The Fake Left

OPEDS

By Dady Chery & Gilbert Mercier

A scathing view of the “comfortable left”, as it operates in the US and other developed nations. Actually, there is a”fake left” that actively shills for Western imperialism.

NEWS JUNKIE POST

All writers with a desire to rattle people out of their torpor occasionally wonder if it is worthwhile to continue to try to raise their voices over the din of lies and distractions. More and more for us, such thoughts are occasioned, not by the mainstream, which predictably treats all the pronouncements from the powerful as being newsworthy, but by the fake left, which lobotomizes most of whom it touches. The increasing sophistication of this group and its rate of expansion are astounding. Its purpose is to annihilate and replace the real left, and it is making great strides in this regard. The real left includes those who, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK), came to realize that quantum leaps are the way forward, rather than tiny incremental change. The real left does not curry favor or approval from those in power; it challenges the social status quo and respects the inherent right of an injured and indignant population to rebel against authority. It is not for rent or for sale, and it does not cave in to power. [dropcap]B[/dropcap]y contrast, the motivations of the fake left are money and fame: the preservation of their place in their ivory towers, together with all the trimmings of an upper middle class or wealthy lifestyle. For them, the path is smoothed and the wheels of the machine are oiled for lucrative book deals, speaking tours, radio and television interviews, and articles that are infinitely reverberated through approved sites in the Internet. Their spokespeople channel political ideas toward electoral cycles and transform revolutionary musings into banalities, paralysis, and futile actions. They attack the public’s thought process itself and engender an attention-deficit disorder. Ideas are not pursued, shared, honed, and acted upon but instead displaced by fleeting slogans like “hope and change,” or “feel the Bern.” Alternatively, the ideas are muddled, branded and labeled with names like “shock doctrine,” “disaster capitalism,” or “climate capitalism,” so that they may be put away and no longer examined. An important function of the fake left is to diffuse legitimate, spontaneous defense. Righteous anger is made to give way to confusion, and the impetus to revolt is transformed into the futility of virtual actions. Slogans are used as vaccines to prevent the contagion of dissent. Thoughts, not quite fully formed and the beginning of spontaneous actions, like blockage of bridges and highways, quickly dissipate. They are aborted into quick visual scans of an image or rapidly associated with a few words, like “black lives matter,” and then shared on social media. Today, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense would not kindle a revolution; instead it would be quoted, posted, pinned, and tweeted. The fake left is a decoy: a hunter’s trap to break the leg of any possible revolution. One of the fake left’s godfathers is the multibillionaire George Soros, who obviously believes that wealth equals wisdom and has come up with a clever model to launder his vast financial gains into global political influence. Soros has developed an extremely diversified portfolio of intellectual properties and non-governmental organizations (NGO) in more than 37 countries. Artists throughout the world who present their people as victims, and promote passivity and despair, are rewarded with support and prestigious prizes. Supported organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are accused not only of selectively collecting data on human rights abuses but also of exploiting some of those data to pressure countries into policy changes that are unrelated to human rights. “Independent” journalism is a major focus of Soros’ Open Society Foundation, which was founded in 1993, soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union and right before the explosion of the Internet. When US-friendly corrupt governments, and US-sponsored institutions like USAID and the United Nations are exposed by the real left, Soros-sponsored think tanks and news organizations like the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) spring into action and become the voice of reason, demanding that these organizations self-reform. Countless others, also related to the Open Society Foundation, echo and amplify their message. Dismantlement and profound systemic change are never on the agenda. In most of the world, and especially the US, elections are staged, with the primary goal being to let off steam from targeted sectors of the population. A secondary goal is to make a rigged political process appear believable and give the impression of a free exchange of ideas. The candidates are presented as caricatures that trigger an emotional identification in specific groups of people. In the US in 2016, the mean, misogynist and racist ugly American stereotype is served well by Donald Trump for the right. On the other side, the reincarnated Occupy leftist champion of social justice is played by Bernie Sanders. Nonetheless it is Hillary Clinton‘s turn to win. Trump and Sanders serve to keep the elections in the news and to make Clinton the only supposed pragmatic choice. The ambition of Sanders to beat Hillary Clinton is questionable in light of the fact that he did not run for the presidency in 2012, although the issues were the same, and he could have benefited then from the energy of Occupy. Sander’s platform is a reactivation of the Occupy themes. Occupy, however, is not what it used to be. Indeed it is a perfect example of something from the real left that was hijacked. It began as a leaderless anti-capitalist movement called US Day of Rage, but soon it acquired leaders like Chris Hedges, and its most radical elements, like the Black Bloc anarchists, were vilified and excluded. The fake left poaches the narrative of the real left so as to kill it. Outright plagiarism and abundant appropriations and rewrites are hallmarks of the fake left. Since it lacks a heartfelt leftist rhetoric, it must continually borrow one, ironically, to excoriate it so as to present a superficial version of it. Any critical examination will show that the self-proclaimed firebrands of the left have, for decades, never moved the revolutionary dial an iota. If books like Noam Chomsky’s Occupy or Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, or Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco’s Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt had been genuine, they would have brought people to the barricades in the streets, and there would surely have been attempts to suppress them. Instead the books have been celebrated and glorified by the media establishment, because these pseudo-radical manifestos have not brought action but paralysis. The latest offering by Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything, will, by design, change absolutely nothing at all, except the balance of her bank account. Those few of us who are genuinely trying to change the course of events sometimes wonder how we can compete against this powerful new machine that appropriates our message, twists it, and then blasts a degraded version of it through countless bullhorns. Doesn’t the public realize that wealth and fame are not the normal trappings of revolutionaries? Don’t people know that revolution is never easy, and that if it appears to be, it is not real? If words like earth, nature, life, democracy, dissent, protest, love, and revolution are allowed to lose their weight, our voices will go the way of the song of the extinct Dodo bird. It is imperative that these words be reappropriated and reinfused with meaning. Revolutionary talk cannot be permitted to become an exercise in futile venting or a validation of passivity; to mean anything at all, it must be enacted in community. Editor’s Notes: Dady Chery is the author of We Have Dared to Be Free, and Gilbert Mercier is the author of The Orwellian Empire. Photograph one by Tom Lin; photograph three by Tinou Bao; photographs four and nine by Gilbert Mercier; photograph five by Niccolo Caranti; photograph six by Gaelx; photographs seven and eight by Michael Vadon.

