make the leader of the country "an offer that he can't refuse". If they fail to persuade the leader to accept the deals made by the Economic Hit Men then the CIA will attempt to engineer an assassination, making it appear to be an accident, such as a plane crash, and Perkins points to the cases of Allende in Chile, Roldos in Ecuador, and Torrijos in Panama as examples of these "accidents". Another option is to overthrow the country's leader in a coup, such as how the CIA deposed the very popular Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, (he'd made the mistake of nationalizing his country's oil industry to get Iran a more reasonable share of the profits), and almost succeeded in ousting Chavez in Venezuela a few years ago. If the jackals fail then it is up to the U.S. Army, the most powerful fighting force that the world has ever seen, to liberate the country from the grip of either a ruthless dictator, a communist sympathizer, or whatever label fits that country's leader which is then used to sell the use of military force to the American people. This was the case for Noriega in Panama and very likely the case for both Hussein in Iraq and Milosevic in Serbia. It doesn't take much of an imagination to add Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela to the list of targets given how intense the vilification of their leaders in the U.S. media has been in the past few years. Iran and Venezuela are both oil rich countries which were once devoted "allies" of the U.S. but which have partially or completely thrown off the yoke of economic exploitation. It is clear that the U.S. would very much like to get those countries back under its control using whatever means necessary but is finding that it has become a victim of its own imperial overreach. The case for North Korea being a target is less clear since it has no resources to exploit, but then the U.S. doesn't seem eager to launch an invasion into that country despite its progress towards nuclear missile technology. Another recent regime change is that which occurred in Afghanistan after September eleventh. It wasn't long after Karzai was elected to lead that "liberated" country that he and Pakistan's president signed a treaty to build a gas pipeline from the Caspian region to the Indian Ocean, a pipeline that would free the resource-rich, landlocked Central Asian countries from having to use Russian pipelines, and pay the Kremlin for the privilege, to distribute their natural gas. The pipeline project had been proposed to the Taliban but the Taliban rejected the proposal and are now no longer in power. Interesting. This is not to say that the war in Afghanistan wasn't about trying to capture Osama bin Laden, but keep in mind what has been accomplished, what hasn't been accomplished and what interrupted the search for the most wanted terrorist leader in the world.

Which brings us to Iraq. The precise reasons for why the U.S. invaded Iraq have never been completely explained. Insiders have admitted that there were a number of interested parties which each had different objectives for an invasion. This seems reasonable since support for an unjustified war would have needed to come from many places to make it happen. Conquering Iraq would have accomplished a number of goals such as giving U.S. corporations more control over oil, delivering fat reconstruction contracts for politically connected businesses, enabling the construction of massive new military bases in the heart of the Middle East, taking out an enemy of Israel, helping Republicans and pro-war Democrats win elections, and not least of all, easing the fears of our country's cowardly leaders. But it appears that one of the most compelling reasons for the invasion was for the U.S. to recapture the image invincibility that it lost on September eleventh. A powerful national image is vital when it comes to spreading corporatocracy with the threat of military force and a number of countries were openly challenging U.S. control of their economies. The credibility of the U.S. was at stake and along with it the promise of continued corporate profits through economic domination. So the U.S. needed to make an example out of a country, displaying to the entire world that the ghosts of Vietnam had all been exercised and that we were not afraid to put boots on the ground in order to force a regime change upon countries whose leaders refused to do things our way. In this regard, the campaign in Afghanistan was far from convincing. The U.S. mostly used Northern Alliance soldiers instead of U.S. troops to rout the Taliban and later paid the price for that decision when the Afghan soldiers, as the story goes, allowed a number of surrounded Al Qaeda leaders to escape at Tora Bora. The U.S. appeared impotent as a result and Afghanistan offered little for U.S. corporations to plunder. These were two serious problems, both of which could be solved by invading Iraq.

In previous editions of The Burning Blade I suggested that the U.S. refrain from the corporate looting of Iraq and to give the Iraqis more control over their country, especially when it came to their economic self-determinism. After all, our system is all about greed, so why not put Iraqi greed to work for us by giving them incentives to stabilize and rebuild their own country. It is here where I must admit that I was naïve. I did not realize that the corporate takeover of Iraq was one of the primary objectives if not the most important objective of the entire invasion. If Perkins is correct, and it seems to me that he is, then the system of Neoliberal imperialism requires that no country be able to resist the imposition of foreign domination of its economy or else the credibility of the U.S. is undermined. The goal in Iraq is not democracy, or stability, or justice, or peace, or anything else that we've been told. The unspoken goal in Iraq, "victory" if you will, can be measured purely on the balance sheets of corporations which are doing business inside Iraq.

