[Graphic: Clinton vs Trump by DonkeyHotey.]

Paul Jay interviews Henry A. Giroux

Transcript

PAUL JAY, TRNN: Welcome to the Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Baltimore. I’m known for a documentary I made called Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows. It was about professional wrestling and a battle between Bret Hart and Vince McMann and we got a lot of behind the scenes coverage in that and I got to know the wrestling world some. It occurred to me that there’s a certain kind of press that covers wrestling much the way a lot of press covers American politics. Now everyone that has any sense about them at all knows that professional wrestling is theater. In fact, the film I made helped kind of make that clear for everyone. But it is theater and everyone acknowledges it’s theater but there is still some press out there that plays along and covers the wrestling theater as if it’s real. Well I think much the same thing goes on in American politics. Much of the election campaigns are positioning, rhetoric, language, supposedly support this, oppose that, which is really all part of the theater. But because it does affect the horse race of the outcome of the elections, most of the corporate media covers all of this theater as if it’s real. Well something’s happening in this election which because of partly the bluster and in some ways weird honesty of Donald Trump, some of that theater is breaking down. The WikiLeaks about Hillary Clinton and behind the scenes machinations of the Clinton campaign, there’s been somewhat of a tear in the fabric of this theater. Now joining us to talk about this is Henry Giroux. Henry joins us from Hamilton, Ontario. He’s a professor of scholarship in the public interest at McMaster University and author of his most recent book, America at war with itself. Thanks for joining us Henry.

HENRY GIROUX: It’s a pleasure to be with you.

JAY: So, what do you make of the idea that wrestling and American politics have a lot in common?

GIROUX: I think it’s a fabulous analogy. I think that in many ways what we see happening is the cultural celebrity which has never really been taken too seriously, although it confers a great deal of authority, has all of a sudden outed itself. It’s out of the closet. I mean people realize that what we’re getting is not only an exercise in performance and showmanship but we’re also getting what I would call, an elimination of the truth. The truth is one of the great causalities of this particular election cycle. It’s never been more visible than it is now. In one hand, what you have basically a celebrity who has no trouble lying because he believes that nobody will really take him too seriously because he thinks he really is a celebrity. On the other hand, you have the alternative press, you have the alternative media exposing all the nonsense that of course Hillary Clinton believes in and making it clear that she has no lock on honesty either. It seems to me that as the truth begins to disappear, questions are being raised about what are the conditions that produced this. What are the contradictions at work here? What does it mean for instance when Hillary Clinton says she believes in families and she believes in children and she worked for the Children’s Defense Fund when in actuality as the first lady, she had no trouble calling black youth super predators, she basically supported her husband’s welfare program which did horrible things for pro minorities? She supported an educational system in part that had nothing to do with the imagination and real learning. Had everything to do with accountability and standardization. So, it goes on and on. I think that as this fabric gets torn, as the veil gets sort of taken away and as the mystic of theater begins to dissolve, a kind of shocking reality emerges. One steeped in corruption, despair, inequality, poverty, systemic violence, racism, that becomes increasing difficult for the American political, financial, and corporate elite to basically legitimize.

JAY: I think the Clinton campaign’s particularly interesting. First of all, you have a 74 senator from Vermont. If he’d had maybe another month or two, might’ have actually might have won in terms of especially in his weakness in the south and amongst African Americans. Another month or two and he might have sorted some of that out. It’s quite remarkable that someone at least in terms of mainstream media, someone who came from obscurity, I think people that followed progressive politics, he was certainly well known. But for most of the country, they barely knew his name. To go from there to almost winning and there’s some suggestion, some of the specific state races he certainly didn’t lose fairly. Now you have the majority of the country simply says they don’t believe Hillary Clinton is a truth teller. They think she’s a liar. They don’t trust her. Yet she’s the only candidate these elites got. Trump lies exposed. Even the republicans, the fact that the system couldn’’t come up with better candidates within the republican party to actually take on someone like Trump that should’ve been an easy duck to shoot of anybody of any caliber. The whole caliber of these political candidates has just banal.