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US fabricated excuses for military intervention from Markale to Ghouta?

THE SAKER CHRONICLES
Deciphering the syntax of disinformation

FIRST FILED AUGUST 24, 2013 | VINEYARD OF THE SAKER

Markale massacre. Cherchez i soliti ignoti.

False flags by the empire are like the homage that crime pays to virtue…in this case the consent of the masses.
THE IDEA IS TO MAINTAIN THE ILLUSION OF A FUNCTIONAL DEMOCRACY

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne of the labels which I have been using more and more recently is the “Bosnia v5 Chechnya v4 Kosovo v3 Libya v2 Syria v1” which refers to the fact that the Empire uses exactly the same trick over and over again to justify its military aggressions.

Though history is replete with false flag attacks, the end of the Cold War saw a systematization of a specific complex of measures designed to give a sophisticated illusion of an undeniable fact. Here is how this works: I will present a theoretical model and one example.

First, a high-visibility target is identified. During the war in Bosnia, the most “visible” location was the city of Sarajevo, and the most “visible” location inside Sarajevo was the Markale market. By “visible” I, of course, mean “visible to the media.” Second, a specific moment is chosen for the attack. It can be right before or after a crucial negotiation, it can be made to coincide with an election, it can be matched to a religious or secular holiday or whatever other optimal moment in time is preferred. In Bosnia the first “Markale market massacre” was intended to justify the use of NATO airpower against Bosnian-Serb artillery positions while the second Markale market massacre was intended to justify a second wave of airstrikes against Bosnian-Serb forces. Third, the actual false flag attack is conducted with the triple aim of having a maximum amount of killed civilians, to secure the maximal amount of media coverage and to coincide with the exact moment when the forces needed for the military intervention are ready.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he need for this maximization of casualties and coverage is explained by the fact that enough military specialists on the ground will inevitably have the expertise to see through the false flag and try to challenge the official version. In Bosnia, the official narrative about the Bosnian-Serb responsibility was almost immediately challenged by no less than the UNPROFOR Commander Sir Michael Rose (for the first massacre) and by the UNPORFOR Sarajevo Intelligence Chief Colonel Andrei Demurenko (for the second massacre).

