The White House has recently disclosed that double digit unemployment will soon be upon us (if it is not upon us already).
What an unexpected boon for military recruiters at a time when the project of U.S.-based Capitalist imperialism is struggling to enter a new phase.
This recession really is the answer to militarist prayers. How fortuitous! Who could have foreseen it?
The pressing need to find an exit strategy for Iraq has suddenly eased. The Obama Administration's commitment to increase U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan is no longer regarded as untenable.
Suicide bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan continue apace, but no one is minding the body count.
Yes we can! Yes we can!
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Reality Check
For a reality check (after being lulled by the major news media and the handful of billionaires that own it into the false belief that the U.S. actually functions as a democratic republic), check out Democracy Now! and also the good people at the WSWS:
Then ask yourself why Iraq's petroleum industry is being divvied up among foreign oil companies and why the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today in favor of promotional tests that consistently (and, as I understand it, exclusively) favor white firefighters over their African American and Latino co-workers.
Capitalist Imperialism abroad and the Angry White Man Revanchement at home. Looks like it's back to business as usual in the U. S. of A.
Yes we can!
Change we can believe in!
November 2008 seems like such a long, long, time ago in a land far, far, away.
Then ask yourself why Iraq's petroleum industry is being divvied up among foreign oil companies and why the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today in favor of promotional tests that consistently (and, as I understand it, exclusively) favor white firefighters over their African American and Latino co-workers.
Capitalist Imperialism abroad and the Angry White Man Revanchement at home. Looks like it's back to business as usual in the U. S. of A.
Yes we can!
Change we can believe in!
November 2008 seems like such a long, long, time ago in a land far, far, away.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Incisive Commentary on the Recent Elections in Iran
From the World Socialist Web Site:
Iran, the media and the World Socialist Web Site
"Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play," Joseph Goebbels once declared. In the case of the American media, it is hardly necessary for the government to play. The keyboard plays itself.
This is certainly true of the media's treatment of the recent elections in Iran.
No sooner was the election over than the media settled on the desired interpretation of events: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was carrying out a "coup d'etat" through a "rigged" election. The opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, enjoyed overwhelming support and was leading a "green revolution" for freedom and democracy.
This analysis has been presented without even the pretense of objectivity. The possibility that there might be different sides to the story, other interpretations of the election results, is completely ignored. Facts that contradict or call into question the desired conclusion are ignored.
The various TV commentators and print reporters--to say nothing of the newspaper columnists--have become open partisans of the oppositional candidate, who happens to be the candidate favored by the United States.
The role of the New York Times, the mouthpiece of American liberalism, is particularly brazen. In retrospect, it is clear that the newspaper had prepared well in advance to assist the US government in a destabilization operation aimed at changing the top personnel and shifting the Tehran regime in a manner favorable to American economic and geostrategic interests. It sent chief foreign affairs columnist Roger Cohen and Executive Editor Bill Keller to Tehran to cover developments, along with many other journalists and staff.
The Times has to this day presented no independent analysis of the actual election results. It has not acknowledged, let alone refuted, those establishment think tanks and commentators who have argued that the election results were by and large accurate.
In none of its articles has the "newspaper of record" referred, for example, to the analysis of Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty, who conducted a poll showing that in the run-up to the election, Ahmadinejad was leading by a 2-to-1 margin. Instead, it has from day one accepted uncritically and promoted as fact the claims of Mousavi and his supporters.
The New York Times set the tone for the rest of the print media. Meanwhile, on television, the cable news stations carried non-stop and highly slanted coverage of the anti-Ahmadinejad demonstrations.
The media has devoted a great deal of coverage to the tragic death of one young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, who has been proclaimed a martyr to the cause of democracy, even though the circumstances of her death are unclear and she was apparently a bystander, not a protester. The scale of Iranian state violence is inflated, while virtually nothing is said about US drone attacks on civilians in neighboring Pakistan that this week alone killed more than 80 people. Do the lives of these Pakistanis not count?
