“Transformation” – Jarda Sklar

Editor's Note

Earth sinking in the Atlantic "garbage patch" - Homage to human stupidity

If one looks up "transformation" in a thesaurus, one will see the word "change;" however, the change that is implied by transformation is not just a shift in direction. Implied is "radical change," "revolution," "sea change," "about face." In other words, "transformation" implies a degree of destructiveness accompanied by pain. When looking at the needs of the world today, it is clear that the changes needed, cognitive, social, and structurally, require much more than a  "rearranging the deck chairs." We are a world that is the Titanic in so many ways. We have figuratively and literally ripped the hull of our ship on the sharp rocks of an unwavering reality - whether we acknowledge it or not; whether we announce the disaster below the waterline or not. This ship is already sinking (physically and socially) and there is only one route to survival - radical change. We must transform our thinking, our social organization, and the very way we live upon the Earth.

Change is a word that both intellectuals and the intelligentsia of America are discussing in these times. However, one is justified to wonder what kind of change they mean. As a rule when intellectuals/liberals speak of change, they mean reform (and not enough of it, at that: that is, the leisurely conforming of the lives of the collective with their own. The radical, politically-socially committed intelligentsia means something else and their thought and conclusions take another avenue of meaning: their aim is transformation or, if you prefer, radical change. However, it is an unfortunate paradox that no more than liberals, the intelligentsia does not always know what to do with its convictions.

Human history is marked by change but by precious few transformations. Contemporary liberals in general are in fact eternally concerned with change/reforms, debating and writing learned papers about it. Unfortunately, however, for the most part wishy-washy liberals have never known exactly who they are or even what they intend by liberalism: is it economic or social or political? Liberals seldom have creative ideas of that which is worth leaving as a legacy for mankind. Since Spinoza’s creation of economic liberalism in the socially liberal city of Amsterdam in the seventeenth century, the very term “liberalism” has remained so nebulous that even a left-thinking person like Einstein claimed he believed in Spinoza’s god. And today, along another avenue of thought, Russians who follow the U.S. line in East Europe and are rabidly anti-Putin, call themselves and are called derogatorily by others, “Liberals”.

Most certainly, the changes mankind so needs are not the changes promised in each and every U.S. electoral campaign. On the contrary, in my opinion the radical transformation of the entire society must be the ultimate goal of socially aware people and society. And the sooner, the better. I will repeat here: The American intelligentsia might keep in mind the comforting thought that of major world countries today perhaps only America is economically self-contained and self-sufficient enough to support and survive the upheavals of a new socio-political revolution. Despite the recent statistic according to which nearly half of young Americans are curious about Socialism, the great historical contradiction remains that in no other country is real capitalism so strong and the idea of Socialism so weak as in the United States of America, which, in turn, has made Socialism so difficult to achieve elsewhere as happened in our times in Russia.

Scientists tell us that in the universe nothing is ever lost, although nothing remains the same, which seems quite logical considering the cellular process of life. Already in pre-socratic times, Heraclitus wrote that “you could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.” In a surprising linear fashion everything is constantly undergoing change, one form replacing another and that replacing another and so on and on. Each birth and rebirth are the beginnings of something new. Death is the end of an earlier form. Meanwhile, the substance of the universe and of being remains the same in a sort of cosmic oneness, the perfect conception of the world and its life.

The creative individual who does not accept the world as it is is Godlike in that like earlier genuine revolutionaries he attempts to not only change it—that is, not only reform it—but to transform it.  And there lies a major difference between change and transformation: Change alters the past. Transformation creates the future. The ideological leadership of rebellious eighteenth century France saw in the collapse of the monarchy a unique opportunity to transform society and realize the ideals of the Enlightenment—ideals that went far beyond the limited political scope of the preceding English and American revolutions. French revolutionaries aspired to the creation of a new social order and a new breed of human beings.

CCT

Revolutionaries began to refer to grandiose and ambitious plans to transform the world. Revolutionaries no longer limited their goals to mere changes that just somehow occurred  but to changes brought about by men.  Likewise, Communist revolutionaries of late nineteenth century Russia imagined the coming revolution as a thorough transformation, not only of every political and socio-economic order previously known, but of human existence itself. Revolution’s aim, in the words of Leon Trotsky, was “overturning the world”.

Nonetheless, within our universe the figure of rebellious Adam has shown that in the great order of things nothing new is created, nothing is destroyed; minor changes come about too often for the wrong reasons. But that does not mean that things cannot be transformed—to the same degree that Pinocchio transformed into a real boy.  First, there were forests, then arrived man, and then appeared the desert. Those were transformations. In the same way, Westerners centuries ago abandoned the feudal system and transformed into capitalists.

Moreover, the world society that capitalists have created testifies to the power and durability of the phenomenon of transformation. Although changes in capitalism’s nature (as a rule for the worse) have occurred, those changes have not affected the essence of capitalism, which, though it goes by different names, its substance remains the same: this is mine and that is yours.

