Category: BOURGEOIS FEMINISTS - The Greanville Post

Green Party presidential candidate

The Democratic Party’s Grand Inquisition has move leftward, targeting 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, whose political crime was to attend an RT dinner in Russia, the year before. The Democrats are trying to yoke her into their fake “Russiagate” conspiracy. Stein is “the perfect foil. She can simultaneously be blamed for Clinton’s loss while feeding the anti-Russia frenzy.”

“The Democrats have shamefully praised the intelligence apparatus, shown love for an FBI director and joined the chorus for war and American intervention around the world.”

Democrats hate the left more than they hate the right. Democrats are allegedly the counter weight to the right wing in America when in reality their goal is to replicate the same policies. The subterfuge inherent in the political duopoly allows them to live off the pretense of defending the people from the neo-liberal forces they in fact support.

Their hatred is most evident when people who are truly on the left dare to make the case for political change. When Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost presidential races in the Electoral College, Democratic Party scorn was directed solely at the Green Party and their voters.

In both elections there were far more instances of registered Democrats voting for George W. Bush and Donald Trump respectively. One would think that they would be marked for condemnation. Instead the Democrats show their true colors, excusing and placating the turncoats in order to make the case for “lesser evil” neo-liberalism and imperialism.

“The subterfuge inherent in the political duopoly allows them to live off the pretense of defending the people from the neo-liberal forces they in fact support.”

The Russiagate phenomenon makes Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein an even bigger target. Stein visited Russia in 2015 and attended the RT network’s anniversary dinner. She was seated at the same table with Vladimir Putin, although the two never spoke.

This simple act is now being included among the flimsy so-called evidence that the Russian government interfered in the election. The war party is an important part of the duopoly and leading Democrats are reveling in their opportunity to make political hay.

Congressman Adam Schiff is ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee and a leader in the charge against Russia and now Stein. “Jill Stein was also in Russia attending the RT function, so we’re going to need to look at any efforts the Russians made through whatever means to influence our elections.” It isn’t clear how Stein’s presence in Moscow impacted the election but truth isn’t the point.

“We have a right to visit any nation and interact with anyone we choose and to question presidents, congress and elite punditry.”

The Democrats’ urge to destabilize the entire system in order to do the work of the war party is dangerous for many reasons. It now gives them an even bigger out. They can continue their attack on the rights of nations and people all over the world and simultaneously blame the Russian government for their own abject political failures.

Donald Trump Jr. and others involved in his father’s campaign are now targets of investigation because of their amateurish contacts with Russian citizens. The Senate Judiciary Committee demanded that Trump the younger provide them with any communication he had with 41 individuals and entities and they included Jill Stein’s name among them. The list also includes Putin, his foreign secretary, the ambassador to the United States, the Ritz Carlton hotel and the oligarch who bankrolled Trump’s Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.

“There is no legitimate reason for Stein’s name to be on this list.”

Every other person, business or organization on the list is a Russian government official, played some role on the Trump campaign, or are or are mentioned in stories about election hacking. There is no legitimate reason for Stein’s name to be on this list. She makes clear that she has had no contact with the Trump family or campaign. She is being thrown under the bus in a classic smear tactic.

Rank and file Democrats have lost all sense of logic and common sense in their post-election trauma. They are always predisposed to attack anyone who points out the obvious deficiencies in the party they cling to with such devotion. The years of anti-Russian propaganda and willingness to censure anyone daring to do what they will not has primed them for this moment.

Ever since Election Day they have shamefully praised the intelligence apparatus, shown love for an FBI director and joined the chorus for war and American intervention around the world. Jill Stein is now the perfect foil. She can simultaneously be blamed for Clinton’s loss while feeding the anti-Russia frenzy.

“Stein is being thrown under the bus in a classic smear tactic.”

It is important for the left to defend Stein at this moment. She and all Americans have a right to disagree with their government’s foreign policy. We have a right to visit any nation and interact with anyone we choose and to question presidents, congress and elite punditry. We should be able to do so without fear of harassment or legal jeopardy.

American provocations against Russia go back to the collapse of the Soviet Union and are responsible for the possibility of a hot war. It is important to say so and to act in solidarity with those who become targets when they act on their right to freedom of movement and speech.

The notion that Russia is a hostile power is a concoction of the corporate media and the war loving members of the duopoly. If they attempt to silence or smear Stein or anyone else they must be met with staunch opposition.

About the author

Black Agenda report's Senior Editor and Columnist Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly at the Black Agenda Report. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley (at) BlackAgendaReport.com.

Excerpt

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

Edition No. 7
EDITED BY PATRICE GREANVILLE
•
Dispatch first iteration 0002 2017-20-17 | Collated and edited by Patrice Greanville
MAIN COMMENTERS: • Luciana Bohne • Bisharat Abbasi • Sherri Ingrey • William Shaw

22 July at 08:48

"Postmodernism was an attempt to normalise the world as it is . . ."

Bisharat Abbasi for "capitalism is a system of terror" and other harsh truths.

( . . .and, among other profanities, postmodernism gave us the worst, most inhuman, most "because I can" architecture in the history of human efforts to secure shelter, a roof over our heads when it rained or snowed or baked . . . postmodern architecture should be preserved by future generations as a reminder of how capitalism, in its decayed stage, produced homelessness, mass dislocations, threw people out into the elements, and then erected hideous monuments to its desolation."

Sanagar Ali and 10 others.