One does not need to be a supporter of the Iranian clerical regime--and the WSWS is the most consistent and principled opponent of this government--to recognize the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the American media.
There appears to be an inverse relationship between the resources the media devotes to a story and the reliable and serious information it provides. None of the more fundamental issues in Iran are ever addressed.
Nowhere in the mass media has there been a serious analysis of Iranian history (let alone the reactionary role of the US in that history) or the class dynamics of Iranian society. The actual program of Mousavi and his chief backer, the multimillionaire veteran of the regime, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, remains a blank page, as does Mousavi's role in repressing left-wing opposition in the 1980s.
There has been no analysis of the geopolitical interests at stake, above all the interests of the United States. The fact that Iran borders three countries that are presently subject to US military intervention--Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan--is not considered relevant in understanding what is taking place in the country. The long record of US provocation in Iran, including the CIA-organized overthrow of a popular nationalist government and Washington's support for the brutal dictatorship of the Shah, are mentioned in passing, if at all.
Propaganda in the guise of news and analysis has not been confined to the mainstream media. The major "left" publications--the Nation, Huffington Post, Democracy Now!, and many others--have fallen in line as well.
The standard-bearer of left-liberal politics in the US, the Nation, sent its chief foreign policy commentator, Robert Dreyfuss, to Iran to serve as an advocate of the "color revolution." As the WSWS revealed, Dreyfuss was once a prominent figure in the fascistic Lyndon LaRouche organization. He wrote a book denouncing the overthrow of the Shah.
Under his byline, the Nation published an interview, for the purpose of placing the election crisis in "perspective," with former foreign minister Ibrahim Yazdi. In his book, Dreyfuss had identified Yazdi as the CIA's contact within the clerical regime.
Supposedly "socialist" publications are no different. A recent post on the web site of Socialist Worker, the publication of the International Socialist Organization, declares approvingly that even forces "on the political right, who months ago would have agreed with a US strike against Iran, stood with Iranians"--that is, with supporters of Mousavi. That the ISO has aligned itself with neoconservative supporters of a war against Iran does not give the organization pause.
The Obama administration has become the vehicle for these middle-class groups to make their peace with American imperialism. They now have the "space" they so long desired. One senses relief, if not outright glee, that they can politically rub shoulders with the most reactionary forces.
Under these conditions, the World Socialist Web Site plays an absolutely critical role. It is a force of rationality and objectivity, a counterweight to the pressure of the bourgeois media, right and "left."
The WSWS is not just one of many online news sources. It is unique, not only in the quality and breadth of its coverage, but above all in its clear political perspective and orientation, based on the heritage of the Marxist movement. It is precisely this grounding that enables the WSWS to develop a correct analysis of unfolding political events and provide the working class in Iran and internationally with an independent revolutionary perspective.
To carry forward this critical work, we appeal to our readers to support the WSWS financially. As the crisis of capitalism deepens, our tasks become larger, more complex and more costly.
In making the decision to support the WSWS, you are not simply helping us. More fundamentally, you are aiding in the development of the most important instrument for the liberation of the international working class.
Joe Kishore
Iran, the media and the World Socialist Web Site
"Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play," Joseph Goebbels once declared. In the case of the American media, it is hardly necessary for the government to play. The keyboard plays itself.
This is certainly true of the media's treatment of the recent elections in Iran.
No sooner was the election over than the media settled on the desired interpretation of events: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was carrying out a "coup d'etat" through a "rigged" election. The opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, enjoyed overwhelming support and was leading a "green revolution" for freedom and democracy.
This analysis has been presented without even the pretense of objectivity. The possibility that there might be different sides to the story, other interpretations of the election results, is completely ignored. Facts that contradict or call into question the desired conclusion are ignored.
The various TV commentators and print reporters--to say nothing of the newspaper columnists--have become open partisans of the oppositional candidate, who happens to be the candidate favored by the United States.