You return to your old hometown to take a look and you might say, “It’s not what it once was.” Something unsettling has changed in your life. That change makes you anxious. Reality is not what you once thought it was. Life in flux and constantly changing is not for many of us. That is why conservatives who resist change are in the majority and the apprehensive and indifferent minority the eternally oppressed/suppressed.

But if you are uncomfortable with change, as most people are, if you pass through your time shuddering at the idea of change, you might as well forget about transformation. For transformation, as above, means something essentially different from change, which, it is worth repeating over and over, means simply reforms. Transformation on the other hand is not just a change of clothing, home, life style or even your desires, any of which can be abandoned or changed back to the former. Transformation implies radical change and much more, a transmutation into something else altogether, a gunning of your mind to a future different from present and past. After genuine transformation there is no going back. Only in myth and fables can the prince be transformed into a donkey and then back again into a human being. Or, as in Greek mythology, a man be turned into a woman and then back to a man again. After transformation a new, radically different model emerges. You can twist and manipulate the clay but never again can you recreate the previous model that had seemed permanent. We know that reforms are not always positive; often newly instituted measures for tightening the screws over a society are labeled reforms. Not even transformation is always beneficial to society; for example, the philosopher-ecologist, Yuval Harari labels the agricultural revolution of ten thousand years ago “the worst crime in history” because of the resulting plight of farm animals and the conditions under which they live and die. Nonetheless, mankind (we now total seven billions on planet Earth) must search for a new and more just way of life, where also an inextinguishable moral light burns brightly, and that means no less than radical transformation of the present social order called Capitalism.

A shift in social standing is part of the dangerous game of life but a radically changed situation like a conversion to another faith—or a loss of faith all together—create the risk of no longer understanding who, where and what you are. Yet a rapid break-through into a radically changed social style can perhaps still save the world of mankind.

Communist Russia set out to transform man as he was and create the Soviet man. The undertaking was partially successful. However, when the Soviet state system collapsed under the firepower of its enemies, the then halfway Soviet man, was caught up in the nets of an imported form of savage capitalism. He struggled and thrashed around against what he had become. He traveled around the world, had new and exciting experiences but he is still trying to adjust to capitalism. Nonetheless, I believe, many traits of the Soviet man remain implanted in the DNA of contemporary Russians. To him the true essence of capitalism remains foreign and extraneous, irrelevant and inappropriate—if not vulgar. In that sense Communism was not a useless failure. Something has remained. Today, America aspires to domination of the entire world; according to the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev and its greatest writer, Fedor Dostoevsky, Russia’s mission and destiny is to save the world.

Stories and literature are also temples of transformation. For Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti, the writer is the priest of change and the custodian of metamorphosis. Narrative fiction, he says—he too sometimes confusing change and transformation—are spheres where man can experiment his desire to metamorphose, change and transform. He calls this alteration the “passion of metamorphosis”. According to Canetti, the true task of the writer is to keep alive the ability to transform, to direct his energies at a passion that exists not for personal gain but for its own sake: the metamorphosis passion. Therefore, for the sake of us all, we must “beware of sins against poets”, as the great writer, E.L. Doctorow once wrote.

Marx pointed out that the anarchy of the market itself was sufficient to understand that capitalism could not work in the long run and was doomed to eventually transform. For the market is anarchy itself. It is evident that when corporations become people—but remain free of accountability and are therefore irresponsible—the result is necessarily anarchy and inhuman totalitarianism.

In Kafka’s The Trial the law and the trial itself are transformed into human life. For Kafka, the law, empty of content, is indistinguishable from life while the body of Joseph K. becomes the trial. This transformation moreover is marked by something of the beyond. I think that genuine transformation lies there in the beyond which in the minds of some is progress.

I return again and again to the Russian example because just as the intelligentsia in pre-revolutionary Russia set its stamp on the development of the idea of Socialism there (in the end making the greatest revolution of modern times), when the propitious moment arrives, when what was inexpressible becomes expressible, when events have created a universal mood of revolutionary discontent with the existing system, when tensions reach the boiling point and public apprehension becomes that of the animal trapped by its predator, the American intelligentsia, together with the American wage earners and the growing, multiplying, ever angrier and, one hopes, awakening middle class, will rise against the capitalist system, salvage the positive parts of America and bring about the non-postponable transformation.

Liberals could join in the great movement but contemporary liberals alone will never, never bring about real radical social change; at the most, I insist, they want reforms of the existing system. Liberals never seem to learn. They never change. Today, most of them are still on the Obama-Clinton bandwagon, even after their presidents have condoned torture, formalized the doctrine of American Exceptionalism and American world hegemony, started more and more wars and instituted new controls over Americans at home. Liberals have given up the struggle even for reforms to align the USA with the rest of the world (health, education, finance, et al). Liberals can be intolerant and extremist –and sanctimonious—in their limited views and mindset. Liberals can take strong stands on minor community improvements; they work themselves into a fury and campaign relentlessly and join sit-ins and carry placards concerning, let’s say, how the local school yard is to be used on weekends and still vote for war and ignore the concept of social justice for all. Viewed from the distance, I am dubious about so-called grassroots activities: they are welcome but I suspect in the long run harmless. As a rule Power lets them sit-in, march and carry their placards. As if the military-industrial complex (It really does exist!) of which President Eisenhower warned America, gave one hoot in hell about their protests. And it cares even less about the liberals themselves which is indicative of the banality and ordinariness of contemporary liberals, most of whom merit, in my opinion, disdain and disesteem.