22 July at 02:44

Postmodernism was an attempt to normalise the world as it is, because by delegitimising questioning, and dubbing any attempt at changing the existing state of affairs as terrorism, it (postmodernism) indirectly legitimised "the terror of capital ". They called their western capitalist democracies the "lesser evil " as compared to the other existing political systems around the world. Conceiving a "lesser evil " in their bankrupt imagination and comparing it with an imagined and fabricated "grater evil" was the logic and strategy of postmodernism. This is the logic of late capitalism, a system bereft of ideas and imagination. Capitalism is a system of terror, and this terror is the terror of capital. We now live in the world that is ruled by a terroristic system we call capitalism , because capitalism is the mother of all terrorisms.

Luciana Bohne 22 July at 08:11

Narcissism or Counter-revolution?

We have a word for it, and it's a word in the psychological discourse: narcissism. But I call it reactionary regression of the social.

Luciana Bohne

"Because I'm WORTH it." L'Oreal commercial for hair dye in the 70s summed it all up.

William Shaw and just a painful mind numbing hour or so in front of television or an equally painful trip thru Vanity Fair, Esquire or almost any slick magazine is the same ad over and over again...

Sherri Ingrey 22 July at 08:28

"Narcissism or Counter-revolution?

Narcissisism fits rabid self-absorption nicely, and meshes with capitalist values extremely well.

Luciana Bohne

22 July at 07:36

Patriarchy has nothing to do with capitalism? You're joking, right?

Capitalism (the age of bourgeois rule, the age of the bourgeoisie, the age of liberalism) swept away feudalism (the age of aristocratic and ecclesiastical rule, the age of lords and serfs, the age of hierarchical absolutism). It swept away all the ideologies that pillared it, except two: patriarchy and religion, because these were tools of control.

If you believe that patriarchy has nothing to do with capitalism, all your struggles for gender rights are exercises in futility.

Capitalism, instead of eradicating "residual ideology" of feudalism, inferiorizing women, kept it going, until it became profitable (cheaper workers and added tax contributors) to "liberate' them and to turn them into collaborators for the status quo.

The ascension to political power (which followed upon economic power accumulated through hijacking the Industrial Revolution and plundering the "New World) of the bourgeois-era capitalist ruling class did not "liberate" women as a priority of principles.

One system that did, immediately, grant women and colonized people equality was not bourgeois-capitalist-liberalism. It was its historic challenger, which entered the stage of political, economic and human-development history in October of 1917.

Greg Smith

21 July at 23:27

Tfs Luciana Bohne.

21 July at 17:38

The Patriarchy Strikes Back

"You want women in position of power? No problem, so long as they extend and enhance OUR power. Hell, we'll even give them equal rights previously reserved to men to bomb, maim, torture, and kill, to declare war, to incite hatred against neighbors, to sell arms that kill women and babies and young and old people. We are not fools. We know things have to change in order to stay the same. Thank you, Rachel, for your awesome contribution to the age-old patriarchal tradition of war, vengeance, and fratricidal hatred."--The Patriarchal Committee for the Advancement of Women.

Luciana Bohne shared teleSUR English's video.

21 July at 16:46

And it's not like CIA intelligence in 2002-03 (when CIA, before Brennan, still had a separate research branch from operations) didn't tell mad dogs in Defense, State, and White house that Iraq would break apart and be split in three parts if attacked and invaded. Apparently, that's what the neo-cons wanted. All crimes, including by Isis are on the heads of Blair and Bush. That's the way the ball bounced at Nuremberg.

[More soon...]

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Introduction

The most striking feature of recent elections is not ‘who won or who lost’, nor is it the personalities, parties and programs. The dominant characteristic of the elections is the widespread repudiation of the electoral system, political campaigns, parties and candidates.

Across the world, majorities and pluralities of citizens of voting age refuse to even register to vote (unless obligated by law), refuse to turn out to vote (voter abstention), or vote against all the candidates (boycott by empty ballot and ballot spoilage).

Photo by torbakhopper

If we add the many citizen activists who are too young to vote, citizens denied voting rights because of past criminal (often minor) convictions, impoverished citizens and minorities denied voting rights through manipulation and gerrymandering, we find that the actual ‘voting public’ shrivel to a small minority.

As a result, present day elections have been reduced to a theatrical competition among the elite for the votes of a minority. This situation describes an oligarchy - not a healthy democracy.

Oligarchic Competition

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ligarchs compete and alternate with one another over controlling and defining who votes and doesn’t vote. They decide who secures plutocratic financing and mass media propaganda within a tiny corporate sector. ‘Voter choice’ refers to deciding which preselected candidates are acceptable for carrying out an agenda of imperial conquests, deepening class inequalities and securing legal impunity for the oligarchs, their political representatives and state, police and military officials.

The established parties and the media work in tandem to confine elections to a choreographed contest among competing elites divorced from direct participation by the working classes. This effectively excludes the citizens who have been most harmed by the ruling class’ austerity programs implemented by successive rightist and Social Democratic parties.

The results of elections and the faces of the candidates may change but the fundamental economic and military apparatus remains the same to serve an ever tightening oligarchic rule.

The elite regimes change, but the permanence of state apparatus designed to serve the elite becomes ever more obvious to the citizens.

Why the Oligarchy Celebrates “Democracy”

The Clintons: demagogy has been good business for this contemptible duo.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he politicians who participate in the restrictive and minoritarian electoral system, with its predetermined oligarchic results, celebrate ‘elections’ as a democratic process because a plurality of voters, as subordinate subjects, are incorporated.