The role of the New York Times, the mouthpiece of American liberalism, is particularly brazen. In retrospect, it is clear that the newspaper had prepared well in advance to assist the US government in a destabilization operation aimed at changing the top personnel and shifting the Tehran regime in a manner favorable to American economic and geostrategic interests. It sent chief foreign affairs columnist Roger Cohen and Executive Editor Bill Keller to Tehran to cover developments, along with many other journalists and staff.
The Times has to this day presented no independent analysis of the actual election results. It has not acknowledged, let alone refuted, those establishment think tanks and commentators who have argued that the election results were by and large accurate.
In none of its articles has the "newspaper of record" referred, for example, to the analysis of Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty, who conducted a poll showing that in the run-up to the election, Ahmadinejad was leading by a 2-to-1 margin. Instead, it has from day one accepted uncritically and promoted as fact the claims of Mousavi and his supporters.
The New York Times set the tone for the rest of the print media. Meanwhile, on television, the cable news stations carried non-stop and highly slanted coverage of the anti-Ahmadinejad demonstrations.
The media has devoted a great deal of coverage to the tragic death of one young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, who has been proclaimed a martyr to the cause of democracy, even though the circumstances of her death are unclear and she was apparently a bystander, not a protester. The scale of Iranian state violence is inflated, while virtually nothing is said about US drone attacks on civilians in neighboring Pakistan that this week alone killed more than 80 people. Do the lives of these Pakistanis not count?
One does not need to be a supporter of the Iranian clerical regime--and the WSWS is the most consistent and principled opponent of this government--to recognize the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the American media.
There appears to be an inverse relationship between the resources the media devotes to a story and the reliable and serious information it provides. None of the more fundamental issues in Iran are ever addressed.
Nowhere in the mass media has there been a serious analysis of Iranian history (let alone the reactionary role of the US in that history) or the class dynamics of Iranian society. The actual program of Mousavi and his chief backer, the multimillionaire veteran of the regime, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, remains a blank page, as does Mousavi's role in repressing left-wing opposition in the 1980s.
There has been no analysis of the geopolitical interests at stake, above all the interests of the United States. The fact that Iran borders three countries that are presently subject to US military intervention--Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan--is not considered relevant in understanding what is taking place in the country. The long record of US provocation in Iran, including the CIA-organized overthrow of a popular nationalist government and Washington's support for the brutal dictatorship of the Shah, are mentioned in passing, if at all.
Propaganda in the guise of news and analysis has not been confined to the mainstream media. The major "left" publications--the Nation, Huffington Post, Democracy Now!, and many others--have fallen in line as well.
The standard-bearer of left-liberal politics in the US, the Nation, sent its chief foreign policy commentator, Robert Dreyfuss, to Iran to serve as an advocate of the "color revolution." As the WSWS revealed, Dreyfuss was once a prominent figure in the fascistic Lyndon LaRouche organization. He wrote a book denouncing the overthrow of the Shah.
Under his byline, the Nation published an interview, for the purpose of placing the election crisis in "perspective," with former foreign minister Ibrahim Yazdi. In his book, Dreyfuss had identified Yazdi as the CIA's contact within the clerical regime.
Supposedly "socialist" publications are no different. A recent post on the web site of Socialist Worker, the publication of the International Socialist Organization, declares approvingly that even forces "on the political right, who months ago would have agreed with a US strike against Iran, stood with Iranians"--that is, with supporters of Mousavi. That the ISO has aligned itself with neoconservative supporters of a war against Iran does not give the organization pause.
The Obama administration has become the vehicle for these middle-class groups to make their peace with American imperialism. They now have the "space" they so long desired. One senses relief, if not outright glee, that they can politically rub shoulders with the most reactionary forces.
Under these conditions, the World Socialist Web Site plays an absolutely critical role. It is a force of rationality and objectivity, a counterweight to the pressure of the bourgeois media, right and "left."
The WSWS is not just one of many online news sources. It is unique, not only in the quality and breadth of its coverage, but above all in its clear political perspective and orientation, based on the heritage of the Marxist movement. It is precisely this grounding that enables the WSWS to develop a correct analysis of unfolding political events and provide the working class in Iran and internationally with an independent revolutionary perspective.