Gaither Stewart

Our Senior Editor based in Rome, serves—inter alia—as our European correspondent. A veteran journalist and essayist on a broad palette of topics from culture to history and politics, he is also the author of the Europe Trilogy, celebrated spy thrillers whose latest volume, Time of Exile, was recently published by Punto Press.

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BY GARY LEUPP

“It’s getting really hard to know where any lines were drawn.”

-CNN

I confess I’d been looking forward to this. My son, following the Judicial Watch website, has been saying for months that the big email scandal will involve the State Department-Clinton Foundation ties and Hillary’s use of her office to acquire contributions from Saudi and other donors. As someone opposed to World War III (beginning in Syria and/or Ukraine), I was hoping that they (and he) were right.

It might not be all that immediately clear to many why this is another big deal. After all, it follows Hillary’s ongoing private server email scandal, involving not just issues of the Secretary’s “judgment” and so-called “national security” but also revealing details about Clinton’s key role in the bloody destruction of Libya and her hawkish views in all circumstances.

CNN commentators assure us that the FBI investigation “went nowhere” because the FBI decided she’d committed no crime. (Just move on, folks; this was political all along.)

These new revelations come just after the scandal of the DNC rigging the primaries for Hillary, revealed by email leaks (from an unknown source) provided through Wikileaks. The content of these has been avoided like the plague by mainstream media, which is in Hillary’s camp and is generally protecting her. The focus instead is on allegedRussian efforts to influence the U.S. election, and the imagined Putin-Trump “bromance.” Respectable news agencies have been announcing, as fact, the idea that Wikileaks got the emails from Russia; and that Moscow is trying to swing the election towards Trump (because he’ll accept an invasion of Estonia, wreck NATO etc.). It’s (or it should be) obvious bullshit, an effort to change the subject while exploiting the McCarthyite paranoid sentiments of the most backward.

The headlines are so far cautious. “Emails renew questions about Clinton Foundation and State Department Overlap.” “Newly released Clinton emails shed light on relationship between State Dept. and Clinton Foundation.” They are not (yet) shrieking, “Sheik bought State Dept. favors from Clinton Foundation donation” but we shall see.

What do the emails show so far? Two examples have been highlighted by the conservative Judicial Watch, which requested the email transcripts through the FOIA. In the first, in 2009, Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese-born billionaire who has given the foundation up to five million dollars and used its assistance to build a project in Nigeria, and is one of the foundation’s top donors, contacted Doug Band, head of the foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative, asking to be put in touch with a high ranking State Department official connected to Lebanon.

Band emailed Hillary’s top aide Huma Abedin and advisor Cheryl Mills, expressing a need. He writes: “We need Gilbert Chagoury to speak to the substance person re Lebanon. As you know, he’s a key guy there and to us and is loved in Lebanon. Very imp.”

A key guy to us. To the Clinton Foundation? The U.S.A.? Abedin did not ask that question before responding, “It’s jeff feltman. I’m sure he knows him. I’ll talk to jeff.” Feltman had been U.S. ambassador to Lebanon from July 2004 to January 2008 but was apparently still seen as the go-to guy. So Hillary’s chief aide took it upon herself to contact the former ambassador to tell him Chagoury (whom she might mention is a major contributor to the Clintons) needed to talk with him.

FBI’s James Comey: Inconclusive recommendations at best.

Nothing illegal there, they will say. Why shouldn’t the State Department arrange contact between a billionaire Lebanese Clinton donor, loved in Lebanon, and the ex-ambassador, if it contributes to regional stability or U.S. national security? And the hard-core Hillary supporters will nod their heads, and maybe point out that Feltman has denied any “meeting.” (Maybe Huma just passed on his address and they chatted online.)

“Julian Assange described the U.S. presidential race as a choice between cholera and gonorrhea. Why should the people of this great country of 310,000,000 people—many with great creativity, integrity and intelligence—be assigned this sick choice of Clinton or Trump by the One Percent that controls everything?”

(CNN I notice is showing a video of Bill Clinton with Chagoury in Nigeria, inaugurating a multi-billion dollar waterfront development on the coastline established “under the umbrella of the Clinton Global Initiative.”)

The other instance of “overlap” central to the discussion so far is a request of Band to Abedin and Mills for “a favor.” Someone who had recently been on a Clinton Foundation trip to Haiti wanted a State Department job. He indicated that it was “important to take care of” this person. Abedin, apparently without questioning Band about why this person was important, got right back to him: “We all have him on our radar. Personnel has been sending him options.” So the head of the Clinton Foundation could snap his fingers, again stressing how “important” his demand was, and Hillary aides Huma and Cheryl paid by your tax dollars would snap into action.

A CNN report deplores “the intermingling of emails between State and Clinton Foundation and others, giving the overall effect that it’s getting really hard to know where any lines were drawn.”

