"Mark Carney’s speech at Davos yesterday really is worth your time. It made some of the front pages today but the news cycle moves so fast that it’s already yesterday’s news. Part of the challenge of this moment - and I believe the job of journalists - is to focus on the signal, not the noise. And if you have time to take in one thing properly, this week, I’d suggest it’s this."
~ Carole Cadwalladr
☝️ Anything by Carol Cadwalladr is required reading. One of the great heroes of our time.
"America has been the world’s policeman and sometimes that’s looked less like a Victorian bobby on the beat and more like a beat-the-shit-out-of-you ICE officer and calling that out is a refreshing blast of honesty."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carole_Cadwalladr
The org she founded: https://the-citizens.com/
could use an rss link
@mastodonmigration @wdlindsy
Here's the full "The Power of the Powerless" referred to in the article: https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-power-of-the-powerless-vaclav-havel-2011-12-23
"It does what a great speech should do: it gives us the language to process and understand what is happening. It does so from a position of moral clarity. And it includes a call to action to what remains of the liberal world. ...
We can’t respond and act to this hugely consequential geopolitical moment if we are complicit in the denial of our leaders and media. This is a week in which the world we have known has swung on its axis."
"We cannot simply carry on as if it’s business and normal. ...
We’ve been lucky through a golden age of peace and prosperity but as he so clearly articulates, that age is gone. Ahead lies [sic] dragons."
Cadwalladr's posting has the full text of Carney's speech. It's also at the Guardian link below.
"Carney just gave the first speech today of the new global order as it exists. … He was the first major leader to say… America, the United States of America, is no longer a hegemon. We are in a multipolar world, a multilateral world, where the great powers, Russia, China, the United States of America, are finding their equilibrium through panic, fear, greed, & just the pursuit of all of the middle powers."
~ Mike Madrid
#MarkCarney #Davos #GlobalOrder #power #NATO
/4
https://thelefthook.substack.com/p/under-trump-a-weak-isolated-america
"It's a brilliant articulation of the new architecture that is going to frame the world going forward. So the days of the American hegemonic power, this from 1988 to today, this is the first day you heard the articulation from what was an ally saying America is no longer the lone superpower. It's over."
Hmmm... While Carney is right that it's the end of the so-called 'rules based order', and that countries like Canada had prospered under that, it's disingenuous to locate the dishonesty of that period in the exceptionalism of 'great powers'.
The fact is that 'middle powers' like Canada prospered in large part because they also ignored the rules when it suited them. European countries also participated in propagating coups and invasions in the commercial interests of their multinational companies, then muddied the truth about them, they also extracted vast resources from weaker countries under the cover of 'investments', and denied life-saving medicines in the name of 'intellectual property', they also voted unfairly in the UN, IMF, WTO, etc, traded unfairly, sponsored tax havens, etc, etc...
They set the rules of the rules based order in the interests of multinational capitalism, and directly against the interests of people and planet. It has blown up in their faces - but the idea that a decent alternative can be developed without understanding that the injustice has been far deeper than the exceptionalism of 'great powers' is just naive.
