The Europe That Can Say No?

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by GARY LEUPP

Federica Mogherini: a rare voice of reason and even hope in a continent now accustomed to vassalage.

EU president and Polish politician Donald Tusk says the U.S. acts with “capricious assertiveness.” With friends like this who needs enemies?” he asked the other day, adding, “If you need a helping hand you will find one at the end of your arm.”

EU vice-president Federica Mogherini met with European and Iranian representatives after the U.S. decision to leave the Iran nuclear agreement. She committed Europe to the following:

The protection of European Union economic operators and ensuring legal certainty:

And last but not least, the further development of a transparent, rules-based business environment in Iran.”

Meanwhile U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton asks rhetorically on ABC: “Why would any business, why would the shareholders of any business, want to do business with the world’s central banker of international terrorism?” He threatens secondary sanctions on nations that, adhering to the agreement, expand trade with Iran.

Some including RT commentators predict Europe will buckle to U.S. pressure and cancel contracts. But maybe not this time. Maybe Europe will become the Europe That Can Say No.

“We are working on finding a practical solution … in a short delay of time,” Mogherini says. “We are talking about solutions to keep the deal alive. We have a quite clear list of issues to address. We are operating in a very difficult context … I cannot talk about legal or economic guarantees but I can talk about serious, determined, immediate work from the European side.”

Immediate work to diminish the damage done to world peace and stability by Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement.

Some including RT commentators predict Europe will buckle to U.S. pressure and cancel contracts. But maybe not this time. Maybe Europe will become the Europe That Can Say No.

According to EU Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulus, the EU is preparing legislation to block U.S. sanctions targeting Iran. Its members know that if Iran reaps no sanctions relief from the agreement it will also withdraw, charging betrayal. France’s Total S.A. and Germany’s Siemens have indicated they may back out of contracts with Iran due to fears of U.S. secondary sanctions. The U.S. strives to use access to its marketplace to shape others’ investment options, in this case options that can lead to war. No matter that this violates the sacred bourgeois principle of Free Trade.

There are all kinds of good reasons for Iran and the rest of the world to expand trade ties. (French cooks would like access to Iranian pistachios—the world’s best—and saffron.) And there’s no reason for other governments to embrace Bolton’s view that the Iranian government is the central banker of international terrorism. (Surely that is Saudi Arabia, the world’s leading supporter of Salafist Sunni Islamism, which supports the Syrian Liberation Front, the Army of Conquest, and Ahrar al-Sham. The Saudi monarchy, presiding over a society far more oppressive than Iranian or Syrian society—but spared media outrage—pursues its unholy alliance with Israel to bring down the regime in Tehran, preparing for the coming confrontation by invading Bahrain, isolating Qatar, pulverizing Yemen and bombing Syria at U.S. behest and kidnapped the Lebanese prime minister in order to influence Lebanese politics and diminish the role of Hizbollah.)

And there are all kinds of reasons for Europe to stand up to the U.S. and say, “Your sanctions are not our sanctions.” And maybe add: Your intentions for further regime change in the Middle East are not popular in Europe, which fears more waves of refugees. And also add: The sanctions you’ve demanded we impose on Russia following the February 2014 coup in Ukraine and consequent Russian reassertion of sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula are hurting Europe and should be lifted.

There should be a multilateral world. It already exists, actually, but the U.S. ruling class, wedded as it is to “full-spectrum dominance” and notions of U.S. “exceptionalism” resists acknowledging it. Bolton’s remarks are telling.

A suckup-kickdown bully, and dual nationality Neocon (Israel/US), JohnBolton is surely one of the most odious figures in modern history.

“I think the Europeans will see that’s in their interest ultimately to go along with this,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper over the weekend. Asked if the U.S. would apply sanctions to European firms, he said vaguely, “It’s possible. It depends on the conduct of other governments.” He notes legal devices available to the U.S. such as the denial of licenses. He threatens to pull out all the stops to impede the world’s effort to conciliate Iran. He wants to coordinate Saudi, Israeli, U.S. and MEK efforts to effect regime change in Tehran; as he told an MEK audience in July 2017, he expects this by 2019!

This is the U.S. National Security Advisor, serving an unusually unbalanced, ignorant U.S. president. (The British demanded his withdrawal from the Libya talks in 2004 because he was overbearing, indeed acting like a madman.) He is saying, confidently, Europe will go along “when they see it’s in their interest.” Maybe he and Trump miscalculate. The EU even without Britain rivals the U.S. in population and GDP. If it once needed to obey, it might not need to (or want to) now. The U.S. these days does not smell of freedom, democracy, liberal values, calm reason, tolerated dissent. It reeks of white nationalism, racist exclusion, institutional police violence and murder, and seemingly irrevocable tendency towards the concentration of wealth in the .01%. It is a fundamentally unfair, unjust, unadmirable society that tortures its youth by offering them low-paying jobs and endless student debt if they were lucky enough to go to college. It denies its people the normal standard of public health care and charges them twice the Canadian fees.

It is a basically a fucked-up country. After its (ongoing) disasters in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Lebanon and elsewhere, it has no moral leg to stand on in lecturing Europe to maintain sanctions on Iran. After siding 100% with Israel, on everything imaginable, it has lost any credibility as an honest broker in international relations. [Never had much, if any, credibility with any intelligent person.—Ed]

The EU comprises various imperialist countries who of course exploit workers throughout the world, competing in the process with the U.S. They are not morally different from the U.S. But their governments increasingly chafe under U.S. hegemony, and this particular nut-case hegemon, Donald Trump.

