BEFORE anything else, here’s a noisy ‘Happy Birthday!’ to Customs Commissioner Bienvenido Rubio, on his turning 40 at the waistline last May 4. May you have a successful stint at the agency. And greetings too, to all those celebrating their birthday this month, especially to my daughters Karla Mae, Pauline Rose and my ‘Kuya’ Philip who had passed on to the Great Beyond.

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As you are reading this, May 9, it would be a national holiday in Russia, as they celebrated ‘Victory Day’ against Nazi Germany with the formal signing of Germany’s surrender to the Allied Forces. The unconditional surrender came with Berlin under Soviet control and Adolf Hitler already dead a week before, on April 30, after committing suicide inside his Berlin bunker.

This year’s celebration is expected to be less grandiose as in previous years with the special military operation in eastern Ukraine still ongoing after more than a year and with Ukraine terrorist groups, under NATO/US guidance, continuing with their attacks inside Russia, the latest of which was the murder attempt on President Vladimir Putin thru a drone strike at the Kremlin last May 4 that was fortunately foiled by the Russian military.

It has been 78 years since both the West and Russia were forced to band together to end the era of militarism and Fascism in Europe and Asia (thru Japanese Imperialism) and we find it not totally surprising that Fascism is making a “comeback.” For what is Fascism but the extreme version of Western capitalism?

The breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 appears to support the “idea” that only Capitalism is the way forward for human civilization and that its time for the remaining proponents of Socialism, China in particular, to follow the capitalist path, if it wants to progress at all for the benefit of its people.

The West and the United States were so enamored in their belief of “superiority” over everyone else that from that point on, they want to impose their own capitalist system to the rest of the world, whether other people want it or not. Just look at what they did to Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Syria and the former Yugoslavia, among others.

Their covering slogan of course is, “Democracy,” the “bringing” or the “restoration” of democracy.

“Democracy” of course is to politics as “Capitalism” is to the economy. There is a vast divide between them but for the West and Uncle Sam, democracy equals capitalism and vice versa.

And there lies the problem because while democracy means the rule of majority based on consensus, capitalism means the rule of profit and the enrichment of the few over everyone else.

In other words, democracy, as a political ideal, simply means it cannot be tailor-fitted along the Western model alone democracy is also the aim of Socialism and Communism but this is repugnant to the West because for them, Western style democracy is the sure gateway to huge profits for their global corporations thru their exploitation of the resources of other countries.

Indeed, Karl Marx was proven correct in his observation that under the capitalist system, governments are nothing but the executive department of the “bourgeoise” in pursuit of its own agenda that includes creating “a world after its own image.”

And this is where we are now today living under a decadent and decaying global capitalist system that still wants to impose its view and its version of “order” to the rest of the world all for the sake of profit. That is why the world is in chaos.

But a growing segment of the world has seen and suffered enough under this burdensome system that they are now actively rejecting further Western encroachments and insistence that they go practice “democracy.”

And guess to whom they are getting their “inspiration” from? China and Russia. Why them? Because both countries have been militant in the defense of their sovereignty and the right to pursue their own course of national development.

Their “partnership without limit” as both Pres. Putin and President Xi Jinping put it, not only gives inspiration to other countries and peoples, especially in Africa and the rest of the so called ‘Third World,’ who are longing to break free from the capitalist West to chart their own national destinies.

This partnership of course is unacceptable and a nightmare to the West. They won’t allow it to mature further and you can take that intention to the bank, as they say.

We should be prepared for more turbulent days ahead.