And, just in case anybody has doubts about this, I would note here that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has had to acquit the Bosnian-Serbs initially charged with the crime. Finally, even if the accusation is absolutely ridiculous (like Gaddafi giving Viagra to his soldiers to rape Libyan women), the vast majority of Western politicians will go along with it just to avoid appearing not “strong” enough “on” whatever entity dares to resist the Empire. As for those who actually conducted the attack, all they need is “plausible deniability” (a CIA-coined expression meaning that it is possible that the US was not behind the attack). I would even say that all the Empire needs is “short-term plausible deniability” just because even if with time the false flag nature of the attack is proven beyond reasonable doubt, nobody cares.

Think of 9/‌ 11. By now the fact that the destruction of WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7 was caused by controlled demolition has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt.[ 480] I would even argue that the US government has implicitly admitted to this through its NIST report on WTC1 and WTC2 and almost explicitly admitted the same through its report on WTC7. So what? Does anybody even care by now? Of course not. Most of the imperial false flag operations have been debunked, in most cases rather rapidly. But in a world ruled by political expediency and, let’s be honest, an almost total indifference to the very concept of “truth,” that kind of debunking, while historically important, is operationally easy to ignore. “We lied? So what? Whatcha gonna do about it.”

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]fter Saddam’s non-existing WMD the very notion that being caught lying is a problem has vanished. Now the imperial politicians can lie all they want, with no consequences for that at all. Which brings me to the so-called “Ghouta” chemical attacks.

Fabius: The dignified prostitutes of the empire.

Key imperial politicians, Fabius in France, but also in the UK, Sweden and others, have already stated that this was an attack by Syrian forces. They were in such a hurry to apportion blame that they could not even wait for any investigation. They just “knew”! Fabius even said that the guilty party should be punished by “force,” but something tells me that he did not mean bombing the insurgents should the UN report blame them. Besides, France is “already” bombing al-Qaeda in Mali, how could it possibly do the same thing in Syria where al-Qaeda are the “good guys”? According to the Anglo media, the US is preparing for cruise missile strikes. Now, to understand what that really means, one has to understand what cruise missiles stand for in the collective psyche of the US Democrats: Democrats use cruise missiles not only to destroy a target, but also to simply “appear strong” and get the Republicans off their backs. I am thus quite sure that even if the White House fully understands that the Syrian military did not use chemicals two days after the arrival of the UN investigation team (if only because the attack might have been organized by the CIA), this will not at all prevent Obama from launching a series of cruise missile strikes just to appear strong, macho, with hair on his chest. It will be easy to tell, by the way: If the White House launches a sustained cruise missile strike campaign of at least 5 days, with each round of damage assessment followed by repeat attacks— then they are trying to intervene militarily on the side of the insurgency and tip the balance on the ground. If the White House launches a one-time series of cruise missile strikes lasting 24 or less, and then declares victory and stops, then it’s just a way to deal with the crazy Republicans and neocons who always want blood, blood and more blood. Finally, if the White House orders no strikes at all, then this means that this false flag operation was not a US or NATO one, but an “independent” effort of Wahhabi crazies, probably with Saudi or Qatari complicity. We shall know very soon.

THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK The Saker (2015-11-17). THE ESSENTIAL SAKER: from the trenches of the emerging multipolar world (Kindle Locations 11542-11557). Nimble Books LLC. Kindle Edition.