Angela Merkel said last week that Europe can no longer count on the United States to protect it. “It is no longer such that the United States simply protects us,” she declared, “but Europe must take its destiny in its own hands. That’s the task of the future,” she said during a speech honoring French President Emmanuel Macron, who said European nations should not allow “other major powers, including allies” to “put themselves in a situation to decide our diplomacy [and] security for us.” Trump was all over this guy in his last visit but the bromance ends here. You do not order proud France to cease trade ties with Iran just because you’re looking for another war. Europeans are tired of that. Tired of being taken for granted as slavish allies when the U.S. decides to attack somebody. The Truman Doctrine is dead, the Cold War over, Europe despite Brexit increasingly united in its ability to collectively respond to U.S. pressure.

Let there be an intensification of inter-imperialist contradictions! Let Germany say, yes, brothers and sisters, let us make Mercedez-Benz in Tehran! Let us sell you Airbus passenger airliners! Let us buy your walnuts and pomegranates and carpets. And let us tell the Americans the “American century” is not gonna happen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, (AK Press). He can be reached at: gleupp@tufts.edu

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

Comment here or on our Facebook Group page.

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

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Today’s Poor People’s Campaign: Too Important Not to Criticize

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

BAR's Bruce Dixon

Introduction

On the progressive website OpEdNews (OEN), I recently posted a QuickLink to an article published in Black Agenda Report by its managing editor Bruce Dixon. Seeking to get Dixon’s piece maximal attention, I titled my framing introduction to it “The Most Important Political Article in Ages.” Despite the appearance of advertising puffery, I was not exaggerating.

To grasp why I find Dixon’s timely piece so hefty, readers must understand my constant political perspective—as an activist analyst intensely focused on strategy and organizing. Like Karl Marx in his Theses on Feuerbach, I’m inclined to say, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” If the world we desperately wish to change is the hellhole of U.S. politics, nothing remotely rivals in importance the current attempt to revive Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign (PPC).

But as we support that campaign, nothing is more crucial than keeping it true to the spirit—and depth of underlying political analysis—of Dr. King. Rightly conducted, today’s PPC could be (pun intended) just what the doctor ordered. This is why principled PPC critics like Dixon (who shares King’s race and radical socialist leanings, if not his religion) deserve our close and serious attention.

PPC’s Enormous Potential: To Lead Us from Our Political Desert

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]or a movement having, in King’s day and now, roots in U.S. black churches, religious allusions and metaphors are of course highly appropriate. So in saying today’s PPC could lead us out of our political desert, I am implying it could lead us into the Promised Land. Not, of course, that anyone acquainted with the nightmare of human history should expect the PPC to establish the millennium. But as a climate justice activist deeply influenced by Naomi Klein, I do think addressing humanity’s climate emergency will require a level of rapid-fire moral maturation unprecedented in human history. Our stark choice is between maturation and climate catastrophe, perhaps even between maturation and climate Armageddon. As a broad movement crying out for moral maturation—across an interrelated spectrum of issues including climate—today’s PPC is the closest approach anyone has made to a viable climate justice movement. It’s also the first movement—unlike Democrats’ pussy-hatted, Russophobic “McResistance”—offering a potentially deep response to the ghastly symptom of bipartisan disease known as Trump.

"As a climate justice activist deeply influenced by Naomi Klein, I do think addressing humanity’s climate emergency will require a level of rapid-fire moral maturation unprecedented in human history..."

Provided, of course, today’s PPC attacks the bipartisan disease. Since doubts on that score are what I find most compelling in Dixon’s critique, I’ll say much more on that soon. But first I must dispose of the points—few but crucial—where I disagree with Dixon.

Religion and Morality: Where Dixon Seems Off Base

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]ny close reader of Dixon’s piece, and of my words so far, might have guessed (correctly) that my differences with him relate to religion and morality. Indeed, my previous section strongly hints that I’m comfortable with the PPC’s religious origins and morality-based language in ways that Dixon is not. In fact, I find in the PPC’s religious origins and moral language unique sources of effectiveness where Dixon sees only defects. But before elaborating on my two chief differences with Dixon, I wish to emphasize that they’re far outweighed by debt we owe him for his gutsiness in criticizing the PPC. I imagine that for many supporters, today’s PPC has already reached such iconic status that its critics must seem as perverse as detractors of Mom and apple pie would have seemed to characters in early 1960s sitcoms. Dixon honestly stuck his neck out for urgent public purposes, and even where his critiques seem mistaken, they’re hardly shallow or ill-willed, but instead rooted in realities clear-sighted people must acknowledge.

Now, anyone reading Dixon’s piece will instantly notice its snarky tone toward religion. As a frequent reader of Black Agenda Report (a black leftist publication, after all), I find this par for the course and hardly unjustified; how often, after all, has religion—especially U.S. Christianity—been used to buttress the powers that be? Or, in other words, to provide respectable support—even God’s sanction—for a ruthless capitalist or militarist establishment or even Nazis? Much more often, I’d venture, than it’s been used for the vastly more Christian purpose of “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” And that’s above all true when the comfort or affliction were to be offered in this-worldly terms; religion’s notorious postponement of any reckoning to the afterlife of course underlies Marx’s famous jibe at religion as “the opiate of the masses.”

