People Before Profit blog

"Blacklisted Again" Michael Berkowitz on "Trumbo" by Norman Markowitz

Political Affairs — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 15:20:12 +0000

Below I have posted Michael Berkowitz's excellent review of "Trumbo," the new film on the life and struggle of novelist, screenwriter, and early Hollywood Blacklist victim, Dalton Trumbo.

Reviews of the film in mass media so far have been very good, even on CNN and other major news venues. So far though, I haven't seen much comment in left media, even those sources which seek to reach out to lthe broad liberal center.

I confess I haven't seen the film yet, but everyone who I know who has finds it energizing for the struggles going on today, where censorship and self-censorship remain major issues. Holefully, Michael's review will be reposted broadly This reposting on our Political Affairs blog will hopefully be a beginning to its wider circulation

The Hollywood Blacklist was only the tip of the iceberg of the various forms of blacklisting and "graylisting" which directly and indirectly struck at hundreds of thousands of people, in the arts, sciences, professional, and blue collar unionized work

"Gray listing" was denying individuals, promotions, the publication of their work or demoting them in various forms of manual labor without explanation. Individuals sometimes lost their jobs but were able to find other ones, usually inferior ones, in the same field. It encouraged withdrawal from political activity and self censorship,or, as was said in the 1950s, "getting along by going along" In my research I found it to be more pervasive then formal blacklisting, which the blacklisters also denied was happening.

Those interested in the Hollywood Blacklist might also try to find Judy Chaikin's brilliant documentary, Legacy of the Hollywood Blacklist" (1987). Narrated by Burt Lancaster, the film deals with the families of the Hollywood Blacklist victims, including Dalton Trumbo's children.

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Political Writer

Trumbo": Blacklisted Again!

Posted: 11/16/2015 4:55 pm EST Updated: 11/16/2015 4:59 pm EST

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- Dalton Trumbo is back! The United States' best screen writer, black-listed and imprisoned during the 1950s McCarthy era witch hunts, has returned full of life, politics and attitude in Jay Roach's smart, funny unrepentant film "Trumbo."
  
  Trumbo clearly had many lives. In 1939, he won the National Book Award for his anti-war novel "Johnny Got His Gun," the story of Joe Bonham, a young soldier who lost his arms, legs and his face to an artillery shell explosion. Unable to kill himself, Bonham wanted to serve as an example of the horrors of war. Bonham enabled Trumbo to do just this, as the book, read in schools around the world, has been twice made into movies and performed as well in theaters internationally.
  
  Beyond his novels and many short stories, Dalton Trumbo was most successful as one of Hollywood's most sought after and highly paid screen writers. Prior to the end of World War II, Trumbo scripted a variety of films including the popular war epic "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" (1944) and "Kitty Foyle," (1940) for which he was nominated for an Academy Award.
  
  When World War II Allies the United States and the Soviet Union fell out, Trumbo fell out of step. Like thousands of Americans looking to the Soviet Union for models of social change, he had joined the Communist Party. His continued opposition to fascism, support of workers rights and advocacy for racial integration, earned him a fact finding visit from the FBI. The House Un-American Activities Committee, formed to investigate fascism in 1938, subpoenaed Trumbo among a group of ten influential Hollywood film writers and directors, fearful they were too sympathetic to Soviet communism.
  
  Although they had broken no laws, the Committee cited this Hollywood Ten for contempt of Congress when they refused to testify. Based on suspected political beliefs, these and other Hollywood writers, directors and actors were denied work. Some of the most talented and creative artists were systematically locked out. Without income, they lost their homes. Families were broken and lives shattered.
  
  Trumbo served a year in federal penitentiary in Ashland, Kentucky despite having broken no laws. He was barred from work and lost the family farm. Undaunted, he organized other writers to work under pseudonyms for fledgling film makers like Frank King (portrayed in the film by John Goodman). Please don't make the film too good, King warned Trumbo, we're just a small studio doing second rate features! Trumbo generally complied, as the B film productions kept many of the Blacklistees from starving.
  
  But writing under the front of his friend Ian McLellan Hunter (Alan Tudyk), Trumbo was able to pen the Academy Award winning script for the Gregory Peck - Audrey Hepburn classic "Roman Holiday" (1953). Under the name of the King brothers' nephew Robert Rich, Trumbo won another Academy Award for "The Brave One" (1956).
  
  The big break for Trumbo and in the Blacklist came with Kirk Douglas' hiring him to work on Stanley Kubrick's blockbuster "Spartacus," a film about another courageous underdog fighting for his rights. In a moment where Hollywood legends intersect, Douglas is asked why he would hire and publicly credit political dissident Dalton Trumbo, Douglas smiles and replies . . . "I am Spartacus!" In another act of principle, newly elected President John F. Kennedy walked through the American Legion picket line to see the film's premiere.
  
  Bryan Cranston sparkles as Trumbo, witty and talented, unflinching in his support of the working class and his espousal of communist ideals, loyal to his comrades like Arlen Hird (Louis C.K.), exacting of his stoic wife Cleo (Diane Lane) and his rebellious daughter Niki (Elle Fanning). Helen Mirren provides loathsome texture as formidable Right Wing gossip journalist Hedda Hopper.
  
  Multiple Emmy Award winning Director-Producer Jay Roach (Austin Powers, Meet the Parents, The Campaign) has crafted a thoughtful and highly entertaining re-telling of these scoundrel times. Still, one could argue that Trumbo is being blacklisted again, as the film despite high per theater earnings, has only opened to twenty theaters across the country. Nevertheless, Roach closes with Trumbo's much too generous description of the times:
  
  "There was bad faith and good, honesty and dishonesty, courage and cowardice, selflessness and opportunism, wisdom and stupidity, good and bad on both sides; and almost every individual involved, no matter where he stood, combined some or all of these antithetical qualities in his own person, in his own acts." (New York Times, September 11, 2007).

A Corrected and Updated Version of The "Madness" of Donald Trump by Norman Markowitz

Political Affairs — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 13:57:22 +0000

Trump French National Front leaer Marine Le Pen

First let me apologize to all readers about yesterday’s blog post. It was written on a system very hastily with no system that I could access for spell check. Since then, new and bad news has come in. While some were commenting on the Paris Climate Change Conference, which of course is an attempt to address one of the central issues facing the whole world, the National Front, founded by Vichy supporter Jean Marie Le Pen and today led by his daughter, which Europeans for decades have regarded as a neo fascist party, won the first round in the French regional elections. Le Pen’s daughter has changed the party’s focus, eschewing anti-Semitism (and even expelling her father and some of his old supporters) and emphasizing anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant ideology, as European parties long considered fascist are now doing. The Socialist Party, which is the governing party and has gone along with economic austerity policies, ran third, Now it is withdrawing its candidates and telling its supporters to vote for the traditional conservatives against the National Front, much like the German Social Democrats in 1932 in the German presidential elections called upon their supporters to vote for the incumbent rightwing conservative, Field Marshall von Hindenburg against Hitler. Hindenburg won but the depression crisis was not addressed by the existing conservative government and Hindenburg, with the support of rightwing conservatives subsequently named Hitler Chancellor.

Below is the corrected and updated version

Let's start as Marxists telling it like it is. Donald Trump is not simply a "hate monger." People hate various things, both personal and political. Trump is a racist and a fascist, and the two go hand in hand.

"Muslims" are for Trump what "Jews" were for Hitler, a "problem", a "subversive force," an "enemy within."

Throughout Europe and North America, as anyone with an understanding of history can see, Anti-Muslim bigotry is becoming for the right the new “Anti-Semitism."

Parties that Europeans have traditionally considered fascist, like the National Front in France, have soft-pedaled their traditional anti-Semitism, including Holocaust denial for anti-Muslim bigotry, And the danger of a fascist victory in a major industrialized nation and military nuclear power must now be taken seriously

Some have even come to support Israel as a defender of "Western civilization" in the Middle East" from the barbaric “Muslim" hordes, much as Hitler proclaimed his Japanese allies "honorary Aryans" because they represented the worship of military power and leaders that characterized the "superior races" defending civilization from the barbaric hordes (in reality because they were his allies, as the Israelis are the allies of the U.S./NAT0 bloc in the Middle East Although some of his most vocal supporters are neo Nazis and rabid anti-Semites, Trump has found it convenient to identify with the ultra-right Netanyahu government of Israel and his responded to charges of anti-Semitism that he is the only candidate with Jewish grandchildren(as if that is in any way connected to the issue)

Trump builds upon conventional racist and xenophobic views, which frankly have also played a significant role in U.S. history locked in conflict with anti-racist, egalitarian, cultural pluralist views,

But Trump takes them a step further, like Hitler and his many imitators through the world in the period between the two world wars.

Trump has called for a "ban" on all Muslims entering the U.S., something resembling the "oriental exclusion" policies of the U.S. government from the 1890s on. And to compound the demagoguery, Trump has thrown in the internment of over 120,000 Japanese during WWII, a policy repudiated in the courts in 1983 and by Congress in 1988, with an apology and limited reparations to survivors---which no one for many decades has openly defended on any level for decades. Of course, Trump has dodged the question of whether he would have "voted" to intern the Japanese at the time, saying only that war is tough and that America today is soft and no longer wins wars

So Hitler's "Asiatic Hordes" led by Judeo-Bolshevism" marching from the Russian Steppes to conquer and destroy European civilization becomes for Trump, Muslim infiltrators come to use murder Americans as part of their global holy war.

Does it pay to tell Trump that WWII was won against the Axis alliance, whose core ideology he imitates? Probably not?

Does it pay to tell Trump that the court decision overturning an earlier Supreme Court decision(1944) upholding the internment stated clearly that lawyers defending the decision before the court with-held from the judges the facts the the government new that the Japanese constituted no real security threat? Probably not.

Does it pay to tell Trump that WWII that the Allies included the U.S., Britain, the USSR, and millions of partisan fighters in Yugoslavia, Greece, the Soviet Union, China, Indochina, the Philippines, and that the Soviet Union made the largest contribution to victory by engaging nearly 90 percent of all European Axis forces between 1941 and 1944? Probably not? Many of those people probably be on his exclusion list?

Would it even pay to inform him that those who win wars are really the ones who suffer the least casualties and end up in the best position in terms of economic power? The U.S. was in that position after the two world wars, but the cold war of course was very different. The U.S. paid the most for the NAT0 alliance and then of the major, discounting China in both its revolutionary civil war and the Korean War (before it really took off with the development of its Socialist Market Economy) suffered the most dead and wounded? Probably not. Trump’s idea of war seems to come from John Wayne movies and contemporary video games.

The Marxist-Leninist definition of fascism, avoided by some but still in my opinion the most valuable, is that fascism is the open terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary sectors of the capitalist class in the service of finance capital. In the U.S. today, that would mean at the elite level the powerful oil, coal and natural gas corporate leaders, the military contractors, the investors in the prison industrial complex. At the mass level it would mean most white men and women frustrated by their failures to advance in society in terms of status and money, ready to blame their situation on minorities and the poor given special benefits by government, and by foreign powers stepping on a weak United States.

But how do you fight fascism? The one thing you don’t do is first ignore and then appease it

Fascists are successful when they enter the political mainstream and their enemies on the left are either divided or marginalized. Fascists create whether they come to power or not create a poisoned political climate, unless the left and the center form a united front against them. A united front doesn’t mean the left become the center, cheerleading for its policies and apologies for its retreats?

If history is any judge, conservatives cannot fight fascists since their lives are spent fighting the moderate and militant left.

Those centrists, old and new versions of cold war liberals, who today are counterpoising Trump on the right with Bernie Sanders on the Left, like their predecessors who did the same thing with Hitler and Stalin before WWII under the totalitarian concept, won’t fight fascists like Trump because their real aim is to protect the status quo from militants like Sanders (if and when a leader like Sanders becomes president, they will then fight)

And those who laugh at politicians like Trump or smugly believe that he will simply divide the right and lead the Republicans to defeat can’t really fight the fascism that Trump is peddling today.

Both Republican and Democratic politicians are issuing statements criticizing Trump's statements in varying degrees as representing either "hate"(Clinton) or a distortion of "conservativism" and "true American values"(some of the Republicans). Bernie Sanders has answered Trump directly and clearly in the following with the following words below the words I have pasted a short video clip from Bernie Sanders appearance on the Tonight Show in response to Trump

“Demagogues throughout our history have attempted to divide us based on race, gender, sexual orientation or country of origin. Now, Trump and others want us to hate all Muslims. The United States is a great nation when we stand together. We are a weak nation when we allow racism and xenophobia to divide us.”
Read more at

http://www.inquisitr.com/2618075/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-slammed-by-bernie-sanders/#OlfFmt5mDbR5T8KL.99

Unity with content, not merely a phantom "unity" to defeat "the ultra-right" by supporting lesser of two evils candidates without purpose or a plan has in the past been the only way to prevent fascists from coming to power political. The French Popular Front and the U.S. New Deal coalition, in which Communists played a major role, kept fascists from coming to power with concrete programs that improved the conditions of life for working people and gave them hope for the future and making it clear to those in the capitalist ruling classes who were ready to fund fascist demagogues and use them against the working class that the risks of doing that were too great. Both of those people’s front coalitions were based on mobilizing working people to make clear and tangible gains, to end conservative austerity policies and also, in the case of the early New Deal, policies that primarily aided the corporations and the banks and agribusiness, with limited provisions to have them trickle down that aid to the people

Right now, the Sanders campaign offers the best hope for fighting what Donald Trump is peddling in U.S. Politics. Our commercial capitalist media understands that which is why they have given Trump such an abundance of publicity. Time Magazine, true to the mindset of its founder, Henry Luce, who preached the doctrine of an "American Century" during WWII, understands that, since they apparently have made Trump one of their 8 finalists for 2015 "person of the year" and snubbed Bernie Sanders.

We on the left should realize that and work for the Sanders campaign as the basis in the U.S. for the kind of peoples front campaign that will not only defeat Trump but will regain control of the federal government and begin to enact that policies that will advance the interests of the overwhelming majority of Americans, who are working class people, and thus eliminate the conditions that the Trumps feed upon

The "Madness" of Donald Trump by Norman Markowitz

Political Affairs — Tue, 08 Dec 2015 16:58:54 +0000

Let's start as Marxists telling it like it is. Donald Trump is not simply a "hate monger." People hate various things, both personal and polititical. Trump is a racist and a fascist, and the two go hand in hand.

"Muslims" are for Trump what "Jews" were for Hitler, a "problem", a "subversive force," an "enemy within."

Throughout Europe and North America, as anyone with an understanding of history can see, Anti-Muslim bigotry is becoming for the right the New" Anti-Semitism."

Parties that Europeans have tradionally considered fascist, like the National Front in France, have soft-pedaled their traditional anti-Semitism, including Holocaust denial for anti-Muslim bigotry,

Some have even come to support Israel s a defender of "Western civilization" in the Middle East" from the barbaric "Muslim" hordes, much as Hitler proclaimed his Japanese allies "honorary Aryans" because they represented the worship of military power and leaders that characterized the "superior races" defending civilization from the barbaric hordes(in reality because they were his allies, as the Israelis are the allies of the U.S./NAT0 bloc in the Middle East

Trump builds upon conventional racist and xenophobic views, which frankly have also played a significant role in U.S. history locked in conflict with anti-racist, egallitarian, cultural pluralist views,

But takes them a step further, like Hitler and his many imitators through the world in the period between the two world wars.

Now, Trump has called for a "ban" on all Muslims entering the U.S., something resembling the "oriental exclusioon" policies of the U.S. government from the 1890s on. And to compound the demagoguery, Trump has thrown in the internment of over 120,000 japanese during WWII, a policy repudiated in the courts in 1983 and by Congress in 1983, with an apology and limited reparations to survivors---that no one for many decades has openly defended on any level for decades. Of course, Trump has dodged the question of whether he would have "voted" to intern the Japanese at the time, saying only that war is tough and that America today is soft and no longer wins wars

So Hitler's "Asiatic Hordes" led by Judeo-Bolshevisim" marching from the Russian Steppes to conquer and destroy European civiliztion becomes for Trump, Muslim infiltrators come to use murder Americans as part of their global holy war.

Does it pay to tell Trump that WWII was won against the Axis alliance, whose core ideology he imitates? Probably not?

Does it pay to tell Trump that the court decision overtuning an earlier Supreme Court decision(1944) upholding the internment stated clearly that lawyers defending the decision before the court with-held from the judges the facts tht the government new that the Japanese constituted no real security threat? Probably not.