Academics, journalists and experts argue that a system in which elite competition defines citizen choice has become the only way to protect ‘democracy’ from the irrational ‘populist’ rhetoric appealing to a mass of citizens vulnerable to authoritarianism (the s-called ‘deplorables’). The low voter turn-out in recent elections reduces the threat posed by such undesirable voters.

A serious objective analysis of present-day electoral politics demonstrates that when the masses do vote for their class interests - the results deepen and extend social democracy. When most voters, non-voters and excluded citizens choose to abstain or boycott elections they have sound reasons for repudiating plutocratic-controlled oligarchic choices.

We will proceed to examine the recent June 2017 voter turnout in the elections in France, the United Kingdom and Puerto Rico. We will then look at the intrinsic irrationality of citizens voting for elite politicos as opposed to the solid good sense of the popular classes rejection of elite elections and their turn to extra-parliamentary action.

Puerto Rico’s Referendum

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he major TV networks (NBC, ABC and CBS) and the prestigious print media (New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times and Washington Post) hailed the ‘overwhelming victory’ of the recent pro-annexationist vote in Puerto Rico. They cited the 98% vote in favor of becoming a US state!

The media ignored the fact that a mere 28% of Puerto Ricans participated in the elections to vote for a total US takeover. Over 77% of the eligible voters abstained or boycotted the referendum.

In other words, over three quarters of the Puerto Rican people rejected the sham ‘political elite election’. Instead, the majority voted with their feet in the streets through direct action. France’s Micro-Bonaparte

Macron: Voted in by a narrow minority.

In the same way, the mass media celebrated what they dubbed a ‘tidal wave’ of electoral support for French President Emmanuel Macron and his new party, ‘the Republic in March’. Despite the enormous media propaganda push for Macron, a clear majority of the electorate (58%) abstained or spoiled their ballots, therefore rejecting all parties and candidates, and the entire French electoral system. This hardly constitutes a ‘tidal wave’ of citizen support in a democracy.

During the first round of the parliamentary election, President Macron’s candidates received 27% of the vote, barely exceeding the combined vote of the left socialist and nationalist populist parties, which had secured 25% of the vote. In the second round, Macron’s party received less then 20%of the eligible vote.

In other words, the anti-Macron rejectionists represented over three quarters of the French electorate. After these elections a significant proportion of the French people – especially among the working class –will likely choose extra-parliamentary direct action, as the most democratic expression of representative politics

The United Kingdom: Class Struggle and the Election Results

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he June 2017 parliamentary elections in the UK resulted in a minority Conservative regime forced to form an alliance with the fringe Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a far-right para-military Protestant party from Northern Ireland. The Conservatives received 48% of registered voters to 40% who voted for the Labor Party. However, 15 million citizens, or one- third of the total electorate abstained or spoiled their ballots. The Conservative regime’s plurality represented 32% of the electorate.

Despite a virulent anti-Labor campaign in the oligarch-controlled mass media, the combined Labor vote and abstaining citizens clearly formed a majority of the population, which will be excluded from any role the post-election oligarchic regime despite the increase in the turnout (in comparison to previous elections).

Elections: Oligarchs in Office, Workers in the Street

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he striking differences in the rate of abstention in France, Puerto Rico and the UK reflect the levels of class dissatisfaction and rejection of electoral politics.

The UK elections provided the electorate with something resembling a class alternative in the candidacy of Jeremy Corbyn. The Labor Party under Corbyn presented a progressive social democratic program promising substantial and necessary increases in social welfare spending (health, education and housing) to be funded by higher progressive taxes on the upper and upper middle class.

Corbyn’s foreign policy promised to end the UK’s involvement in imperial wars and to withdraw troops from the Middle East. He also re-confirmed his long opposition to Israel’s colonial land-grabbing and oppression of the Palestinian people, as a principled way to reduce terrorist attacks at home.

In other words, Corbyn (left) recognized that introducing real class-based politics would increase voter participation. This was especially true among young voters in the 18-25 year age group, who were among the UK citizens most harmed by the loss of stable factory jobs, the doubling of university fees and the cuts in national health services.

In contrast, the French legislative elections saw the highest rate of voter abstention since the founding of the 5th Republic. These high rates reflect broad popular opposition to ultra-neo liberal President Francois Macron and the absence of real opposition parties engaged in class struggle.

The lowest voter turn-out (72%) occurred in Puerto Rico. This reflects growing mass opposition to the corrupt political elite, the economic depression and the colonial and semi- colonial offerings of the two-major parties. The absence of political movements and parties tied to class struggle led to greater reliance on direct action and voter abstention.

Clearly class politics is the major factor determining voter turnout. The absence of class struggle increases the power of the elite mass media, which promotes the highly divisive identity politics and demonizes left parties. All of these increase both abstention and the vote for rightwing politicians, like Macron.

The mass media grossly inflated the significance of the right’s election victories of the while ignoring the huge wave of citizens rejecting the entire electoral process. In the case of the UK, the appearance of class politics through Jeremy Corbyn increased voter turnout for the Labor Party. However, Labor has a history of first making left promises and ending up with right turns. Any future Labor betrayal will increase voter abstention.

The decision of many citizens not to vote is based on taking a very rational and informed view of the ruling political elites who have slashed their living standards often by forcing workers to compete with immigrants for low paying, unstable jobs. It is deeply rational for citizens to refuse to vote for within a rigged system, which only worsens their living conditions through its attacks on the public sector, social welfare and labor codes while cutting taxes on capital.