For those who know Marx’s context (see the link just provided), not even Marx is as purely hostile toward religion as he’s typically portrayed. But given humanity’s vastly improved capacity to alleviate human misery via science, technology, and democratic institutions—resources that didn’t exist when religions like Christianity were founded—no religious voice should now be trusted that hasn’t come to terms with Marx. Dixon’s snarkiness is totally appropriate to shallow religion, whereas the religion behind the PPC, in its vigilance about universal human sinfulness, is capable of critiquing shallow establishment religion in terms as scathing as anything found on the Marxist left. A fact driven home for me by recent readings in The Radical King and some works by prominent Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, a significant influence on King. Given the scholar-activist backgrounds of Revs. William Barber and Liz Theoharis (Theoharis actually on the faculty of Union Theological Seminary, Niebuhr’s long-time home), leadership of today’s PPC seems in good, uncompromising hands.

And no one cognizant of the role churches played in the civil rights movement, as well as earlier social movements like abolitionism and woman’s suffrage, should doubt their immense value as community bases for political organizing. This seems especially true in a society that increasingly isolates individuals, and where labor unions, formerly powerful resources for organizing, have been decimated by successful political attacks. Now embracing Unitarian Universalism, that least dogmatic of religious faiths, I personally can (from an organizing standpoint) only regret I hadn’t been “churched” in my incarnations as an anti-fracking, and later Bernie or Bust, organizer. Belonging to a church gives one special access not only to members of one’s own church, but to interfaith political organizing—a powerful weapon wielded by today’s PPC.

To close (very willingly) my criticisms of Dixon, morality seems the area where he’s most off base. To berate the PPC for its emphasis on political issues as moral ones is probably to attack its greatest strength—a strength quite evident in King. Dixon rather amazingly overlooks the crucial role moral appeals played in eliminating such societal horrors as slavery, dueling, public torture, family vendettas, child labor—and in the civil rights movement itself. What’s more, he flies in the face of cognitive scientist George Lakoff’s important advice to liberals and progressives: that we need to start articulating the moral foundations of our political positions with the same dedication that conservatives, through their well-funded foundations and think tanks, have.

Like many liberals in the 1920s and '30s, in a world buffeted by the Great Depression and the rise of fascism, Niebuhr gained fame and admiration for his cogent criticism of capitalism and even espoused socialism. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the same man, soon effected a complete about face. arguing now from a "Christian Realist" platform saturated with fierce anti-communism. In the 1950s, Niebuhr described Senator Joseph McCarthy as a force of evil, not so much for attacking civil liberties, as for being ineffective in rooting out Communists and their sympathizers. In 1953, he supported the execution of the Rosenbergs, saying, "Traitors are never ordinary criminals and the Rosenbergs are quite obviously fiercely loyal Communists... Stealing atomic secrets is an unprecedented crime." (Wikipedia)

But even in his biggest misstep, Dixon is neither shallow nor ill-willed; his mistake is intertwined with valid, important concerns. On the one hand, Dixon contrasts the PPC’s insistence on morality with a class struggle analysis he (unsurprisingly for a leftist) rightly finds missing. In its efforts at broad-based coalition building, the PPC, which never hesitates to give moral criticism, is unduly chary of giving political criticism based on unjust imbalances of economic (and thereby, of political) power. A strange stance indeed for a movement seeking to eliminate poverty and racism—and a radical neglect of crucial insight from Niebuhr, who saw such unjust imbalances as brutal instances of collective immorality. Class and power balance issues are moral issues, and Niebuhr saw collective immorality as even more pernicious for societies than the individual kind.

Finally, even Dixon’s off-kilter criticism of PPC’s moral language veils an extremely valid related concern. When Dixon (mistakenly) says “ labeling your political opponents, their leaders, their misguided values and their persons as ‘immoral’ is never a persuasive political tactic” (ignoring the numerous social evils defeated by precisely moral critiques), his words do suggest a totally legitimate concern about the targets of such critiques. The powerful are in a radically different position of responsibility from the powerless; almost needless to say, Trump supporters—generally victims of propaganda in a system that offers few valid choices (Clinton was hardly a good alternative)—bear considerably less moral responsibility than Trump and the staffers of his thuggish regime. In politics, we should always fire our moral weaponry at the powerful; the powerless, rather like bystanders of armed conflict, should be left to infer the implications of associating closely with parties rightly under moral assault. Creating shame by proxy, without the resentment provoked by personal blame, is the needed moral tactic.

Democrats, Russiagate, and Third-Party Voices: What Dixon Gets Crucially Right

Given the great value I find in Dixon’s courageous article, I regret the amount of space I had to use for specifying my criticisms; if anything, that was because I had to disentangle even his weaknesses from intimately related strengths. Praising his unalloyed merits is a much more gratifying task.

Now, in splitting claims of merits between the PPC and Dixon, I’m inclined to say the PPC (as a movement with religious roots making moral criticisms) has a better toolkit for doing the needed political job than Dixon actually realizes. But on the existing evidence, I’d credit Dixon with a better understanding of what the job actually is. So I’d strongly urge the PPC to enlist Dixon (or someone with a similar perspective) as an adviser on its project, lest it botch that project by misapplying its powerful tools—or failing to use others it may need.