READERS SHOULD RECALL THAT TGP RAN AN EXCELLENT REVIEW OF THIS BOOK BY OUR SPECIAL EDITOR AND BEIJING CORRESPONDENT JEFF BROWN. See it here: https://www.greanvillepost.com/2015/12/21/the-essential-saker-from-the-trenches-of-the-emerging-multipolar-world/

ABOUT THE SAKER

THE SAKER is the nom de guerre of a former Russian-born military and geopolitical analyst. He has described his former career as that of "the proverbial 'armchair strategist', with all the flaws which derive from that situation. This weakness is partially mitigated by the fact that I used to be a *professionally trained* armchair strategist: this is the guy who in peace time sits at the top floor of a sombre looking building and who in war time sits very deep inside a bunker." At one point he was a military analyst during the Kosovo war, and very pro-war, pro-West until some of his experiences during that war changed him and he left that profession in disgust. He was anti-Soviet but has gradually become pro-Putin. He explains, “And while during the Bosnian war I could get UNPROFOR intelligence delivered to me every morning, now I only have access to public, and mostly unreliable and uninteresting, sources.” “Before the war in Bosnia I had heard the phrase "truth is the first casualty of war" but I had never imagined that this could be quite so literally true. Frankly, this war changed my entire life and resulted in a process of soul-searching which ended up pretty much changing my politics 180 degrees. This is a long and very painful story which I do not want to discuss here, but I just want to say that this difference between what I was reading in the press and in the UNPROFOR reports ended up making a huge difference in my entire life. Again, NOT A SINGLE ASPECT OF THE OFFICIAL NARRATIVE WAS TRUE, not one. You would get much closer to the truth if you basically did a "negative" of the official narrative.”

Like The Greanville Post, with which it is now allied in his war against official disinformation, the Saker's site, VINEYARD OF THE SAKER, is the hub of an international network of sites devoted to fighting the "billion-dollar deception machinery" supporting the empire's wars against Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Venezuela and any other independent nation opposing or standing in the way of Washington's drive for global hegemony. The Saker is published in more than half a dozen languages. A Saker is a very large falcon, native to Europe and Asia.

ISIS: A US-Created Instrument for High Crimes

Stephen Lendman

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]SIS didn’t arrive out of thin air. Washington created it along with other terrorist groups. They’re used as imperial foot soldiers, taught to commit appalling atrocities, largely against civilians.

A new UN report on the Iraq conflict said “the scourge of ISIL continues to kill, maim and displace Iraqi civilians in the thousands and to cause untold suffering.”

Conflict from January 2014 through October 31, 2015 claimed “at least 55,0547 civilian casualties,” 18,802 killed, another 36,245 wounded, the report said.

It ignored millions of Iraqi deaths from US imperial wars since the 1980s – from violence, preventable diseases, severe malnutrition, starvation, lack of potable water and overall deprivation.

“Six US presidents since Jimmy Carter ravaged Iraq for over 35 years…”

Mass internal and external displacement continues, millions driven from their homes in search of safe havens, unwanted, treated like outlaws. The UN called appalling conditions in Iraq “staggering.” Six US presidents since Jimmy Carter ravaged Iraq for over 35 years.

ISIS “continues committing systematic and widespread violence and” human rights abuses, flagrant genocidal high crimes. The UN failed to explain how Washington orchestrates them, CIA operatives and special forces training its fighters how to commit high crimes, including beheadings and other appalling atrocities.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Saudi prince Zeid bin Ra’ad, said “(e)ven the obscene casualty figures fail to accurately reflect exactly how terribly civilians are suffering in Iraq.”

Syrian army soldier beheaded: ISIL’s business card.

“The figures capture those who were killed or maimed by overt violence, but countless others have died from the lack of access to basic food, water or medical care.”

Refugees fleeing war-torn areas endure appalling “horror(s),” unwanted imperial victims. ISIS holds thousands of Iraqis in bondage, women as sex slaves, mostly ethnically Kurdish Yazidi community members. Called “devil worshippers,” they’re told to “convert or die.” Thousands were massacred earlier, many others abducted.

A survivor said “(t)hey came for all of us. The men were killed, the women and children were taken. In the village of Kocho, they never got a chance to run. ISIS took thousands there.”