Does it pay to tell Trump that WWII that the Allies included the U.S., Britain, the USSR, and millions of partisan fighters in Yugoslavia, Greece, the Soviet Union, China, IndoChina, the Phillippines, and that the Soviet Union made the largest contribution to victory by engaging nearly 90 percent of all European Axis forces between 1941 and 1944? Probably not.

Would it even pay to inform him that those who win wars are really the ones who suffer the least casualties and end up in the best position in terms of economic power. The U.S. was in that position after the two world wars, but the cold war of course was very different. The U.S. paid the most for the NAT0 alliance and then of the major, discounting China in both its revolutionary civil war and the Korean War(before it really took off with the development of its Socialist Market Economy) suffered the most dead and wounded

The Marxist-Leninist definition of fascism, still the best, is that fascism is the open terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary sectors of the capitalist class in the service of finance capital. In the U.S. today, that would mean at the elite level the powerful oil, coal and natural gas corporate leaders, the military contractors, the investors in the prision industrial complex. At the mass level it would mean most white men and women frustrated by their failures to advance in society in terms of status and money, ready to blame their situation on minorities and the poor given special benefits by government, and by foreign powers stepping on a weak United States.

If history is any judge, conservatives can not fight fascists since their lives are spent fighting the moderate and militant left. Those centrists who today are counterpoising Trump on the right with Bernie Sanders on the Left , like their predecessors who did the same thing with Hitler and Stalin before WWII under the totalitarian concept, won't fight fascists like Trump because their real aim is to protect the status quo from militants like Sanders(if and when a leader like Sanders becomes president, they will then fight)

And those who laugh at politicians like Trump or smugly believe that he will simply divide the right and lead the Republicans to defeat can't really fight the fascism that Trump is peddling today.

Unity with content, not merely a phantom "unity" to defeat "the ultraright" by supporting lesser of two evils candidtes without purpose or a plan is the only way to prevent fascists from coming to power political. The French Popular Front and the U.S. New Deal coalition, in which Communists played a major role, kept fascists from coming to power with concrete programs that improved the conditions of life for working people and gave them hope for the future and making it clear to those in the capitalist ruling classes who were ready to fund fascist demagogues and use them against the working class that the risks of doing that were too great.

We on the left should realize that and work for the Sanders campaign as we supported united front struggles against Hitler and his many imitators in the past. That is really the best answer that we can give to Trump and the "little Trumps" who are running against him in the Republican primaries

Robert Parry's Constructive Criticism for both the Obama Administration and the Center Left by Norman Markowitz

Political Affairs — Sun, 06 Dec 2015 17:35:22 +0000

This is a valuable article from Robert Parry, whom I consider one of the very best investigative journalist of the last three decades.

It is constructive criticism for the Obama administration. After the Vietnam War crippled Great Society, and the conservative in the American sense, "neo liberal" in the global sense Carter and Clinton administratons, Obama has made significant progress in some areas of domestic policy, less so in foreign policy. There are many reasons for this but, to a considerable extent, his administration has soft-pedaled its liberal labor achievements and been erratic in its opposition to the Republican Right. Many times Obama has been militant and eloquent, other times he was been silent or has spoken in the language of "process liberals," counseling moderation.

Sadly much of the center and the "moderate left" have followed this course, distinguishing themselves from the right by soft-pedaling their own policies and substitutiong description for analysis and sideline cheerleading for creative plans of action. Robert Parry is one of the political journalists who doesn't do that. We at Political Affairs have always struggled from our founding not to do that. Parry stopped writing for the Associated Press a long time ago. when it became clear to him that the commercial media would longer give him the freedom to write as he had earlier. Hopefully that will never happen to Political Afairs or the Peoples World, either through direct editorial censorship by editors or self-censorship by writers

Norman Markowitz

Obama's Credibility Crisis

By Robert Parry, Consortium News

06 December 15

Inside Official Washington’s bubble, the Important People believe their “group think” is the envy of the world, but the truth is that their credibility has collapsed to such a degree that their propaganda can’t even match up with the head-chopping videos of the Islamic State crazies, writes Robert Parry.

ike the old story of the little boy who cried wolf, the U.S. government is finding out that – just when its credibility is most needed – it doesn’t have any. With all its “soft power” schemes of “perception management,” funding “citizen bloggers” and sticking with “narratives” long after they’ve been discredited, the U.S. government is losing the propaganda battle against ISIS.

That was the conclusion of outside experts who examined the State Department’s online campaigns to undercut ISIS, according to an article by The Washington Post’s Greg Miller who wrote that the review “cast new doubt on the U.S. government’s ability to serve as a credible voice against the terrorist group’s propaganda.”

In other words, even when the U.S. government competes with the creepy head-choppers of ISIS, the U.S. government comes in second. Of course, the State Department remains in denial about its collapse of credibility – and typically won’t release the details of the critical study.

Instead, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Richard Stengel insisted that the State Department’s messaging operation “is trending upward,” although acknowledging that his team is facing a tough adversary in ISIS and must “be equally creative and innovative.” [For more on Stengel’s falsehoods, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Who’s the Propagandist: US or RT?”]

But the U.S. government’s problem is much deeper than its inability to counter ISIS propaganda. Increasingly, almost no one outside Official Washington believes what senior U.S. officials say about nearly anything – and that loss of trust is exacerbating a wide range of dangers, from demagogy on the 2016 campaign trail to terrorism recruitment in the Middle East and in the West.

President Barack Obama seems to want so desperately to be one of the elite inhabitants of Official Washington’s bubble that he keeps pushing narratives that he knows aren’t true, all the better to demonstrate that he belongs in the in-crowd. It has reached the point that he speaks out so many sides of his mouth that no one can tell what his words actually mean.

Indeed, Obama arguably suffers from the worst “credibility gap” among the American people since Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon on the Vietnam War or at least since George W. Bush on the Iraq War. As eloquent as he can be, average folk in the U.S. and around the world tune him out.

White Rage

So, on the domestic side, when the President tells Americans that another trade deal – this one with Asia – is going to be good for them, does anyone outside the opinion pages of the elite newspapers and the big-shot think tanks believe him?

America now has a swelling underclass of formerly middle-class whites who know that they’ve been sold out as they face declining living standards and an unprecedented surge in dying rates. Yet, because they don’t trust Obama, these whites are easily convinced by demagogues that their plight stems from government programs designed to help blacks and other minorities.

This white rage has fueled the race-baiting and anti-immigrant campaigns of billionaire Donald Trump and other political outsiders in the Republican Party. Trump has soared to the top of the GOP presidential field because he says a few things that are true – that rich people have bought up the political process and that trade deals have screwed the middle class – giving him an aura of “authenticity” that then extends to his uglier comments.

Americans are so starving for a taste of honesty – which they’re not getting from Obama or other members of the elite – that they will believe a megalomaniacal huckster like Trump. After all, they know that what they get from Obama and his clique is manipulative spin, treating them like dummies to be tricked, not citizens of a Republic to be respected.

The hard truth is that the Great American Middle Class indeed has been sold out, often by fast-talking neo-liberals like President Bill Clinton who – with the help of many centrists and conservatives – pushed through trade deals and banking “reforms” that gussied up Wall Street while boarding up Main Street. The neo-liberals, working with Republicans, also promoted trade deals with Mexico and other low-wage countries that sent millions of U.S. jobs overseas.

From this experience, many Americans see “guv-mint” to blame for their plight, enticing them down the right-wing path that seeks to negate government power. What these Americans don’t grasp is that this Tea Party ideology is further selling them out to the corporatists and the speculators who will be put in an ever stronger position to gouge what’s left of the Middle Class.

In other words, at a time when Americans need their government to collectively represent their interests – to provide for “the general Welfare” as the U.S. Constitution mandated – they have no faith that the government is theirs or will protect their interests.

The Propaganda Imperative

A similar realization holds true with foreign policy. The U.S. government has so thoroughly bought into the concept of “perception management” and “strategic communications” – blending psy-ops, propaganda and P.R. – that the government has decoupled from facts. Information is just there to be exploited for geopolitical gain, usually to pin some offense on the latest “designated villain.”

We saw this in 2003 with the disinformation campaign about Iraq’s WMD, but it didn’t stop there. The U.S. government has used its control of important media levers to demonize a variety of world leaders who have gotten in the way of Official Washington’s desires. Meanwhile, equal or worse abuses by “our guys” are downplayed or ignored.

For instance, Libya’s secular dictator Muammar Gaddafi was mocked when he warned of Islamist terrorists rampaging in eastern Libya. Indeed, Gaddafi’s vow to fight them became the pretext used for a “regime change” operation under the “human rights” banner, “responsibility to protect.”

That operation – promoted by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who gloated over Gaddafi’s murder (“We came, we saw, he died”) – has transformed Libya into a land of anarchy with the Islamic State and other terror groups seizing ground and chopping off heads. But Clinton, like other architects of this disaster, won’t admit to a mistake.

Similarly, the Obama administration and the compliant mainstream U.S. media pushed a propaganda campaign against Syria’s secular leader Bashar al-Assad, blaming him for virtually all the violence that engulfed Syria despite the awareness of senior U.S. officials, including Vice President Joe Biden, about the key role played by Sunni jihadists and terror groups with the backing of Sunni-ruled Gulf states and Turkey.

So, when a lethal sarin gas attack struck a suburb of Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013, the Obama administration and key “human rights” groups blamed Assad’s forces although some U.S. intelligence analysts and independent observers quickly smelled a rat, the likelihood of a provocation sponsored by Al Qaeda operatives – possibly aided by Turkish intelligence – trying to induce the U.S. military to destroy Assad’s army and clear the way for a terrorist victory.

Though that “false flag” scenario became increasingly likely – as the case against Assad’s forces essentially collapsed – Obama and his administration have never corrected the record. They just left what now appears to be a false narrative on the record, so it can still be cited by neocon opinion leaders or “human rights” advocates and thus be used to mislead the American public.

Some people defend Obama for not admitting a mistake because to do so would undermine U.S. credibility, but I think the opposite holds true, that a frank admission that there was a misguided rush to judgment would be refreshing for Americans who are sick and tired of spin.

Similarly, there’s the case of the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine, which the Obama administration pinned on ethnic Russian rebels and indirectly on Russian President Vladimir Putin. The case whipped up a frenzy of Russia-bashing across the West and thus became a valuable propaganda club.

But again, as U.S. intelligence analysts shifted through the evidence, some moved off in a different direction, blaming a rogue element of the Ukrainian government, according to a source briefed on these findings.

Yet, instead of either correcting the record or presenting evidence to buttress the initial judgment, the Obama administration has gone silent, refusing to make public any evidence that it possesses about the killing of 298 people. That has allowed the West’s mainstream media and some supposedly “independent” bloggers to continue to push the Russia-did-it line.

Shifting Blame

More recently, the Obama administration has reacted to overwhelming evidence that some of its Mideast “allies” have been aiding and abetting the Islamic State, Al Qaeda and other violent jihadistsby trying to shift the blame to the Syrian government and Russia.

In other words, we’re told not to blame the Saudis and the Qataris for funding and arming these jihadists (despite admissions from Vice President Biden, former Secretary of State Clinton and the Defense Intelligence Agency). Nor should we notice that the Islamic State has been shipping its illicit oil into Turkey in large truck convoys through Turkish border crossings which also allow jihadist fighters to go back and forth.

The evidentiary record of Turkey’s covert support for these radical jihadists is a long one, including many admissions from Turkish officials and reports from major Turkish media outlets. But we’re told to ignore all that evidence and trust that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is doing all he can to seal off his border and stop the terrorists.

Instead, though the Syrian and Russian governments have been delivering heavy blows to the jihadists, including Russia shaming the Obama administration into belatedly joining in the bombing of those ISIS oil convoys, we’re supposed to believe that Damascus and Moscow are actually in cahoots with ISIS. This storyline amounts to the U.S. government’s own crazy conspiracy theory.

We’re also supposed to believe that the Saudis, the Qataris and the Turks are seriously engaged in the grand U.S. “coalition” – Obama has boasted of its 65 members – to fight ISIS, Al Qaeda and other terrorists. But these “allies” are mostly just going through the motions.

The overall impact of the U.S. government’s years and even decades of public manipulation has been to “trifurcate” the American people into three groups: those who still believe the official line, those who are open to real evidence that goes against the official line, and those who believe in fact-free conspiracy theories positing that nothing from any official source can be true.

To say that such a division is not healthy for a democratic Republic is to state the obvious. Indeed, a democratic Republic cannot long survive if government officials insist on managing the people’s perceptions through propaganda and disinformation. Nor can it long survive if a significant part of the population believes the craziest of conspiracy theories.

Yet, it seems that President Obama and other senior officials simply can’t resist taking the easy route of deception to reach a compliant consensus, rather than engaging in the hard work of presenting clear evidence and engaging the American people in serious debate.

Or, perhaps Obama and his advisers are too deep into the lies and thus fear the consequences of admitting that many of their claims were false or misleading. That would be like Toto pulling the curtain away from the Wizard of Oz and the wizard immediately confessing. The instinct is to tell the populace to ignore that man behind the curtain.

The Impossible Speech

I have long advocated that Obama should go on television in the style of President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address in 1961, sitting in the Oval Office, hands-folded, none of Obama’s glitzy stage-craft, and simply level with the American people.

Before the speech, Obama could release the 28 pages from the congressional 9/11 report about Saudi support for the hijackers. He also could release other U.S. intelligence analyses on the role of the Saudis, Qataris and Turks in supporting Al Qaeda and ISIS. He could toss in what U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded about the 2013 sarin gas attack in Syria and about the 2014 shoot-down of MH-17 in Ukraine.

To the degree that the U.S. government had misled the American people, the President could fess up. He could explain how he and other government officials were seduced by the siren song of the propagandists who promised to line up public opinion behind a policy with no muss or fuss. He could admit that such manipulation of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government is simply wrong.

Obama could explain that he now realizes that elitism in the pursuit of the people’s subservience is incompatible with the principles of a Republic in which the citizens are the sovereigns of the nation. He could ask our forgiveness and recommit himself to the government transparency that he promised during the 2008 election. (While at it, he could pardon and apologize to the whistleblowers whom he has prosecuted and imprisoned.)

Having reestablished a foundation of trust – and repudiating the past decades of deception – he could explain what has to be done in Syria. Most significantly he could demand that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other countries helping ISIS and Al Qaeda shut down that assistance immediately or face severe financial and other consequences, “allies” or not.

Then, he could promise that – after reasonable stability is restored to Syria – the people of Syria would be allowed to decide who they want as their leaders. Right now, the key obstacle to a new power-sharing government in Syria is the West’s insistence that Assad can’t compete in future democratic elections. Yet, if President Obama is so sure that most Syrians hate Assad, nothing could demonstrate that better than Assad’s resounding defeat at the polls. Why avoid that?

But it’s become painfully obvious that Obama does not have it in him to give that speech or take such actions. It would require defying Official Washington’s neocon-dominated insider community and “allies,” such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel. To appease those forces, he will continue to play word games and to spin propaganda narratives. He is too much of an elitist to inform and empower the American people.

Thus, the Obama administration’s credibility gap won’t be closed. Indeed, it will widen into a chasm, with Official Washington sitting on one side and the vast majority of humanity on the other. The undeserving winners will include the terrorists of ISIS and Al Qaeda. There will be many losers who deserve better.

(Obama has scheduled an Oval Office speech for Sunday night on the topic of terrorism, to describe what he has been doing to protect Americans.)