Setting tool and job metaphors aside, the existing evidence suggests Dixon’s diagnosis of our political woes is nearly identical to mine: the deep corruption, by plutocratic and militarist interests, of both parties in a structurally two-party system, with Republicans as the more straightforwardly extremist party and Democrats as their insincere, ineffective, and in fact enabling “opposition.” If it’s true, as Noam Chomsky states, that U.S. Republicans are “the most dangerous organization in human history,” it’s likewise true that Democrats like it that way, for only contrast with such a vile party could justify to voters corruption as deep as Democrats’ own. Dixon obviously prefers the Green Party to either (as do I), and if we face simple facts, Greens are almost infinitely closer to Dr. King’s values—and almost infinitely more willing to fight the PPC’s “four evils”—than either party with a prospect of actually holding power. Finally, any accurate diagnosis of our political woes must acknowledge that both major parties use every dirty trick in the book to keep intraparty reformers, let alone reformist third parties, from ever gaining power; and that both command vast media resources, likewise corrupted by plutocratic and militarist interests, that serve as propaganda organs to keep legitimate criticisms and political issues inconvenient to both parties from ever being aired.

While the PPC is quite willing to denounce the vile moral consequences stemming from this diagnosis—and to use civil disobedience to spread the message that those consequences are intolerable—they seem utterly unwilling to spread (by civil disobedience or any other means) the message of the underlying diagnosis.

If my political instincts (and Dixon’s) are correct, the PPC’s denouncing of the consequences of the diagnosis—without daring to pronounce the diagnosis itself—risks reducing the PPC to the role of ineffectual moral scolds, no matter how much civil disobedience they engage in. Why this is so is tellingly explained in terms of one of Dixon’s most spot-on criticisms: the PPC’s unlikelihood ever to denounce Democrats’ pernicious Russiagate narrative.

Taking matters at face value, the PPC would have more stake than anyone in being skeptical of Russiagate. After all, if Russia really is a dangerous enemy hellbent on destroying U.S. democracy, a considerable portion of U.S. military expenditure—such as updating our nuclear arsenal—is fully justified. Ditto for whatever vast new expenditures are required to ward off Russian cyberattacks. And since nuclear weapons are unusable (having value only as deterrence), countering [putative] Russian global aggression will likewise require vast spending on conventional defense. So, accepting the premise that Russia is our determined enemy means kissing goodbye to the domestic spending required for the PPC’s cherished aims, such as fighting poverty or rebuilding our infrastructure to address climate change. And speaking of addressing climate change, we can likewise kiss goodbye to cooperation with Russia—a petrostate whose close collaboration we desperately need—in arresting climate catastrophe. And beyond all this, the clampdown on civil liberties that comes with an active state of war merits mentioning; in a wartime state, the civil liberties of a dissenting movement advocating peace (like the PPC) are most apt to be curtailed.

All in all, a pretty chilling blow to the PPC’s aspirations. Unless Russiagate is the overblown hysteria narrative—the self-serving Democratic propaganda narrative—Bruce Dixon and numerous other principled progressives are virtually certain it is. It’s curious—to say the least—that the PPC doesn’t amplify their voices (as only a movement can) in denouncing a [mendacious and high-handedly fabricated] narrative that thwarts its every aim.

But for fear of offending its Democratic Party supporters, the PPC seems content to let stand Democratic propaganda narratives—lies of fact or omission—that sabotage its own noble aims. So again, Dixon is totally justified in criticizing the PPC for accepting Greens and other left-of-Democrats progressives in its ranks provided they’re kept off stage and placed under a gag order about uttering certain “inconvenient truths.” Like, say, that Green Party principles and policies are infinitely closer to Dr. King’s than those of Democrats. Or, say, that the Democratic National Committee defended its right to rig primaries in court and has subsequently shown its determination to continue suppressing party progressives (see here and here).

Perhaps, ultimately, the PPC shares Chomsky’s view of Republicans as “the most dangerous organization in human history and fears telling the ugly truth about Democrats will cause the election of Republicans. But can’t a disciplined, tightly knit movement simultaneously tell the truth about Democrats while imposing the view that Republicans are worse and are under no circumstances to be voted for? I think of Adolph Reed’s “support” for Hillary Clinton in his superb piece “Vote for the Lying Neoliberal Warmonger: It’s Important”; this piece seems especially appropriate, since “lying neoliberal warmonger” seems to fit Democrats’ controlling leadership and not just Hillary Clinton. Thus portraying the Democratic Party seems much better preparation for practicing civil disobedience against—or issuing ultimatums to—corrupt Democrats the PPC had elected for purely defensive reasons. Like, say, the ultimatum of having its vast membership work to build the Green Party for 2020 if Democrats don’t seize the chance to shape up the PPC offered them in 2018.

If the PPC refuses to use its movement bully pulpit to tell hard truths about Democrats, Dixon’s words about its “lack of any political endgame” will prove prophetic: what good does it do to “vote like never before” when there’s no candidate in either major party worth voting for?

About the Author

Distinguished Collaborator Patrick Walker is co-founder of Revolt Against Plutocracy (RAP) and the Bernie or Bust movement it spawned. Before that, he cut his activist teeth with the anti-fracking and Occupy Scranton PA movements. No longer with RAP, he actively seeks collaborators to build a Bernie or Bust successor movement--one dedicated to fighting neoliberals of both parties (but especially neoliberal Democrats) under Trump. A happily if belatedly married man, Patrick resides with his wife, stepdaughter, and three beloved Sheltie dogs in Williamsville, NY. Patrick can be reached at: pjwalkerzorro@yahoo.com.