Conclusion

Liz Warren is the Democrats' latest effort to sell the electorate a new bogus "tribune of the people". Among the runner-ups for the job we also find the ultra-ambitious and corrupt Corey Booker, promising a rerun of Obama's supposedly irresistible winning streak. Much of their appeal rest on vague populist rhetoric and identity politics.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he vast majority citizens in the wage and salaried class do not trust the political elites. They see electoral campaigns as empty exercises, financed by and for plutocrats.

Most citizens recognize (and despise) the mass media as elite propaganda megaphones fabricating ‘popular’ images to promote anti-working class politicians, while demonizing political activists engaged in class-based struggles.

Nevertheless, elite elections will not produce an effective consolidation of rightwing rule. Voter abstention will not lead to abstention from direct action when the citizens recognize their class interests are in grave jeopardy.

The Macron regime’s parliamentary majority will turn into an impotent minority as soon as he tries carry out his elite promise to slash the jobs of hundreds of thousands of French public sector workers, smash France’s progressive labor codes and the industry-wide collective bargaining system and pursue new colonial wars.

Puerto Rico’s profound economic depression and social crisis will not be resolved through a referendum with on 27% of the voter participation. Large-scale demonstrations will preclude US annexation and deepen mass demands for class-based alternatives to colonial rule.

Conservative rule in the UK is divided by inter-elite rivalries both at home and abroad. ‘Brexit’, the first step in the break-up of the EU, opens opportunities for deeper class struggle. The social-economic promises made by Jeremy Corbyn and his left-wing of the Labor Party energized working class voters, but if it does not fundamentally challenge capital, it will revert to being a marginal force.

The weakness and rivalries within the British ruling class will not be resolved in Parliament or by any new elections.

The demise of the UK, the provocation of a Conservative-DUP alliance and the end of the EU (BREXIT) raises the chance for successful mass extra-parliamentary struggles against the authoritarian neo-liberal attacks on workers’ civil rights and class interests.

Elite elections and their outcomes in Europe and elsewhere are laying the groundwork for a revival and radicalization of the class struggle.

In the final analysis class rule is not decided via elite elections among oligarchs and their mass media propaganda. Once dismissed as a ‘vestige of the past’, the revival of class struggle is clearly on the horizon.

About the Author

James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York.

He is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles in nonprofessional journals such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Nation, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, New Left Review, Partisan Review, TempsModerne, Le Monde Diplomatique, and his commentary is widely carried on the internet

Oligarchic politicians depend on the systematic plundering Treasury to facilitate and protect billion dollar/billion euro stock market swindles and the illegal accumulation of trillions of dollars and Euros via tax evasion (capital flight) and money laundering. The results of elections and the faces of the candidates may change but the fundamental economic and military apparatus remains the same to serve an ever tightening oligarchic rule.

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

Photo by Ninian Reid | CC BY 2.0

“Whoever is not prepared to talk about capitalism should also remain silent about fascism…”

— Max Horkheimer

Nikita Khrushchev: The difference between the Soviet Union and China is that I rose to power from the peasant class, whereas you came from the privileged Mandarin class.

Zhou Enlai: True. But there is this similarity. Each of us is a traitor to his class.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here is now a clear genocidal intent in the Saudi attack on Yemen. An attack assisted by and designed in part by the United States. It is worth noting at the top that once King Abdullah died, and Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud took the throne, the shape of the Saudi power structure was changed. And the most important part of that change was the ascension of Mohammad bin Salman to defense minister. Bin Salman is all of thirty one, and in addition has retained the title of Minister of State, and added secretary general of the Royal Court. A rather astounding and nearly unprecedented consolidation of power in the hands of a thirty one year old. Additionally the eighty-one-year-old King is already suffering dementia and is not expected to long survive his tenure as Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques {sic}. Bin Salman is second in line to the throne.

Also worth noting that a week after Trump visited the Kingdom and did the sword dance and touched the orb (and seriously, what the fuck is all that?) the president appointed clear-cut nut job Michael D’Andrea to head up Iranian affairs at the CIA. A guy nicknamed ‘The Undertaker’. And a chain smoking abusive bully who converted to Islam (I mean there is a real story in unpacking D’Andrea). And a short time later a terror attack hit Tehran. Not to mention that secretary of war James ‘Mad Dog” Mattis is a longtime anti-Iranian zealot. You connect the dots. The U.S. is now ramping up an already breathtaking assault on the Arab world, and on the global south overall. And barely any of this is even mentioned in the mainstream press.

The logic at work, from the U.S. assault on Yugoslavia (which looms as the real trial run) to Libya and Iraq and now Syria, has been not just to defuse pockets of developing resistance to Western capital, but to dominate labor markets and control resources. The penetration of Western capital is the engine behind this massive wave of attacks on the global south. All of this began, in a sense, at least in its current incarnation, after 1989 and the fall of the U.S.S.R. But the hyper escalation began with 9/11. And it was Obama, far more than Bush, that implemented the structural and tactical policy that Trump has inherited. And to return to the Saudis for a moment; Obama oversaw a cooperation with the Saudis in channeling money to Takfiri mercenaries as part of the assault on Syria. To the tune of billions of dollars (or as one analyst put it, over a hundred thousand dollars a year for every single anti Assad terrorist mercenary). And it was Obama who had U.S. military advisors in Riyadh, from day one, of the Saudi attack on Yemen. An attack that has left millions suffering starvation, and an outbreak of Cholera — a proxy biological attack itself, and a totally destroyed infrastructure.

Crown Prince bin Salman: liable to rule for a long time. We must wonder what kind of shadow he will cast.