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

A Marxist IQ for December by Norman Markowitz

Political Affairs — Sat, 05 Dec 2015 12:03:47 +0000

In 1899, Eduard Bernstein, a leading figure in the Social Democratic Party of Germany wrote a work, translated into English as Evolutionary Socialism, which argued that changes within capitalilsm meant that Marx's theory of revolutionary socialism was no longer relevant to the coming 20th century and had to be revised. Now there are some figures in Communist parties who are making similar arguments for the 21st century. This month's Marxist IQ looks engages some of these contentions past and present

1.Bernstein argued that Marx thinking in the Communist Manifesto and Capital was no longer accurate because

a. More and more members of the Proletariat(working class) were becoming small capitalists(middle class)

b. Capital itself was not becoming more concentrated(monopoly) but more diffuse

c. Socialism could be best achieved through social reforms(pensions, wages and hours legislation) and popular reform movements

d. all of the above

2. Many leading Marxists, including Rosa Luxembourg and Vladimir Lenin, subsequently challenged Bernstein's ideas, which came to be called revisionism Lenin contended that

a Socialism could only be established by Communists dropping out of society and establishing Communes

b. Socialism could only be established by Communists establishing an all powerful party that would plot to overthrow the state

c.Without a revolutionary party to both educate and organize workers in all areas of the class struggle, social movements would dissipate over time and all reforms would be ad hoc, which capitalists, organized as a class, would undermine and/or repeal when they could

d. Communists could best win support for socialism by organizing educational associations to win over the educated middle classes

3.Variations on Bernstein's ideas on the future of socialism have appeared over and over again in various Marxist Socialist and Communist Parties more more than a century. In the U.S., which of the following CPUSA leaders did not accept and militantly opposed such ideas when they took shape in the CPUSA

a. Jay Lovestone

b.Gus Hall

c. Earl Browder

d. John Gates

4. In the aftermath of the dismemberment of the Soviety Union, many capitalist thinkers proclaimed the death of "totalitarian Communism" and the global triumph of "free market liberal democracy." Some of these ideas are echoed today in some Communist parties by those call for parties to remove words like Lenininism and Communist from their names, dissolve into political coalitions, social movements, community organizations. These arguments would have merit perehaps if over the last 25 years

a. trade unions and peoples movements had seen a significant decline global poverty and inequality

b. peace movements had achieved a sharp decline in warfare and militarization globally

c. social movements had achieved increases in civil rights and civil liberties globally

d.all of the above

5. A century ago, at the dawn of the Russian Empire Socialist Revolution, Vladimir Lenin challenged right wing revisionism, particularly socialists supporting their nations in WWI, with the contentions that

a.The concentration of capital not only increased, but had given dominance to finance(bank/stock market)

b. the creation of international syndicates of finance capital called cartels in Europe, trusts in the U.S., had

produced militarization in lthe major industrialized countries fighting for raw materials, cheap labor, and captive markets globally

c. The advances in science and technology was producing less freedom, less rights, less security and opportunity for the working classes globally, this proving in real life the falsehood of rightwing revisionism

d. all of the above

Answers to last month's IQ

1.c

2.b

3.d

4.c

5.d

A Wake Up Call for those in Labor and the Left who Who Wait for Hillary Clinton by Norman Markowitz

Political Affairs — Sun, 29 Nov 2015 16:23:40 +0000

Below I have pasted two articles for both liberals, labor members of various left organizations and parties. In should be a wake up call for those who are observing while Hillary Clinton plays traditional patronage politics to win over leaders of trade unions and prominent Democrats to gain the Democratic presidential nomination. For trade union leaders out of touch with their members and seeking either positions in or protection from a Clinton administration, this makes a certain sense. For prominent Democrats used to taking their mass constituents for granted who seek either local patronage or positions for themselves and their underlings in a Clinton administration, this makes some sense. But for leaders of broad left organizations and parties, who will receive nothing directly from a Clinton administration, it makes little sense. Doing organizatoinal work and running propaganda interference for a candidate like Clinton before she is nominated under the delusion that this will somehow hold her to the left and/or strengthen the left organization or party among the masses of people doesn't make sense. Communists did this effectively after Franklin Roosevelt was elected President for example, both moving him to the left and advancing mass organizations and struggles and the CPUSA after his administration moved to the left, forming a center left coalition with the administration. Bernie Sanders is the candidate of the broad left. He has used the word socialism in a way that no one, including Franklin Roosevelt ever did. Full support for him to to and through the convention and opposition to those who endorses Clinton now is the only rational policy for left organizations and parties that seek to avoid business as usual cooptation and or marginalization. And rank and file people in trade unions, left organizations of all kinds and of course the liberal wing of the Democratic party are taking that position.

For many in labor and left organizations, the standard argument is that we will have to support Clnton when she is nominated against any Republican, who will represent the "ultra-right." That is a legitimate argument, but it should not be used as an excuse to follow those who are the right and ultra-right in our own ranks, who have used that argument over and over again to deny or apologize for both the failed leadership of the candidates that they have supported and their own failings

The first article below is from the Sanders campaign on the movement in ttiche SEIU against their leadership's endorsement of Hillary Clinton, an endorsement filled by misstatements about what her positions are

The seond is an article by Michael Blecher in Op-Ed News expressing confusion and anger about why liberals and Democrats are crticizing Sanders and avoiding the Elephant in the Room, which is of course Clinton's long record as a Center Right Democrat, in the tradition of her husband, the leader when he became President of the "Democratic Leadership Council," which sought to" rescue" the party from New Deal Great Society Democrats, anturyd called themselves "New Democrats" Their aversion to concepts like the Welfare State and Franklin Roosevelt's Economic Bill of Rights was even greater than then some self styled "21st century Communists" are to Lenin and even the term Communism. Bill Clinton was the most conservative Democratic President in the 20th century and worked with Republican Congresses to repeal both the Federal Aid to Families with Dependant Children legislaiton(1935) thus ending "Welfare as we have known it(a promise he made in 1992) from the far right and the separation of commercial from investment bankiing in the National Banking Act(1935) aka, Glass Steagall, the only two major pieces of New Deal legislation every repealed and both with disastrious consequences, the first to low income women and children, the second to the whole economy as it became a central factor in the stock market crash and "great recession of 2008 to the present.

I would take some issue with Blecher's overall view of the Democratic party(whose Southern white supremacists and corrupt political machines both cut deals with and worked to undermine the New Deal and great Society administrations. But his analysis of Clinton's positions is accurate and his interpretations as I see it quite fair.

Features

Rank and file revolt as SEIU endorses Clinton

By Meghan Brophy -

November 28, 2015

Photo via foxaudiovisual/Flickr

On November 17th, the International Executive Board of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) announced its early endorsement of Hillary Clinton. Despite SEIU’s leadership in the Fight for $15 movement, this announcement comes just days after Clinton opposed a nationwide $15/hour minimum wage, instead favoring a $12/hour, during a Democratic Party debate.

In addition to SEIU, the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the dockworkers’ International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the National Education Association (NEA) have endorsed Clinton. In total, these unions represent nearly 10 million working people across the U.S. and have massive resources. Labor for Bernie, a grassroots network of rank and file union members, released a statement on November 20th calling SEIU’s national endorsement “short-sighted and unprincipled” and based on a “failed strategy of purely transactional politics with corporate liberals.”

While National Nurses United and the American Postal Workers Union have endorsed Sanders on a national level, most of Sanders’ union support has come from thousands of rank and file union members and the dozens of locals that have endorsed him. SEIU Local 1984, New Hampshire’s second largest union, broke with their leadership to endorse Sanders. Across the country, SEIU members have overwhelmingly voiced their support for Bernie Sanders on social media.

For example, Linda Davis states: “Was she [Clinton] fighting for workers when she was on the board at Wal-Mart? Is she fighting for $15.00/hr for low wage employees? She is mouthing what she THINKS voters want to hear. Then she will do the bidding of those who bought and paid for her political office once she is elected. Bernie Sanders is the only one who is not owned by corporate America. If you cannot support Bernie Sanders, SEIU, then you do not truly support your members, and I cannot support YOU.”

Bernie Sanders’ campaign has put the issues ordinary people face into the spotlight and popularized socialism for a whole new generation. This presents an important opportunity to build movements and a new party of working people and youth. While Democratic Party “super delegates,” more than 150 elected officials, and corporate donors line up behind Hillary Clinton, Sanders has generated tremendous grassroots support with his bold demands and call for a “political revolution against the billionaire class.” Over 650,000 people have donated to Sanders campaign – the highest ever for any presidential campaign at this stage of the election cycle.

From serving on Wal-Mart’s Board of Directors to supporting a plethora of anti-worker policies, Hillary Clinton doesn’t deserve the support of working people. On the contrary, Sanders has consistently supported unionization efforts and working class movements. From a $15/hour minimum wage, to single-payer health care, to tuition-free public college, achieving Sanders’ platform will require a movement independent of the two parties of the billionaire class.

Over the past four decades, union membership in the U.S. has declined and many union leaders have made huge compromises with employers, giving up hard-won gains such as benefits and higher wages. Likewise, most major unions have continuously supported Wall Street Democrats, such as Hillary Clinton. In order to revive and rebuild a fighting labor movement, it is integral to break with these corporate politicians.

As SEIU members continue to fight for $15, the strategy of supporting the “pragmatic” candidate, Hillary Clinton, ultimately means settling for $12/hour and prolonging the status-quo. At a time when social movements around inequality and racism are exploding, the short-sightedness of the SEIU union leadership to endorse corporate-backed Clinton is astonishing. Instead of lining up with an ally of Wall Street, SEIU could have struck a blow to corporate politics and put its resources behind the growing number of activists supporting Bernie’s call for a political revolution. This also poses in front on SEIU members the need to build a democratic, fighting union that will be on frontlines of social struggles and for independent political action.

The political revolution called for by Sanders has to also include a rejection of the corporate-based Democratic Party and the building of a new political party of the 99%.

Through building a grassroots campaign, 15 Now, and electing an independent, open socialist to the Seattle City Council, Kshama Sawant and Socialist Alternative fought and won the first $15/hour minimum wage in a major U.S. city.

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Hillary Clinton's glaring vulnerability
(image by Salon.com) DMCA

Op-Ed News

Michael Blecher

I do not understand how any true Democrat can so blindly support Hillary Clinton. How can so many people call themselves progressives yet stubbornly endorse or stay silent to a candidate that stands in opposition to the very platform they're supposed to represent? I am appalled by how many articles in the past 48 hours attacked Bernie Sanders' stance on gun control. The saddest part about these attacks is they came largely from the Left.

If we want to argue that Bernie Sanders is not as progressive as we would like or is far from the perfect candidate, that's fair. Nevertheless, I am not a Democratic purist who feels my candidate will perfectly align with all my views. I feel simplistic idealism and this immature drive for perfectionism is both damaging and impossible (e.g., Lawrence Lessig's candidacy).

However, we can't lie to ourselves and act like Hillary Clinton resembles anything close to what the Left once represented. What has always amazed me about attacks from the Left on Bernie Sanders is how few mention that Hillary Clinton has taken a more conservative view on every issue (even on gun control at one point). Facts are facts and I'm tired of so called Democrats that defend Hillary religiously. The only criticism I ever see is the email scandal but the scary truth is Hillary Clinton's email scandal should not be the piece that significantly contributes to her downfall. It should be her past policies. But where are the Rachel Maddow's, or the Bill de Blasio's (who hypocritically wrote this article a year ago)? I can't help but be reminded of The Emperor's New Clothes when I think of the way the Left mischaracterizes Hillary Clinton.

Have we forgotten the fact that it was her husband who created and championed the term "New Democrat"? Have we overlooked the fact that it was her husband who pushed his party so far to the center that by 2000, many people couldn't tell the difference between the Republicans and Democrats? Have we forgotten that in 2008, Ann Coulter even stated that she wanted Hillary Clinton over John McCain because she felt Hillary was the more conservative candidate?

Many Democrats will blame Ralph Nader for costing Al Gore the 2000 election. How quickly it is that we forget the progressive ideas that Nader championed and that he was once, a Democrat. We forget the fact that Nader ran largely because the Democrats had moved too far to the center. 15 years later, we see the Democratic Party already crowning a candidate that reaffirms what many on the Left feared, the Democratic Party has lost its soul.

Now, Hillary Clinton will state her view on this issue or that issue has evolved and so on, or will reveal her "progressive platform" after being asked about her position multiple times but it will often if not always be largely shaped by the polls. This is not always a bad thing to have in a leader. We should want one that will try to represent the people. However, it can also be incredibly detrimental. At times, it is up to our leaders to vote in favor of their principles, to vote what they know is best for the country, and it is their job to then convince the majority of Americans why this is the right position. We saw this with FDR and the New Deal which was very unpopular at the time. We saw it again with LBJ and the Great Society. We saw it in Kennedy's A Strategy of Peace Speech. This is what great leaders do. They shift the direction the country is going in because they have a certain wisdom that the common individual may not yet have but will acquire.

We can continue down this path of electing those who will only help maintain the status quo, where significant changes to the middle class and poor are not likely to occur as the elected on both sides are corrupted by the lobbyists. Or we can fight against it, against the accusations that this party has abandoned the working-class, the poor, and the minorities. Obama pushed this country slightly to the left and in 2016, we have a wonderful opportunity to win the presidency regardless who our candidate is simply because the GOP will alienate so many voters in key swing states. But truth be told, Democrats may win the general election and still lose in the long run by electing the wrong person. Let us not return to the center by nominating Hillary Clinton. We have been burned once before by a Clinton.

What follows is a list of reasons why no one can strongly endorse Hillary Clinton and call themselves a Democrat. If you want to favor Hillary Clinton because you cling to the argument of electability or because you actually agree with the policies of the New Democrats, then that's valid. But, please do not tell me that you somehow endorse Hillary Clinton because she champions Democratic values the same way FDR or LBJ did. The values of the old Democrats and the 1990s New Democrats are very much in opposition to each other.

Let us now review every time Bill Clinton and/or Hillary either endorsed a view or helped implement a policy that the Left was supposed to oppose, shall we. Up first is Hillary Clinton. Let us review the various things she has gone on record saying.

Hillary Clinton said she adamantly opposed illegal immigration in 2003, and felt they should go after the employers for hiring them. In 2006, she only reemphasized her very Republican-like views on illegal immigration. On several occasions in 2007, she stated she was against providing driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. She also went on record saying that the thousands of minors that were crossing the border illegally into South Texas last year should be sent back, once we identify who the responsible adults in their families are.

In regards to abortion, in 2008, she stated that abortion should be "safe, legal and, rare, and by rare I mean rare." In fact, when we further investigate her record on abortion, she has not only stated this view at previous events, but she even advocated for abstinence. When videos were released earlier this year, exposing a so-called scandal at Planned Parenthood, Hillary Clinton did not give a veryringing endorsement of Planned Parenthood at first. She called the videos disturbing, and didn't oppose a congressional inquiry into the abortion process.

Perhaps, the oddest thing is that we even find inconsistencies when we examine her views on guns, which Hillary Clinton and the beltway media claims she is running to the left on when we compare her to Bernie Sanders. However, in 2008, she felt gun legislation was best left up to the states. In fact, she even mentioned her own love affair with guns. In 2005, she enhanced the narrative that gun violence can be partly attributed to the sale of violent video games, and tried to make the sale of such games to minors a federal offense.

Not only did she vote for the War in Iraq but her foreign policy has often been described as neoconservative. Even in her recent speech on the Iran Deal at the Brookings Institution, her speech could be described as very hawkish. In her most recent interview on the Daily Show, which occurred in 2014, (an interview I might add was appropriately scolded by Andrew Sullivan at the time), her foreign policy seemed to revolve around this idea that America needs to go around the world reminding other countries again why America is great.

Despite what certain liberal revisionists will tell us about her 2008 presidential campaign, her campaign was accused of using racist undertones. For example, sociologist Orlando Patterson, writing in the New York Times in 2008, discussed the implicit racism found in Hillary Clinton's now infamous 3 am commercial. Hillary Clinton's campaign also provided a photo of Obama in a turban to the Drudge Report. At the time, Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, described it as "the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we've seen from either party in this election." During the campaign, Bill Clinton also once made the remarks that a few years ago, Barack Obama would have been carrying their bags. At another point in the campaign, Bill Clinton insinuated Barack Obama doesn't loveAmerica. In addition, Hillary Clinton surrogates, such as Andrew Cuomo went on record saying that Obama can't "shuck and jive at a press conference"

In regards to civil liberties, she voted for the Patriot Act in 2001, and voted to reauthorize it in 2006. In 2005, she co-sponsored legislation that would criminalize the desecration of the American flag. In regards to the rights of the LBGT community, she was late to the party (no pun intended) when it came time to support gay marriage and even in the most recently disclosed emails, she didn't seem to be the most sensitive to same-sex parents. She also supported the Workplace Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which the ACLU strongly opposed because they felt it could lead to discriminatory behavior.

And let us not forget her ties to big banks and Wall Street as her top 10 cumulative donors included Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. In addition, her son-in-law manages a hedge fund that was formed by him and several former Goldman Sachs employees. Nor should we forget the role she has played in expanding the use of fracking, her reluctance to take a stand on the TPP agreement, and the delay in disclosing her view on the Keystone Pipeline. We should also remember how Elizabeth Warren condemned Hillary Clinton in 2005 for helping pass bankruptcy legislation that would help credit card companies at the expense of the American people. Let us also note that Hillary Clinton voted for the Wall Street bailout.

What is intriguing is how even today, I see Hillary Clinton presenting this faÃ§ade that she is more to the left than Bernie Sanders because she does not want to provide free tuition to rich kids. Of course, on this logic, Republican Presidential candidates in 2012 like Chris Christie and Mitt Romney should be hailed as Robin Hoods then as they offered a similar idea regarding social security. However, people on the Left knew the real motives behind this plan. There is also her complex relationship with charter schools, and her history as a board member for Wal-Mart.