Entire families were massacred or enslaved. Survivors became refugees. Iraq is a US-created cauldron of endless violence, chaos and human suffering. UN authorities failed to lay blame where it belongs.

World leaders ignore what demands responsible intervention. An entire population continues enduring unspeakable torment.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Note to Commenters
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The Global Plutocrats Meet in Davos: The Disease Pretending to Cure Itself

REPORTS BLOOMBERG: IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde—a glorified servant of the master class— plans to meet with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to discuss the nation’s bailout package, according to a person familiar with the matter.

TAKE ONE: by Stephen Lendman
Unprecedented Global Wealth Disparity

Ahead of wealthy and powerful financial and political elites meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam released a report, titled “An Economy for the 1%,” highlighting global inequality “reaching new extremes.”

“The richest 1% now have more wealth than the rest of the world combined. Power and privilege is being used to skew the economic system to increase the gap between the richest and the rest,” it said.

“A global network of tax havens further enables the richest individuals to hide $7.6 trillion. The fight against poverty will not be won until the inequality crisis is tackled.”

In 2015, 62 billionaires had more wealth than half the world’s population – compared to 388 in 2010.

The wealth of 62 richest people increased 44% since 2010 to $1.76 trillion. In contrast, resources of humanity’s bottom half fell over $1 trillion, a 41% decline.

Half of all newly created new millennium wealth went to the top 1% – at the expense of the world’s least advantaged.

“The average annual income of the poorest 10% of people in the world has risen by less than $3 each year in almost a quarter of a century. Their daily income has risen by less than a single cent every year,” said Oxfam.

Financial inequality is unprecedented – “sucked upward at an alarming rate,” trillions of dollars hidden in tax havens.

Former US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said “(w)e can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”

Runaway global inequality is greater than ever, the gap between extreme wealth and poverty widening annually.

Oxfam chief executive Mark Goldring called it “unacceptable that the poorest half of the world population owns no more than a small group of the global super-rich – so few, you could fit them all on a single coach.”

“World leaders’ concern about the escalating inequality crisis has so far not translated into concrete action to ensure that those at the bottom get their fair share of economic growth.”

“In a world where one in nine people go to bed hungry every night, we cannot afford to carry on giving the richest an ever bigger slice of the cake.”

“We need to end the era of tax havens which has allowed rich individuals and multinational companies to avoid their responsibilities to society by hiding ever increasing amounts of money offshore.”

“Tackling the veil of secrecy surrounding the UK’s network of tax havens would be a big step towards ending extreme inequality.”

“Three years after he made his promise to make tax dodgers ‘wake up and smell the coffee’, it is time for David Cameron to deliver.”

Oxfam predicted that by 2016 the richest 1 percent of the world’s population would control more wealth than the bottom 99 percent. But, to the charity’s own surprise, this transition occurred a year earlier than it had expected.

90% of World Economic Forum corporate partners have enormous wealth hidden in tax havens – the amount quadrupled from 2000 to 2014, showing governments complicit in tax avoidance, making ordinary people bear an inordinate burden.

Cameron broke his earlier promise to crack down on corporate tax avoidance, supporting what he claims to oppose.

A key trend exacerbating inequality is “the falling share of national income going to workers in almost all developed and most developing countries,” said Oxfam – along with the widening disparity between rich and poor.

Women are especially harmed, comprising the majority of low-paid workers globally.

Goldring stressed it’s “no longer (acceptable) for the richest to pretend their wealth benefits” others when it clearly comes at the expense of the world’s least advantaged.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

TAKE TWO: By Andre Damon (WSWS.ORG)
The ruling class meets at Davos

On Wednesday, some 2,500 corporate executives, celebrities and government officials will converge at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland to discuss “improving the state of the world” between skiing the alpine slopes and $1,000-a-plate gala dinners.

The heads of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and virtually every other major bank and hedge fund will rub shoulders with the government officials nominally in charge of regulating them, including US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and European Central Bank President Mario Draghi.