GIROUX: I think what’s interesting here is that the republican party, they couldn’t come up with a decent candidate because they had no sense of the degree to which they had violated any principles that sort of [attaches] them to any notion of civic justice or to the economic issues that have caused enormous anger throughout the country, that they were unwilling to address. I think there’s another issue here. I think the issue is something you mentioned earlier about Bernie Sanders, who I find very hopeful, in that people don’t realize that language matters and I think what Bernie did, taking off from the Occupied movement which gave us a new language about inequality. Bernie gave us a language for economic and social justice and political justice in a way that we haven’t heard before because it was endlessly being replayed over and over again. I think that what you have there is you have the power of what I call a reimagination machine that attacks a disimagination machine. He took the disimagination machine which covers everything over in lies and false metaphors and indecent stories and corruption and he exposed them and I think that one of the great beginnings, one of the great movements for any form of insurrection of democracy is to make power visible. I think he did that. I think the black lives matter movement does that. I think they’re all driving liberals absolutely crazy because it’s becoming increasingly difficult for the liberals to basically defend this thing that they call democracy. It’s not a democracy at all. They know it. But they don’’t have a language to basically come back at this. I know. I was listening to a radio this morning and I don’’t know if you know this but the alt-right, they’’re responding to this by intimidating people, by attempting to ruin the lives of now I think it’s like 500 reporters throughout the United States attacking their families, putting stuff on twitter, putting pictures of their children up in ways that are utterly disgusting and vile. I think you see two moments here. You see a moment of impending fascism which is utterly violent and criminogenic. Then you see another moment which is criminogenic but not as violent. But’ its grappling at the same time with some way to rescue itself by pointing only to Trump without at the same time pointing to its own liabilities.

JAY: I think the sort of mediocrity banality of these candidates, it’s not just a happen chance, and many of the presidents in the past and I would put both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama – they’re smart guys. I disagree with probably 98 or 99% of their policies and both of them were involved in what I think could be categorized as war crimes, including Bill Clinton and sanctions on Iraq and the drone policy and others and the development of the war on Syria with Obama and such and Libya of course. But that being said, these are smart guys. They speak in full paragraphs. They are articulate. They can crack jokes. They’re knowledgeable. But it was under their watch that we had a great leap in this transfer of wealth to the top 1 or so percentile. A great leap in the parasitism of capital. Casino capitalism. Massive derivatives and speculative markets and this very parasitical, very degenerate you could say type of capital created this orgy of profits for this top tier at a level they’d never seen before and when you live in the bubble of those massive profits, perhaps they have no idea what’s going on amongst the American people. So, all of a sudden they get this shock in the republican party and almost a major shock in the democratic party and I don’t know if they really come back from this because I don’t know if they can really get out of this bubble disconnect with what’s going on in terms of daily life.

GIROUX: They meaning the financial elite. Is that what you’re saying?

JAY: Well the financial and political elites, yea.

GIROUX: Exactly. Well I don’t want to underestimate the power of the cultural apparatuses that they control to basically normalize what appears to be unimaginable. I mean I’m always shocked by that I think the real issue here is that we live in a country in which memory is very short. We live in a culture of the immediate. I’m often shocked about what gets forgotten 5 days after the news cycle. So, the real question is, how do you keep the count of memories. These images. How do you keep this language up? This critical language that consistently reminds people of the contradictions and the crimes. The United States is a war culture. I mean there’’s no other way to talk about it. It’s primarily organized for the production of violence at almost every level. Of course, the punishing state is getting worse and the acceleration of police violence is getting worse. I think as long as the alternative media can focus on and sustain these images and these stories and these counter narratives, I think they’re fine. But it’s a hard fight because as you well know Paul the mainstream media controls most of the media and so the real question here is how do we take the question of culture and power and education and link it to everyday life in ways that allow it to travel across a variety of public spheres so that these memories and injustice and corruption can be sustained?

JAY: Thanks very much for joining us Henry.

GIROUX: My pleasure.

JAY: And thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.

 

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[Graphic: Calais street scene by Harriet Paintin of Bow and Brush.]

=By= Harriet Paintin and Hannah Kirmes-Daly

After the last buses departed, the French authorities and some media outlets reported that the camp had been cleared and the eviction was a success, ignoring the hundreds left behind. Having been turned away by the authorities for the third day running, children were ordered back into a Jungle which by this time had become an apocalyptic scene of burning buildings, toxic smoke, exploding gas canisters. They had nowhere else to go but the streets, with no information about what options are open to them, if any.