Now, let us review Bill Clinton's presidency, and ask ourselves if we want another Clinton in the White House. Let us not forget how many people have suffered or died because of Bill Clinton. There was the federal crime bill that he signed in 1994. This bill included the "three strikes" law (i.e., if one is convicted of two prior felonies, a third felony conviction would lead to a life sentence). This bill also included mandatory minimum sentences for minor non-violent offenses (e.g. drug-related crimes). There was the so-called welfare reform bill. Peter Edelman, a policy maker that worked for Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton would resign in protest of this bill because he knew how much it would harm millions of poor children, and legal immigrants. I urge everyone to read the article written by Edelman in 1997, as many of his criticisms and concerns were proven to be valid. His article is also a reminder that many Democrats were on the right side of history (Tedd Kennedy called the bill "legislative child abuse"). I wish I could say the same for Bill Clinton.

Then there was the number of bills that Bill Clinton signed that helped Wall Street run amok. He signed the Gramm-Leach Bliley Act, which abolished the Glass-Steagall law. He made it possible for a derivative market to exist without any kind of regulation. Bill Clinton also appointed guys like Larry Summers to the Treasury. Larry Summers was not just one of the guys to blame for the 2008 Financial Crisis, but he even played a disturbing role in dismissing Gary Davis' concerns about Enron's suspicious tactics, and instead, preached this idea that overregulation was the real cause of the problem happening in California, not Enron.

The list goes on and on. Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement which significantly slashed the amount of manufacturing jobs in America. There was the Defense of Marriage Act which deprived same-sex couples of having the same benefits and rights that all other couples had. Bill Clinton also expanded the Drug War, and was perfectly okay with putting a mentally challenged person to death when he was Governor of Arkansas. In fact, many argued that it was a strategy he used to help him get elected as president. In 1996, Bill Clinton also signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. The New York Times would go on to describe this bill as "the law that keeps people on death row despite flawed trials".

I won't even review other scandals in depth, like the way Bill Clinton turned Lincoln's Bedroom into a fundraising condo, or the attack Bill Clinton unleashed on Sister Souljah which Jesse Jackson rightfully criticized. Nor will I go into detail about how many feminist organizations turned a blind eye every time Bill Clinton was accused of sexual misconduct, or the way they threw Monica Lewinsky under the bus, even blaming the whole scandal on her. As Susan Faludi once said when referring to the Lewinsky affair, "it sounds like she put the moves on him."

The fact is this list can actually be expanded. Nevertheless, the point has been made. It is time the so-called champions for the principles of the Left to scrutinize Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton's past. A vote for Bernie Sanders will send a ripple effect to the Democratic Party that the era of New Democrats is over. It is time we take our party back.

A Powerfful Isreali Critique of the Concept of "International Terrorism" and Wars without End Against it by Norman Markowitz

Political Affairs — Sun, 29 Nov 2015 15:19:06 +0000

Below I am cutting and pasting a poweful critique of the concept of "international terrorism" and the war against it by Uri Avnery, an Israeli intellectual and longtime critic of Israeli government policy. The article is in Tikkun, which seeks to be a force for progressive Jewish opinion, particularly among religious people, for peace and justice in the Middle East and the world. This critique deserves widespread reposting

Norman Markowitz

Editor's Note: Please share this widely. It is an important corrective to much of the public discourse that has led us into evil paths to deal with evil acts of others. You can read this onlien at: http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/uri-avnery-on-why-there-is-no-such-thing-as-international-terrorism

Uri Avnery

November 28, 2015

The Reign of Absurdiocy

There is no such thing as "international terrorism".

To declare war on "international terrorism" is nonsense. Politicians who do so are either fools or cynics, and probably both.

Terrorism is a weapon. Like cannon. We would laugh at somebody who declares war on "international artillery". A cannon belongs to an army, and serves the aims of that army. The cannon of one side fire against the cannon of the other.

Terrorism is a method of operation. It is often used by oppressed peoples, including the French Resistance to the Nazis in WW II. We would laugh at anyone who declared war on “international resistance”.

Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian military thinker, famously said that "war is the continuation of politics by other means". If he had lived with us today, he might have said: "Terrorism is a continuation of policy by other means."

Terrorism means, literally, to frighten the victims into surrendering to the will of the terrorist.

Terrorism is a weapon. Generally it is the weapon of the weak. Of those who have no atom bombs, like the ones which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which terrorized the Japanese into surrender. Or the aircraft which destroyed Dresden in the (vain) attempt to frighten the Germans into giving up.

Since most of the groups and countries using terrorism have different aims, often contradicting each other, there is nothing "international" about it. Each terrorist campaign has a character of its own. Not to mention the fact that nobody considers himself (or herself) a terrorist, but rather a fighter for God, Freedom or Whatever.

(I cannot restrain myself from boasting that long ago I invented the formula: "One man's terrorist is the other man's freedom fighter".)

MANY ORDINARY Israelis felt deep satisfaction after the Paris events. "Now those bloody Europeans feel for once what we feel all the time!"

Binyamin Netanyahu, a diminutive thinker but a brilliant salesman, has hit on the idea of inventing a direct link between jihadist terrorism in Europe and Palestinian terrorism in Israel and the occupied territories.

It is a stroke of genius: if they are one and the same, knife-wielding Palestinian teenagers and Belgian devotees of ISIS, then there is no Israeli-Palestinian problem, no occupation, no settlements. Just Muslim fanaticism. (Ignoring, by the way, the many Christian Arabs in the secular Palestinian "terrorist" organizations.)

This has nothing to do with reality. Palestinians who want to fight and die for Allah go to Syria. Palestinians – both religious and secular – who shoot, knife or run over Israeli soldiers and civilians these days want freedom from the occupation and a state of their own.

This is such an obvious fact that even a person with the limited IQ of our present cabinet ministers could grasp it. But if they did, they would have to face very unpleasant choices concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

So let's stick to the comfortable conclusion: they kill us because they are born terrorists, because they want to meet the promised 72 virgins in paradise, because they are anti-Semites. So, as Netanyahu happily forecasts, we shall "live forever by our sword".

TRAGIC AS the results of each terrorist event may be, there is something absurd about the European reaction to recent events.

The height of absurdiocy was reached in Brussels, when a lone terrorist on the run paralyzed an entire capital city for days without a single shot being fired. It was the ultimate success of terrorism in the most literal sense: using fear as a weapon.

But the reaction in Paris was not much better. The number of victims of the atrocity was large, but similar to the number killed on the roads in France every couple of weeks. It was certainly far smaller than the number of victims of one hour of World War II. But rational thought does not count. Terrorism works on the perception of the victims.

It seems incredible that ten mediocre individuals, with a few primitive weapons, could cause world-wide panic. But it is a fact. Bolstered by the mass media, which thrive on such events, local terrorist acts turn themselves nowadays into world-wide threats. The modern media, by their very nature, are the terrorist's best friend. Terror could not flourish without them.

The next best friend of the terrorist is the politician. It is almost impossible for a politician to resist the temptation to ride on the wave of panic. Panic creates "national unity", the dream of every ruler. Panic creates the longing for a "strong leader". This is a basic human instinct.

Francois Hollande is a typical example. A mediocre yet shrewd politician, he seized the opportunity to pose as a leader. "C'est la guerre!" he declared, and whipped up a national frenzy. Of course this is no "guerre". Not World War III. Just a terrorist attack by a hidden enemy.

Indeed, one of the facts disclosed by these events is the incredible foolishness of the political leaders all around. They do not understand the challenge. They react to imagined threats and ignore the real ones. They do not know what to do. So they do what comes naturally: make speeches, convene meetings and bomb somebody (no matter who and what for).

Not understanding the malady, their remedy is worse than the disease itself. Bombing causes destruction, destruction creates new enemies who thirst for revenge. It is a direct collaboration with the terrorists.

It was a sad spectacle to see all these world leaders, the commanders of powerful nations, running around like mice in a maze, meeting, speechifying, uttering nonsensical statements, totally unable to deal with the crisis.

THE PROBLEM is indeed far more complicated than simple minds would believe, because of an unusual fact: the enemy this time is not a nation, not a state, not even a real territory, but an undefined entity: an idea, a state of mind, a movement that does have a territorial base of sorts but is not a real state.

This is not a completely unprecedented phenomenon: more than a hundred years ago, the anarchist movement committed terrorist acts all over the place without having a territorial base at all. And 900 years ago a religious sect without a country, the Assassins (a corruption of the Arabic word for "hashish users"), terrorized the Muslim world.

I don't know how to fight the Islamic State (or rather Non-State) effectively. I strongly believe that nobody knows. Certainly not the nincompoops who man (and woman) the various governments.

I am not sure that even a territorial invasion would destroy this phenomenon. But even such an invasion seems unlikely. The Coalition of the Unwilling put together by the US seems disinclined to put "boots on the ground". The only forces who could try – the Iranians and the Syrian government army – are hated by the US and its local allies.

Indeed, if one is looking for an example of total disorientation, bordering on lunacy, it is the inability of the US and the European powers to choose between the Assad-Iran-Russia axis and the IS-Saudi-Sunni camp. Add the Turkish-Kurdish problem, the Russian-Turkish animosity and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the picture is still far from complete.

(For history-lovers, there is something fascinating about the reemergence of the centuries-old struggle between Russia and Turkey in this new setting. Geography trumps everything else, after all.)

It has been said that war is far too important to leave to the generals. The present situation is far too complicated to leave to the politicians. But who else is there?

ISRAELIS BELIEVE (as usual) that we can teach the world. We know terrorism. We know what to do.

But do we?

For weeks now, Israelis have lived in a panic. For lack of a better name, it is called "the wave of terror". Every day now, two, three, four youngsters, including 13-year old children, attack Israelis with knives or run them over with cars, and are generally shot dead on the spot. Our renowned army tries everything, including draconian reprisals against the families and collective punishment of villages, without avail.

These are individual acts, often quite spontaneous, and therefore it is well-nigh impossible to prevent them. It is not a military problem. The problem is political, psychological.

Netanyahu tries to ride this wave like Hollande and company. He cites the Holocaust (likening a 16-year old boy from Hebron to a hardened SS officer at Auschwitz) and talks endlessly about anti-Semitism.

All in order to obliterate one glaring fact: the occupation with its daily, indeed hourly and minutely, chicanery of the Palestinian population. Some government ministers don't even hide anymore that the aim is to annex the West Bank and eventually drive out the Palestinian people from their homeland.

There is no direct connection between IS terrorism around the world and the Palestinian national struggle for statehood. But if they are not solved, in the end the problems will merge – and a far more powerful IS will unite the Muslim world, as Saladin once did, to confront us, the new Crusaders.

If I were a believer, I would whisper: God forbid.

A Corrected Version and Updated Version of "The Missiles of November" by Norman Markowitz

Political Affairs — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 09:48:51 +0000

Below is an edited version of the comments I posted Yesterday. I did so in a very great rush and the typos proliferated, even by my standards. I apologize to all readers. Unfortunately, the news today on Thanksgiving is not good, as President Putin is sending air defense missiles to the Russian base at strike at any air plane threatening Russian planes. To make the crisis even more like Catch -22 or Dr. Strangelove than when I first posted the article , the follow below is from an AP news report today

"It will be ready to destroy any aerial target posing a potential danger to our aircraft," Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at a meeting with military officials. He also announced the severance of all military ties with Turkey and said that from now on, Russian bombers will always be escorted by fighters on combat missions over Syria.

Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, director of the German Marshall Fund in Ankara, said it is possible Russia could down a Turkish plane.

"Turkish planes violate the Syrian border daily, either for reconnaissance flights or for anti-IS operations," he said. "In the same way that Turkey argues it has rules of engagement, Russia could also declare its own rules of engagement, saying it has the right to protect the skies of its ally."

There is a very famous quote from Karl Marx which I will paraphrase, "history repeats itself. The first time as tragedy the second time as farce."

In October, 1962, the world was literally on the brink of a nuclear war, because a U.S. U-2 plane had discovered missiles sites in Cuba, the U.S. had established a naval blockade around Cuba and given the Soviets ultimatums about dismantling the sites, and Soviet ships were sailing toward Cuba.

The U.S. at the time had nuclear missiles pointed at the Soviet Union on the territory of its NAT0 ally Turkey, which we now know were an issue for the Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev. Eventually, the crisis was overcome, even though the then head of the Strategic Air Command, General Curtis Lemay, did everything he could to provoke a nuclear war, including sending his bombers toward Soviet radar, since it was his belief that the sooner the U.S. fought a nuclear war with the Soviets the better, because war was inevitable and the Soviets would only grow stronger over time.

Fortunately, President Kennedy removed Lemay who later was to become, along with General Edwin Walker, the real life inspiration for the character General Jack D. Ripper in Dr Strangelove

Today I awoke to find the mass media all a flutter about Turkey downing of a Russian jet, apparently in Turkish air space, in which at least two of the crew have been killed. According to the latest report, Mass media today is reporting that there are "Russian missiles" pointed at Turkey and Vladimir Putin's angry rhetorical response, referring to the attack as a "stab in the back" perpetrated by the accomplices to terrorists, has led to legitimate fears of an escalating crisis.

I said farce at the beginning of this article, but farces can also be sinister. Putin, everyone should remember is the head of state of a country that represents essentially the rump of what was the Soviet Union, a country which dismantled Soviet socialism and has struggled to replace it with a kind of state and crony capitalism, against all sorts of popular opposition--a country that has raw materials and great military power, but, frankly, compared to the Soviet Union little else.

Recently, Putin has been demonized in the press of the U.S. NAT0 bloc as a "new Stalin," an absurd formulation used to support "freedom fighters" from the Western Ukraine who identify with fascist henchman of Adolf Hitler, whom the Soviet people and the Stalin leadership defeated in the second World War.

Putin would of course not wish to be identified with Nikita Khruschev, who was the Soviet leader during the Cuban missile crisis. Accused of installing "Communism" in Cuba. If Curtis Lemay were still alive, he might accuse Putin of seeking to install "Communism" in Syria and see the last 24 years of Russian history as an elaborate charade to fool the "West," as Ronald Reagan saw detente in the 1970s, accusing Henry Kissinger of being "soft on Communism" in its own way the equivalent of calling Putin a revolutionary socialist

But there are real dangers in this farce. Turkey is aiding rightwing Muslim forces against the Damascus government, as are the Saudis and the U.S. and others. Russia has entered the conflict with its military power attacking various targets of the uprising, including the Al Quaida spinoff, ISIS. The Obama administration has criticized Russia for failing to join in a coordinated attack against ISIS

But nothing in reality is coordinated among those who have turned the region into a war zone and how can it be when the various outside powers are supporting and opposing various factions, including of course, ISIS, whose attempt to establish a barbarous feudal theocratic regime has brought about the legitimate wrath of people through the world

Russia today is not the Soviet Union, but NAT0 still exists. If Russia were the Soviet Union, the prospects for peace would in effect, I would say, be greater, since the Soviets struggled to implement a policy of peace and used education to advance that policy among the Soviet people.

I doubt the sort of rhetoric Putin has engaged in today would have been used in the Soviet Union, although his points about Turkey aiding terrorists are certainly valid

What would happen if a conflict between Turkey and Russia, enemies since the 17th century, did break out into war? What given the conditions of the NATO alliance, would the major NATO states do--the U.S. Britain, France, and Germany?

These are the sorts of questions which should be raised today, along with an understanding that NATO itself is essentially a sort of appendix that serves no real purpose in the post-Cold War era except to act the way Marx saw Czarist Russia in the 19th century, the "gendarme" or policeman of Europe, in this case, the policeman of the world

Diplomacy, at least the best of old fashioned diplomacy, would be to work out a policy of joint international action in Syria to eliminate ISIS and disarm the various factions, and since Russia is really the only actor not opposed to the Damascus government, offer to end the support for the Kiev government and its fascist minions in exchange for Russia ending its support for the Damascus government and supporting a policy of both peace and democratic political reconstruction in Syria.

That would make sense. unless one wants to do a remake of Dr. Strangelove, with Donald Trump as General Jack D. Ripper, Ben Carson as General Buck Turgidson, and perhaps, Hillary Clinton as President Muffly Muffly

The "Missiles of November" by Norman Markowitz

Political Affairs — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 11:43:14 +0000

There is a very famous quote from Karl Marx which I will paraphrase, "history repeats itself. The first time as tragedy the second time as farce."

The U.S. at the time had nuclear missiles pointed at the Soviet Union on the territory of its NAT0 allty Turkey, which we now know were an issue for the Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev. Eventually, the crisis was overcome, even though the then head of the Strategic Air Command,General Curtis Lemay, did everything he could to provoke a nuclear war, including sending his bombers toward Soviet radar, since it was his belief that the sooner the U.S. fought a nuclear war with the Soviets the better, because war was inevitable and the Soviets would only grow stronger over time.