This page about the Clinton Foundation “expenses” speaks loudly about their charitable endeavours. Obviously, in their book, the charity begins and ends at home. (Click on image)

Maybe nothing illegal here. But there is an ongoing FBI investigation, no longer about Hillary’s multiple phones and private server, nor about the content of the communications (revealing her hawkish savagery), but about the routine trade-off of foundation connections for political rewards.

Those transactions are mere corruption, not war crimes. But the U.S. mass media never targets politicians for their bloodiness, and they love the conventional corruption scandal. So let there be more leaks that will absorb the attention of the talking heads! Let’s see clearer pay-for-play evidence! And let’s see more details about how the DNC midwifed Hillary’s nomination, actively sabotaging a supposedly democratic process.

The stench of corruption has enveloped the Clintons for years. It’ll grow heavier after Hillary inherits the imperial throne in January.

Let the American people see how thoroughly rotten both candidates are, and how thoroughly rotten the system that barfed them up.

Bernie in a fair process would be the Democratic nominee now. Clinton didn’t so much steal the election as buy it in advance, arranging the details through lackey Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Trump would not be the Republican nominee but for the editorial decisions of cable news producers to—from the very inception of his campaign—announce BREAKING NEWS and cover his nearly identical rants every time he held a rally.

This gratuitous coverage obviated the need for any (other) Trump advertising. Even as the anchors, commentators and other talking heads ridiculed, denounced and appeared puzzled about the Trump phenomenon, the networks made the viewers imbibe his vapid rants. They hooked the most reactionary elements of the population on this blowhard billionaire nut case.

In the Democrats’ case, Wall Street and Wasserman Schultz controlled the primaries. In the Republican case, the corporate news media (for its immediate profit motives) advertised a total dick who happened to be a billionaire and represent the One Percent every bit as much as Hillary.

So they’re now in our faces, day after day. Hideous people with their news-anchor supporters, and cable commentators so ready to dismiss serious issues, put the very best face on their candidate, and change the subject to attack the other candidate. In the end it comes down to: We have a two-party system. The parties made their choices. So you HAVE to choose one.

Julian Assange described the U.S. presidential race as a choice between cholera and gonorrhea. Why should the people of this great country of 310,000,000 people—many with great creativity, integrity and intelligence—be assigned this sick choice of Clinton or Trump by the One Percent that controls everything?

US AG Loretta Lynch: Another carefully picked Democratic party flunkey, and a disgrace to her race, as is Obama. The plutocracy’s interest, and my career, come first.

Why should any Bernie supporter [Bernie proved no tower of principle, either.—Eds] so debase himself or herself as to say, “Okay, I know the primaries were fixed and that Bernie could not win because the cards were stacked against him. And despite the fact that I put passion and effort into an anti-Wall Street campaign, now I’ll support the Wall Street candidate, who’s also a liar, who’s going to flip-flop again on TPP and bomb Syria to produce regime change, and provoke Russia in Syria and Ukraine—because well anyway she’s better than Trump, and we all have to vote, don’t we”?

But why should anybody have to hold their nose while they vote? The whole process has been exposed as never before as a farce. Why participate at all in something so corrupt? Do you want to vote just to vote, to publicly display the fact that you believe in the system itself, like the North Koreans who routinely go to the polls patriotically to vote for the options available? (As you may know, in some elections in the DPRK you can vote for a candidate of the Workers’ Party of Korea, Chondoist Chogu Party, Korean Social Democratic Party or independent. There is the manicured appearance of multiparty democracy—just like here. And no doubt some people feel good after the voting, knowing they’ve done their civic duty in a system they believe in. But what if you’ve woken up and don’t believe in the system anymore?)

Why not think bigger, and beyond? Either Clinton or Trump will likely take office in January, as the most unpopular newly elected president of all time. Either will have been brought to power by a manifestly anti-democratic, corrupt process that, more than in past years, is well exposed this time. Either will be vulnerable to mass upheaval, in the wake of Mexico wall construction or the announcement of a Syrian no-fly zone. Appalled by the election choices and result, the majority could maybe consider targeting the rigged system itself.

Just a suggestion. Massive demonstrations in Washington on Inaugural Day by people who have come to reject its legitimacy itself, knowing that it’s run by the One Percent to whom black lives don’t matter, drone warfare is cool and global warming is a hoax. Posters and banners with the curt, easy-to-understand and undeniably truepopular slogan: THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS RIGGED!

Imagine a huge rally Jan. 20 demanding its overthrow, or at least the immediate resignation of the system’s illegitimate new executive, even if we don’t know what comes next.  Imagine the admiration that would invite throughout the world, the hope it would inspire should the people of this country rise up to challenge not just a war, policy or person but the corrupt (capitalist and imperialist) system under which we live.

***

Now I read that the FBI, directed by James Comey (who recommended no charges for Clinton for her private cell phone use but left open the prospect of recommending criminal charges against Clinton for abusing her office to profit the Clinton Foundation) in fact has recommended charges against Hillary.