This eviction may have been dressed up as a “humanitarian effort” but the blatant contradictions between the official line of events and the reality on the ground reveals gaping fault-lines in Europe’s refugee policies. With unaccompanied minors left sleeping on the street, then by no stretch of the imagination has this been a successful operation. Rather, this is nothing but a complete failure on behalf of the authorities who are responsible for their protection. If the eviction was planned with the best interests of the Jungle residents in mind, then it would have worked out in a different way.

There has been a refugee camp in Calais since the early 1990s, and after each eviction people have returned to rebuild. Long term residents of the Jungle believe that there is nothing that the authorities can do to stop people coming and trying to reach the UK; they are confident that before long, small camps will spring up again, but without the facilities and systems of mutual cooperation and aid that people have built in the Jungle their survival will be even more precarious.

 

Harriet Paintin is a freelance writer and musician, and Hannah Kirmes-Daly is a freelance reportage illustrator. They work together on documenting individual stories through art and music, focusing on refugee stories. Follow them at brushandbow.com.

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[Photo: Before and after mountain top removal for coal extraction. Devastation brought to you by the Koch Brothers. Credit: Earth Justice.]

=By= The Real News Network

 

From The Real News Network

Scientists say Temperatures Will Rise to Critical 2° by 2050

The Real News Network is Building a Global Climate Change Bureau

2014 and 2015 each set the record for hottest calendar year since scientists began measuring surface temperatures over 150 years ago, and 2016 is shaping up to be even warmer. This will be the first time that we’ve seen three consecutive years with record-breaking temperatures.

A temperature increase of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels will now be reached much sooner than earlier predicted according to a report by seven leading climate scientists.

“The 1.5°C target could be reached by the early 2030’s and the 2°C target by 2050” says the report that included Sir Robert Watson, former Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The scientists say that even if all the pledges made by the signatory countries to the Paris agreement are fully implemented, climate will pass this dangerous mark in 34 years.

This is a threshold that most scientists have warned cannot be crossed without dire consequences, including a rise in sea levels of several feet that would flood many coastal cities in the U.S., longer droughts, more intense heat waves that cause a major disruption in the world’s food supply, and large migrations of people from countries of the global south.

It is also a point where it becomes far more difficult to reverse the warming trend. Some scientists suggest temperatures by the end of the century could rise as much as 4-6°C above pre-industrial levels. [1°C equals 1.8°F, so this is a temperature rise of 7.2-10.8°F]

The report titled The Truth About Climate Change says, “Much of the public believes that climate change is only going to happen by the end of the century,” and that this is a misunderstanding of the urgency. Unless there is a dramatic change in current public policy, most people alive today will live to see the 2°C threshold crossed.

The report continues: “Climate change is happening now, and much faster than anticipated.” Climate change related floods, droughts, more intense storms, heat waves, and wildfires have already had devastating effects on livelihoods, infrastructure, and lives.”

If the 2°C threshold is to be avoided, the report calls for far more aggressive targets than those set by the Paris Agreement and for that action to begin immediately. The report says, “To meet the 2°C target, global CO2 emissions should be net zero by 2060-2075.”

The threat is catastrophic, the science overwhelming. So why aren’t solutions to the climate change crisis at the top of the political agenda?

Why don’t we see millions of people in the streets demanding decisive action? Why isn’t this a major issue in the election debates? Why are politicians who deny the existence of human-caused climate change even elected to office?

The lack of American public engagement in the climate crisis is a global concern. If U.S. policy doesn’t change, human life as we know it and thousands of other species will not survive.

According to a Yale survey, 70% of Americans now believe global warming is real. If so, why isn’t there more political pressure to face up to the crisis?

Dig further into the numbers and the state of public opinion is more fully revealed.

• Of those who believe climate change is real, only half (53%) think that global warming is mostly human caused. One in three (34%) believe it is due mostly to natural changes in the environment.
• Only about one in ten Americans understand that nearly all climate scientists (more than 90%) are convinced that human-caused global warming is happening.
• Over half of Americans (58%) say they are at least “somewhat worried” about global warming, but only 16% say they are “very worried.”

Why are only 16% of people surveyed very worried about what 90% of scientists think is a catastrophic threat?