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

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The Social Disease Menacing Humanity And Its Cure

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The name of the disease is capitalism.
And it can't be said often enough.

“We believe the economy should be democratically owned and controlled in order to serve the needs of the many, not to make profits for the few.”

Economic bigotry is at the root of most if not all our problems and while the victims of that bigotry grow in number we are reduced to seeing only certain of them from certain groups often identified because they are indeed subjected to even more bigotry than most. But this amounts to the same old lesser evil politics that pit the majority against one another while a rich minority rules over all. The suppression of a potential majority that could bring about national and help in creating global democracy for the first time in recorded history results in identity group minorities gasping for breath by climbing up and over other groups to achieve their goals commonly mis-identified as dreams, while actually enabling and accomplishing the goals and even dreams of all ruling classes: division of the peasants-workers-citizens potential majority into easily controlled minorities at war among themselves while remaining relatively oblivious to their rulers.

The richest minority in the history of planet earth, with a relative handful of individuals amassing fortunes of billions of dollars while billions of humans live precariously, with many in abject poverty.

Can supporters of the NRA and personal firearms ownership find unity with those who oppose weapons production itself? Can members of Black Lives Matter ever unite with those who believe that white lives don't? Will men who are sexually frustrated ever be able to communicate with women who are sexually set upon? They, and countless other divided humans, can never hope to unify as long as all of us are ruled by market forces under the control of minorities working for private profit before any - if any - consideration for public benefit. Those forces will always produce some gun owners and weapons opponents, some allegedly black and allegedly white people, and legitimately male and female humans who do well enough to be manipulated into competing to achieve even more comfort at the market by having more guns or less, more freedom or less, and more sex or less. But a large and expanding population which is barely able to get by, joined with a growing population that can’t get by at all are unable to compete at this alleged free market where nothing is free and are thus reduced to the totally un-organized status of people without representation at all, except by isolated disorganization or default.

While the upper professional classes among the population find outlets for their problems in gaining college educations and thus a bit more market place presence even while carrying enormous debt, those outlets are becoming more expensive and evasive, leading to greater frustration even among the relatively privileged – and ever more diverse - minority that is programmed to see only those slightly more or less privileged as enemies with little notice if any of those so privileged as to be members of what amounts to almost another race of beings:

To maintain this degree of unfairness based on cosmetic affluence only available at great debt, programmed divisions among the population keep a shrinking minority in varying degrees of comfort but always convinced others are threatening that comfort from below, rarely looking above to the commanding heights so far beyond their reality it can seem a heaven achievable only to the highest priests, ministers, rabbis or imams, or more realistically their secular owner-employers, the super rich so far beyond normal humanity in wealth they might as well be gods superior to past pharaohs, kings, queens or other shamans.

That deplorable condition of humanity is not only maintained but strengthened, at least temporarily, by conditioned adherence to the religious doctrine of market forces under the domain of private control exercised exclusively and primarily in the pursuit of private profit. In order to change the situation for the human race, personally, socially, nationally and most importantly in our global environment, we will need to act on and realize what the opening quote from a group of organized global patriots clearly and succinctly states. If you forgot:

“We believe the economy should be democratically owned and controlled in order to serve the needs of the many, not to make profits for the few.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Frank Scott is founding editor of legalienate.blogspot.com. He lives in Richmond, California.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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

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BREAKING: UN Demands Poland Release Political Prisoner Mateusz Piskorski

BE SURE TO PASS THESE ARTICLES TO FRIENDS AND KIN. A LOT DEPENDS ON THIS. DO YOUR PART.

By JAFE ARNOLD, SENIOR EDITOR, FORT-RUSS
Fort Russ is a fraternal website

This official UN opinion document, “WGAD/2018/POL/OPN No. 18/2018”, declares the imprisonment of the Polish activist and scholar turned political prisoner, Dr. Mateusz Piskorski, to be arbitrary and in violation of international law on human and civil rights. The document thus calls on the Polish government to immediately release Piskorski and afford him appropriate reparations.

Mateusz Piskorski was arrested and his political party Zmiana’s offices and members’ homes were raided by Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) on May 18th, 2016, two days after Piskorski had publicly warned that the deployment of US troops to “NATO’s Eastern Flank”, i.e., Poland, would lead to waves of political repression against dissenting voices. Piskorski, the co-founder of the European Center for Geopolitical Analysis, the founding chairman of the “first non-American party in Poland”, Zmiana, scholar of international relations and experienced international election observer, was one of the most outspoken voices against Washington-dictated Polish policy, which in a series of letters from behind bars he described as degrading Poland into a helpless battlefield between the US and Russia.

Since 2016, Piskorski has been kept “temporarily” behind bars under suspicion of working for the intelligence services of the Russian Federation and People’s Republic of China, but no such official charge was presented until nearly two years later, on April 23rd, 2018. The evidence and key case files have been kept classified from not only the public, but from Piskorski himself, who was also not even “invited” to several of his own case hearings. [The whole thing has the signature stench and high-handedness of US/NATO false flags these days, whereby judicial procedures, even those based on Constitutional guarantees, are simply disregarded.—Ed]

Fort Russ has been the only English-language news service, and one of the only independent news resources in the world, that has provided constant coverage of the Piskorski case.