But the Department of Justice headed by Clinton loyalist Loretta Lynch rejected the recommendation. Because—don’t you see?—Hillary has to be the next president. To stop Trump, at all costs! And to stop Putin, that aggressive (sic) Putin. And to keep together the “Clinton Coalition.”

Good job, Loretta! But regardless of your effort, Hillary’s Pinocchio nose grows longer by the day, while the whole system is exposed as a cancer requiring the most aggressive treatment.

---

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Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?

FRONTLINE NEWS—

Reports, News Flashes, and Commentary from Various Conflict Zones Around the Globe
HUMANITY IN TORMENT

=By= Carlos Aznárez

Brazilian protests. (Fernando Frazão/ABr – CC BY 3.0 BR)

Practice makes perfect they say, and the US has refined its coup strategy to a fine art. How simple it is to bring down any government that seems disadvantageous to the US desires at the time. The US is now sweeping back through South America, apparently reshaping governments and policies at will. (rw)

The coup has been consummated. Brazil now joins Honduras and Paraguay in the list of countries that Imperialism used as a giant laboratory to test, with undoubtable success, their technique to destitute neo-developmentalist governments. This recipe is labeled as “moderate” by some analysts that are not experiencing its results in their own flesh, and for those who compare it with the inhuman dictatorships that these countries suffered a few decades ago. In fact, they are brutal, like capitalism is in essence. In Argentina, for example, in just a few months, 120,000 workers were laid off, as inflation increased dramatically, crushing hopes for a better future. This onslaught in Latin America has to be analyzed in a broader context: it’s part of the same strategy that the heads of Washington DC implemented in the Middle East, destroying one country after the other, until they found out they could attain the same results with more ease in Latin America.

What these coups have in common is that they were propelled by a reaction against the most basic reforms in favor of the people. Each and every one of the heads of state that the coups destituted was targeted only because they began to design some social policies for the sectors that the neoliberalism of the 90s had, plain and simply, thrown into exclusion. Their measures weren’t even revolutionary, such as nationalizing foreign commerce, or making the agrarian reform. On the contrary, the case of Brazil pathetically shows that it didn’t matter to them that Dilma did all types of concessions and made alliances with their side that derived in austerity policies that were clearly in line with the neoliberal project. The bourgeoisie kept attacking from every flank and eroding, day after day, the Workers’ Party (PT).

Unlike the Argentine right-wing and media, which managed to get Mauricio Macri democratically elected, their Brazilian peers forcefully clawed their way into the Presidential house by using the institutions as weapons. Their candidate, Michel Temer, has enough criminal records to enter the Itai Prison instead of the Planalto Palace. But the increasingly discredited bourgeois democracy will allow him to attempt a plan for adjustment that has been plotted by the think-tanks of the opposition.

In fact, it’s announced that the infamous people that were in power with former neoliberal  president Henrique Cardoso will return, and that officers and allies of the IMF and the World Bank will arrive in the country hand in hand with local right-wing leader Aécio Neves. Of all these comebacks, the most disturbing one is that of Henrique Meirelles, who was in charge of the Central Bank under Lula’s Presidencies, between 2003 and 2011, when the economy was peaking unlike these days. Meirelles, a neoliberal whose tendencies were muzzled under Lula’s administration, currently is an executive for big transnational companies and trusted by members of the US Republican Party, will promote in the Ministry of Finance a policy of austerity and indebtment, following the steps that his colleague Joaquim Levy began under Dilma’s administration.

Encouraged by their “victory”, in the next six months without Dilma in power, the Brazilian right is going to try to avoid her comeback (which at this point seems unlikely), and also avoid that Lula da Silva, the only charismatic leader of the working class, holds any chance to win future elections.

However, although the right thinks their dreams of privatizations, layoffs and devaluation are going to soon come true, there’s a factor that they must take into consideration: it’s the enormous popular resistance that for several months has taken over the streets of Brazil. Those workers and peasants that stood up with determination against the austerity policies of former Minister Levy and the pro-agribusiness policies of former Minister Katia Abreu —both of them members of Dilma’s government. They block roads, they man the barricades, they light up when they hear their peers chanting slogans for “land, housing, work!”, they march for kilometers to denounce that the people of Brazil has been waiting for years for unfulfilled promises. They are workers that chose against occupying seats and defend the class autonomy, precisely to not drown the revolutionary ideas they possess in the sewers of bureaucracy and politicking. That’s the real Brazil, with its Landless and its Homeless, with its metal workers from the ABC union or the combative Mercedes Benz workers, who cried out loud that “there will be no coup”. They are the grassroots from which the resistance will emerge from today on, against this tragic May 12, and will try to counteract Temer’s and his partners’ will to govern the country.

Source: The Dawn

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Andre Vltchek
Itinerant Philosopher and Journalist

Broken Chains – The Immigrants – Battery Park – NYC (Donald & Cameron – CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Andre Vltchek speaks from the heart about the West’s brutalization of the planet and its people, and about the power of resistance and community. (rw)

There are several essential messages literally shouting from the screen, whenever one watches ‘The Last Supper’ (La Ultima Cena), a brilliant 1976 film by a Cuban director Tomas Gutierrez Alea.