The Koch Brothers’ war on science certainly plays a major role in promoting doubt about the overwhelming scientific evidence of human-caused climate change. They spend millions financing witch hunts against climate scientists and funding “research” designed to confuse public opinion.

The Kochs and other billionaires with a vested interest pour hundreds of millions into the coffers of politicians willing to obstruct legislation that would regulate fossil fuel and promote a green sustainable economy.

Perhaps as responsible for the gap between public opinion and scientific evidence is corporate television news, “The gatekeeper of public consciousness.”

Firstly, they ignore the crisis. The report cited above was not the lead story on television newscasts. We can’t find evidence it was carried by any U.S. television news outlet at all.

According to a Media Matters report, the four major corporate TV networks aired a total 146 minutes of climate change coverage in 2015. ABC only aired 13 minutes of coverage and Fox’s coverage consisted mostly of “criticism of efforts to address climate change.”

The report continues:

CNN aired almost five times as much oil industry advertising as climate change-related coverage in the one-week periods following the announcements that 2015 was the hottest year on record and February 2016 was the most abnormally hot month on record.

Only 16% of Americans are “very worried” about global warming because corporate TV news doesn’t want us to worry about it.

Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, says:

While US foreign policy is mostly responsible for the growth of militant terrorist groups, the threat of a nuclear terrorist attack is existential. Think about what we’ll do when 500,000 people are killed in New York City. We will declare martial law nationwide. We will be the most draconian tyranny you’ve ever seen on the face of this earth. But still I consider climate change a greater danger because it is a threat to the very survival of the human race.

What are the reasons for corporate TV’s lack of interest in the major news story of the century?The obvious answers are pressure from certain advertisers, the interests of corporate ownership, and the political intrigues of the fossil fuel industry.

But I think it goes even deeper.

In 2009, two years after the Fourth IPCC Assessment Report said, “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” TV coverage of climate change was at its height – a whopping 205 minutes for the entire year. Even former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appeared in an ad with Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi calling for action on climate warming.

Then something happened.

A large section of the elites looked at what it would really take to meet the target scientists said was necessary to mitigate and stop the terrible consequences of climate change. They said, “No way.”

The transformation required to drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels and move to a green economy would change who has power and how business is done. There is no way to achieve the necessary reduction in carbon emissions without serious government regulation, a strengthening of the public sector, and massive public investment. All this requires a reduction in the political power of the fossil fuel industry and the financial elites associated with it.

Gingrich renounced the Pelosi ad in 2011.

The majority of the billionaires who control the commanding heights of the economy and politics are more interested in short-term profits and immediate personal gratification than some “long-term” threat. They either fight against all climate change legislative action or support relatively weak measures to reduce carbon emissions – better than nothing, but far from what scientists say is required.

For most people of wealth it comes down to a simple calculation: My family and I will be ok. As the IPCC puts it: “Risks are unevenly distributed and are generally greater for disadvantaged people and communities in countries at all levels of development.”

People who understand the scale of the systemic risk are marginalized by corporate media and thus are marginalized in politics.

A critical task in engaging large numbers of ordinary people in fighting and voting for a rational climate change policy is breaking the corporate monopoly on daily video news. We must create an independent, uncompromising source of global climate change news and investigative reports.

The very first story ever produced by TRNN in 2007 was an interview series with George Monbiot on the urgent climate change threat. We produced a series titled “Who Cares About Bangladesh” soon afterwards.

We reported directly from the COP21 Climate Conference in Paris.

We did in-depth interviews with climatologists like Dr. Alan Robock and Dr. Michael Mann who both worked on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Economist Robert Pollin has appeared in numerous interviews with specific proposals for a transition to a green economy.

We recently interviewed the esteemed actor Emma Thompson while she was onboard a Greenpeace vessel in the Arctic.

We’ve reported on environmental activism from all over the world.

We will soon be releasing the documentary “The Doubt Machine: The Koch Brothers War on Climate Science” narrated by Emma Thompson.

With our limited resources we have produced more than 535 reports on climate change since the fall of 2007 when we started our service. In 2015, we produced 1029 minutes of programming about climate change. That’s more than seven times of all the major networks combined.

We have produced more than 10,000 reports and interviews overall since we began our daily production. We also cover international and national news and now have a bureau in Baltimore reporting on the problems and solutions to the crisis of urban America. Millions of people have watched. We average 1.5 million views per month.