And remember, too, that Saudi Arabia only exists in its current form because of the U.K., and because of subsidizing from the West. And the British saw some sort of logic in supporting the minority fringe fundamentalism of Wahabbist Islam. A short bit of history here: it was in the 1700s that Ibn Saud formed an alliance with itinerant religious fanatic Adl al-Wahhab and this alliance formed into a movement of fanatic reformists who terrorized the peninsula until the start of the 19th century. And once destroyed by Egyptians (and Turks), the Wahab doctrine survived underground in small enclaves of nomadic tribes. But it was the start of the 20th century that saw the return of Saudi power and Wahabi ideology.

Johnny Grant wrote…

“…Abd-al Aziz, the then Saud leader, returned from exile determined to reclaim the family’s former power. In doing so he used much the same tactics as his ancestor, Ibn Saud, namely employing fear under the banner of jihad. But there were two other important aspects to Aziz’s strategy that can’t be overlooked: the Ikhwan project, and the support from the British.

A major part of Abd-al Aziz’s strategy for reclaiming the peninsula was to extend Wahhabism through radical teaching into the surrounding Bedouin tribes. The traditional tribesmen were considered theological ‘blank slates’ by the House of Saud. Primitive and unenlightened, the Jahiliyyah were opened up to Wahhabi conversion by Saudi clerics with great enthusiasm.”

Aziz courted the British, who saw the wisdom in having a fanatical puritanical autocrat control the restive tribes and signed him up as part of a British protectorate. In 1932 the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was born, and a few years later oil was discovered. The formation of the Kingdom also saw an early cooperation with Israel. Common goal drove this partnership and it was Israel, with of course U.K. help, that fought the revolutionary republican forces in Yemen that wanted to overthrow the authoritarian Imam of the time – forces backed by Egypt’s Nasser.

Asher Orkaby writes…

“Since neither London nor Riyadh wanted to openly support the royalist forces, they needed a partner that would be willing to organize airlifts clandestinely over hostile territory. They turned to Israel, the only country with more to lose than Saudi Arabia from an Egyptian triumph in Yemen. Israeli leaders, for their part, believed that supporting a proxy conflict with Egypt would forestall an Egyptian-Israeli confrontation in the Sinai, keeping Nasser too preoccupied to attack Israel.

The celebrated Israeli transport pilot Aryeh Oz, then serving as the leader of Israel’s International Squadron 120, led the mission. Using a retrofitted Boeing Stratocruiser, he oversaw 14 flight missions to Yemen’s northern highlands between 1964 and 1966, carrying vital weapons and supplies that, in numerous cases, helped turn the tide of battle in favor of the royalists. Israeli pilots charted a flight path directly over Saudi territory, avoiding Egyptian fighter jets patrolling the Red Sea.”

Israel and Saudi cooperation continues, especially in regard to Iran. And the influence of Saudi money extends to every corner of the Imperialist West. Let me quote Fintan O’Toole…

“Wahhabism was born in the 18th century, Salafism in the 19th. And they are not “Islam” – Salafis and Wahhabis make up 3 per cent of Muslims. One of the more bizarre aspects of this ideology is that it involves attacks on things most Muslims regard as sacred. When western liberals wring their hands about giving offence to Muslims by depicting or representing the prophet, they miss the most important point. Cartoons in Charlie Hebdo are vastly less offensive to most Muslims than the destruction of early Islamic tombs by the Saudis. But of course self-appointed defenders of Islamic sensitivities, funded by Saudi largesse, won’t tell you that.”

Western governments abide by the dictum, just don’t mention the Saudis. The vast majority of Iraqis and Syrians believe ISIS is a western invention. And so it is, by way of Saudi Arabia. The modernist blog notes…

“These are precisely the populations which the western media universally insisted ISIS drew its support and sympathy. These are the people who the Western right insist simply spawn such savage groups periodically from the depths of their Oriental inscrutability, and of whom Western liberals parrot the equally racist absurdity that they are just so constitutionally barbaric as to morph into head-choppers after a certain sum of bombs have been dropped.”

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Western mainstream press and good deal of the left in the West continue to express the generalizing Orientalism that links Milosevic, Qadaffi, and Assad as all the same, and all somehow inherently despotic and creations outside history. The demonizing of Islam is linked to the Western (meaning U.S. and U.K.) need to bury the reality of Saudi influence, and the history of Wahabbi fanaticism. But it is also a part of the hidden security apparatus (or deep state, a term predictably being ridiculed in mainstream media now) that works to defuse and squash any organic grassroots movements of resistance.

Ole Tunander wrote….

“US Rear-Admiral James Lyons, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Plans, Policy and Operations, in 1984 set up a ‘terrorist unit’ — known as the Red Cell — recruited from his own naval special forces (SEAL Team Six), to attack naval bases worldwide. This unit set off bombs, wounded US personnel and took hundreds of hostages as part of its operations. According to Lyons, it was necessary for US forces to get ‘physical’ experience of the terrorist threat in order to ‘change the mindset’ and ‘raise the awareness’ of the troops to prevent a possibly even more devastating attack.

Once again, the US was developing a security system that included both sides of the coin. With the end of the Cold War and the decline of the Soviet threat, however, many Europeans believe this ‘dual structure’ — with its specifically tasked terrorist units — may have evolved into an instrument for establishing not only internal Western stability but also US global hegemony.”