The utmost one: it is impossible to enslave an entire group or race of people, at least not indefinitely. Longing for freedom, for true liberty, is impossible to break, no matter how brutally and persistently colonialism, imperialism, racism and religious terror try to.

The second, equally important message is that the whites and the Christians (but mostly the white Christians) have been behaving, for centuries and all over the world, like a horde of savage beasts and genocidal maniacs.

At the end of April 2016, on board Cubana de Aviacion jet that was taking me from Paris to Havana, I couldn’t resist opening my computer and watching La Ultima Cena again, for at least the tenth time in my life.

Screen capture

Gutierrez on my screen, Granma Internacional (official Cuban newspaper named after the boat which brought Fidel, “Che” and other revolutionaries to Cuba, triggering the Revolution) and a glass of pure and honest rum on my table, I felt at home, safe and blissfully happy. After several depressing days in Paris, I was finally leaving that gray, increasingly depressing, oppressive and self-righteous Europe behind.

Latin America was waiting for me. It was facing terrible attacks organized by the West. Its future was once again uncertain. “Our governments” were bleeding, some of them collapsing. The appalling extreme right-wing government of Mauricio Macri in Argentina has been busy dismantling the social state. Brazil was suffering from the political coup performed by corrupt right-wing lawmakers. Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution was struggling, literally fighting for its survival. Treasonous reactionary forces were confronting both Ecuador and Bolivia.

Where my heart lies. (NASA)

I was asked to come. I was told: “Latin America needs you. We are fighting a war for survival”. And here I was, on board the Cubana, going ‘home’, to the part of the world that has always been so dear to me, and has shaped me into what I am now, as a man and as a writer.

I was going ‘home’, because I wanted to, but also because it was my duty. And I damn believe in duties!

After all, I’m not an anarchist but a Communist, ‘educated’ and hardened in Latin America.

***

But what does it mean when I say: ‘I’m a Communist?’

Am I a Leninist, a Maoist, or a Trotskyist? Do I subscribe to the Soviet or the Chinese model?

Honestly, I have no idea! Frankly, I don’t care much for those nuances.

To me personally, a true Communist is a fighter against imperialism, racism, ‘Western exceptionism’, colonialism and neo-colonialism. He or she is a determined Internationalist, a person who believes in equality and social justice for all people on this Earth.

I’ll leave theoretical discussions to those who have plenty of time on their hands. I never even re-read the entire Das Kapital. It is too long. I read it when I was 16 years old. I think that reading it once is enough… It’s not the only pillar of Communism and it is not some holy scripture that should be constantly quoted.

More than Das Kapital, I was influenced by what I saw in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. I saw the entire world, some 160 countries; I lived on all continents. Wherever I went, I witnessed the horrors of ongoing Western plunder of the Planet.

I saw the Empire forcing countries into bestial civil wars; wars sparked so the multi-national companies could comfortably loot. I saw millions of refugees from once proud and wealthy (or from potentially wealthy) countries that were ruined by the West: Congolese refugees, Somali refugees, Libyan and Syrian refugees, refugees from Afghanistan… I saw inhuman conditions in factories that looked like purgatories; I saw monstrous sweatshops, mines, and fields near feudally run villages. I saw hamlets and townships, where the entire population vanished – dead from hunger, diseases, or both.

I also spent days and days listening to shocking testimonies of victims of torture. I spoke to mothers who lost their children, to wives who lost husbands, to husbands whose wives and daughters were raped in front of their eyes.

And the more I saw, the more I witnessed, the more shocking the stories I heard; the more obliged I felt to take sides, to fight for what I believe could be a much better world.

I wrote two books compiling hundreds of stories of terror committed by the West: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”.

It didn’t bother me how derogatorily the Empire has been in depicting people who are still faithful to their ideals; ready to sacrifice everything, or almost everything, for the struggle against injustice.

I’m not afraid of being ridiculed. But I am terrified of wasting my life if I put selfishness on a pedestal, elevating it above the most essential humanistic values.

I believe that a writer cannot be ‘neutral’ or apolitical. If he is, then he is a coward. Or he is a liar.

Naturally, some of the greatest modern writers were or are Communists: Jose Saramago, Eduardo Galeano, Pablo Neruda, Mo Yan, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to name just a few. Not a bad company, not bad at all!

And I believe that living and struggling for others is much more fulfilling than living only for one’s own selfish interests and pleasures.

***

Cuban boys in Trinidad (Jplavoie)

I admire Cuba for what it has done for humanity, in almost six decades of its revolutionary existence. Cuban Internationalism is what I personally see as ‘my Communism’.

Cuba has heart and it has guts. It knows how to fight, how to embrace, how to sing and dance and how not to betray its ideals.

Is Cuba ideal? Is it perfect? No, of course it is not. But I don’t demand perfection, from countries or from people, or from the Revolutions for that matter. My own life is very far from ‘perfect’. We all make errors and bad decisions: countries, people as well as revolutions.