To carry forward this critical work, we appeal to our readers to support the WSWS financially. As the crisis of capitalism deepens, our tasks become larger, more complex and more costly.
In making the decision to support the WSWS, you are not simply helping us. More fundamentally, you are aiding in the development of the most important instrument for the liberation of the international working class.
Joe Kishore
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Iran, or What Happens In Vegas...
Back in 2000, when Bush-Cheney, Inc. stole the election in Florida, remember how Americans took to the streets demanding that their votes be counted or that Floridians be sent back to the polls? And remember how near bedlam broke out in cities all across this great land when, in 2004, Bush-Cheney, Inc., reprised the Florida scenario in southern Ohio?
No, no, that's right...Those protests didn't happen. Not here, not anymore. The spirit of democracy, of lower case "r" republican entitlement, fled these shores sometime in the early 1970's. Or maybe it simply retired to Vegas.
I was just there (Las Vegas, that is), taking in the so-called "Fremont Street Experience."
Yeah, baby!
This summer the Fremont Street Experience invites you to "re-live" the Summer of '69. There's a light show and black-jack dealers dressed in tie-dye and as I strolled into the lobby of the Fitz I was greeted with the Dead's "Uncle John's Band" blaring from loud-speakers...
This is capitalism in high gear: the social, political, and cultural unrest that made the 1960's a time of promise, hope, and deep anxieties has been commodified by the entertainment industry and sold back to the American people as so much kitsch and farce. Bread and circuses (though nowadays, it seems, many Americans had best not count on the bread).
I cannot help but recall Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; were he to try to write that book today, the correct title would read: The Capitalist Ethic and the Mere Spirit of Protestantism. But why bother with that? Cozy up with a copy of Tacitus's Annals and watch your future unfold from the past.
If you want to know where people take their republic seriously, look to Iran.
Friday, May 29, 2009
The Time Has Come to Be Militantly Anti-Military-Industrial-Complex
Like Eduardo Galeano. Here is an excerpt from his recent interview on Democracy Now!, one of only a handful of news outlets worth paying attention to...
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about President Obama, a little more about him. We recently had on the Pan-Africanist scholar Ali Mazrui, who’s a Kenyan scholar, a chancellor at a Kenyan school and also at Binghamton University in New York. He said Barack Obama has become “the most powerful single black individual in the history of civilization.” What about the significance of Barack Obama becoming president?
EDUARDO GALEANO: Well, it’s a very important—a very important victory in a long, long and difficult and painful fight against racism, especially in this country, in the United States.
Here in the book, I tell some stories, unknown or almost unknown, happened fifteen minutes ago in historical terms. For instance, in 1942, 1942, the Pentagon, when the United States was entered in the Second World War, the Pentagon forbade, prohibited the transfusions of black blood. And at that time, the director of the plasma bank in the Red Cross was a scientific called Charles Drew, and he denied the order. He denied to obey it, saying it’s stupid. Such a thing, such a thing, black blood, does not exist. Blood is red; it’s not black. Blood is red. And he knew what it was he was speaking about. He was almost the inventor of the plasma, or at least the scientific who made it possible. He saved million of lives in the Second World War. But besides being a scientific of very high reputation, he was black. And he was black. And so, he was not—he knew perfectly well what he was speaking about, and that’s why he resigned or was resigned. And this happened just a while ago, it’s yesterday.
So it’s very important, the fact that Obama is now president of the United States, being, as he is, black or half-black, no? The problem is that nobody is better or worse for being black or white, like—this book also, Mirrors, contains a lot of stories about women, this half of humanity. I don’t know why called a minority. I’m not strong in mathematics, but how half of humanity may be a minority? And I tell a lot of stories that are badly known or unknown. Then, my friends—I have some terribly perverse friends, saying, “Well, now the system gave you as a gift that wonderful woman called Condoleezza Rice.” And I say, “Well, yes, it’s true, because a woman is not better than a man or a man better than a woman. We are all made, you know, half-garbage and half-marble, half-beauty and half-[expletive].” But we should have the same opportunities. And that’s a problem. The discrimination have condemned so many people to be invisible. And this book tries to recover their memories and to recover their presence.