The UN document, which was set to be unveiled in Poland on May 11, on the day of yet another hearing to extend Piskorski’s detention, arrived at a number of conclusions which Fort Russ and critics of the Polish government’s actions have exposed since day one.

The Working Group determined that “Mr. Piskorski’s activities clearly fall within the boundaries of the freedom of opinion and expression, and the freedom of peaceful assembly and association, protected by articles 19 and 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights…” (point 45), and that “his deprivation of liberty is therefore arbitrary” (point 48).

Given this violation of Piskorski’s rights, the Working Group “wishes to emphasize that no trial of Mr. Piskorski should take place in the future” (point 49). However, the report noted that “there is no apparent end in sight to the constant renewal of Mr. Piskorski’s pre-trial detention and, although his detention is kept under regular review every three months, he is effectively being detained indefinitely” (point 50).

Concerning the nature of the “case” and the allegations against Piskorski, the document also recognized that the Polish government “has failed to allow Mr. Piskorski and his lawyers fair access to classified information” (point 53) and that “Mr. Piskorski’s right to present a defence was violated as he could only participate in some hearings on his pre-trial detention” (point 54).

In conclusion, the UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention assessed that “the appropriate remedy would be to release Mr. Piskorski immediately and accord him an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations in accordance with international law” (point 60), and calls on the Polish government “to ensure a full and independent investigation of the circumstances surrounding the arbitrary deprivation of liberty of Mr. Piskorski, and to take appropriate measures against those responsible for the violation of his rights” (point 61).

Of extreme significance is the fact that the document mentions in multiple places that the Polish government has not responded to any of the Working Group’s requests for clarification despite the fact that on “18 December 2017, the Working Group transmitted the allegations from the source to the Government under its regular communication procedure”, “requested the Government to provide detailed information by 19 February 2018 about Mr. Piskorski’s current situation” and, despite the fact that “the Government requested an extension of the deadline for response…the Government did not submit any information” (points 38 and 39).

The fact that the Working Group’s investigation, including attempted outreach to the Polish government, has evidently been underway since December 2017 demonstrates that the document’s conclusions have been meticulously deliberated over a significant span of time, and that the Polish government still has no valid justification, whether verbal or legal, to present on its imprisonment of Dr. Piskorski.

In turn, the document spells out clearly in section (d) of point 63 that Poland’s international obligations and the compatibility of its laws and practices in line with the present opinion founded on international law are hereby in question and necessitate follow-up investigation. This is no more nor less than a questioning of Poland’s adherence to international law as a UN member over its imprisonment of Dr. Piskorski. This bears serious implications for Poland’s reputation and poses a serious dilemma out of which it will be more than difficult to maneuver.

In short, the UN Human Rights Council’s working group has confirmed what many have been saying all along, namely, that Piskorski’s detention is politically motivated, a violation of international law on human rights and civil freedom, and therefore a symptom of unjust and unlawful practices by the Polish government in the present time.

In many respects, this breakthrough is thus a confirmation of Piskorski’s own warnings that Poland is sliding down the path of political repression, fostered by its instrumentalization as “NATO’s Eastern Flank” and seeking to silence dissent under the pretexts of “Russian information and hybrid war” and “espionage,” both of which terms the document found highly questionable. The UN document clearly reprimanded the Polish government to “refrain from imposing restrictions that are not consistent with international human rights law, including restrictions on discussion of government policies and political debate; reporting on human rights, government activities and corruption in government; peaceful demonstrations or political activities; and expression of opinion and dissent” (point 46).

This resolution is an enormously important development. With the presentation of this UN-backed document, Zmiana’s General Secretary, Tomasz Jankowski, believes “with full confidence” that “Mateusz Piskorski will win first – if not today then tomorrow, and if not tomorrow then the next day.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jafe Arnold is Special Editor of Fort Russ, research fellow and Special Projects Director of the Center for Syncretic Studies, and founding Editor-in-Chief of Eurasianist Internet Archive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Trotkyist WSWS website delivers scathing balance sheet of left movements in Latin America.

BE SURE TO PASS THESE ARTICLES TO FRIENDS AND KIN. A LOT DEPENDS ON THIS. DO YOUR PART.

Under the signature of Bill Van Auken, a senior editor, the folks at wsws.org, a Trotskyist organisation affiliated with the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), a member of the Fourth International, have just published a scathing analysis of the admittedly disastrous course of left movements in Latin America, among which even the most promising at one time (Sandinistas, Cuban revolution, Chavismo) are now in open retreat if not downright near collapse or seriously compromised by leadership failure and the unrelenting pressures of international neoliberalism. Some, as is clear in the case of Ecuador, appear to have already switched from bourgeois left nationalism to unapologetic collaboration with US-led imperialism. As is usual with Trotkyist analyses it seems to us that while the objective situation they describe is pretty much the way they say it is, and the prospects for true revolution are now in tatters everywhere, it is the degrees of blame and causation which separate us in some critical aspects. In our view, from a dialectical perspective, and without denying the personal and organisational errors noted in the article, not to mention the effects of betrayals and corruption, wsws.org is a bit overly critical of the left forces attempting social change, attributing to these actors powers and choices they rarely had, while discounting too much the tremendous pressures and destabilising influence of world capitalism and the associated native bourgeoisies, the natural fifth column, all of which—short of total revolution—continue to enjoy formidable resources to block, sabotage, deform and in many cases ultimately defeat some of the revolutionaries' most inspired projects. Indeed, extreme criticism of revolutionary leadership is one of the chief analytical postures of Trotkyism. Criticism is certainly good and necessary, but extreme criticism bordering on idealist conceptions of reality may obfuscate as much as it reveals. We thus wonder if the betrayal of the Bolivarian revolution is so complete, as described by wsws.org, why is it that the imperialists and comprador layers in Venezuela are still seeking to overthrow and wipe out all vestiges of chavismo instead of simply forming a de facto alliance with it, as imperialism has done many times with "strongmen" and corrupt regimes in Latin America and beyond, with whom they found it easy to do business with. Fact is that, mundane as it sounds, revolution under any conditions is an exceedingly difficult thing, especially so when the world's most reactionary and criminal superpower is constantly meddling in the affairs of the nation in the process of transformation. —PG