Ya think? The recent Manchester bombing is a perfect expression of the mechanisms of the hidden security hierarchy. John Pilger observed…

“The unsayable in Britain’s general election campaign is this. The causes of the Manchester atrocity, in which 22 mostly young people were murdered by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the secrets of British foreign policy.

Critical questions – such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist “assets” in Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of the threat in their midst – remain unanswered, deflected by the promise of an internal “review”. The alleged suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was part of an extremist group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, that thrived in Manchester and was cultivated and used by MI5 for more than 20 years.”

When Hillary Clinton ordered the assassination of Qadaffi, the killers were part of this same group that the U.K. protected and employed, in theory, when necessary. Again, this imperial policy goes back to WW2. And the goal was to stop secular states, to stop Pan-Arabism lest control of resources fall out of Western control. And the creation of Israel was part of the plan. Pilger adds…“Pan-Arabism has since been crushed; the goal now is division and conquest.” The truth is Mu’ammar Gaddafi never intended to massacre anyone. But the fact he controlled massive oil reserves served, among other things (like wanting to create a new currency to replace the dollar), to put a target on his back. The destruction of Libya included massive bombing of civilian areas and an estimated death toll (including a high percentage of children) in the tens of thousands. Obama ordered troops to South Sudan, the Congo, and the Central African Republic…a de-facto invasion of desperately poor nations, all with total invisibility in U.S. media. The western narrative on terrorist attacks never varies. Lone wolf acting alone. Product of a barbaric Islam, a culture of violence, anti modern, savage and anti democratic.

Jim Kavanagh wrote…

“The Abedi family was part of a protected cohort of Salafist proxy soldiers that have been used by “the West” to destroy the Libyan state. There are a number of such cohorts around the world that have been used for decades to overthrow relatively prosperous and secular, but insufficiently compliant, governments in the Arab and Muslim world—and members of those groups have perpetrated several blowback attacks in Western countries, via various winding roads. In this case, the direct line from Libya to Mali to Manchester is particularly easy to trace.”

The attack in Tehran, the one applauded by Trump and the craven imbecile Dana Rohrbacher, was claimed by ISIS. And ISIS, as must be clear by now, is the creation of Saudi Arabia with huge amounts of help from the U.S., Israel, and U.K. And secondary assistance from NATO, Turkey, Jordan, and the other gulf monarchies. When Trump blames Iran for the terror in its capital, he is part of the inversion of reality that is now daily fare in western media. Iran is the largest democracy in the region and the greatest opponent of fanatical Salafi terrorism. Israel continues to be a crucial actor in the global Imperial project of the U.S. They support ISIS financially, but also with safe passage through the Golan Heights, and with free hospital care; not to mention the intermittent air strikes by the Israeli air force. With Netanyahu under investigation for corruption, one can expect Israeli aggression will only increase in an effort to distract from his domestic problems.

“…more than seventy American companies and individuals have won up to $27 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last three years, according to a recent study by the Center for Public Integrity. According to the study, nearly 75 per cent of these private companies had employees or board members, who either served in, or had close ties to, the executive branch of the Republican and Democratic administrations, members of Congress, or the highest levels of the military.” — Garikai Chengu

So what is the conclusion one draws from all these facts? Well, firstly, the United States is the #1 world aggressor. The Saudis, like ISIS, like Kagame, are just a tool. Iran hasn’t invaded anyone for 300 years. It isn’t Russia that has 800 military bases around the world. That would be the U.S. And it was under Obama, who now looms as the worst president in history, that the constitution was essentially shredded. The U.S. now assassinates anyone anywhere in the world without due process, advocates indefinite detention of anyone, even U.S. citizens, without trial, and can label any American a terrorist without due process (you can be labeled a terrorist for paying cash at an internet cafe).

The U.S. has entered a gilded age in which the affluent classes, the managerial class (now increasingly elitist, and including a kind of new technological expert priest class ) who live largely in big urban centers, have grown ideologically and culturally apart from the underemployed working class, are aligned with the impossibly rich 1%. The haute bourgeoisie are now not just structurally opposed to the working class, but culturally as well. They are white professional gentrifying educated and anti socialist. Race and gender cut across this, too. The violence against the third world is the same violence vented on black communities in the U.S. And I’ve seen essays arguing that racism is at an all time low (and argued this with a pseudo leftist in fact) when of course it is only a certain kind of manufactured image of anti racism that has grown. The real racism against black people is reaching new levels of sadism. The academic left concerns itself increasingly with identity issues while ignoring the massive uptick in direct violence against the global poor. No country the U.S. has attacked has offered even the remotest threat. Yemen was and is the poorest country in the Arab world. And domestically, despite various liberal laws now providing protection (and Dean Spade is very good on this with regards to trans people) there has been a growth of material punishment and marginalization of the most vulnerable. The mythology that passing laws changes something, like racism say, is actually one that ends up justifying racism because now, supposedly, in a post racist society if you fail it is because you are lazy or somehow just not up to the task. And running alongside this is the growing prison population. The violence against black communities is the same violence directed at Yemen, and Libya and Syria. There remains in the U.S. a dire housing shortage, food insecurity has grown, and stripped down welfare benefits. The state is the great punisher today, both domestically and globally. And the global violence is masked because much of it takes place through the hidden security apparatus, and domestically through the illusions of legal faux legitimacy. That Obama succeeded in sustaining an image of progressive liberalism is one of the great propaganda achievements of the modern era. For Obama did nothing for the poor, and globally intensified the imperialist drive for global hegemony. And that is the story in one sentence. Globally the United States has destroyed secular governments, supported monarchies and dictatorships, propagandized against all secular socialist minded leaders and in fact against any leader not prostrate in obedience. Our allies, such as Israel, are exactly the same. Expansionist and racist and militant. Or like Saudi Arabia, degenerate and morally bankrupt societies of bigotry and cruelty. That is the company the U.S. keeps.