The bottom line is that the ideology that the U.S. is trying to spread when it comes to using covert and overt force is no longer democracy but capitalism, more specifically the Neoliberal version of capitalism where the few prosper at the expense of the masses and where foreign interests reap the fruits of the labor of wage slaves. Yes, Neoliberalism brings progress and yes there is also upward mobility to a limited degree, but it also brings unrest, upheaval, and terrorism. Now, I'm not saying that all of the leaders who have been arrested, assassinated, deposed, vilified, or bombed by the U.S. were angels, many were not far from the tyrants which we claimed that they were, although some of them were definitely national heroes. And I'm not saying that those leaders ran or are running their countries any better than someone personally selected by a Neoliberal think tank, some of them have a rather ham-fisted approach to economics although not all progress can be measured by GDP. I'm also not saying that this all occurs in a vacuum. There are certainly a number of rival ideologies in the world which are seeking ways to undermine U.S. influence world wide and who would be willing to fund violent fanatical organizations to strike at their enemies. After all, that's what the U.S. did with the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 80s. And even our allies are rivals when it comes to the economic sphere. Recall that France and Russia were keen on cozying up to Hussein after the first gulf war but were being prevented from consummating their relationship and gaining access to the Iraqi oil fields by the U.S. and U.K. This is the new colonialism, with direct control over foreign lands being replaced by economic control, and the old colonial powers are still competing with each other for the right to plunder the third world.

But despite the emphasis on profit, Neoliberalism is not simply all about money. Neoliberalism is an ideology that is more about the perfection of the market based system than as a tool for getting rich. Idealists believe that a system run with truly free markets will be a rising tide that lifts all boats. Regulations are shunned since they are viewed as being the tools of the corrupt to pervert the system for their own gain. Pure free markets should be under no ones control, and thus become akin to a god. This god of the free market is often capricious and fickle, but it acts with an "invisible hand" to reward the righteous and punish the unworthy. No longer must one endure the endless arguments of priests and true believers to find the path to enlightenment. All the answers can be found on your bank statement. If the bottom line is large, then you are pious and devout. If the bottom line is small, then you have sinned. This is the new god of the west. It is the new White Man's burden that we must impose on the unwashed heathens of the world. So far the results of various Neoliberal experiments have not been very successful but the claim is made that if all of the "negative" side effects, such as pollution, are priced into the market based system accordingly then the market forces will naturally tilt towards a more positive system. Also, Neoliberals believe that the poor have only themselves to blame and that once people understand and embrace the market based system they will learn marketable skills and produce things that people want to buy and thus will pull themselves out of poverty. Some theorists even envision a utopia of freedom of choice and free markets where pricing mechanisms on every facet of life self regulate the entire social system towards stable, efficient progress, but given what the combination of free markets and human herd-like behaviors has been seen to produce it seems that surrendering so much of our world and ourselves to such a god would be a serious error.

Getting back to more conventional morality, a strong argument can be made to the effect that if it is not us who are exploiting a given country, it will be one of our rivals exploiting them just as much if not more. This argument is supported by the Fireaxe theory, which states that all ideologies fight against each other and that the ones which fight the fiercest are the ones which survive and thrive. Of course, I in no way intend nor desire the Fireaxe theory to be used by apologists for "Corporate Warlordism". What I do intend with the Fireaxe theory is to identify the forces in play in order to understand and hopefully predict world events. Ideology clouds the issue and tries to sweep inconvenient facts under the rug while over-emphasizing others. Even in an ideology which champions free speech and freedom of the press the truth can be difficult to unearth, and I might add that in such an ideology the truth is especially elusive since you can easily get used to taking for granted that what you are being told has been verified as accurate. And so, as always, Forever Vigilance.

Speaking of free speech, "Eternal Devotion to the Dark Goddess" has been completely fleshed out, drafted, and is marching towards the final version of what promises to be the darkest descent down the rabbit hole that Fireaxe has released to date. Since I'm going to run past my target date I will release a sample track from the CD in return for your forgiveness. Expect it before the end of the year.

A big ‘Hello’ to anyone receiving the Burning Blade for the first time. This is the Fireaxe newsletter.