A balance sheet of the betrayals of left nationalism in Latin America

By Bill Van Auken, wsws.org
Dateline: 14 May 2018

As we commemorate May Day and today’s 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx, the resurgence of the class struggle that is shaking political and social relations on a global scale is finding particularly sharp expression within Latin America, the most socially unequal continent on the planet.

As in the United States and elsewhere in the world, teachers have taken the lead in this renewed upsurge of the class struggle, going on strike and taking to the streets from Sao Paulo to Buenos Aires, and from Santiago, Chile to Mexico City to San Juan, Puerto Rico to fight the decimation of public education and defend their living standards and basic rights. In many instances, these struggles have been met with naked police repression.

Bill Van Auken's address at the 2018 International Online May Day Rally

The new crop of right-wing governments—Macri in Argentina, Temer in Brazil, Piñera in Chile—are no more able to resolve the crisis gripping the capitalist system in Latin America than their supposedly left predecessors. Like them, mired in filthy corruption scandals, their only answer is to shift the burden onto the backs of the working class.

As the Latin American working class once again moves toward revolutionary struggle, it is high time for the drawing up of an unsparing balance sheet of the betrayals of past struggles and the role played by leaderships that have done everything in their power to disorient and mislead the working class.

“The emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class itself,” Marx and Engels famously insisted. This essential affirmation of the role of the working class as the sole consistently revolutionary class in capitalist society, and the impossibility of establishing socialism under the leadership of any supposedly radical or left section of the bourgeoisie or petty-bourgeoisie, has been confirmed again and again through tragic historical experiences in Latin America.

The International Committee of the Fourth International has insisted that defeating the attacks carried out by both imperialism and the native Latin American bourgeoisie is possible only through the independent mobilization of the working class, throughout the Americas, based upon a revolutionary socialist and internationalist program.

The ICFI has waged a decades-long battle against all those who have promoted one or another bourgeois or petty-bourgeois movement as a substitute for the decisive task of building revolutionary Marxist parties in the working class.

Left nationalism, with the fawning support of petty-bourgeois radicals in Europe and North America, has played a catastrophic role in Latin America.

This found its consummate expression in the development of the thesis that the coming to power of Fidel Castro in Cuba had opened up a new road to socialism, which no longer required either the conscious and independent political intervention of the working class, or the building of revolutionary Marxist parties.

Instead, guerrilla warfare, waged by small groups of armed men under the leadership of radical petty-bourgeois nationalists, would suffice. This myth, derived from the coming to power of Castro’s July 26 Movement, was distilled into the retrograde theories of guerrillaism, elaborated by his erstwhile political ally Che Guevara, as the model for revolutions throughout the hemisphere.

This false perspective found its most prominent proponents in the Pabloite revisionist tendency, which emerged within the Fourth International under the leadership of Ernest Mandel in Europe and Joseph Hansen in the US, subsequently joined by Nahuel Moreno in Argentina.

This anti-Marxist perspective was propagated throughout Latin America with disastrous consequences. It served to divert a layer of radicalized youth away from the struggle to build a conscious revolutionary leadership in the working class, and into grossly unequal armed confrontations that claimed the lives of thousands and helped pave the way to fascist-military dictatorships throughout the continent.

New York Times photo accompanying an "opinion" piece against the Venezuelan government by Gustavo Dudamel. Notice the flag by the protester deliberately lies, as Venezuela is NOT a dictatorship. Such little details are not mentioned nor corrected by the Times which is happy to beat the drums of "regime change" as they have been doing for years in Syria and elsewhere.

The International Committee of the Fourth International fought intransigently against the Pabloite perspective. Defending Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution, the ICFI insisted that Castroism did not constitute any new road to socialism. Rather, it represented only one of the more radical variants of the bourgeois nationalist movements that had come to power throughout much of the former colonial world in the post-World War II era.

The ICFI warned that the Pabloites’ elevation of Castro as a “natural Marxist,” entailed the wholesale repudiation of the historical and theoretical conception of the socialist revolution going back to Marx, and laid the basis for the liquidation of the revolutionary cadre assembled by the Trotskyist movement internationally into the camp of bourgeois nationalism and Stalinism.

Last month saw the formal end of the nearly six-decade rule of the Castro brothers, under conditions of mounting social inequality on the island and the attempt by the ruling strata to salvage its privileges by means of a rapprochement with US imperialism. Today, deals signed with Obama remain in abeyance, as Trump demands even greater concessions from Havana and promotes the activities of the rabid anti-Castroites in Miami, while threatening a renewal of US aggression. The fate of Cuba will be determined by the development of the class struggle and the struggle to build a new revolutionary leadership in the working class, both on the island as well as in the United States and throughout the Americas.