Gordon Huff, a Vietnam veteran, wrote…

“Every day my father would return from the Ford factory, describing 120-degree heat and air steeped in carcinogenic solvents. His friends and coworkers died in their 50s. By age 55, he had suffered half a dozen heart attacks and was on disability of $60 a month to support a family of 4. This is a common story, not an exception, this is how my generation grew up, mowing lawns, shoveling snow for money for shoes, working to support a family as early as 10. This is the American generation that went to Vietnam and it was the generation that taught the Pentagon that their games would not continue unopposed.

Today it’s different. The public questions little, those in the military question nothing. When America’s invading armies in Iraq and Afghanistan, under bush never found WMDs or the massive underground terrorist fortresses Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld spoke of, what was the downside? Thousands of American military were killed over not just nothing but abject lies.

When billions in cash was stolen in both Iraq and Afghanistan, when 250,000 AK 47’s purchased by the US government for the Iraqi military simply disappeared, nobody saw it. When Haliburton Corporation furnished the US Army with drinking water taken unfiltered from the Euphrates River, one of the most polluted bodies of water on Earth, hundreds infected with Hepatitis and other diseases, nothing was said, certainly no congressional investigation but the Pentagon was silent as well. Also silent were the troops in the field, silent then and still silent.”

And Hollywood deserves a fair share of blame for the effectiveness of the propaganda. The endless repetition of Imperial lies and the fawning adoration of militarism has helped create a nation run by a sub literate gangster billionaire. A president who appoints only other billionaires or just old fashioned regressive cracker racists like Jefferson Sessions. Raw meat tossed to the xenophobic right wing. And I will tell you now, Trump will get re-elected because the class segregation is now deeply entrenched and the collaborator liberal class will in the end defer to their own self interest. They will vote Democratic (Chelsea Clinton? Michelle Obama? Cory Booker?…who is the next Democrat to run against Trump? It won't be Hillary because I think her health will prevent it). But whoever it is, they will lose. And for the same reasons Hillary lost this time.

This is a society of extraordinary denial and self delusion. Global aggression and the artificial Salafi terrorist mercenaries are the result of Capitalism and Imperialism. They are the proxy warriors in the West’s irrational lust for more. Of everything. And of the barely concealed death instinct of the western psyche.

About the Author

John Steppling is an original founding member of the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival, a two-time NEA recipient, Rockefeller Fellow in theatre, and PEN-West winner for playwriting. Plays produced in LA, NYC, SF, Louisville, and at universities across the US, as well in Warsaw, Lodz, Paris, London and Krakow. Taught screenwriting and curated the cinematheque for five years at the Polish National Film School in Lodz, Poland. A collection of plays, Sea of Cortez & Other Plays was published in 1999, and his book on aesthetics, Aesthetic Resistance and Dis-Interest was published this year by Mimesis International.

The destruction of Libya included massive bombing of civilian areas and an estimated death toll (including a high percentage of children) in the tens of thousands. Obama ordered troops to South Sudan, the Congo, and the Central African Republic…a de-facto invasion of desperately poor nations, all with total invisibility in U.S. media. The western narrative on terrorist attacks never varies. Lone wolf acting alone. Product of a barbaric Islam, a culture of violence, anti modern, savage and anti democratic.

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HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

By Jerry White, wsws.org

12 June 2017

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he “People’s Summit” in Chicago, organized by the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party, concluded on Sunday. The event was sponsored by the National Nurses United (NNU) and other unions that had backed Sanders’ bid for the Democratic presidential nomination last year, along with several liberal and pseudo-left organizations aligned with the Democrats.

The event was a political fraud from beginning to end. The basic thread running through all of the workshops and demagogic speeches was the fiction that the Democratic Party—a party of Wall Street and the CIA—can be transformed into a “people’s party.”

In remarks Saturday night, Sanders claimed that his campaign, which came to an ignominious end with his groveling endorsement of Hillary Clinton, had pushed the Democratic Party to the left and forced it to adopt “the most progressive platform in history.” This fantasy flies in the face of reality. Since Trump’s election, the Democrats have moved further to the right, attacking the billionaire president not for his savage austerity proposals or attacks on immigrants and democratic rights, but for his supposed “softness” toward Russia.

Sanders lent his support to the neo-McCarthyite campaign of the Democrats and the military-intelligence apparatus, which sees Russia as the chief obstacle to US imperialism’s drive for regime change in Syria and Iran. “I find it strange we have a president who is more comfortable with autocrats and authoritarians than leaders of democratic nations,” Sanders said. “Why is he enamored with Putin, a man who has suppressed democracy and destabilized democracies around the world, including our own?”

Consistent with his presidential campaign and his post-election efforts to shore up the Democratic Party, Sanders made no mention of the Democrats’ record of militarism or the danger of a military confrontation with the world’s second largest nuclear power.

Thoroughly unprincipled, Sanders lent his support to the neo-McCarthyite campaign of the Democrats and the military-intelligence apparatus, which sees Russia as the chief obstacle to US imperialism’s drive for regime change in Syria and Iran. “I find it strange we have a president who is more comfortable with autocrats and authoritarians than leaders of democratic nations,” Sanders said. “Why is he enamored with Putin, a man who has suppressed democracy and destabilized democracies around the world, including our own?”