Perfection actually horrifies me. It is cold, sterile and self-righteous. It is ascetic, puritanical, and therefore inhuman, even perverse. I don’t believe in saints. And I feel embarrassed when someone pretends to be one. Those small errors and ‘imperfections’ are actually making people and countries so warm, so lovable, so human.

The general course of the Cuban Revolution has never been ‘perfect’, but it has always been based on the deepest, most essential roots of humanism. And even when Cuba stood for some short time alone, or almost alone (it was China at the end, as I wrote and as Fidel shortly after confirmed in his “Reflections”, that extended to Cuba its mighty fraternal hand) – it bled, it suffered and shivered from pain brought by countless betrayals, but it did not stir from its path, it did not kneel, it did not beg and it never surrendered!

This is how I think people and countries should live. They should not exchange ideals for trinkets, love for security and advantages, decency for cynical and bloodstained rewards. Patria no se vende, they say in Cuba. Translated loosely: ‘The Fatherland should never be sold’. I also believe that Humanity should never be sold, as well as Love.

And that is why I am a Communist!

***

Betraying what we – human beings – really are, as well as betraying the poorest of the poor and the most vulnerable among us is, I believe, more frightening than suicide, than death.

A person, a country or a culture that thrives on the suffering of others, is defunct, thoroughly immoral.

Hive Life (Vladimir Chuchadeev)

The West had been doing exactly that, for decades and centuries. It has been living from and thriving on the enslavement of others and usurping everything on and under the surface of our Earth. It has corrupted, morally and financially, millions of people in its colonies and client states, turning them into shameless and spineless collaborators. It has ‘educated’, indoctrinated and organized huge armies of traitors, on all continents, in almost all corners of the world.

Betrayal is the most powerful weapon of the Western Empire – betrayal and oblivion.

The West turns human beings into prostitutes and butlers, and those who refuse, into prisoners, slaves and martyrs.

Indoctrination is well planned. Dreams are poisoned and ideals dragged through dirt. Nothing pure is allowed to survive.

People are made to fantasize only about hardware; phones and tablets, cars and television sets. But the messages are empty, full of nihilism, repetitive and shallow. Cars can now drive very fast, but there is nothing really significant waiting at the end of the journey. Phones have thousands of functions and applications, but they are broadcasting increasingly trivial messages. Television sets are regurgitating propaganda and intellectually toxic entertainment.

It all brings profits to big corporations. It guarantees obedience. It strengthens the regime. But in many ways, humanity is getting poorer and poorer, while the Planet is almost entirely ruined.

Beauty is replaced with images full of gore. Knowledge is spat on, substituted by primitive pop. Or it is confused with those official-looking diplomas and stamps of approval issued by the indoctrination centers called universities: “Graduated: ready to serve the Empire!” Poetry is gone, from most of bookstores, and from life.

Love is now shaped on pop culture images, anchored in some ‘retro’, oppressive and outdated Christian dogmas.

It is clear that only Communism has so far been strong enough to confront the essence of the mightiest and the most destructive forces on our Planet: Western colonialism/ imperialism, which is locked in a disgusting and incestuous marriage with its own offspring – cruel feudal, capitalist and religious gangs of ‘local elites’ in conquered and ruined countries all over the world.

Both the Empire and its servants are betraying humanity. They are ruining the Planet, pushing it into the state where it could soon become uninhabitable. Or where life itself could lose all its meaning.

To me, to be a true Communist means this: to be engaged in the constant fight against the incessant rape of human brains, bodies and dignity, against the plunder of resources and nature, against selfishness and consequent intellectual and emotional emptiness.

I don’t care under which flag it is done – red with the hammer and sickle, or red with several yellow stars. I’m fine with either of them, as long as the people holding those banners are honest and concerned with the fate of humanity and our Planet.

And as long as people calling themselves Communists are still able to dream!

***

Western propagandists tell you: “show us one perfect Communist society!”

I answer: “There is no such society. Human beings, as we have determined, are incapable of creating anything perfect. Fortunately!” Only religious fanatics are aiming at ‘perfection’. Humans would die of boredom in a perfect world.

Revolution, a Communist Revolution, is a journey; it is a process. It is a huge, heroic attempt to build a much better world, using human brains, muscles, hearts, poetry and courage! It is a perpetual process, where people give more than they take, and when there is no sacrifice, only a fulfillment of duty towards humankind.

‘Che’ Guevara once said: “Sacrifices made should not be displayed as some identity card. They are nothing less than fulfilled obligations.”

Maybe in the West, it is too late for such concepts to flourish. Selfishness, cynicism, greed and indifference have been successfully injected into the sub-consciousness of the majority of people. Perhaps that is why, despite all those material and social privileges, the inhabitants of Europe and North America (but also of Japan) appear to be so depressed and gloomy. They live only for themselves, at the expense of others. They want more and more material goods and more and more privileges.

They have lost the ability to define their own condition, but probably, deep inside, they feel emptiness, intuitively sensing that something is terribly wrong.

And that’s why they hate Communism. That’s why they stick to self-righteous lies, deceptions and dogmas delivered to them by the regime’s propaganda. If Communists were right, then they would be wrong. And they suspect that they may be wrong. Communism is their bad conscience, and it brings fear that the bubble of lies could one day get exposed.