The fact that Obama is black is very important in the fight against racism, but it’s also a challenge. I mean, he should prove that blacks can do it better than whites, like women in power, which is unfortunately not the case of Margaret Thatcher, for instance. But they are at least—at least Margaret Thatcher had the opportunity to show it. And sometimes I think Obama is doing it well, and sometimes not. But it must be very difficult for him.
Yesterday I said perhaps he’s lost in the bush, and meaning that there is all this war machine, for instance. He improved the war budget. He improved it. In the campaign, he was promising a quite different attitude. But he ended raising the war budget, which is mysteriously named in the United States “defense budget.” I don’t know defense against who, because the last time this country was invaded was in 1812. Well, later there was a short invasion by Pancho Villa, but this was almost nothing, I mean. And I believe we should—we should propose a new model of world, not consecrated to this human passion of killing each other. We are the only animal specialized in mutual extermination.
By the way, advertising, I’m a member of a vast movement working for a big giant march for peace and against violence on October 2 in all countries, in all countries. And I hope we may have millions and millions of feet walking in the whole planet, in all cities, in all parts of the world, against the war, against this crazy mad world living against itself, this big factory of death that the world is nowadays. Each minute, each minute, the last official figures say, each minute, the world gives, each minute, $3 million to military expenses, $3 million per minute for military expenses, for the industry of death. And each minute, fifteen children die from hunger or curable diseases. So we’ll march against it, because we believe another world is possible.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Eduardo Galeano, and we’re going to be back with him in a minute.
FULL INTERVIEW HERE!
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about President Obama, a little more about him. We recently had on the Pan-Africanist scholar Ali Mazrui, who’s a Kenyan scholar, a chancellor at a Kenyan school and also at Binghamton University in New York. He said Barack Obama has become “the most powerful single black individual in the history of civilization.” What about the significance of Barack Obama becoming president?
EDUARDO GALEANO: Well, it’s a very important—a very important victory in a long, long and difficult and painful fight against racism, especially in this country, in the United States.
Here in the book, I tell some stories, unknown or almost unknown, happened fifteen minutes ago in historical terms. For instance, in 1942, 1942, the Pentagon, when the United States was entered in the Second World War, the Pentagon forbade, prohibited the transfusions of black blood. And at that time, the director of the plasma bank in the Red Cross was a scientific called Charles Drew, and he denied the order. He denied to obey it, saying it’s stupid. Such a thing, such a thing, black blood, does not exist. Blood is red; it’s not black. Blood is red. And he knew what it was he was speaking about. He was almost the inventor of the plasma, or at least the scientific who made it possible. He saved million of lives in the Second World War. But besides being a scientific of very high reputation, he was black. And he was black. And so, he was not—he knew perfectly well what he was speaking about, and that’s why he resigned or was resigned. And this happened just a while ago, it’s yesterday.
So it’s very important, the fact that Obama is now president of the United States, being, as he is, black or half-black, no? The problem is that nobody is better or worse for being black or white, like—this book also, Mirrors, contains a lot of stories about women, this half of humanity. I don’t know why called a minority. I’m not strong in mathematics, but how half of humanity may be a minority? And I tell a lot of stories that are badly known or unknown. Then, my friends—I have some terribly perverse friends, saying, “Well, now the system gave you as a gift that wonderful woman called Condoleezza Rice.” And I say, “Well, yes, it’s true, because a woman is not better than a man or a man better than a woman. We are all made, you know, half-garbage and half-marble, half-beauty and half-[expletive].” But we should have the same opportunities. And that’s a problem. The discrimination have condemned so many people to be invisible. And this book tries to recover their memories and to recover their presence.