Fortunately, President Kennedy removed Lemay who later was to become, along with General Edwin Walker, the real life inspiration for the character General Jack D. Ripper in Dr Strangelove

Today I awoke to find the mass media all a flutter about Turkey downing of a Russian jet, apparently in Turkish air space, in which at least two of the crew have been killed. According to the latest report. Mass media today is reporting that there are "Russian missiles" pointed at Turkey and Vladimir Putin's angry rhetorical response, referring to the attack as a "stab in the back" perpetrated by the accomplices to terrorists, has led to legitimate fears of an escalating crisis.

I said farce at the beginning of this article , but farces can also be sinister. Putin, everyone should remember is the head of state of a country that represents essentially the rump of what was the Soviet Union, a country which dismantled Soviet socialism and has struggled to deplace it with a kind of state and croney capitalism, against all sorts of popular opposition--a country that has raw materials and great military power, but, frankly, compared to the Soviet Union little else.

Recently, Putin has been demonized in the press of the U.S. NAT0 bloc as a "new Stalin," an absurd formulation used to support "freedom fighters" from the Western Ukraine who iidentify with fascist henchman of Adolf Hitler, whom the Soviet people and the Stalin leadersihp defeated in the second World War.

Putin would of course not wish to be identified with Nikita Khruschev, who was the Soviet leader during the Cuban missile crisis. accused of installing "Communism" in Cuba. If Curtis Lemay were still alive, he might accuse Putin of seeking to install "Communism" in Syria and see the last 24 years of Russian history as an elaborate charade to fool the "West," as Ronald Reagan saw detente in the 1970s, accusing Henry Kissinger of being "soft on Communism" in its own way the equivalent of calling Putin a revolutinary socialist

But there are real dangers in this farce. Tuirkey is aiding rightwing Muslim forces against the Damascus government, as are the Saudis and the U.S. and others . Russia has entered the conflict with its military power attacking various targets of the of uprising, including the Al Quaida spinoff, ISIS. The Obama administration has criticized Russia for failing to join in a coordinated attack against ISIS

But nothing in reality is coordinated and who can it be when outside powers are supporting and opposing various factions, including of course, ISIS, whose attempt to establish a barbarous feudal theocratic regime has still the legimate wrath of people through the world

I doubt the sort of rhetoric Putin has engaged in today would have been used in the Soviet Union, although his points about Turkey aiding terrorists are certainly valid

What would happen if a conflict between Turkey and Russia, enemies since the 17th century did break out into war. What given the conditions of the NAT0 alliance, would the the major NAT0 states do--the U.S. Britain, France, Germany?

These are the sorts of questions which should be raised today, along with an understanding that the NAT0 bloc itself is essnetially a sort of appendix that serves no real purpose in the post Cold War era except to act the way Marx saw Czarist Russia in the 19th century, the "gendarme" or policeman of Europe, in this case, the policeman of the world

That would make sense. unless one wants to do a remake of Dr. Strangelove, with Donald Trump as General Jack D. Ripper, Ben Carson as General Buck Turgidson, and pehaps, Hillary Clinton as President Muffly Muffly

The Ontario Federation of Labor Speaks Out in International Terrorism by Norman Markowitz

Political Affairs — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 18:06:41 +0000

This statement by the Ontario Federation of Labor, representing one million workers in Canada's largest province, is a powerful connecting the attacks in Paris with a whole pattern of escalating violence through the world and also holding its new government, which won an election by pledging to break with the reactionary and racist policy of its Conservative Party predecessor, accountable. Above that I have posted a cartoon which enhances the message in the statement

Norman Markowitz

OFL Statement on the Paris Attacks, Refugees and the Path to Peace

Inbox

Portside Labor <labor-moderator@portside.org>

Nov 19 (4 days ago)

to PORTSIDELABOR

Portside Labor

	OFL Statement on the Paris Attacks, Refugees and the Path to Peace Sid Ryan November 18, 2015 Ontario Federation of Labor There can be no justification or excuse for the mass killings of innocent people of Paris. The horror experienced in Paris last week is not isolated, it has been played out with ruthless regularity in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine and many other countries, sometimes at the hands of Western forces. While Western hearts have been choked by the anguish of Parisians, we must also extend our horror and concern for millions of innocents throughout the world.
	, ,
	The coordinated killings that rocked Paris over the weekend are an unspeakable horror. Ontario workers are united in our sympathy and solidarity with the victims, their families, friends and, indeed, the people of France who have been shaken by these attacks. However, Canadians who have recently rejected former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s divisive politics now face an important test of our resolve. We must not allow the horrific nature of this atrocity to drag Canada back into the racism, Islamophobia and war-mongering that characterized our last government. The burden to hold firm on the change that we demanded in the October election is jointly shared between Canadians and our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. There has already been incredible pressure on the new Prime Minister to abandon the change he promised Canadians and to revert to Harper’s politics of fear. It is up to Canadians – of every creed and colour – to stay firm in our commitment to receiving 25,000 Syrian refugees before the end of the year as a start and an end to the Canadian air strikes and military intervention in the Middle East that are contributing to the creation of more refugees and the radicalization of militant reactionaries in the region. Here in Ontario, news soon traveled of a fire that was deliberately set at a Peterborough mosque, in what one can only assume is a racist backlash to the incidents in France. It is an important warning that we must refuse to allow ourselves to be dragged into Islamophobic prejudice, discrimination and harassment. When Canadians allow themselves to be divided and to apply blanket stereotypes that dehumanize an entire population of people, we validate the objectives of terrorists and play directly into the hands of hawkish Conservatives who now seek to exploit our fear. As we talk to our co-workers, friends, family and our political representatives, we must remind them that many refugees are fleeing violence and war. They are not the perpetrators of murder, they are the victims of it, and they deserve safety just as much as we do. Canadians have a humanitarian obligation to open our borders and our homes in these times of crisis, just as we has done on so many historic occasions in the past. There can be no justification or excuse for the mass killings of innocent people of Paris. These are the tactics of terror and they are designed to instigate further retaliation and conflict. We cannot play into that ploy. Western bombing, drones, repression and killing in Syria or neighbouring countries will only provoke more awful terror in reply, just as past Western military attacks in the region have contributed to the creation of millions more innocent refugees, magnified the devastation, and fueled the recruitment efforts of the same forces that they sought to eliminate. We must find another way to end the conflict. What Syrians truly need is diplomacy instead of bombs and military strikes. It is time for countries like Canada – and other G20 countries – to play a pivotal role in replacing power politics with a process of conflict resolution that empowers the people of Syria to determine their own collective future. The horror experienced in Paris last week is not isolated, it has been played out with ruthless regularity in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine and many other countries, sometimes at the hands of Western forces. While Western hearts have been choked by the anguish of Parisians, we must also extend our horror and concern for millions of innocents throughout the world. On behalf of the more than one million workers who are members of the Ontario Federation of Labour, I am calling on Canadians to oppose any backlash against refugees, migrants, Muslims and racialized people around the world. The strongest and boldest reaction we can have to terror is to say no to war and hatred, to open our doors to the victims of violence throughout the world and to assume a peacekeeping role that generations of Canadians have demanded. In solidarity, Sid Ryan President, Ontario Federation of Labour

The Ontario Federation of Labor Speaks Out in International Terrorism by Norman Markowitz

Political Affairs — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 18:06:36 +0000

Norman Markowitz

OFL Statement on the Paris Attacks, Refugees and the Path to Peace

Inbox

Portside Labor <labor-moderator@portside.org>

Nov 19 (4 days ago)

to PORTSIDELABOR

Portside Labor

	OFL Statement on the Paris Attacks, Refugees and the Path to Peace Sid Ryan November 18, 2015 Ontario Federation of Labor There can be no justification or excuse for the mass killings of innocent people of Paris. The horror experienced in Paris last week is not isolated, it has been played out with ruthless regularity in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine and many other countries, sometimes at the hands of Western forces. While Western hearts have been choked by the anguish of Parisians, we must also extend our horror and concern for millions of innocents throughout the world.
	, ,
	The coordinated killings that rocked Paris over the weekend are an unspeakable horror. Ontario workers are united in our sympathy and solidarity with the victims, their families, friends and, indeed, the people of France who have been shaken by these attacks. However, Canadians who have recently rejected former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s divisive politics now face an important test of our resolve. We must not allow the horrific nature of this atrocity to drag Canada back into the racism, Islamophobia and war-mongering that characterized our last government. The burden to hold firm on the change that we demanded in the October election is jointly shared between Canadians and our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. There has already been incredible pressure on the new Prime Minister to abandon the change he promised Canadians and to revert to Harper’s politics of fear. It is up to Canadians – of every creed and colour – to stay firm in our commitment to receiving 25,000 Syrian refugees before the end of the year as a start and an end to the Canadian air strikes and military intervention in the Middle East that are contributing to the creation of more refugees and the radicalization of militant reactionaries in the region. Here in Ontario, news soon traveled of a fire that was deliberately set at a Peterborough mosque, in what one can only assume is a racist backlash to the incidents in France. It is an important warning that we must refuse to allow ourselves to be dragged into Islamophobic prejudice, discrimination and harassment. When Canadians allow themselves to be divided and to apply blanket stereotypes that dehumanize an entire population of people, we validate the objectives of terrorists and play directly into the hands of hawkish Conservatives who now seek to exploit our fear. As we talk to our co-workers, friends, family and our political representatives, we must remind them that many refugees are fleeing violence and war. They are not the perpetrators of murder, they are the victims of it, and they deserve safety just as much as we do. Canadians have a humanitarian obligation to open our borders and our homes in these times of crisis, just as we has done on so many historic occasions in the past. There can be no justification or excuse for the mass killings of innocent people of Paris. These are the tactics of terror and they are designed to instigate further retaliation and conflict. We cannot play into that ploy. Western bombing, drones, repression and killing in Syria or neighbouring countries will only provoke more awful terror in reply, just as past Western military attacks in the region have contributed to the creation of millions more innocent refugees, magnified the devastation, and fueled the recruitment efforts of the same forces that they sought to eliminate. We must find another way to end the conflict. What Syrians truly need is diplomacy instead of bombs and military strikes. It is time for countries like Canada – and other G20 countries – to play a pivotal role in replacing power politics with a process of conflict resolution that empowers the people of Syria to determine their own collective future. The horror experienced in Paris last week is not isolated, it has been played out with ruthless regularity in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine and many other countries, sometimes at the hands of Western forces. While Western hearts have been choked by the anguish of Parisians, we must also extend our horror and concern for millions of innocents throughout the world. On behalf of the more than one million workers who are members of the Ontario Federation of Labour, I am calling on Canadians to oppose any backlash against refugees, migrants, Muslims and racialized people around the world. The strongest and boldest reaction we can have to terror is to say no to war and hatred, to open our doors to the victims of violence throughout the world and to assume a peacekeeping role that generations of Canadians have demanded. In solidarity, Sid Ryan President, Ontario Federation of Labour

Imperialism Today, a Scorecard to Understand What Is Happeningby Norman Markowitz

Political Affairs — Sat, 21 Nov 2015 16:10:16 +0000

I am an historian, not a philosopher. I always try to compile and interpret information based on the context from which it comes, its ideological framework and whether it is reliable or accurate in what it presents and whether it is valid, meaning that, even if it is accurate, does the information really support the arguments made from it.

Contemporary mass media presents a blizzard of information claiming to be fact in a matter of minutes, in words and pictures and videos and of and do it yourself social media It is as if for most people, the forest and the trees never end, so the easiest solution is to stay on the main road, in the CNN middle lane, the Fox right lane, or, occasionally turn to MSNBC for a short left turn.

Let me try to present first information, then interpretation, then a "scorecard"

1.Terrorists, meaning those who deliberately launch murderous attacks on civilians, innocent people, to gain recognition and support for various causes, last week launched murderous attacks in Paris. And now in Mali

Interpretation. Terrorist attacks were once called the "tyranny of the weak". They are launched by those who don't have the strength to launch a conventional military or guerrilla war or are losing that war. They are police rather than military questions. Usually they unite the very forces that they are attacking and frighten off potential supporters.

If you want to help terrorists, the best thing to do is to give them the recognition that they seek, portray them as having great power that they do not have, use their acts to attack the religious/ethno-cultural groups that they seek to gain power over.

2.These specific acts come from supporters of a self-proclaimed "Islamic State" ISIS,which had seized significant territory in war torn Syria.

This group derives from Al Quaida in Iraq, which came into existence in Iraq after the Bush administration ousted the Baath regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Al Quaida in Iraq was a product of the Al Quaida Group led by Osama bin Laden, pledged to fight "holy wars" to establish fundamentalist theocratic societies in all Muslim countries and drive out all "non Muslim" institutions , ideas and people who did not conform to their theocratic definitions. Although Al Quaida was responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, it was a direct creation of the Reagan administration funded CIA managed war against the revolutionary Communist-led government of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Those who became Al Quaida later were called "freedom fighters" hailed in U.S. NATO bloc media, praised by intellectuals in many nations, even though their murderous tactics were the same then as now and their ideology was the same, except of course that the anti-communist, anti-Soviet components of their ideology were paramount at the time. After the destruction of both the revolutionary government of Afghanistan and the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Treaty allies, Al Quaida turned on its former benefactors, who now became its major targets.

Interpretqtion.

The CIA beginning in the early 1950s warned of "blowback" meaning the unintended consequences of actions over time, even successful ones.

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration sought to restore and escalate the Cold War as a foundation for its near tripling of the military budget. It also sought to preserve and protect the U.S. NATO bloc based transnational oil companies control of the major oil region of the world in alliance with feudal regimes and to strike against Iran, with whom the U.S. Was in a semi state of war, having frozen Iranian assets in 1980 and ended diplomatic relations.

To accomplish those goals it supported Iraq's Baath government in its war of aggression against Iran, sought to cover up Iraq's use of poison gas against Iran, and coaxed its feudal allies,the Saudis and Kuwaitis to "loan" Hussein billions to fight the war. At the same time it through the CIA worked closely with the Pakistani rightist dictatorship of General Zia to establish border bases and carry forward the "contra war" against Afghanistan and its Soviet allies. After the end of the Iran-Iraq war and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Bush administration sought to drop Hussein but it wasn't so easy. He invaded Kuwait.

But imperialism sees every disaster, especially disasters of its own making as opportunities. To keep the tens of billions of dollars flowing into the military industrial complex and the oil flowing, the first gulf war was fought and an easy victory ensued against an isolated enemy. Hussein was kept in power to be used as a bulwark against Iran while Iraq was hit with sanctions which produced more suffering for the people of Iraq. Warlords and religious fanatics imposed a regime of terror and murder on the people of Afghanistan. None of this mattered to Bush or his successor, Clinton, who saw the destruction of the Soviet Union as the completion of their Crusade/Jihad.

bin Laden didn't see it that way. The scion of the family that had the largest private fortune in the region, he and the tens of thousand who had fought as "freedom fighters" took their Holy war" back to their own countries and began to launch attacks in Europe and Africa against civilian targets. Most of their crimes were against the people of Muslim countries who refused to bow down to their theocratic tyranny.

However, the whole military intelligence structures of the U.S. NATO bloc for half a century had been created to fight Communist parties, peoples front coalitions, national liberation struggles, even neutralist regimes like India and peace movements. Groups like Al Quaida and governments like the Taliban had been pawns and allies, with their major supporters and founders, the Saudi billionaires and the rightwing regime, still allies. So they weren't taken seriously in spite of their actions. There was no coordinated effort to deal with them, intelligence warnings were not analyzed and the catastrophe of the 9/11 attacks resulted.

For Bush II, this also was a great opportunity to declare a global world war against terrorism, double the military budget in his first term,and invade Iraq a second time to achieve regime change, get rid of Hussein, the "Axis of Evil" ally of Al Quaida, who with his "rogue state" brethren, Iran and North Korea. Of course none of this was true until the invasion and occupation brought Al Quaida into Iraq, conflicts between religious denominations in Iraq led the Saudis to begin to support their religious friends in Iraq, Turkey, a NATO bloc country elected a government which plays its own game of Islamic religious politics, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict deepened with a rightist Israeli government seeking to distract its own people and world opinion by warning of an Iranian nuclear threat

The sentence above ran on as did the crisis that President Obama inherited.