Instead, he continued to advance the duplicitous line that it is possible to wage a struggle against the economic and political domination of America’s “billionaire class” while backing that same class’s imperialist foreign policy.

In an hour-long speech that never mentioned the words “war,” “capitalism” or “socialism,” Sanders suggested that a fundamental transformation of society would be possible if young people decided to run for state and local office as “progressive Democrats.” This, he said, was “the real revolution” that his campaign had engendered.

According to Sanders, the popular support for his election campaign had forced not only the Democrats, but significant sections of the Republicans to adopt “progressive” ideas. “We have won the battle of ideas and will continue to win the battle of ideas,” he said.

“We have in recent years made enormous progress advancing the progressive agenda,” he continued. “Sometimes, what we all do is we look at today and think, ‘Well, that’s kind of the way it always was.’ That’s not the case. Ideas that just a few years ago seemed radical and unattainable are now widely supported, and, in fact, some of them are being implemented as we speak.”

As supposed evidence of this political sea change, Sanders pointed to various Democratic city and state officials who have given rhetorical support for mild reform measures, including minimum wage hikes and broader state-funded health coverage. He also pointed to the election of “progressive Democrats” in New York, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

Sanders referred to last week’s election in the United Kingdom, in which the Labour Party gained 29 parliamentary seats, to say that the “movement for economic, social, racial and environmental justice is growing worldwide.” He said Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had won those extra seats “not by moving to the right or becoming more conciliatory, but by standing up to the ruling class of the UK.”

As in Sanders’ own campaign, in which he won 13 million votes by claiming to be a “democratic socialist” leading a “political revolution against the billionaire class,” the popular support for Corbyn is an expression of the growing political radicalization of workers and especially young people in the face of the explosive growth of social inequality and the discrediting of the entire political system. Far from standing up to the ruling class, however, Corbyn, like Sanders, has sought to contain this social opposition within the confines of a capitalist political party, in this case the Labour Party.

Sanders pointed to the immense level of social discontent in the United States. “While the last eight years did get better under Obama,” he claimed, “millions were left behind. Workers who had decent factory jobs were told, ‘Sorry, we’re moving to China.’ Half of older Americans have nothing in the bank. Millions have no health insurance or have high deductibles. Working families are in pain and they are worried about their kids.”

“All over,” Sanders continued, “people are furious. They are asking, ‘Does anybody hear my pain? Does anybody give a damn about me and my family?’”

Well aware of mass disaffection with the political establishment and the radicalization of millions of workers and young people, Sanders and the rest of the organizers of the People’s Summit are concerned that the Democratic Party will not be able to play its traditional role of channeling, containing and suppressing opposition and preventing a mass working-class movement against capitalism.

How was it possible, Sanders asked, that the most unpopular candidate was able to become president? “He did not win the election, the Democrats lost the election,” he answered.

“The current model and the current strategy of the Democratic party is an absolute failure,” he continued. “The Democratic Party needs fundamental change. What it needs is to open up its doors to working people and young people and older people who are prepared to fight for social and economic justice.

“The Democratic Party must understand what side it is on. And that cannot be the side of Wall Street, or the fossil fuel industry, or the drug companies.”

Sanders is by no means the first political snake oil salesman to peddle the lie that the Democratic Party ever was or ever could be anything other than a party of the capitalist ruling class. He is, however, one of the more practiced of this breed, having been at it for decades, during which he has used his façade of “socialism” and “independence” to provide the Democrats with a much needed left cover. He has spent some 30 years in Congress performing this service for the ruling class, and is now being handsomely rewarded, earning not only political prestige and media attention, but also a cool million in income last year.

In fact, the Democratic Party long ago abandoned any policy of social reform and spent the last four decades undoing the New Deal and War on Poverty programs. It continues to move to the right, not the left.

The Democratic Party has almost nothing to say about the biggest attack on social programs in history. It is not holding congressional hearings on Trump’s destruction of Medicaid or his attacks on democratic rights. Instead, it is holding hearings to pressure or even remove Trump so that the American ruling class can escalate its aggressive policy against Russia, including preparations for war.

Sanders’ support for the anti-Russia campaign expresses the essence of his class position as a capitalist and imperialist politician.

He and the liberal and pseudo-left publications and organizations that back him, from the Democratic Socialists of America to the Nation magazine, the International Socialist Organization, Socialist Alternative and other anti-Marxist “left” organizations, are perpetrating a political fraud to block the emergence of a revolutionary movement of the working class.

Some of these forces are urging Sanders to break with the Democrats and build a new “People’s Party” along the lines of the pro-capitalist Podemos movement in Spain or Syriza in Greece. The latter, once in power, quickly betrayed all of its anti-austerity promises and set about implementing social attacks that go beyond those carried out by its conservative predecessors. Both Podemos and Syriza had representatives at the People’s Summit.

Rejecting a political break with the Democrats, Sanders told the Washington Post, “Look, as the longest-serving independent member of Congress, I know something about that [third parties]. Where my energy is right now is in fundamentally transforming the Democratic Party into a grass-roots progressive party. And we’ll see where it goes.”

Whatever illusions remain in Sanders will be dissipated as a movement of the working class emerges and workers begin to advance their own demands, which cannot be reconciled with war, social inequality and the maintenance of the capitalist system.

About the Author

The author is a senior political analYst with wsws.org.

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Global Detention

At “People’s Summit,” Sanders backs Democrats’ anti-Russian warmongering

By Jerry White, wsws.org

12 June 2017