While we have worked hard to keep a focus on climate change, what we have accomplished is far from enough. We need a Climate Bureau with sufficient resources to become a major daily video climate news service for online and TV.

The power of daily video news is what shapes most people’s world view and the field is dominated by news organizations that will not seriously address the problem or are in fact, part of the “doubt machine.”

It is clear that a radical change in the way the world produces and uses energy is required. Currently, about 82% of energy produced in the world is obtained by burning fossil fuels. How we produce energy without burning fossil fuels will be critically important as the world population is expected to grow by 40% to 10 billion by 2050.

 

Please go to The Real News in order to read the rest of their plans for their new Global Climate Change Bureau (GCCB).

 

Learn more about The Real News’ Global Climate Change Bureau. The Real News Network

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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL-QUOTES BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS.

Ron Ridenour
Author, Activist, Journalist

Perhaps the biggest perceived political dilemma for the world right now is what will happen in the United States, and thereby to the world, depending on which of the two becomes president. Because of this unprecedented hate-filled election campaign, many pundits consider this election to be the most important in USA history.

I have long postponed making a prediction about what could occur with either Donald Trump or Hilary Clinton as president. I also vacillated about making a prognosis regarding Barack Obama when he first campaigned for the presidency. The main reason for both hesitations have to do with the two main moral principles in my life’s political struggles for over half a century: always fight against racism-racial/ethnic/gender inequality, and against war and for peace.

What happened, though, with many of the extremely brave civil rights leaders and activists, as well as many peace activists? In the effort to gain “political influence” many went into the Democratic Party and deemed it “necessary” to support imperialist wars and the capitalist economy. This has been the case with several SNCC leaders such as John Lewis, and the Black Congressional Caucus in general, and with the independent “socialist” Sanders.

When it came to Obama’s first election campaign, it could seem that I would be abandoning solidarity with black people if I severely criticized him and opted to support no presidential candidate or a decent one with no chance of winning. And now eight years later, if I come out against Clinton, it could seem that I support an avid racist-foreign hater-sexist reality show buffoon.

Returning to 2008, I finally decided to write something about Obama just after he won the election.

“What do I feel? Justice won, justice denied; on-going pain of war, mass murder, torture, unnecessary starvation, unnecessary sickness and early death. Disappointment at not being able to cry with unrestrained gladness that , at long last, my people in kinship have achieved a political and a personal victory of such gigantic proportions. The knowledge that the joyful feeling exists for many makes me feel good in its self. The knowledge of why I can’t cry out of pure joy is most disheartening, though. The permanent war age will continue.”
~ Ridenour, Nov. 2008

And it did! Obama continued and extended the wars. In 2013, I wrote that Obama had become the worst president in US history, because of these war policies; because of his economic policies that increased corporate profits by 171% after taxes, more than under any other presidency since World War II and most assuredly the worst, because his color convinced so many blacks and progressive whites “to give the man a chance”. (Ridenour, Feb. 2013).

And now, it is a female capitalist-imperialist who will most likely take over the reins instead of the buffoon, unless…! She promises to support women gender rights won through long struggles, which the male chauvinist promises to repeal. She promises to support non-white and non-Christian minorities while her opponent castigates them. Maybe she will be better on these important issues.

What is telling, though, is that during her husband’s administration with its criminalization legislation, through their joint law firm that does the white ruling class’s bidding, and their “charity” foundation consisting of millions of dollars from wealthy Americans and foreigners seeking political favors, black people are as poor as ever and more blacks are imprisoned than ever.

What is also telling and negligibly treated by the Establishment media is that Trump states that he will curtail making regional wars and a potential world war. Because of this, Clinton actually accuses him of being a Vladimir Putin “puppet”. She seems to be saying, if you are a patriot you should stand for warring against Russia, which could escalate into a nuclear world war.

What is not presented to the public is a basic economic law that when seeking causes to policies, one must trace the money. Trump is not as dangerous as Clinton because he makes his money from domestic endeavors. He has no invested interest in imperialist-capitalist endeavors that facilitate or necessitate warring on foreign nations as does Clinton’s rich clients and supporters—Monsanto, oil and mineral industries, Haliburton, Goldman Sachs and, of course, the weapons industry.