Other guests will include US Vice President Joseph Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry, Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, as well as the chief executives of GM, Google, Alibaba, Microsoft and the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, having last year imposed sweeping austerity measures on the Greek population, will no doubt be warmly received.

The pathetic Tsipras will be rubbing elbows with his masters.

While the official topic of the discussion will be “Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” there can be little doubt that the topics of discussion will be more tangible and immediate. A conference document outlining the “global risks of highest concern” begins with the following items: “Unemployment or underemployment, Energy price shock, Fiscal crises, Failure of national governance, profound social instability, Failure of financial mechanism or institution, Asset bubble” and “interstate conflict.”

These fears are thoroughly justified. This year’s meeting takes place against the backdrop of the threat of a global stock sell-off, a collapse in commodity prices, deepening divisions within the European Union, as well as growing tensions in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Pacific.

The gathering of global billionaires at Davos embodies the very social crisis its participants will be discussing. The summit is scheduled to begin just two days after the publication on Monday of a report by the global charity Oxfam showing that social inequality soared last year. Oxfam wrote, “In 2015, just 62 individuals had the same wealth as 3.6 billion people – the bottom half of humanity. This figure is down from 388 individuals as recently as 2010.”

The wealth of these 62 individuals, most of whom will likely fly to Switzerland this week, has increased by 44 percent since 2010, while that of the bottom half of the world’s population fell by 41 percent over the same period. The report noted: “In 2015 the world’s wealthiest 80 billionaires had collective wealth of more than $2 trillion. Meanwhile, the wealth of the bottom half of the planet has fallen by approximately $1 trillion in the past five years.”

Since the 2008 crisis, every economic metric, from output to productive investment and the growth of wages, has consistently fallen behind the predictions of economists. But the global economy has proven exceedingly capable of doing one thing: creating and enriching billionaires.

Last year, Oxfam predicted that by 2016 the richest 1 percent of the world’s population would control more wealth than the bottom 99 percent. But, to the charity’s own surprise, this transition occurred a year earlier than it had expected.

Behind closed doors, in exclusive private galas and dinners, the billionaires and multi-millionaires no doubt take a degree of satisfaction in their personal enrichment. But there should be no doubt that, at least in the more serious circles, anyone who draws too much carefree optimism from the size of his own stock portfolio at Davos will quickly be told that he is a fool. This year’s World Economic Forum takes place under a shadow of crisis unlike any since 2009, and the masters of the world have much to worry about.

The Chinese stock market, which caused that country to lead the world in the creation of paper millionaires in 2014, is once again collapsing, despite vast exertions on the part of China’s government, and has entered a bear market. The US stock market, after posting its worst start-of-year performance in history, has entered a correction, with many analysts predicting it too will follow China into a bear market, if not an outright panic on the scale of 2008-2009.

But behind the most recent sell-off lies a deeper set of concerns. The global economy is slowing, causing a destabilization in currency regimes, a sell-off in commodities and a chaotic unwinding of the debt of developing countries. Meanwhile, a whole series of longer-term underlying trends has caused analysts to forecast a dramatic fall in global profitability.

Equally troubling to the financial elite are indications that the working class, heretofore either under the thumb of the pro-business trade unions in the United States and Europe, or atomized and divided in developing countries, is not only increasingly angry and discontented, but inclined to take workplace actions.

Strikes in China spiked last year, and concessions contracts for the big three automakers were barely pushed through by the United Auto Workers in the face of mounting opposition. In Detroit, whose bankruptcy proceeding was among the greatest coups for the global ruling class in recent years, teachers have launched a sick-out, while protests against the poisoning of working-class households in Flint, Michigan has emerged as a major national issue in the United States.

The global financial elite managed to weather the 2008 crash with their fortunes not only intact, but vastly expanded. For more than seven years, they have managed to impose sweeping austerity measures on the world’s population, from Greece to Detroit, and inflict dictatorship on the masses of the Middle East. At the same time, they vastly expanded their own wealth through a record-setting binge of mergers and acquisitions and share buy-backs, financed by free cash from global central banks, and premised on mass layoffs, wage cuts and the destruction of the productive forces.