As a state Senator and U.S. Senator Obama had been a strong critic of the Bush policies in Iraq. But now he finds himself in a more moderate version of regime change in Syria against another albeit different Baath regime in a medium sized country without oil reserves. After 9/11, the stock markets boomed, especially military and oil stocks. The bin laden family greatly expanded its wealth while its its"black sheep" Obamsa hid in plain sight in Pakistan while the Pakistani government took billions in U.S. "Aid" to fight terrorism. Military stocks are booming again after the Paris attacks, rightwing Republicans who can always be expected to learn nothing and try to take advantage of everything from history, are recycling their Vietnam war mythology by blaming Obama for "withdrawing" from Iraq.

Now for the scorecard. Who is on whose side?

Turkey, a NATO state, is backing its own religious rebels/"jihadis" while it increases its oppression against its Kurdish minority which the U. S. Has supported in Iraq. Russia,to the anger of the U.S. has attacked ISIS targets and also other religious/"jihadi" targets supported by the various NATO states and the Saudis.The U.S sees this as an attempt to gain Russian influence in the region and support the Baath regime. Of course, everyone else from ISIS to the various factions supported by everyone else is trying to destroy the Baath regime

So our scorecard must be incomplete because none of the states in conflict are clearly on anyone's side, not even their own. Imperialist rivalries always become "games" of cross and double cross where the masses of people are either pawns and/or, to use the contemporary term, collatorial damage

Syria today is a war zone filled with rival warring factions armed and aided by foreign powers. It is a precursor of the kind of world that contemporary imperialism is creating. The Syrian refugee crisis is a symptom of all what is happening, a symptom that must be addressed and addressed now, but one that in itself will not resolve the general crisis

First, the United Nations, which was established to prevent war, provide aid to the victims of war, and also play a central role in rehabilitation and development of war torn regions should serve as the center of the peace effort. The Obama administration should support the invoking of the UN's Human Rights Charter against those in Europe and the U.S. are refusing to accept refugees, calling for policies that deny people of the Muslim faith basic civil rights and equal protection of the law.

Then we can begin to think of a different scorecard--one that measures progress for the whole region in terms of employment, living standards, and quality of life, not the value of military and oil stocks and territory conquered. And of regional peacekeeping which would seek to integrate Iran, Israel, and Turkey into the region, making them into a part of a solution to the regional problem. Then of course, "regime change" might be addressed in an anti-imperialist way against the Feudal Saudi and Gulf State oil enterprise zones, monstrous regimes which mock everything the United Nations stands for.

Of course that is a scorecard for a new game, which we might call anti-imperialism or Peoples Internationalism, the antidote to "globalization"

So far, the only politician in U.S. National politics who is talking in such terms is Senator Bernie Sanders whom "mainstream" mass media, old fashioned Democratic Machine politicians and equally old fashioned Sam Gompers style business unionist leaders are seeking to ignore.

Ignoring Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, and others through the world who are saying enough is enough to imperialism today out of fear of the "regime change" that they offer through democratic means to the people of their own countries can only make the present crisis a precursor to bigger ones in the future

A Marxist IQ on Elections and Revolutionary Struggle by Norman Markowitz

Political Affairs — Sat, 14 Nov 2015 21:27:33 +0000

U.S. elections traditionally take place in the first week of November. For that reason, I have dedicated this post election Marxist IQ to the question of elections and how it fits into Marxist thought as it has evolved .

1. The struggle for universal suffrage, the right to vote, was led throughout Europe in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries by

Political parties which called themselves liberal
Anarchist organizations
Marxist Socialist parties which called themselves Social Democratic or Labor
Political parties which called themselves conservative

2. From the Communist Manifesto to the present, Marxist movements and parties have defined the struggle for “democracy” as

The struggle for taxation with representation
The struggle for political rights that would enable the working class to obtain economic and social rights
The struggle to create “free market economies”
The struggle to abolish government

3.As workers began to achieve the right to vote in elections in many European countries Karl Marx warned that

Workers must support the existing parties in order to protect themselves
Workers should not participate in the existing political system because they will be coopted
Workers must make sure that they register and vote
Workers must establish labor based socialist parties so as not to have to choose every few years what party of the ruling capitalist class would govern them for the next few years.

4.Presidential Elections in U.S. history have played a role in accelerating far reaching changes, some of a revolutionary nature. Which of the following elections did not usher in major changes in U.S. politics and society in the interests of labor and the people

The election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932
The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860
The election of Bill Clinton in 1992
The election of Lyndon Johnson in 1964

5 Even by modern capitalist definitions of democracy, which concern free and fair elections, the U.S. ranks low among major industrialized countries because

There is no check on the use of money by individuals and parties in elections
The turnout among eligible voters for a variety of reasons is the lowest in the developed world, in non-presidential elections usually below 50%
Campaigns are usually waged for many months on the basis of “negative advertising” principles, personal attacks, appeals to traditional ethnic and gender biases, exaggerated and/or invented domestic and international scandals and crises
All of the above

Answers to Last month’s Marxist IQ

1.c

2.b

3.d

4.d

5.c

On the 98th Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and Transformation of 20th Century History by Norman Markowitz

Political Affairs — Sun, 08 Nov 2015 20:34:21 +0000

Yesterday, November 7^th, was the 98^th Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, establishing what was then called Soviet Russia, the first revolutionary socialist state in history .

That state and its successor, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, went out of existence in 1991. The dominant capitalist propaganda prefers to say that it “imploded” which after forty four years of cold war and an estimated ten trillion dollars in U.S. cold war related military spending alone is a great example of the old Yiddish term of chutzpah, or overweening arrogance. I prefer the term counter-revolution, which was what the Soviets feared in 1917 but we will get back to that.

Today, capitalist propaganda outside of those brave who navigate through the Internet to search for truth remains supreme in official commercial and corporate media, even though the underlying capitalist system itself is becoming very shaky.

There are even some Communists in many countries today who use terms like “Stalinism” and “totalitarianism” to disassociate themselves from the Soviet past believing that this will enable them to move closer to the masses of people in their countries, as “twenty-first century” Communists

So far, it hasn’t worked too well. In reality, it has led them to move closer to the very capitalists who hailed the downfall of the U.S.S.R., as some combination of a failed experiment and the “death of Communism” and continue to move ahead with their grand design to turn the 21^st century into a high tech version of the 19^th century.

Perhaps it is time a day after the 98^th anniversary to take stock of the Soviet Revolution in terms of its experience and achievement. I will try to do that in a short sketch.

First, the Soviet Union was not an experiment, failed or otherwise. Experiments take place in laboratories, under controlled conditions, not in real life. Nor was the Soviet Revolution, “storming heaven,” a doomed effort, as Marx wrote about the Paris Commune and anti-Communists have written about every socialist revolution. The Soviet Revolution took place in a huge empire constituted 1/6 of the earth’s surface, which as its enemies discovered could not be encircled and destroyed as the Paris Commune, or the Hungarian Soviet of 1919.

The Bolshevik Revolution was not a “coup” as both old anti-Soviet defenders of capitalism and “new Russian” capitalists smugly assert. It was a political revolution which continued a revolutionary process that began in March(on the calendar in use in the advanced countries) and moved forward, as the Czarist autocracy was overthrown, Soviets developed, and a provisional government sought desperately to both keep Russia in the war and thwart the anti-capitalist, anti –landlord upsurge of the masses. the masses of people in motion determined that process, and the Bolsheviks, against great odds, by representing their desires and interests to end the war, end the suffering, poverty and inequality of Czarist society, led them to victory in establish both a government of the Soviets and a government committed to constructing socialism.

In the aftermath of November 7, the Soviet government actually proved what Socialists through the world had been proclaiming since 1914—that the war was an imperialist war among rival capitalist states. It proved that by publishing the Czar’s secret treaties with its allies. To save the revolution, it signed an onerous peace with Imperial Germany.

Then the revolution was attacked by all, from the defeated Central Powers to the victorious allies. With working class movements and socialist parties as its only friends it then fought a devastating Civil War and became the center of a new revolutionary socialist world movement, movement which revived the term from 1848, Communist, after 1919. It the process, it took Marxist Socialism, which as theory had identified itself with the industrial and industrializing countries Western Europe and North America, and in practice, had built parties and trade union movements primarily in those regions, and made in fully a world movement.

The Soviets became the first state in modern history to make anti-imperialism the foundation of its foreign policy. As such, through the 3^rd or Communist International(Comintern), centered it helped to develop commissions to aid in the construction of both revolutionary socialist (Communist) parties, anti-imperialist, national liberation movements, trade union federations, peasant organizations, organizations to defend the rights of national minorities and the foreign born, and organizations of youth and students. The Comintern was never really the pawn of the Soviet Union, except in anti-Communist propaganda, but the Soviets played an essential role in its establishment and development

The Soviet Revolution directly influenced the anti-imperialist movement in China, the formation of a Communist Party of China, and the eventual triumph of the Chinese people over Japanese Imperialism and the Chinese Socialist Revolution, with the establishment of the Peoples Republic of China on October 1.

It influenced positively the rise of the Indian national independence movement and the establishment of a non-Communist, non-aligned India after WWII, under the leadership of Nehru, whose commitment to a mixed economy form of socialism was influenced directly by the planning achievements of the Soviet five year plans.

Of course, the Soviet revolution did produce its antithesis, fascism, an open terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary sectors of the capitalist class. But if Lenin was correct, and I think he was, the development of finance capital which had produced global imperialism was militarizing societies and liquidating liberal democratic institutions through the world.

Had the Soviet revolution not taken place, imperialism would not only have assumed its fascist form, in all probability, but would have created the hellish world that Jack London foresaw in the Iron Heel at the turn of the century and the great science fiction writer, Philip K. Dick, saw in his fictional history, The Man in the High Castle, which looked at what the U.S. and the world would have been if Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan won WWII, divided up the U.S., restored slavery in Africa, and carried out racist mass murder through much of the world. In the process of playing the leading role in the defeat of the fascist Axis, its anthithesis, the Soviet Union also played the leading role in ending the colonial empires which had committed monstrous crimes over generations through Africa and Asia.

Before the Second World War, the Soviet Union not only became center of anti-imperialism through the world but it also served as the center for global anti-fascism in the 1930s. The Soviets aided anti-fascist people’s front movements through the world; advocated in the League of Nations a policy of anti-fascist collective security against aggressor nations; was the only major nation to provide arms and aid to the Spanish Republic when it was attacked by Hitler and Mussolini supported fascist forces.

The Soviets did sign a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany after their hopes to stop Hitler over Czechoslovakia were dashed by Neville Chamberlain who gave Hitler everything he wanted in Central Europe to avoid a new World War that he feared would unleash new socialist revolutions and also point Hitler toward attacking the Soviets.

Through most of their history, the Soviets were playing for time against powerful states and alliance systems which sought to destroy them. They were also building the first socialist state in history under the worst possible conditions, economic backwardness in terms of machinery and skilled workers to begin with, the devastations of war and revolution, and constant serious threats from abroad.

Their size was both their strength and their weakness. It made it difficult for enemies to destroy them but at the same time it made overall socialist development through a planned economy extremely difficult under any circumstance, given the ethno cultural diversity, the geographical barriers, and of course the lack of access to capital for development. Under those circumstances, what the Soviets did achieve under such conditions, although their myriad of enemies would never admit it, far surpassed their failures and defeats in real life.

One cannot rewrite history, however one would wish to. Certainly one would have wanted, as Lenin did, a collective leadership to emerge in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, not the factional struggle which lead to the triumph of Joseph Stalin and the establishment of a personality cult around Stalin, but it did not happen.

One would want the Stalin leadership, faced with opposition in the countryside to the collectivization under the first five year plan, to have pulled back, acted to isolate the Kulak opposition, instead of using massive force in the form of the Red Army, which led to disastrous conflicts, many peasants caught in the middle, disruptions of agricultural production which produced famine, the spread of disease, which always accompanies famine, and huge loss of life.

And one would want the Stalin leadership not to have initiated the mass purges in the CPSU after 1934 which took the form of mass hysteria and assumed a life of their own, undermining Soviet society and at the same time offering all of the Soviets enemies from Nazi Germany to the Hearst Press in the U.S. ammunition to attack the Soviet Union.

But one would have wanted Winston Churchill to have acknowledged the famine in Bengal and accepted U.S. and Canadian aid during WWII, instead of refusing to do so and permitting three million Bengalis to starve to death in the hope that this would defeat Gandhi and the Indian National Congress.

One would also wanted Churchill’s and the British General Staff’s to not create as a contingency plan “operation unthinkable,” in May, 1945, a plan to launch WWII in a surprise attack against the Soviet forces on July 1, 1945, with 47 divisions of British and American troops, and former German Wehrmacht troops,. One would have wished that thispart of the hidden history of the early cold war, had never been contemplated by anyone.

Fortunately this madness straight out of Dr. Strangelove was never anything more than a crackpot contingency plan of a collapsing British Empire, but it has done little to damage Churchill’s reputation, unlike Joseph Stalin, who remains capitalism ecumenical devil of Communism, joined in recent years by the late Mao Tse-tung.

Nor has it prevented both academic and journalistic advocates of the “totalitarian theory” to compare Stalin and Hitler even though Churchill, who fought Hitler to save the British Empire, was ready and willing to continue Hitler’s war against the Soviets, even if it meant that they would win in Europe and threaten Britain, to save the British Empire

And one would wish that Franklin Roosevelt had lived out his fourth term, maintained Big Three Cooperation, worked to build the United Nations and used use economic power to internationalize the New Deal, which would have made the U.S. the leading nation in the industrialized world in regard to its labor and social welfare policies, by the 1960s, not a nation where the very concept of a welfare state did not exist. Of course that didn’t happen

At the very least, one would have hoped that Harry Truman would not have first used

the atomic bomb against the Japanese by refusing their request to end the war with the proviso that the emperor be kept; that he then not only keep the emperor but give him and the royal family amnesty from all war crimes trials; and that he finally would not use the Japanese armies in China as a police force to try to prevent the Chinese Communist party from triumphing while his government armed Chiang Kai-shek’s forces to the tune of three billion and aided Chiang in looting China as he and his supporters retreated to Taiwan after their defeat.

` And there are many other examples one might come up with, from Ronald Reagan’s winning an Oscar for Bed Time for Bonzo and continuing his acting career for the rest of his life to Lyndon Johnson restoring the Geneva Convention and reuniting Vietnam short of war in 1964. One can’t make any of that happen. But one can and must understand the double standard that is applied as a matter of course when dealing with socialist countries and revolutionary movements and steadfastly refuse to accept that double standard.

Let me conclude by saying that humanity owes the Soviet people a debt that it can never repay. Even many who denounce “Stalinism” today would not be alive or have even been born had not the Soviet people and the Stalin leadership of the CPSU not beat back the largest invasion in history and literally made the largest contribution to the defeat of the fascist Axis in WWII.

And of course, those who continue to use the simplistic idealist concept of mass politics, the totalitarian equation, especially those on any section of the left, should stop and think where the world would have been if that concept had prevailed in 1941 to prevent the U.S. Soviet alliance against the Axis powers from taking shape.

As for the dismemberment of the Soviet Union constituting the “death of Communism,” that death was proclaimed many times in the past—first after the defeat of the revolutions of 1848, then after the suppression and massacre of the Paris Commune in 1871, then of course with Hitler’s proclamation of a “New Order” and the Invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, and finally with Gorbachev’s outlawing the CPSU and turning power over to Boris Yeltsin in 1991. Somewhat the people keep on fighting back, socialism, lives on as the only viable alternative to and solution for a capitalist system that produces more poverty and more inequality with its every “victory.”

Two years from now, it will be the 100^th anniversary of the Soviet revolution. Hopefully we will celebrate it in any America in which the people, the broad left, and the CPUSA are all advancing toward “Bill of Rights Socialism,” socialism, as the Chinese like to say about their socialism. “with

Robert Parry on the Republican Recycling of the Myth of the Liberal Media by Norman Markowitz

Political Affairs — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 10:46:57 +0000

Below I have pasted Robert Parry's fine article on the Myth of ther "Liberal Media."

It is an important article which makes most of the really relevant points on an important issue If anything, it underestimates the degree to which the press aka print media and their successors in radio and television have been and continue to be the most conservative mass media in the developed world, although recent trends in Britain concerning the BBC suggest others may be catching up to the U.S., especiall, when it comes to public media, which is generally more developed and publically funded at a higher level in other industrialized countries than in the U.S.

Let me add a few points to Parry outstanding article. The first is that the U.S. press from its inception in the early 19th century has always been political, reflecting the views not only of its owners but of political parties. 19th century newspapers were often took the name leading parties, Federalist, Whig, Democrat, and Republican to reflect their allegiance to these parties.

By the end of the 19th century, the rise of both a mass press and mass consumer industries made commercial advertising central to the newspaper business , making the press more likely to support business interests and oppose trade unions and various reform movements.