The same Pabloite revisionists who promoted Castroism went on to declare the Sandinista Liberation Front in Nicaragua, and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front in El Salvador, as the basis for a new path to socialism and the foundation for a new revolutionary international. Despite the immense heroism and the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of lives in the struggle against US-backed dictatorships and CIA terrorist armies, both these movements transformed themselves into bourgeois parties, made peace with the reactionary ruling oligarchies they had previously opposed and became faithful executors of the austerity programs of the IMF.

Last month saw the Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega—who has amassed wealth and power rivaling that of the former dictator Somoza—unleash violent repression against workers and youth protesting against draconian cuts to pensions, leaving some 30 dead.

Last month also saw the jailing on trumped-up corruption charges of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the former metalworkers leader, who became president of Brazil as the leader of the Workers Party, or PT, the Partido dos Trabalhadores.

Many of the same Pabloite and Morenoite revisionists, who had previously extolled the virtues of Castroism and Sandinismo, presented the PT as a new uniquely Brazilian road to socialism. They entered and helped build the PT into what became a thoroughly corrupt bourgeois party that for a dozen years served as the preferred instrument of rule of the Brazilian bourgeoisie. It is telling that Lula’s imprisonment by the right-wing government of Michel Temer has produced no mass outcry from Brazilian workers, who saw their living standards and rights subjected to sharp attacks by PT governments, with the collaboration of its affiliated trade unions.

A tendency that learns nothing and forgets nothing, the Morenoites, having seen their Brazilian adherents long since expelled from the PT, have concentrated their efforts on a series of unprincipled electoral alliances and maneuvers within the trade union and parliamentary arenas in Argentina. The logic of this activity is directed toward the preparation of a new betrayal of the Argentine working class through the creation of a new left bourgeois party, along the lines of Podemos in Spain or Syriza in Greece.

As its principal ally in perennial unprincipled electoral alliances acknowledged, in a candid—and self-incriminating—fashion last year, the PTS [Partido de Trabajadores por el Socialismo], the main continuator of the discredited politics of Morenoism in Argentina, represents a “Podemos in diapers.”

Finally, there was the fraud of Bolivarian or “21st century” socialism, introduced with the coming to power of former army colonel Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. While able to adopt a “left” posture and provide minimal social assistance programs to the working class under conditions of rising oil prices, with the collapse of the commodity boom, this bourgeois nationalist movement, based firmly on the military, has turned sharply against the working class. Its policies have enriched a layer of financiers, commodity speculators and senior military officers, while upholding the interests of international finance capital, even as workers confront growing hunger and unemployment.

Meanwhile, the Ecuadorian government of Rafael Correa, another proponent of Bolivarianism and 21st century socialism, has given way to that of his hand-picked successor, Lenin Moreno. While introducing a series of capitalist counter-reforms, Moreno has sought to curry favor with US and British imperialism by means of a grotesquely reactionary betrayal, cutting off WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s Internet access and barring him from receiving visitors at the Ecuadoran embassy in London, where he has been a virtual prisoner for the last six years. As Moreno’s government seeks closer ties with the US military and the Trump administration, it collaborates in suppressing a man pursued by Washington for exposing the crimes of US imperialism. Such is the logic of bourgeois nationalism.

These bitter experiences with the politics of bourgeois nationalism, and its Pabloite and other petty-bourgeois pseudo-left props, underscore the necessity of forging a new revolutionary Marxist movement, based upon the independent political mobilization of the working class and the unification of workers in Latin America with workers in the United States and internationally in a common struggle to put an end to capitalism.

We appeal to our comrades in Latin America, those participating in this online rally, those who read the World Socialist Web Site and all those workers and youth seeking a revolutionary path: the history of the class struggle in Latin America is one not merely of betrayals, but of immense heroism, self-sacrifice and determination, all of which will be summoned up in the revolutionary battles to come. The decisive question, however, is to learn the lessons of the past, so that the mistakes and betrayals will not be repeated. This above all means the study and assimilation of the long history of the struggle waged by Trotskyism against revisionism and, on this principled foundation, building sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country.

* * *

Hacemos un llamado a nuestros camaradas en América Latina, a quienes están participando en este mitin en línea, a quienes leen el World Socialist Web Site y a todos los trabajadores y jóvenes buscando un camino revolucionario. La historia de la lucha de clases en América Latina no solo está compuesta de traiciones, sino también de inmenso heroísmo, autosacrificio y determinación, atributos que serán invocados en las batallas revolucionarias venideras. Sin embargo, la cuestión determinante será aprender las lecciones del pasado para que no se repitan errores ni traiciones. Ante todo, esto significa estudiar y asimilar las enseñanzas de la larga historia de luchas del trotskismo contra el revisionismo y, con base en estos principios fundamentales, construir secciones del Comité Internacional de la Cuarta Internacional en cada país.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bill Van Auken is a senior editor and noted activist with wsws.org, a publication of the SEP, a Marxian Trotkyist formation.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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BREAKING: UN Demands Poland Release Political Prisoner Mateusz Piskorski

Trotkyist WSWS website delivers scathing balance sheet of left movements in Latin America.

A balance sheet of the betrayals of left nationalism in Latin America

By Bill Van Auken, wsws.org Dateline: 14 May 2018

By Bill Van Auken, wsws.org
Dateline: 14 May 2018