“Our governments have failed us… Its beyond fuel subsidy… They are tired of being used as mercenaries for the government… My parents stopped me today, but I damned the consequences… If I die, I die. But Nigeria has to move!”
Martin Luther King Jr. talking to Harry Belafonte: “I said, ‘What’s the matter, Martin? You seem very agitated.’ He said, ‘Well, I am, because I’ve come upon a thought that I don’t know how to deal with at this moment.’ I said, ‘Well, what is it?’ He said, ‘We’ve fought long for integration. It looks like we’re gonna get it. I think we’ll get the laws,” he says. “But I’m afraid that I’ve come upon something that I don’t know quite what to do with. I’m afraid that we’re integrating into a burning house.’”
“The three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.” – Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor
James Baldwin responds to William F. Buckley Jr. in debate.
He talks about the American Dream, and coming to the consciousness that the American Dream does not serve people of colour. An excellent series of comments on coming to ‘true consciousness’ against the ‘false consciousness’ of the racist capitalist system.
Barack Obama’s Defense Department has released a memo (“Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense“) reiterating the strategy of the U.S. government. Particularly of interest is the continuing hostility towards Iran, and U.S. government threats and plans for forcible regime change in that country.
Under the heading of ‘Counter Terrorism and Irregular Warfare’, the memo says that:
“U.S. military forces must continue to hold al-Qa’ida and its affiliates and adherents under constant pressure, wherever they may be.”
That is, the U.S. will continue to intervene in countries without their permission, including when permission is explicitly denied, even if those nations explicitly agree with U.S.’s claimed aims of the elimination of terrorism (which many do; and all implicitly do because, what people, after all, are interested in promoting terrorism within their countries?).
Some images from Iran. This is the country, like all the countries before it, that the U.S. and its allies want to raze to the ground (click image to go to video page):
The Israeli state bombs Iran. So the Iranian government responds against Israel. U.S. troops are in occupied Palestine during the attack. There then exists a direct pretext for U.S. intervention.
Too simplistic? Hardly. “Missile defense” programs are a first strike weapon.
* * *
“Several thousand US troops headed to Israel for ‘unprecedented’ joint missile defense exercise
On Dec 20 Jerusalem Post reported thousands of American soldiers were deploying to Israel to take part in the “the largest-ever missile defense exercise” in Israel’s history. So far, the U.S. media is not covering it, but Iran sure is.”
The concept of ‘flip flop’ which is thrown around in the corporate media is a tool (like all their tools) designed to constraint the terms of acceptable debate. So, for example, a politician who once supported something, and now opposes it, might be accused of ‘flip flopping’, which is implicitly defined as bad, though they never say why. The implicit assumption is that changing your views is wrong and unprincipled.
Now most politicians usually change their positions from one bad position to another, or sometimes to a ‘good’ position which they either (1) don’t intend to implement, (2) will never have the power to implement, or (3) like 2, will be structurally constrained from implementing. But that doesn’t matter. All that matters is they changed their position, regardless of what their previous and new positions are, or even if there is any substantial change in position (that is, even if its only a rhetorical shift – which it often is).
So if someone once supported drone attacks, but then came to oppose it, the members of both party might call that a ‘flip flop’ to bring them back in line, never questioning the substance of their previous or current position. Its a method of completely avoiding any substance whatsoever. (This is obviously a hypothetical example since almost all U.S. politicians support drone attacks).
But more importantly the idea that changing your views is bad or unprincipled – even if you change them to better positions – re-enforces the terms of elite ‘debate’, and attempts to guilt people into never questioning or changing their views. Because if you change your views, you might eventually change them in a direction that is contrary to the interests of politician elites and the members of the ruling class they serve.
An excellent video from a really rad 13 year old. Check it out. She rocks.
Glenn Greenwald has contributed from a leftwing perspective an excellent corpus of writings analysing the insidious nature of recent U.S. interventions around the world, and the attacks on civil rights within America’s borders over the course of the last several years. While I don’t always agree with his precise analysis, I highly recommend that anyone who can regularly read his journalism on Salon.com, where he posts almost daily (and sometimes several times daily); or watch his excellent talk from the Socialism 2011 Conference here for a good introduction to his views:
That said, different people, using the same evidence, can come to different conclusions. I think that is the case with Greenwald’s New Year’s Eve post on Ron Paul (“Progressives and the Ron Paul Fallacy“, Salon.com, 31 Dec. 2011). He is writing with the illusions that many liberals still have in Barack Obama in mind. Particularly Greenwald is taking aim at Obama supporters who attack Ron Paul but hypocritically do not critique the president’s imperial policies.
So many pets are surrendered and euthanised every day. The top reasons? “Owner evicted”. “Owner foreclosed”. “Owner sick”. “No time”. “Too expensive”. “No room”. “Allergies” (which can also in many cases mean, “not enough room” or “no healthcare”).
In a system where people are overworked, underpaid, cramped into tiny spaces, denied healthcare, and are forced to use for-profit veteranarians, its no wonder that millions of pets are killed every year.
The solution? Well, its great when people adopt pets from kill-shelters. But there’s basically only one ultimate solution: Send capitalism to the kill shelter.
Kill capitalism, not our pets.
“Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.” – Dorothy Day
Four sites in Queens, NY have been fire bombed – “a bodega, the Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center in Jamaica and two homes”, one of which is used as a Hindu temple – yet the newspapers of the one percent are calling it “arson”, not terrorism (in The New York Times, Fox New York, The Daily News, not even a mention in The New York Post). Violence against Muslims, Hindus, MLK Jr. Day Parades, or other innocent people doesn’t count as terrorism in the newspapers of the one percent.