Most people in the West, even those who claim that they belong to the Left, want Communism to go away. They want to smear it, cover it with filth; bring it ‘to their level’. They want to muzzle it. They are desperately trying to convince themselves that Communism is wrong. Otherwise, the responsibility for the hundreds of millions of lost lives would haunt them incessantly. Otherwise, they would have to hear and maybe even accept that the privileges of Europeans and North Americans are constructed on dreadful crimes against humanity! Otherwise, they would be forced to, on moral grounds, dismantle those privileges (something truly unthinkable, given the mindset of Western culture).

The recent position of the majority of Europeans towards the refugees coming from countries destabilized by the West, clearly shows how morally defunct the West really is. It is incapable of basic ethical judgments. Its ability to think logically has collapsed.

But the West is still ruling the world. Or more precisely, it is twisting its arm, pushing it towards disaster.

Western imperialist logic is simple: “If we rape and loot, it is because if we don’t, others would! Everybody is the same. It cannot be helped. What we do is essential to human nature.”

It is not. It is rubbish. I have seen people behaving better, much better than that, almost everywhere outside the Western world and its colonies. Even when they manage to slip away from their torturers and jailers – the Empire – for only a few years, they behave much better. But usually they are not allowed to slip away for too long: the Empire hits powerfully against those who dare to dream about freedom. It arranges coups against rebellious governments, destabilizes economies, supports the ‘opposition’, or directly invades.

It is absolutely clear to anyone who is still able and willing to see, that if the criminal Western Empire collapses, human beings would want to, they’d be capable of building great egalitarian and compassionate societies.

Global Solidarity by Angel Caido/

I believe that this is not the end. People are waking up from indoctrination, from stupor.

New, powerful anti-imperialist alliances are being forged. The year 2016 is not 1996 when there seemed to be almost no hopes left.

The war is waged, the war for the survival of humankind.

It is not a classical war of bullets and missiles. It is a war of nerves and ideals, dreams and information.

Before passing away, the great Uruguayan writer and revolutionary, Eduardo Galeano, told me: “Soon the time will come, and the world will erect old banners again!”

It is happening now! In Latin America, Africa and Asia, in almost all parts of the former Soviet Union and in China, people are demanding more Communism, not less. They don’t always call Communism by its name, but they are crying for its essence: freedom and solidarity, passion, fervor, courage to change the world, equality, justice and internationalism.

I have no doubt that we will win. But I also suspect that before we do, the Empire will bathe entire continents in blood. Desire of Westerners to rule and to control is pathological. They are ready to murder millions of those who are unwilling to fall on their knees. They already murdered hundreds of millions, throughout the centuries. And they will sacrifice millions more.

But this time, they will be stopped.

I believe it, and shoulder-to-shoulder with others, I am working day and night to make it happen.

Because it is my duty…

Because I’m a Communist!

Andre Vltchek

Philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism. Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

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By Mike Faulkner
Sr. Contributing Editor, London Correspondent

This is a photo of part of the International Work Brigade upon our arrival in Havana, Cuba in early August, 1960. I am standing second on the left, back row, wearing sun glasses. (Mike Faulkner, personal photo)

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]idel Castro is, in my view, one of the greatest revolutionary leaders of all times and has been an inspiration to me for 56 years. I have to admit to a very personal interest in the Cuban revolution and its “Lider Maximo.” I would like to explain why.

This is the cover of the first English version of Fidel’s 1960 speech to the International Work Brigades.

Fidel, who had been suffering from a sore throat brought on by his numerous speaking engagements at this time, arrived late and started to address the crowd. The international work brigades had been honoured by a special place in the hall, immediately in front of the speakers platform. After he was about 20 minutes into his introduction his voice started to give out until he could hardly be heard. I was seated next to a member of the Association of Rebel Youth (AJR) who interpreted for me. The crowd started to shout in unison for Fidel to stop and rest. He was reluctant to do so. Eventually, Raul, who had earlier spoken briefly to point out how important his brother’s speech was to be, came onto the stage and almost literally had to drag Fidel off. In the interval between his leaving and his return (about 30 minutes) the thousands in attendance began to sing and chant revolutionary jingles and humorous ditties with which we were to become very familiar over the next few months: They chanted in unison “Cuba Si! Yankee No” and many others, of which I recall only a few, such as: “Fidel, seguro! A los Yankees dale duro! (Come on Fidel! Give the Yankees Hell!) “Fidel, Fidel, que tiene Fidel, “Que los Americanos no pueden con el.” (What is it about Fidel that the Yankees want nothing to do with him?)

Mike Faulkner

is a Senior Contributing Edior and our London Correspondent. He is a British citizen living in London. For  many years he taught history and political science at Barnet College, until his retirement in 2002. He has written a two-weekly column,  Letter from the UK, for The Political Junkies Magazine since 2008. Over the years his articles have appeared in such publications as Marxism Today, Monthly Review and China Now. He is a regular visitor to the United States where he has friends and family in New York City. Contact Mike at mikefaulkner@greanvillepost.com

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