Wednesday, May 20, 2015

strange headline; i was expecting to get a good rant on, but the video doesn't make the argument that i was expecting. so, i'm not needing to tear anything apart. however, i feel that an opportunity was missed to build a larger narrative. on a broader point, though: what's the point of independent media if it's going to parrot the propaganda in the mainsteam media?

and, the idea that europe wants to buy exports from america is just that: propaganda. to get your head around this, you have to understand the nature of the global economy that the united states built after world war two. of course, this order mostly collapsed as a consequence of reaganomics, and is now more or less gone. but, the current administration has put a bigger focus on exports...

back in the years between 1945 and 1993, the united states actually built stuff. a lot of stuff. more stuff than anywhere else in the world. and, as a result, it needed export markets. huge ones. the economic relationship between america and europe that emerged after world war two was (and i'm grossly over-simplifying) something along the lines of "you europeans are going to buy our stuff, in exchange for protection from russia. and, if you don't like that....you don't want to think about what happens if you don't like that. put it like this: or else.".

this is what america tricks itself into thinking a "friend" is.

so, in the world order created by the american empire, europe is designed as an export market for american goods. that is, it's a colony of america.

now, there's lots of reasons europe never really liked this idea, and a lot of it underlies the things europe has done to seek greater sovereignty over the last many decades, and especially since the "end" of the cold war. one of the biggest problems is that when you're stuck in these coercive trade relationships, you're forced to over pay for goods at the tip of a shot gun.

europe wants to buy gas from russia. it's cheap. it's stable. it's easy. and that's a threat to the economic order that exists. which is one of the reasons why the americans are doing everything they can (and largely failing...) to create divisions between russia and europe.