Markin comment:
On a day when I am in high dudgeon after the October 2nd One Nation Democratic Party pep rally (that is what it was, politically, as intended by the organizers) I will keep this one short and sweet for now. And let history speak, the history of real anti-war work done in the throes of World War I, the Zimmerwald conference. I am glad that this One Nation demonstration occurred now as a "show of colors." But, politically, it was a rally to stir up the troops for the Democrats in November and nothing more. Christ, I am glad our committee did not endorse this thing. It is now clear, clearer than ever, that we have much, much, much work to do to get people to break from Obama's wars, and Obama's party. For those who think along those same lines going back to Zimmerwald in 1915 is like a breathe of fresh air.
With that sense of history in mind , and with and understanding that our anti-war tasks are about the same now as then, and as daunting, I am posting some thoughts from a recent comment concerning a few steps in my own personal anti-war evolution in the early 1960s that seem germane today because I have run up against many of the arguments recently:
“…In many ways 1965 was a watershed year in the struggle against the Kennedy-Johnson Vietnam War. Not only was there a grievous escalation of troop levels and bombing attacks based on the usual frame-up set-up (the Gulf of Tonkin incident) that seem to be conveniently available when the tom-toms of war get beating but the fledgling anti-war movement (at least in the East) was getting organized in more than a token manner. Thus, on the serious matter of which way forward for that movement in order to drive it to victory those New York meetings (the early meetings to organize the growing opposition to the Vietnam War-Markin), the epicenter of the East Coast opposition, took on added meaning both for the immediate struggle against the war and the long term prospects for a real anti-imperialist opposition to American aggression in the world. And, maybe, more.
Listen though, in 1965, I was at the height of my Catholic Worker/ Americans for Democratic Action (ADA)-tinged left liberal pacifistic political views. Although not philosophically absolutely committed to non-violence or to working totally within the parliamentary system I was no embryonic Bolshevik ready to raise all kinds of hell. I still believed that “sweet” reason could be brought into play in bourgeois politics and the “better angels of our nature” (a term that I was fond of even then) would prevail. I was in no way hostile to communists, of whatever tendency, but merely saw them as another set of partners in the struggle against war. In short, I held a very popular frontist attitude, to use a term of art in our communist movement that I was not familiar with, and would not have used, then.
All of the above is by way of saying that had I been at the New York anti-war meetings, as I had been at various Boston meetings with the same kind of groups, including SANE (a group that I had worked with on their nuclear disarmament campaigns in the very early 1960s) which drove anti-war efforts around here in those days, I would have been nonplussed by the wishy-washy politics of using “sweet” reason on the Johnson Administration (basically coalescing around “stop the war” versus “immediate, unconditional withdrawal of American troops” slogans). Now, of course, long after the fact, I can see that the commitment of the vast majority of anti-war groups to “sweet” reason toward Johnson Administration war policy and a commitment to an essentially pacifist, parliamentary opposition that could easily be pieced off was doomed to failure. Failure, that is if the object, as it was for me, was to stop the bloody bastards in their tracks.
Fortunately the North Vietnamese army (DNV) and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam took matters into their own hands and saved the day by beating the American imperialist forces and ending the war. No one can say truthfully that the American anti-war movement was minimal in that effort but it was, in the end, hardly decisive as some would have it in the fog of memory. Those famous pictures of the United States Embassy in Saigon being frantically and desperately evacuated by helicopter from the rooftops graphically make the point for those who want to argue otherwise.
History is full of little twists and turns, and maybe, just maybe, we can learn something from studying it. Here is the lesson that we can use today. The next time that you are in an anti-war planning meeting and someone argues for immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all troops and mercenaries from (name the then current imperial adventure) as a central slogan for an anti-war demonstration vote for that proposal with both hands (and feet if you have to). That, in effect, is today’s anti-war version of those 1965 events.”
***************
International Socialist Conference at Zimmerwald
Declaration of sympathy for the war victims and the persecuted, adopted by the International Socialist Conference at Zimmerwald
First Published: International Socialist Commission at Berne, Bulletin No. 1, p. 8, September 21, 1915.
Source: Bolsheviks and War, Lessons for today's anti-war movement, by Sam Macey 1985;
Translated: by Sam Macey.
The International Socialist Conference at Zimmerwald sends its expression of profoundest sympathy to the countless victims of the war, to the Polish and Belgian people, to the persecuted Jewish and Armenian peoples, to the millions of human beings who are tormented by boundless sufferings and who have had to bear untold horrors.
The Conference honors the memory of the great Socialist Jean Jaures, the first victim of the war who fell as a martyr and fighter in the struggle against chauvinism and for peace. It honors the memory of the Socialist fighters Tutzowicz and Catanesi, who lost their young lives on the battlefield.
The Conference sends the expression of its profound and fraternal sympathy to the Duma Deputies exiled to Siberia who are continuing the glorious revolutionary tradition of Russia, to Liebknecht and Monatte, fettered by capitalism, both of whom have taken up the struggle against the civil peace policy of the workers in their respective countries, to Comrades Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin who have been imprisoned for their Socialist convictions, and to all comrades, men and women, who have been persecuted or arrested because they have waged a struggle against war.
The Conference solemnly vows to honor the living and dead by following the example of these brave fighters and by indefatigably carrying out the task of awakening the revolutionary spirit in the masses of the international proletariat, and uniting them in the struggle against the fratricidal war and against capitalist society.