The fact that Obama is black is very important in the fight against racism, but it’s also a challenge. I mean, he should prove that blacks can do it better than whites, like women in power, which is unfortunately not the case of Margaret Thatcher, for instance. But they are at least—at least Margaret Thatcher had the opportunity to show it. And sometimes I think Obama is doing it well, and sometimes not. But it must be very difficult for him.
Yesterday I said perhaps he’s lost in the bush, and meaning that there is all this war machine, for instance. He improved the war budget. He improved it. In the campaign, he was promising a quite different attitude. But he ended raising the war budget, which is mysteriously named in the United States “defense budget.” I don’t know defense against who, because the last time this country was invaded was in 1812. Well, later there was a short invasion by Pancho Villa, but this was almost nothing, I mean. And I believe we should—we should propose a new model of world, not consecrated to this human passion of killing each other. We are the only animal specialized in mutual extermination.
By the way, advertising, I’m a member of a vast movement working for a big giant march for peace and against violence on October 2 in all countries, in all countries. And I hope we may have millions and millions of feet walking in the whole planet, in all cities, in all parts of the world, against the war, against this crazy mad world living against itself, this big factory of death that the world is nowadays. Each minute, each minute, the last official figures say, each minute, the world gives, each minute, $3 million to military expenses, $3 million per minute for military expenses, for the industry of death. And each minute, fifteen children die from hunger or curable diseases. So we’ll march against it, because we believe another world is possible.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Eduardo Galeano, and we’re going to be back with him in a minute.
FULL INTERVIEW HERE!
Friday, May 15, 2009
The Real Enemy Among Us
Since President Obama took office and set up his big tent (having learned nothing from the Gingrich-led debacle of the Clinton years), the bottom-feeders from the Reagan-Bush neo-fascist revanchement have returned in force: and they are taking to the airwaves in defense of torture and the various other projects that putrify in the fetid bigotries of their fear-and-thing-ridden imaginations.
I, for one, have had enough. We've been more than polite and gracious to these thugs. It is time to show them the way back under the rocks from whence they have crawled.
Let's see now: we have the military-industrial-evangelical-complex (check); then we have the CIA engaged in para-military operations (check); and then we have private corporations who contract out the services of mercenaries to the government (check); then there's the FBI, National Guard units, state and local police (check, check, check, check). I'm sure I'm forgetting somebody...
I can hardly wait for the return of the East India Company, with its private army and navy to open "free markets" wherever the locals don't seem to understand the importance of buying what we have to sell them.
And still we fear the turbaned bogeyman in the night; armed to the teeth and hyper-vigilant and we just don't feel safe. Maybe it's all that under-the-table arms trading we've been doing for decades that has some people in government legitmately worried...
Blow-back is a bitch.
Centrism in a time of neo-fascist revanchement is just pissing in the flames. To put out the fire, the Left (if we have a viable one in this country, which is doubtful at this point) had better start organizing bucket brigades.
Obama is not ready to take on the real enemy among us: ourselves.
I, for one, have had enough. We've been more than polite and gracious to these thugs. It is time to show them the way back under the rocks from whence they have crawled.
Let's see now: we have the military-industrial-evangelical-complex (check); then we have the CIA engaged in para-military operations (check); and then we have private corporations who contract out the services of mercenaries to the government (check); then there's the FBI, National Guard units, state and local police (check, check, check, check). I'm sure I'm forgetting somebody...
I can hardly wait for the return of the East India Company, with its private army and navy to open "free markets" wherever the locals don't seem to understand the importance of buying what we have to sell them.
And still we fear the turbaned bogeyman in the night; armed to the teeth and hyper-vigilant and we just don't feel safe. Maybe it's all that under-the-table arms trading we've been doing for decades that has some people in government legitmately worried...
Blow-back is a bitch.
Centrism in a time of neo-fascist revanchement is just pissing in the flames. To put out the fire, the Left (if we have a viable one in this country, which is doubtful at this point) had better start organizing bucket brigades.
Obama is not ready to take on the real enemy among us: ourselves.
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