Down to the wire, we learn even more about Clinton’s arrogant neglect of the nation’s own holy National Security by sending hundreds of thousands of emails over her private mobile telephone when she was Secretary of State, hardly an example of a trustworthy person for the presidency.

“The worse the better”

Almost no major US medium endorses Trump. The entire Wall Street capitalist class is against him. The Political Establishment of the two-branch one political-party system is against him. Most of the military and secret service elites are against him. Nearly all US’s European ally politicians and media are against him. So, from OUR standpoint there must be something good about him. “OUR” can be understood as revolutionary, radical left, or just those who do not want wars to escalate.

Trump wants NATO to be less aggressive, less expensive. He wants to curtail US’s funding 70% of its lavish budget, and no war against Russia or China. He opposes the corporate proposals for more international trade deals: TTIP, TPP, CETA …

OK, we can’t count on what he says. He lies just as does Clinton. And if he did win, he might well surround himself with a cabinet and advisors who would be pro-war, just like those Obama embraced from Bush and Clinton’s time. Nevertheless, if he does win, the European Establishment and many misguided European citizens could well become disenchanted with the United States because of this scary buffoon, and because behind him are tens of millions of scary voters many of whom support more guns and violence, more racism, sexism and plain old hatred.

With Trump in the big saddle, Europeans might begin to look for the reasons behind all this bigotry—the fact that contemporary racism is ingrained in an America founded on genocide, slavery and military interventions and wars. Europeans might also seek their own solutions to their issues rather than being captive and dependent upon a United States policeman-of-the word regime.

Today though, more Europeans than ever hope to see a particular presidential candidate win the US elections, namely Clinton. In Denmark, where I live, an August poll found that 88 % of Danes wanted Clinton. Trump received 2.3 %, an historic low for a US presidential candidate.

Some European political parties are encouraging Americans living in their land to vote for Clinton. The former anti-war Socialist People’s Party (SF) in Denmark, for example, paid for a huge ad on buses depicting Trump in a ridiculous manner and appealing for Americans to vote against him.

BBC wrote in October that most Brits look on with a “mixture of fascination and horror” as the campaign “descends into the gutter.” Chris Morris, Oct. 16, 2016:

“In Eastern Europe, in particular, Mr Trump’s flirtation with Moscow, his praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his disparaging remarks about the Nato alliance have caused serious concern…A recurring theme of his campaign has been…the US should and would be prepared to walk away from existing alliances.

“Mr Trump has also taken aim at the European Union, predicting that it will ‘break up’, and supporting the Brexit campaign in the UK.”

“Hillary Clinton by contrast…is steeped in the tradition that allies in Europe form an important part of the American view of the world…[including support for] her adversarial hawkish relationship with Russian leaders.”

That is precisely why I hope for a victory for those less bellicose viewpoints, not that I could actually vote for the narcissist. My view of the US election fiasco is associated with the way I judged the UN COP 15 climate summit held in Copenhagen, December 2009, which most viewed as a “fiasco”. I worked there as one of two PR advisors for Bolivian President Evo Morales. I wrote that the summit was a “smashing success” namely because it forced many people to understand that the Establishment would not cure the climate ills it had created. (Ridenour, Dec. 2009)

“I have heard many debates in the UN where presidents condemn climate change but they never say—cowardly enough—what causes it. We say clearly that it is caused by capitalism,” President Evo Morales said in closing.

And so I hope that if Trump does win, many more people throughout the world as well as in the US will be able to understand that it is not the Man or Woman, white/black/brown/red, or Establishment political parties that can or will make a better world for us. It can only be us on the streets struggling from the grass roots that at least have the potential to stop their wars, their ingrained inequality and racism, their greed and their hatred.

If Clinton wins, it will be more difficult for that consciousness to develop. As with Obama’s first reign, it will take a long period before a protest movement will flourish, and it will take much more than protest to accomplish our common mission. I hope that progressives, traditional liberals and social democrats will see that their hopes for building a better world by supporting the Kennedys, Clintons and Obama has not succeeded, and that they will understand the need to act militantly to eliminate capitalism and its wars—that is a revolutionary view.

November 1, 2016

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[Photo: Corporate dairy Credit: Gunnar Richter Namenlos.net.]