Now, the financial oligarchy looks on with grave concern as the edifice of parasitism propping up their wealth teeters and sways. It is the ruling class’s terror of any opposition by the working class that is behind the growing turn to dictatorship all over the world, including in France, which has been placed under a state of emergency, with the right of assembly and freedom of speech curtailed; in Germany, where sweeping attacks on democratic rights are being implemented amid demands for a “strong state;” and in the United States, where the government is demanding that private companies give it access to encrypted communications.

In addition to dictatorship, the billionaires in every country see a way out of the crisis in war. If profits are inadequate at home, there is the recourse to military adventure to secure raw materials, markets and labor at the expense of their global competitors. To that end, even the nations that forswore militarism in the wake of the last world war, Germany and Japan, are rearming and sending forces abroad, seeking to vie with the vast American military apparatus, bigger than the eight largest armies in the world.

The aim of the billionaires and politicians gathered at Davos will be the formulation of a class response to the deepening crisis gripping world capitalism, that of making the working class bear the weight of the crisis, just like after 2008.

This reality makes it all the more imperative for the working class to formulate its own independent strategic response to the global crisis; that is, the building of a socialist political party of the working class aimed at reorganizing society on a socialist basis.

Andre Damon is a senior editorial writer with wsws.org.

Note to Commenters
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We Need a Mass Movement Demanding Real Social Security and Medicare for All

//

by DAVE LINDORFF

The rising fortunes of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist US senator from Vermont, in the Democratic presidential primaries, provides a unique opportunity for organizing a new radical movement around key political goals including a national health care program for all Americans, not just the elderly and disabled, and a national retirement program that people can actually live on.

The elements are there already. Sen. Sanders is calling, on the stump, for expanded Social Security benefits, which with the collapse of employee pensions and the destruction of retiree savings in the Great Recession and the ensuing “lost decade” of the stock market, is badly needed. He is also calling for expanding and enhancing the Medicare program to cover everyone from birth to death, much as is done in Canada and in every other modern nation on the globe except the US.

The key here is to build a movement around these two programs that might work in parallel with the Sanders presidential campaign, but that would remain separate from it so that, when the election is over, win or lose, that movement will continue. If Sanders were to win the presidency, as is looking increasingly possible if polls can be believed, and if, as some polls also suggest, his win were to end up helping Democrats to retake both the Senate and the House, then having an independent movement in place would be critical. Such a movement militantly demanding Medicare for all and enhanced Social Security benefits would put intense pressure on both a President Sanders and a new Democratic congress to deliver. Meanwhile, if Sanders were to lose, a having a strong, well organized movement in defense of both programs would become even more urgently important.

“The key here is to build a movement around these two programs that might work in parallel with the Sanders presidential campaign, but that would remain separate from it so that, when the election is over, win or lose, that movement will continue…”

Better yet, Sanders is a movement veteran, not just someone like Obama who supposedly did a little stint as a “community organizer.” Sanders’ entire political life dating back to his college days has been about fighting for more income equality, and improved lives for the poor, minorities and working people. One can criticize his record of support as a member of congress for most of the US government’s imperial policies abroad, and even for most of its illegal wars, but domestically, at least, his record of support for fairness and for more racial and economic equality, for worker rights and for women’s equality is pretty much unassailable.

What this means is that as long as he is running — which looks like it could be right through to November — then win or lose he will be pressing for those issues of strengthening Social Security and for replacing Obamacare — that huge, cumbersome gift to the insurance industry — with an expanded and universal version of government-run Medicare. If a movement built around those two issues were to organize marches and rallies and Occupy-style actions in Washington, DC and around the nation, a candidate Sanders could be counted on to appear at them and to support them as he looks to build voter support.

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]t the same time, a movement fighting for Medicare for all and for expanded and improved Social Security would keep the media more honest, preventing the spreading of the kind of treacherous lies such as just spewed out by Sanders’ main opponent Hillary Clinton. A recipient of millions of dollars in “donations” from the health insurance industry, she has been allowed by a supportive corporate media to claim, largely unchallenged, that Sanders’ Medicare-for-All plan would mean “dismantling Obamacare, dismantling CHIP programs (state programs that offer health insurance to poor children), and dismantling Medicare and Medicaid,” and that his plan would end up “making health care more expensive for most people.”