Politicians like William Jennings Bryan and Robert La Follette were subject to biased reporting and ridicule because of their political stands. Strikes were routinely condemned as conspiracies and violence against trade unionists, workers generally and ethnic minorities by police, private detectives, state militia, national guard, and the U.S. army was routinely treated as defensive and justified.

But there was then and hopefully still a difference between the working reporters and the editors who usually censored their stories to conform to the newspapers editorial positions. The best of these reporters did try to sneak in material about what was really happening and some readers learned to read between the lines.

When Radio and later TV came into existence, federal regulations and equal time provisions limited political direct political bias in newscasts in the new electronic media

As Parry states, accounts of racist brutality in the segregationist South in the northern U.S. press(which in part reflected the highlighting of the brutality of segregation and the reality of disenfranchisement in the South in the global press, particularly the left press, as real examples of "American Democracy") and the later emergence of critical reporting on the U.S. neo colonial war in Vietnam(which again was the way it was portrayed in much of global media) largely created the right wing myth of an "un-American liberal media."

In reality, the commercial media has, as Parry notes, moved if anything sharply to the right since the Reagan era. First, deregulation and the elimination of equal time protections in electronic media particularly gave us the Limbaughs and the Savages and Rupe Murdoch's global media empire, which has worked to elect rightwing political parties and conservative candidates in labor and progressive parties in the U.S. and many other countries.

What U.S. mass media is really about can be best seen in the attempt to marginalize Bernie Sanders campaign, more by omission than by direct attack, to exaggerate Clinton's mass support and help to create a "bandwagon" effect for her campaign. That is really standard operating procedure, and to the best of my knowledge, it has never been done to elect a progressive candidate who ran on the issue and challenged the corporate leaders, bankers, and Wall Street Brokerage Houses in the Industrial era.

As for Republican attacks on "Liberal bias" against their presidential candidates, I personally sympathize with the reporters, even the Fox reporters. With this Ponty Python cast of characters, and a scowling Donald Trump standing in the middle and both hurling and fielding insults, there so far has been little that they could do, except perhaps walk off the stage and let the candidates fight among themselves.

Norman Markowitz

Reviving the 'Liberal Media' Myth

By Robert Parry, Consortium News

03 November 15

The Republicans and the Right have dragged out an old favorite whipping boy – the “liberal media” – to distract the voters from the failure of some GOP presidential candidates to answer a few tough questions, a tried-and-untrue exercise in political diversion, writes Robert Parry.

n the wake of last week’s CNBC-sponsored Republican presidential debate – and its alleged “gotcha questions” – the GOP and the Right are reviving their treasured myth of the “liberal media,” a claim that has been politically significant but almost entirely fictitious. There is not now nor really was there ever a “liberal media.”

Generations back, Americans understood that the major newspapers were owned by very rich men and generally represented their class interests. The wealthy owners would deploy their media properties to advance their mostly conservative – and pro-business/anti-labor – viewpoints.

There were always exceptions to this rule, but few Americans in the 1940s, for instance, would have considered the press “liberal,” with President Franklin Roosevelt garnering less than a quarter of newspaper endorsements in his last two races and President Harry Truman getting only about 15 percent in 1948.

The modern myth of the “liberal press” originated in the 1950s when many reporters in the national news media displayed sympathy for the idea that African-Americans deserved equal rights with white people.

Though some prominent journalists and many newspapers (especially but not solely in the South) supported racial segregation, many reporters (principally but not only from the North) wrote critically about Jim Crow laws and racist attitudes. A negative media spotlight was cast on the lynching of black men, brutality toward civil rights activists and violence by whites to keep black children out of previously all-white schools.

Northern reporters, for example, descended on Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, for the trial and acquittal of two white men for the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black youth who supposedly had flirted with a white woman. The critical coverage led the state’s whites to plaster their cars with bumper stickers reading, “Mississippi: The Most Lied About State in the Union.” [For more on the media’s coverage of the civil rights movement, see David Halberstam’s The Fifties. Or Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters.]

In the 1960s, the U.S. mainstream media largely favored the Vietnam War, but skeptical reporting about U.S. tactics – from burning down villages and saturation bombing campaigns to the use of Agent Orange defoliants, assassinations under the CIA’s Operation Phoenix and the massacre at My Lai – angered war supporters who viewed such journalism as undercutting the war effort.

By the late 1960s, the white backlash against racial integration gave rise to Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy and his Silent Majority’s resentment of critical coverage of the Vietnam War strengthened Nixon’s political hand. Nixon personally had a huge chip on his shoulder about what he regarded as hostile press coverage, so he helped infuse the Republican Party with contempt for the “liberal media.”

The 1970s and 1980s

The landmark media events of the 1970s – the publication of the Pentagon Papers secret history of the Vietnam War, investigation of Nixon’s Watergate scandal, and revelations about the CIA’s “Family Jewels” secrets – pretty much sealed this image of a “liberal” press corps that would not reliably defend the actions of the U.S. government.

But this news coverage that so infuriated the Right and many Republicans was not “liberal”; it was accurate. It was a fleeting moment when American journalists were doing what the Founders had in mind with the First Amendment, informing the people about actions by their government so the people could have a meaningful say in controlling what the government was doing.

Nevertheless, the Right’s “liberal media” myth proved to be a powerful ideological weapon, wielded against reporters who uncovered unflattering information about right-wing policies and politicians. These reporters were deemed “unpatriotic,” “un-American,” a “blame-America-firster,” or just “liberal” for short.

I witnessed how this phenomenon played out in the 1980s. Contrary to the “liberal media” myth, the senior executives of news organizations that I dealt with were almost universally conservative or neoconservative.

At the Associated Press, its most senior executive, general manager Keith Fuller, gave a 1982 speech in Worcester, Massachusetts, hailing Reagan’s election in 1980 as a worthy repudiation of the excesses of the 1960s and a necessary corrective to the nation’s lost prestige of the 1970s. Fuller cited Reagan’s Inauguration and the simultaneous release of 52 U.S. hostages in Iran on Jan. 20, 1981, as a national turning point in which Reagan had revived the American spirit.

“As we look back on the turbulent Sixties, we shudder with the memory of a time that seemed to tear at the very sinews of this country,” Fuller said, adding that Reagan’s election represented a nation “crying, ‘Enough.’ …

“We don’t believe that the union of Adam and Bruce is really the same as Adam and Eve in the eyes of Creation. We don’t believe that people should cash welfare checks and spend them on booze and narcotics. We don’t really believe that a simple prayer or a pledge of allegiance is against the national interest in the classroom.

“We’re sick of your social engineering. We’re fed up with your tolerance of crime, drugs and pornography. But most of all, we’re sick of your self-perpetuating, burdening bureaucracy weighing ever more heavily on our backs.”

Fuller’s sentiments were not uncommon in the executive suites of major news organizations, where Reagan’s reassertion of an aggressive U.S. foreign policy was especially welcomed. At The New York Times, executive editor Abe Rosenthal, an early neocon, vowed to steer his newspaper back “to the center,” by which he meant to the right.

There was also a social dimension to this journalistic retreat. For instance, The Washington Post’s longtime publisher Katharine Graham found the stresses of high-stakes adversarial journalism unpleasant. Plus, it was one thing to take on the socially inept Richard Nixon; it was quite another to challenge the socially adroit Ronald and Nancy Reagan, whom Mrs. Graham personally liked.

The Graham family embraced neoconservatism, too, favoring aggressive policies against Moscow and unquestioned support for Israel. Soon, The Washington Post and Newsweek editors were reflecting those family prejudices.

I encountered that reality when I moved from AP to Newsweek in 1987 and found executive editor Maynard Parker, in particular, hostile to journalism that put Reagan’s Cold War policies in a negative light. I had been involved in breaking much of the Iran-Contra scandal at the AP, but I was told at Newsweek that “we don’t want another Watergate.” The fear apparently was that the political stresses from another constitutional crisis around a Republican president might shatter the nation’s political cohesion and would not be “good for the country.”

Building a Right-Wing Media

Still, the notion of a “liberal media” persisted, getting even more absurd as the years went by. Under President Reagan, the recurring complaint on the Right about the “liberal media” gave rise to an overtly right-wing media – a vertically integrated structure from newspapers, magazines and book publishing to talk radio, TV networks and later the Internet.

By the 1990s, this right-wing media was arguably the most important political force in the United States, with talk-show host Rush Limbaugh working as a national precinct chairman for the GOP, rallying conservatives behind various causes and candidates. When the Republicans won control of Congress in 1994, they made Limbaugh an honorary member of the GOP caucus.

The same was true in the upper reaches of corporate media. Collaborating directly with Republican politicians since the 1980s, Rupert Murdoch built a massive media empire based on newspapers (including now the Wall Street Journal), magazines (such as The Weekly Standard), book publishing (HarperCollins) and TV (most notably Fox News).

But Murdoch was far from the only network chieftain to be an ardent Republican. On Election Night 2000, General Electric Chairman Jack Welch revealed a favoritism for George W. Bush while visiting the election desk of GE’s NBC News subsidiary. In front of the NBC staff, Welch rooted for a Bush victory, asking apparently in jest, “how much would I have to pay you to call the race for Bush?” according to witnesses.

Later, after Fox News declared Bush the winner, Welch allegedly asked the chief of the NBC election desk why NBC was not doing the same, a choice NBC did make and then retracted. Though premature, the pro-Bush calls colored the public impression of Bush’s entitlement to the presidency during the month-long Florida recount battle. Welch denied pressuring NBC to call the race for Bush and defended his other behavior as a reaction to younger NBC staffers who Welch thought were favoring Vice President Al Gore.

Pro-Republican bias did not stop with Murdoch and Welch, as columnist Joe Conason has noted. “So was Larry Tisch when he owned CBS. So are Richard Parsons and Steve Case of CNN (and Time Warner AOL),” Conason wrote at Salon.com. “Michael Eisner (Disney ABC) gave to Bill Bradley and Al Gore, but he gave more to Bush and [John] McCain – and he supported Rick Lazio for the Senate against Hillary Clinton.”

Meanwhile, many of the publications that were denounced by the Right as “liberal” bastions (the likes of The New York Times and The Washington Post) shifted fully into neoconservatism – hawkish on foreign policy though more tolerant on cultural issues such as gay marriage and more accepting of science on topics like global warming.

Both the Times and Post advanced President George W. Bush’s bogus claims about Iraq’s WMD as a justification for invading Iraq in 2003. Today, both newspapers toe the neocon line when it comes to aggressive U.S. policies regarding Russia and Syria. Neither makes any effort to conceal their hostility toward Russian President Vladimir Putin and other foreign leaders who are singled out for U.S. demonization.

From the news columns to the op-ed pages, the Times and Post have presented deeply biased coverage that favors more aggressive U.S. interventions abroad. On economic issues, they are generally centrist, favoring “free trade” deals and “reform” of Social Security – neither position shared by most “liberals” or “progressives.”

Most modern media is owned by large corporations or, in a few cases, wealthy families. So, it continues to make sense that these outlets would share the prejudices and interests of the rich, as in the old days of FDR and Truman. Indeed, CNBC, the cable network that has prompted the recent right-wing ire, is famously pro-business and anti-government.

CNBC is dedicated to the proposition that “the market” knows all, except when there is an urgent need for the U.S. government to bail out the major investment banks after they tanked the economy in 2008 and crashed Wall Street stock values. Then, the government’s trillions of dollars were deemed essential, though the bank executives still bristled at any political criticism or suggestions that their compensation should be restrained.

The Tea Party Rise

In the first month of Barack Obama’s presidency, CNBC was on the front lines of promoting this arrogance of the super rich, attacking the new president even as he was confronting the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, with millions of Americans losing their jobs and millions more losing their homes.

Yet, while the huge Wall Street bank bail-out under President George W. Bush was popular with the CNBC crowd – all the better to reverse the plunge in stock prices – there was a fury against Obama’s plans to restrict executive compensation and help stanch the surge in joblessness and home foreclosures.

On Feb. 19, 2009, CNBC reporter Rick Santelli took to the trading floor of the Chicago commodities exchange and fumed about Obama’s plan to help up to nine million Americans avoid foreclosure. Santelli suggested that Obama set up a Web site to get public feedback on whether “we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages.”

Then, gesturing to the wealthy traders in the pit, Santelli declared, “this is America” and asked “how many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills, raise their hand.” Amid a cacophony of boos aimed at Obama’s housing plan, Santelli turned back to the camera and said, “President Obama, are you listening?”

Though Santelli’s behavior in a different context – say, a denunciation of George W. Bush near the start of his presidency – would surely have resulted in a suspension or firing, Santelli’s anti-Obama rant was hailed as “the Chicago tea party,” made Santelli an instant hero across right-wing talk radio, and was featured proudly on NBC’s Nightly News.

Santelli’s rant against helping “losers” inspired the Tea Party movement, which tapped into the populist frustrations of many alienated whites but was largely funded by rich right-wingers, including the Koch Brothers, who viewed it as a way to advance their own anti-regulatory agenda and promote more tax cuts for the rich.

That CNBC would now be attacked as a bastion of the “liberal media” shows how far this myth has slid from reality. CNBC is now part of NBCUniversal, which is co-owned by Comcast (51 percent), a major international media conglomerate, and General Electric (49 percent), a founding member of what President Dwight Eisenhower called the Military-Industrial Complex.

So, the notion that CNBC is a hotbed of leftist journalism is delusional. But that is what the Republican Party and many of its top candidates are selling to their “base.”

‘Gotcha’ Complaints

The complaints from last Wednesday’s debate have focused on alleged “gotcha” questions, such as challenges to Dr. Ben Carson, one of the GOP frontrunners, about whether his budget proposals add up and what was his relationship with a shady nutritional supplement company called Mannatech.

While such queries would seem relevant to business reporters, the questions became the target of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and other candidates who won the audience’s cheers for lambasting the “liberal media.”

The “liberal media” accusations prompted the Republican National Committee to suspend its relationship with NBC regarding future debates. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, even added a button at his Internet site for his supporters to “stand against the liberal left media.”

That CNBC would become the new faux standard bearer for the “liberal left media” might be considered comical, but the furor is indicative of how millions of Americans have accepted the Right’s decoupling from the real world and have surrendered their political judgment to demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and corporate masters of the universe like Rupert Murdoch.

How this happened is, of course, complicated and includes the failure of the mainstream press to defend the times when it has fought on behalf of the American people to keep them informed with important information so they can do their job as citizens in a democracy.

Instead, the mainstream media seems significantly disengaged from the public, treating Americans like a commodity to be manipulated rather than the “We the People” owners of the democratic Republic to be respected and served.

Given the arrogance and elitism of many top news personalities, there is an understandable distrust and disdain for the major media. But that populist revulsion toward the overpaid talking heads has been exploited by skillful right-wing media figures who have rallied millions of confused Americans to become foot soldiers in an ideological army that marches to defend a wasteland of false and factually flimsy information.

The answer to this dilemma must be a recommitment among journalists to get back to the basics — providing citizens with information that they need to do their job — and to take on the powers-that-be in the name of the people.

The Inverted World of Niall Ferguson: On the Real Obama Doctrine by Thomas Riggins

Political Affairs — Tue, 03 Nov 2015 20:34:17 +0000

Niall Ferguson teaches history at Harvard. He has a very conservative world outlook which, when applied to the analysis of current social reality, has a tendency to so warp his perceptions that the situation he writes about becomes an imaginary inverted world where truth becomes falsity and falsity truth. But don't take my word for it. Just look at his article in the Wall Street Journal for 10/10-11/2015: "The Real Obama Doctrine." Ferguson's take on Obama can only be the result a profound ignorance of the historical reality he professes to understand.

He opens his article by referring to ideas expressed by the revered, but morally reprehensible, Henry Kissinger in 1968. Kissinger expressed the opinion America didn't really have a foreign policy. He might have noted the U.S. was too busy butchering Vietnamese peasants to pay attention to much else.

Be that as it may, there was no real coherent strategic thinking going on and this for two reasons according to Kissinger. First, the president was not selected for his strategic thinking but his "will" to get elected, and second, there are just too many lawyers working for the government. Now lawyers are clever but they don't know enough about history and this deficiency has led to the adoption of a "minimum risk" attitude when it comes to policy. Well, Ferguson teaches history at Harvard; what better guide could we have to lead us to understand Obama's plans for the U.S. of A.

Seeing that Obama was elected due to his will to win, has a passel of lawyers at work in his administration, and doesn't support a "maximum risk" policy, he seems to exemplify just what Henry K was complaining about to a tee. Ferguson tells us, in fact, that he himself has "spent much of the last seven years trying to work out" just what strategy Obama was following. Here is what he found out.