US Foods Holding Corporation and Sysco, the two top American food distribution giants, are laying off thousands of workers. Wal-Mart is closing stores and terminating employees. As the price of eggs, beef, cheese, and almost all agricultural products have dropped, farmers across the United States are facing financial ruin.

The ongoing glut in agricultural products is not merely the natural cycle of the market at work. Policies of the US federal government are directly linked to the low food prices. While it is clear that the ongoing agricultural surplus is very bad for the US public, the government seems to have other priorities.

Broken Promises From Politicians

The agricultural prowess of the United States is known across the planet. The current president of China first visited the United States in 1985. He didn’t come to see the Statue of Liberty, or the Washington Monument. Rather, Xi Jinping visited Iowa in order to study the technology and farming techniques employed by some of the most advanced and efficient farmers in the world.

Love for the small farmers is voiced by almost all sectors of US political establishment, and almost always has been. The writings of Thomas Jefferson spoke at length about the “yeoman” and his role in an ideal republic. The left-wing folk singer Pete Seeger sang about how “the farmer is man who feeds them all.” Right-wing Radio host Paul Harvey plucked the heart strings of the American public with his “So God Made a Farmer” speech in 1978.

Each election year, American politicians devote special attention to the Iowa caucuses, the first vote in determining who will be the major parties’ respective nominees. As they travel across the Midwestern agricultural state, the presidential hopefuls routinely make all kinds of speeches championing “the hard working farmers.”

While politicians are known to make promises to the farmers, and seem to recognize that agriculture is essential to the US economy, the policies of recent years, most of them having bipartisan support, have been anything but beneficial to those who work the land. In the current presidential race, Iowa is hotly contested, with Trump and Clinton very close in the polls. The farm glut, spawned by federal policies, is undoubtedly a big factor.

In the first 8 months of 2016, 43 million gallons of milk were poured out due to the glut. According to the Wall Street Journal: “Farmers across the US are pouring out tens of millions of gallons of milk amid massive over glut that has reduced prices and filled warehouses with cheese.”

Meanwhile, another WSJ article reports: “Cattle and hog prices hover near the lowest levels in years as U.S. meat packers produce the largest volume of meat in history.” Between July of 2016 and July of 2017, the price of milk has decreased by 11%. The price of eggs has decreased by 40%.

The overproduction and under-consumption of agricultural products can be directly linked to federal policies. Throughout his administration, Barack Obama has repeatedly cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and reduced the amount of food that low income families are able to purchase. The cutting of this federal program directly takes food from the mouths of low-income Americans. Despite the fact that according to the US Department of Agriculture, 13% of American households are now food insecure, the cuts have continued, and hunger is rising among America’s poor.

In addition to the obvious impact on low-income Americans, the cuts in food stamps have also cut into food sales. Food producing corporations and small farmers have seen a decrease in their sales. Wal-Mart has laid off thousands of workers and closed thousands of stores. These losses and layoffs can be linked directly to the SNAP cuts.

Congress has recently discussed a plan that would eventually take $150 billion out of the federal food assistance program, a move that would undoubtedly push a lot of food producers, retail employees, and meat packers over the edge, along with many others.

The reductions in food assistance are not the only factor. The economic sanctions against Russia have played a dramatic role in creating the current food glut. The collapse and breaking up of the Soviet Union’s collective farm system during the Yeltsin era of the 1990s dramatically reduced Russia’s domestic food production. This opened up new markets for American farmers, who greatly increased their exports to the former USSR.

However, the new sanctions imposed in 2014, which restrict US and EU agricultural sales to Russia, have dramatically changed the landscape of the global food market. American farmers have been deprived of 143.5 million potential customers due to the ban on selling to those living in the Russian Federation.

Austerity & Fascism Leave Farmers Behind

Why is food assistance to low income families being cut? The claim is that the US federal budget is too large, and that hard economic times mandate austerity. However, the United States still has the largest military budget on the planet. When it comes time to reduce spending, rather than cutting the amount of money spent on tanks, bombs, and drones, the politicians have opted to cut into the nutrition of low-income Americans, along with the livelihoods of farmers and agricultural workers. The thousands of military bases around the world, along with the billions given in foreign military aid to countries like Israel, all seem be far more important to US leaders.