Hillary: A ruthless power-monger with no scruples of any kind, and, logically, a shameless corporate shill.

Her assertions are lies, and Clinton knows it when she utters them. She knows Sanders would only be dismantling Obamacare because his plan to expand Medicare would eliminate the need for private insurance, both for individuals and for employers. He would clearly not eliminate Medicare, as he wants to make it universal, not just available to the disabled and those over age 65 as it is today. He would eliminate Medicaid, the miserly and bureaucratic state insurance program for the poor, but only because Sanders would have those people instead covered by the much more expansive benefits of Medicare. The same for children who currently receive insurance through CHIP. And Sanders’ scheme would be cheaper for everyone because even though Medicare for All would be funded by higher payroll taxes, nobody would be paying premiums to insurance companies for health insurance anymore. Neither woul employers, who would instead be pressed to provide savings to employees in the form of higher wages.

The reality is that the US is far and away the world’s biggest healthcare spender both on a share-of-GDP and on a per-capita basis. According to the Commonwealth Fund, based upon Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) data, the US spends the most on health care among the top 13 high-income nations of the world: Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and yet its health outcomes, for example life expectancy and infant mortality rates, are worse.

In 2013, the OECD data shows [1] (see chart) that the US spent 17.1% of Gross Domestic Product, which is a measure of all economic activity in the country, on health care. That was 47% higher, or nearly double the 11.6%, spent by the next biggest spender on health care: France, which has a medicare-for-all style system. It’s 60% higher than the percentage of GDP spent on health care in neighboring Canada, which has a system of universal insurance actually called Medicare. and it is nearly double the cost of the British National Health System which, more like the US Veterans Administration system, actually employs its medical workers and owns the hospitals, and devotes a paltry 8.8% of GDP to health care costs.

As for per-capita health spending, the situation is even more dramatic. Including public health spending by states, local governments and the national government, employer spending, and spending by individuals and families, the per-capital annual spending on health care in the US in 2013 according to the OECD was $9,086. The next highest country was Switzerland (ironically the only other of these countries that relies on private insurers to cover most of its citizens, though with stipulations mandating no profits on basic plans, which all health insurers must have on offer), at $6,325 per person — just two-thirds of what Americans spend. In France, the figure was $4,361 and Canada $4,569. Both those figures ae less than half the US per-capita health expenditure (see table for the rest).

In the case of Social Security, the US is again at the bottom among OECD countries in terms of the benefits it pays to its retired citizens and its disabled. In most modern countries, social-security systems, generally government run like US Social Security, replace about 60 percent of a working person’s income when they retire, which, since they generally no longer have children to support, have free or almost free medical care, and by then own their own home or live in affordable apartments, is enough to allow them to retire without taking a hit in their standard of living. In the US, where Social Security was founded as, it’s benefits have never moved beyond being just an “underpinning” source of income for the disabled and the poor. Providing an amount that on average replaces just 40% of a working person’t income, American Social Security is a program, in other words, not meant to fund a decent retirement, but rather just to keep the elderly and infirm from ending up living in cardboard boxes on heating grates.

A movement to change all that, organized now during the current election year when one leading candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, is calling for the same goals, could really take off, and by remaining independent of the Sanders campaign, could help push the issue forward and build support through the year and, were Sanders to win, into a key spot on his first-term agenda. It would also be a bulwark against inevitable attacks on both critical programs should Republicans somehow manage to win the White House and both houses of Congress.

The first primaries are just weeks off. There is not a moment to waste. All progressive movements, along with the labor movement, must come together urgently to kick off a mass movement of all races, young and old, workers and the unemployed, citizens, immigrants and the undocumented, to fight for these programs — not just to preserve and protect them, but to bring them into the 21st Century as an implementation of the right of all in this nation to a secure old age and to quality health care.

Dave Lindorff is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective, and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

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