Like the attack on the MLK Jr. Day Parade in Spokane Washington last January (2011), there hasn’t yet been a word from the Obama White House. No press releases from either the F.B.I. or D.H.S. (the latter’s most recent press release is promoting a “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign with the NHL).
We need a new society. The current one has FBI/CIA programs linked with the NYPD to hunt down Muslims and freedom fighters, yet ruling class media firms that won’t even use the “T” word when this is clearly violence against innocents meant to instill fear and hatred. If a few fringe Muslims use violence (19 people out of over a billion Muslims around the world) – which most Muslims condemn – its called terrorism. If racists use violence against Muslims, its called “arson”.
A very excellent interview with Tariq Ali, interviewed by David Barsamian, on imperialism, the Arab Spring, and the on-going economic crisis. It will be in the print addition of the International Socialist Review, Issue 81, Jan/Feb 2012. It was posted on International Viewpoint, another excellent Marxist publication comrades should follow if they don’t already.
“So the choice is not whether the proletariat will or will not struggle, but in whose interest it should struggle: its own or that of the bourgeoisie. The question history places before the proletariat is not to choose between war and peace, but between imperialist war and war against this war: civil war. [...]
“With the correct instinct of a habitual ruling class, conscious that the real social basis of its authority narrows as the extent of its rule grows and its power apparatus increases, the bourgeoisie makes the most energetic efforts both to broaden this basis (alignment of the middle class behind it, corruption of the labour aristocracy, etc.), and to defeat its chief enemies decisively before they have organised for real resistance. Thus, it is everywhere the bourgeoisie abolishes ‘peaceful’ means of conducting the class struggle, on the temporary, if highly problematic functioning of which the whole theory of Revisionism was based, and which prefers ‘more energetic’ weapons (one only needs to consider the situation in America). The bourgeoisie increasingly seizes control of the state apparatus, in identifying itself so completely with it that even demands of the working class which appear only to be economic are increasingly blocked by it. Thus, if only to prevent the deterioration of their economic condition, the workers are compelled to take up the struggle against state power (in other words, though unconsciously, the struggle for state power). This forces the proletariat into using the tactics of the mass strike, in the course of which, for fear of revolution, the opportunists are always intent on giving up positions already gained rather than on drawing the revolutionary conclusions from the situation. But the mass strike is by its very nature an objectively revolutionary weapon. Every mass strike creates a revolutionary situation in which the bourgeoisie, supported by its state apparatus, takes the necessary steps against it wherever possible. The proletariat is powerless against such measures. The weapon of the mass strike is also bound to fail against them if the proletariat, faced with the aims of the bourgeoisie, does not also take to arms. This means that it must try to equip itself, disorganise the army of the bourgeoisie – which of course consists mainly of workers and peasants – and turn the weapons of the bourgeoisie against the bourgeoisie. (The 1905 [Russian] Revolution offered many examples of correct class instinct, but only of instinct, in this respect.)
“Imperialist war means the sharpening of this situation to its utmost extremity. The bourgeoisie confronts the proletariat with the choice: either to kill its class comrades in other countries for the monopolistic interests of the bourgeoisie and die for these interests, or to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie by force. All other methods of struggle against this wholesale assault are powerless; all without exception would smash themselves against the military apparatus of the imperialist states. If the proletariat wants to escape this ultimate onslaught, it must therefore itself take up arms against this apparatus, undermine it from within, turn the weapons which the bourgeoisie was forced to give the people against the bourgeoisie itself, and use them to destroy imperialism.
“So here too there is nothing theoretically in the least unprecedented. On the contrary, the core of the situation lies in the class relationship between bourgeoisie and proletariat. War is, as Clausewitz defined it, only the continuation of politics; but it is so in all respects. In other words, it is not only in foreign affairs that war is merely the ultimate and most active culmination of a policy which a country has hitherto followed ‘peacefully’. For the internal class relations of a country as well (and of the whole world), it only only marks the intensification and ultimate climax of those tendencies which were already at work within society in ‘peacetime’. Therefore war by no means creates a totally new situation, either for the country or for the class within a nation. What is new about it is merely that the unprecedented quantitative intensification of all problems involves a qualitative change and for this – and only this – reason creates a new situation.” – György Lukács, “Imperialism: World War and Civil War” in Lenin: A Study on the Unity of His Thought.
“The assertion that religion is innate and natural to man, is false, if identified with Theism; but it is perfectly true, if religion is considered to be nothing but that feeling of dependence by which man is more or less conscious that he does not and cannot exist without another being, different from himself, and that his existence does not originate in himself. Religion, thus understood, is essential to man as light to the eye, as air to the lungs, as food to the stomach. Religion is the manifestation of man’s conception of himself. But above all man is a being who does not exist without light, without air, without water, without earth, without food, – he is, in short, a being dependent on Nature. This dependence in the animal, and in man as far as he moves within the sphere of the brute, is only an unconscious and unreflected one; but by its elevation into consciousness and imagination, by its consideration and profession, it becomes religion. Thus all life depends on the change of seasons; but man alone celebrates this change by dramatic representations and festival acts. But such festivals, which imply and represent nothing but the change of the seasons, or of the phases of the moon, are the oldest, the first, and the real confessions of human religion.” – Ludwig Feuerbach, §3, The Essence of Religion (emphasis added)
“A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across and takes 11 cookies looks at the tea partier and says, “look out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie.” via by my friend A at A Better World Is Probable
Socialist Politics:
Recommended Readings