And why has the US drastically restricted the exporting agricultural products to Russia? The sanctions were enacted in 2014, in response to the Ukraine crisis. The elected President of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovich, was toppled in orgy of street violence. The new government, with a base of support only in the western regions of the country, has within its ranks many open admirers of Adolf Hitler, and is very hostile to Russia.

Since 2014, the people of Eastern Ukraine have taken up arms to resist the new regime. The people in the region of Crimea voted to become apart of the Russian Federation, whose military they had been hosting since the collapse of the USSR. Sanctions were imposed on Russia and continue, based on allegations that Russia is supporting the resistance of people in the Eastern regions against the new, pro-Western regime. US leaders tell us the sanctions are intended to punish Russia for “meddling” in Ukraine.

Since the passing of the sanctions, Russia has revived its own domestic agricultural programs. Small farmers across Russia are producing beef, wheat, and other products no longer sold to them by the US and the EU. Russian agriculture has experienced a boom since 2014, and Russian President Vladimir Putin is even more popular than prior to the crisis.

The decision of US leaders to wage economic warfare against Russia in support of a Ukrainian government that contains many with fascist sympathies, while at the same time cutting assistance to low-income American families, is contrary to values often displayed throughout American history. Both Lincoln and Roosevelt saw prosperity for the agricultural heartland of the United States and the millions who lived in it as vitally important for the entire country. These two most beloved Presidents in US history both worked closely in alliance with small farmers, often in opposition to Wall Street bankers with different interests.

The rallying cry of the Republican Party in its early years, was “Free Land, Free Labor, Free Men!” The “Free Soilers,” farmers who wanted to halt the expansion of slavery in new US territories were an essential part of it. While slavery found support in the financial districts of London and New York, the small farmers had a material interest in ending the barbaric practice, and anti-slavery militias appeared in Iowa and Kansas years before the Civil War broke out.

It was a broad coalition of small farmers, religious abolitionists, and organized labor that eventually put Abraham Lincoln into the White House where he was forced to battle the slaveholders. The process that unfolded recreated the country, in what is widely called “The Second American Revolution.”

“An American Government Cannot Allow Americans To Starve”

The programs that preceded the currently existing Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) were the brainchild of Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, who eventually became the Vice President. When the first “food stamps” were issued in 1939, the director of the program, Milo Perkins described it this way: “We got a picture of a gorge, with farm surpluses on one cliff and under-nourished city folks with outstretched hands on the other. We set out to find a practical way to build a bridge across that chasm.”

While Roosevelt was universally hated by Wall Street bankers, he was very popular with organized labor, artists and musicians, as well as small farmers. As the unemployment councils and labor unions fought for a better life across the country, Roosevelt aligned himself with the mass movement in the streets. Essential in Roosevelt’s progressive coalition was the US Communist Party, an organization that sought to build a “Workers and Farmer’s Government.” When big business objected to Roosevelt’s dramatic economic reforms, he defended them by saying “an American government cannot allow Americans to starve.”

Roosevelt later aligned with the Russian people in order to defeat Adolf Hitler. FDR’s opposition to fascism and his policies of feeding of hungry Americans while subsidizing farmers were not isolated from each other. They corresponded with his overall view of the world, expressed in 1944: “We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth- is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill housed, and insecure…. We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence…. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”

In 2016, things are very different. While banks were bailed out without hesitation during the 2008 financial crisis, financial assistance to low income Americans continues to be cut. Wall Street and London see the Eurasian Bloc of Russia and China as a rising competitor to their financial hegemony. The wealthy financial elite largely support sanctions and further isolation of both countries despite whatever disastrous impact on American farmers, agricultural workers, and food distributors.

Children across the United States are hungry, as 13% of households are food insecure, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Farm workers and those who work for food distributors and supermarkets are losing their jobs. Gallons of milk are at this moment being dumped out in hopes of raising the prices, while food warehouses sit filled with rotting, unsold cheese.

Meanwhile, US and NATO forces are increasing their presence in Eastern Europe, threatening Russia. As agricultural sanctions on Russia continue, weapons and training are being provided to a Ukrainian military that is known to contain a number fascist sympathizers, including the infamous Azov Battalion.

As discontent rises in the United States, it is largely centered in the agricultural and de-industrialized mid-western heartland. It is clear that many Americans desperately want something to change. A government that prioritizes fascistic elements in Ukraine over farmers in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Ohio, is clearly out of touch.

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