He read Obama’s 2009 Cairo Speech but wasn’t clear on how it would result in practical actions. The speech was full of good intentions and was met positively by those friendly to the U.S. and either negatively or skeptically by those hostile to it. The criticisms basically were that actions speak louder than words and that upbeat speeches were no substitute for a change in policies. Ferguson doesn’t go into much detail on the speech, but needless to say he should have known that Obama would not be able to quickly reverse fifty years of cold war policies and the fact that the Bush administration had left the entire Middle East entirely in flames or on the verge irrupting into chaos.

Obama’s attempt to disengage U.S. ground forces in Iraq and strengthen Iraqi security forces is called by Ferguson “precipitate withdrawal.” The fact is that the damage done to Iraq by the Bush policies are almost irreversible and the sectarian Shia government the U.S. created is both corrupt and unwilling, or unable, to reconcile with the Sunni minority. Obama must either try to wind down American involvement or hunker down and prepare for an open ended American occupation. The American people definitely want to get out of Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, and they don’t want to get involved in Syria either. Obama cannot, no president could, put the Middle East back together again after the Bush folks so thoroughly smashed it up. The best he can do is respond to the will of the American people and try and limit the damage caused by the Bush gang.

Besides not having a clue to the complexities in Afghanistan, Ferguson thinks Obama has become “indifferent” to Europe as a result of the attempted “reset” with Russia. It’s true the reset failed but only because it was predicated on Russia following American dictates against its own interests and there is no evidence that Obama has become indifferent to Europe.

But Ferguson also discovered something more troubling than Obama’s failure to clean up the mess left behind by Bush. It is one thing to reject Bush’s policies, but the 2012 debate with Mitt Romney revealed, horror of horrors, that Obama was also “turning away from Ronald Reagan.” Romney held that enemy numero uno to our world wide hegemony was Russia and Obama dismissed this. And what happened? In March 2014 [as a result of U.S. and E.U. intervention in the internal affairs of Ukraine] Russia annexed Crimea returning it to Russian administration after it had been assigned by the Soviet Union to Ukraine in the 1950s. Historian that he is, Ferguson thinks Romney “prescient” in spotting that, in his words, Russia is “our number one geopolitical foe.” We had better move the Seventh Fleet to the Bering Strait in case Putin decides to reverse the Alaska Purchase.

Ferguson also discovered, by reading articles and interviews given by Obama in the popular press, that it was his intention to “create a new balance of power in the Middle East.” Obama said that he wanted to end the conflicts between the Shia and Sunni by trying to get Iran to abandon its (in his opinion) negative polices and to work with the mostly Sunni Gulf states in a common effort to build a positive future in the region.

Obama hopes an international coalition, which could include Iran, might work together to solve the problems of Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya. Unmentioned is the fact that the crisises in all these countries are the results of Saudi and American actions and interference. It would be the U.S. and not Iran that would have to abandon its negative policies. It is unlikely to do since it profits from arms sales to the region.

Ferguson, however, has other reasons for objecting to Obama’s Middle East policies which he says are based on the president’s “fuzzy thinking.” In his recent U.N. speech Obama indicated he was willing to work with other nations “under the mantle of international norms and principles” and with both Russia and Iran (as long they agreed to eventually dump Assad) in solving the Syrian problem. Obama is “fuzzy” because, Ferguson says, neither Russia nor Iran are “famed” for operating under the “mantle of international norms and principles.”

One would expect a Harvard history professor to be aware of the fact that the U.S. is also not “famed” for operating under this mantle. In fact, even a slight acquaintance with modern history would show U.S. behavior is more egregious in this respect than that of either Russia or Iran. In fact, almost every crisis in world diplomacy since (and most of them before) the collapse of the Soviet Union has been the result of the U.S. flouting international norms. To blame Obama for trying improve this dismal record doesn’t say much in favor of Ferguson’s bona fides.

Ferguson thinks Obama's policies are failing because, since 2010, terrorism and violence in the Middle East from North Africa (Libya) to Pakistan and Afghanistan have dramatically increased and we can expect even more violence to come “as the Sunni powers of the region seek to prevent Iran from establishing itself as the post American hegemon.”

It’s true that American policies are not working out if peace is the goal. If, however, the goal is to sell billions of dollars worth of new weapons systems to the governments in the area as well as to ramp up military spending at home, these policies at least make some sense.

After Bush/Cheney destroyed Iraq in the east and the Obama/ U.S. supported NATO intervention in Libya (pushed by Secretary of State Clinton) effectively destroyed that country in the west the growth of terrorism was bound to increase as outside governments and their proxies moved in to take advantage of the chaos the U.S. created.

It was the Sunni governments that moved to take advantage of the situation. The U.S. destroyed two major secular governments and both the Saudi Arabians, and Gulf Sunni states, representing the most backward “Islamic” radical ideology, funded Sunni terrorist groups, as well as Pakistan’s covert support of the Taliban, that has led to the impotence of U.S. policy on the ground. The U.S. still sends billions of dollars in military aid (much of it actually spent at home to support the military industrial complex behind our domestic deep state) to countries who pass some of it along to the very terrorist groups the U.S. is fighting.

The truth is that Iran is not trying to become a hegemon. It was the Shah, installed as a result of a CIA coup against a democratically elected government and backed by the U.S., who was moving to both develop nuclear weapons and establish hegemony, as a U.S. client state, in the region until he was overthrown in 1979. The U.S. has been trying to get rid of the new Iranian government ever since.

Iran’s actions have been purely defensive in nature. It supports its Shia allies in Iraq against the Sunni Islamic State, it supports its ally Assad in Syria against the Islamic state and the Sunni jihadists supported by the Saudis and indirectly by the U.S. under the covering myth of supporting “moderates.” All this puts the lie to Ferguson’s pseudo-historical analysis of “Obama’s failures.” Obama’s problem, such as it is, has been his inability to reverse the movement of Middle Eastern disintegration initiated by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. But he has succeeded in preventing the implosion of half the Mediterranean world by keeping boots off the ground in Libya and Syria, and thus not compounding the Bush/Chenny Iraq folly. Nevertheless his interventionist actions in these two countries threaten to create a wider area of war and destabilization which the next president will have to defuse unless he takes actions towards withdrawal and cooperation with the Iranians and Russians to limit Saudi and Pakistani sponsored jihadists.

Finally, Ferguson concludes there are three major problems facing U.S. foreign policy; the Middle East, Russia’s meddling, and China’s ambitions. Obama, he says, is failing to properly address these problems. The reason for this failure is that he does not have advisors of the caliber of Zbigniew Brzezinski (whose Afghan policies gave us both Osama ben Laden and the Taliban) and Henry Kissinger (whose war crimes against humanity gave us fascism in Chile and Pol Pot in Cambodia, among achievements of similar note). Both of these stalwarts, Furgeson says, have made intellectual contributions to strategic doctrine far greater than the advisors surrounding Obama. Perhaps, but more people around the world have died meaningless deaths and suffered injuries and loss of loved ones due to the strategic doctrines of Brzezinski and Kissinger than due to the policies of Obama (but he is running a close second with his Syrian policies).

U.S. policy does have problems. In the Middle East it supports dictators and tyrants and its blanket support of Israel and Israel’s truly barbaric treatment of the Palestinians prevents it from having a policy that the majority of Middle Eastern people can live with. We create the very terrorists we seek to fight. Russian meddling is nothing more that its advancing policies that protect its interests and are usually just reactions to overt or covert U.S. provocations. There will be no reset of relations with Russia as long as the U.S. acts in bad faith. China’s ambitions are perfectly normal. They want to play a role in their part of the world commensurate with their growing economic and political strength. As long as the U.S. seeks to challenge them in this respect (such as U.S. air and naval provocations in the South China Sea) there will be no real cooperation possible nor any incentive for Chinese to trust the U.S.

The above comments are just a reflection of the current Zeitgeist and it appears that the role of the U.S. is contrary to the movement that spirit is taking — a movement that is pointing us towards a world of better cooperation and understanding and is not subject to the negative destructive will of one rogue superpower. This, and not the views of Henry Kissinger, is what the next president must keep in mind.

The Latest October Marxist IQ Ever by Norman Markowitz

Political Affairs — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 15:28:49 +0000

October for Americans means the World Series, which will start tonight, Columbus Day , which has passed, and Halloween, which will continue uuunfortunately for the next year in the Republican presidential campaign.

October is almost over, and work of various kinds has kept me from this month's Marxist IQ. But better late than never and next month Marxist IQ will be, barring unforeseen circumstances, on time.

In the world through the 20^th century, October meant for billions of people the “October Revolution,” The Soviet Socialist Revolution, both revered and reviled as no other revolution had been in all of history. It still means the October Revolution for many. This month’s Marxist IQ is a tribute to the ongoing significance of that revolution

Before the October Revolution, Czarist Russia was seen by Socialists and Progressives as

The center of great literature, music, and poetry
A "totalitarian" power threatening "democracy"
A semi-feudal empire which served as the "policeman of Europe" and the" prison house of the peoples"
The country with the most advanced working class movement

2. The Russian Revolution of 1905

Was influenced by both the suffering of the masses and Czarist Russia's disastrous war against Japan
Saw the formation of peoples councils(Soviets) that served as a “dress rehearsal” for the October Revolution
Saw the Czarist autocracy use anti-Jewish massacres or pogroms after the revolutionary wave subsided
All of the Above

3. In the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, the supporters of Vladimir Lenin, called Bolsheviks after 1903 differed from their factional opponents called Mensheviks by

a. Their support for liberal elements of the Czarist Bureaucracy as against the Conservatives

b. Their support for a constitutional monarchy on the British model

c. Their support for a revolutionary "vanguard" party of workers and intellectuals who would organize and coordinate the struggle of the working class in all areas while educating the working class for socialism

d. Their support for world revolution to be advanced through revolutionary wars

4.In they years immediately following the October Revolution one saw

Soviet Russia announce its support for a policy of progressive capitalism
The defeat of the revolution through foreign military intervention, civil war and general isolation
Soviet leaders call for a policy of restructuring(perestroika) and the integration of Soviet Russia into a common European homeland
the rapid development of revolutonary parties and movements through the world and the formation of a new third or Communist International(Comintern) to advance their activites

5. In its seventy four years of existence, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

a. built the first publically owned planned socialist economy in history

b. inspired and supported revolutionary movements through the world to fight to both win national liberation struggles against colonialism and advance socialist policies in the industrialized countries

c. Made the principle contribution to the defeat of the fascist Axis in WWII and the defense of the gains made for all people through that victory against the U.S-NAT0 cold war bloc from the end of WWII in 1945 to its last years

d. All of the Above

Answers to Last Month's Marxist IQ

1.d

2.d

3.c

4.d

5.c

Asian Diary by Jack Clontz

Political Affairs — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 12:04:08 +0000

Jack Clontz is an Asian Language and Culture specialist. His observations of current events may be of interest to PA readers with a special interest in Asia. Comments on his observations are welcomed since some of his opinions are controversial and will no doubt

be contested by some readers. We are publishing his reflections to stimulate thinking and hopefully discussion.

Asian Diary

Re: the TPP agreement. At least Thailand did not become involved as originally envisaged. The pharma agreements will bring about hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Did you notice the Chinese recipient (out of three) of the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology? That was one case in which Chinese traditional medicine made an extremely significant contribution to world medicine instead of killing huge numbers of people and other animals. It was also a unique contribution to science from the darkest days of Mao's lunatic policies in which millions died in his full knowledge.

Even towards the end of the Vietnam war, this medicine's efficacy was known. The Vietnamese people, especially those fighting, desperately needed protection against malaria. Because of ideological opposition, Vietnam was denied the medicine and the PRC continued to deny it to the Vietnamese people for many years, especially in the wake of Deng's criminal war against Vietnam in which the PRC was actually defeated with the concomitant loss of tens of thousands on both sides and great destruction along both sides of the border.

Just this week in the Russian euphoria over the bombing campaign in Syria, the Russian Federations's defense minister chortled that the USSR was responsible for the defeat of the USA in Vietnam through air power. What he was actually referring to was the shooting down of huge numbers of US planes (though amateur civilian crews shot down most of the jets fighter bombers like McCain's), especially the Nixon-Kissinger criminal "Arc-Light" heavy bombers during the Christmas madness just before the USA threw in the towel. We know now that most of the missile crews were Soviets, or at least commanded by Soviets, just as in Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis (the sole American plane shot down with the pilot dying during the crisis was shot down by a Soviet crew--the Cuban missiles did not have the altitude range to hit the American reconnaissance aircraft). A contribution was also made by the use of Soviet "trawlers" just off the coast of Guam spotting the take off of the Arc Light bombers, where all of them originated at Anderson Air Base (there is a memorial to them at the entrance to the base), Guam and radioed this message to the Vietnamese. We also now know that North Korean jet fighter pilots engaged in aerial combat with the American planes with, as you know, the North Koreans following the Soviet line in spite of all that had happened.

I resent the Russian claims about Vietnam, since I think they are exaggerated and take credit from the Vietnamese people for their incredible achievement in defeating French, American and Chinese imperialism while greatly hampering Japanese imperialism at one point and forestalling Thai imperialism.

On the other hand, the PRC was incensed by the very cruel treatment of the Vietnamese Chinese by the Vietnamese. A very large proportion of the many thousands of Vietnamese boat people, many of whom died and all of whom greatly suffered, were ethnic Chinese. Surprisingly, the PRC has countenanced Vietnamese imperialism in Laos and Cambodia, though both have been sycophantic followers and supporters, especially Cambodia, of the PRC internationally, especially in ASEAN.

The Chinese anti-malaria drug is artemisinin.

Notice that the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation has saved many thousands of lives through its support of work involving this drug and is engaged in fundamental research (artemisinin is not now often used as a monotherapeutic medicine) in malaria. A handful of French, American and Thai medical scientists are at work on these questions at Mahidol University in Bangkok. They are desperately working to stave off the spread of malaria with parasites carried by three or four species of mosquitoes serving as vectors, which weirdly originate only in one area in northern Cambodia near the Thai border. The mosquitoes have now spread to the area of the refugee camps in Burma along the Thai border. The medical scientists are desperately afraid this drug-resistant form of malaria will spread through Burma with its horrible (though improved in some areas) conditions and thence to Bangladesh and the Indian subcontinent with millions of death certain under the conditions obtaining in India, Bangladesh and parts of Pakistan. Capitalism saves the world?

By far the best hospital in northern Thailand is the McCormick Hospital run by American medical missionaries. Decades ago they forswore proselytizing in recognition of the fact that the vast majority of Thai Buddhists (about 97 percent of the population, it seems) would never become Christians because to do so would be tantamount to becoming non-Thai. The inroads made by evangelical Christian missionaries, often from Australia, have been amongst the northern hill tribes, who are badly treated and are not allowed to become Thai citizens. There are Roman Catholic converts, mostly educated Thais, in Bangkok and sometimes elsewhere, but they are few in numbers. Most Roman Catholics in Thailand have Vietnamese or ancestral Portuguese connections.

Incidentally, Vietnamese students in universities in Thailand are outstanding and make Thai students look very bad in comparison. They are disciplined and learn quickly. Many are already very proficient in English before they come and learn Thai quickly. I have talked to their university teachers in some cases. They are often invidiously compared with foreign students from Burma and such places as Nepal or Sikkim.

Did you know a Thai foreign minister, a Muslim from the northern part of southern Thailand (not a Muslim majority area), in the coup-government involved in throwing over Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006 apologized to the Vietnamese for Thai participation in the Vietnam War? Quite amazing, actually, but nothing really came of it.

Submitted by Thomas Riggins

The last blog was by Norman Markowitz

Political Affairs — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 23:04:38 +0000

I got so excited that I didn't put my name in. We should all be excited and energized by this debate

Norman Markowitz

First Impressions on the Debate which Just Ended

Political Affairs — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 23:00:36 +0000

What a debate. It is almost over. But before th Pundits try to spin it, Bernie was the catalyst. The called him a socialist and he said that democratic socialism means morality, fairness. He talked of a political revolution, which means workers and the whole people voting out the reactionaries who represent th corporations and the rich. He took on Wall directly. And he didn't let Anderson Cooper phase him.

Bernie won the debate for the labor and the left and the people. Hillary Clinton had some moments but they were mostly on generality. And she did play the Gender card over and over again. A progressive woman President would be a major breakthrough for the nation. Elizabeth Warren is such a woman. Hillary Clinton really isn't

These are my first responses. Martin O'Malley was also very good, better than Hillary Clinton. Webb was ridiculous, a cold warrior trying to revive the cold war against China.

Bernie ended right now saying that it will be the millions of people standing up to the billionaires. Without that, no one will be successful