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
*From The Communist Archives- The Struggle Against Class Collaboration In The Anti-War Movement- The Zimmerwald Conference of 1915-The Zimmerwald Manifesto
Markin comment:
On a day when I am in high dudgeon after the October 2nd One Nation Democratic Party pep rally (that is what it was, politically, as intended by the organizers) I will keep this one short and sweet for now. And let history speak, the history of real anti-war work done in the throes of World War I, the Zimmerwald conference. I am glad that this One Nation demonstration occurred now as a "show of colors." But, politically, it was a rally to stir up the troops for the Democrats in November and nothing more. Christ, I am glad our committee did not endorse this thing. It is now clear, clearer than ever, that we have much, much, much work to do to get people to break from Obama's wars, and Obama's party. For those who think along those same lines going back to Zimmerwald in 1915 is like a breathe of fresh air.
With that sense of history in mind , and with and understanding that our anti-war tasks are about the same now as then, and as daunting, I am posting some thoughts from a recent comment concerning a few steps in my own personal anti-war evolution in the early 1960s that seem germane today because I have run up against many of the arguments recently:
“…In many ways 1965 was a watershed year in the struggle against the Kennedy-Johnson Vietnam War. Not only was there a grievous escalation of troop levels and bombing attacks based on the usual frame-up set-up (the Gulf of Tonkin incident) that seem to be conveniently available when the tom-toms of war get beating but the fledgling anti-war movement (at least in the East) was getting organized in more than a token manner. Thus, on the serious matter of which way forward for that movement in order to drive it to victory those New York meetings (the early meetings to organize the growing opposition to the Vietnam War-Markin), the epicenter of the East Coast opposition, took on added meaning both for the immediate struggle against the war and the long term prospects for a real anti-imperialist opposition to American aggression in the world. And, maybe, more.
Listen though, in 1965, I was at the height of my Catholic Worker/ Americans for Democratic Action (ADA)-tinged left liberal pacifistic political views. Although not philosophically absolutely committed to non-violence or to working totally within the parliamentary system I was no embryonic Bolshevik ready to raise all kinds of hell. I still believed that “sweet” reason could be brought into play in bourgeois politics and the “better angels of our nature” (a term that I was fond of even then) would prevail. I was in no way hostile to communists, of whatever tendency, but merely saw them as another set of partners in the struggle against war. In short, I held a very popular frontist attitude, to use a term of art in our communist movement that I was not familiar with, and would not have used, then.
All of the above is by way of saying that had I been at the New York anti-war meetings, as I had been at various Boston meetings with the same kind of groups, including SANE (a group that I had worked with on their nuclear disarmament campaigns in the very early 1960s) which drove anti-war efforts around here in those days, I would have been nonplussed by the wishy-washy politics of using “sweet” reason on the Johnson Administration (basically coalescing around “stop the war” versus “immediate, unconditional withdrawal of American troops” slogans). Now, of course, long after the fact, I can see that the commitment of the vast majority of anti-war groups to “sweet” reason toward Johnson Administration war policy and a commitment to an essentially pacifist, parliamentary opposition that could easily be pieced off was doomed to failure. Failure, that is if the object, as it was for me, was to stop the bloody bastards in their tracks.
Fortunately the North Vietnamese army (DNV) and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam took matters into their own hands and saved the day by beating the American imperialist forces and ending the war. No one can say truthfully that the American anti-war movement was minimal in that effort but it was, in the end, hardly decisive as some would have it in the fog of memory. Those famous pictures of the United States Embassy in Saigon being frantically and desperately evacuated by helicopter from the rooftops graphically make the point for those who want to argue otherwise.
History is full of little twists and turns, and maybe, just maybe, we can learn something from studying it. Here is the lesson that we can use today. The next time that you are in an anti-war planning meeting and someone argues for immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all troops and mercenaries from (name the then current imperial adventure) as a central slogan for an anti-war demonstration vote for that proposal with both hands (and feet if you have to). That, in effect, is today’s anti-war version of those 1965 events.”
***********
International Socialist Conference at Zimmerwald
Manifesto
Source: The Bolsheviks and War, by Sam Marcy ;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
Proletarians of Europe!
The war has lasted more than a year. Millions of corpses cover the battlefields. Millions of human beings have been crippled for the rest of their lives. Europe is like a gigantic human slaughterhouse. All civilization, created by the labor of many generations, is doomed to destruction. The most savage barbarism is today celebrating its triumph over all that hitherto constituted the pride of humanity.
Irrespective of the truth as to the direct responsibility for the outbreak of the war, one thing is certain. The war which has produced this chaos is the outcome of imperialism, of the attempt on the part of the capitalist classes of each nation, to foster their greed for profit by the exploitation of human labor and of the natural treasures of the entire globe.
Economically backward or politically weak nations are thereby subjugated by the Great Powers who, in this war, are seeking to remake the world map with blood and iron in accord with their exploiting interests. Thus entire nations and countries, like Belgium, Poland, the Balkan states, and Armenia are threatened with the fate of being torn asunder, annexed as a whole or in part as booty in the game of compensations.
In the course of the war, its driving forces are revealed in all their vileness. Shred after shred falls the veil with which the meaning of this world catastrophe was hidden from the consciousness of the peoples. The capitalists of all countries who are coining the red gold of war-profits out of the blood shed by the people, assert that the war is for defense of the fatherland, for democracy, and the liberation of oppressed nations! They lie. In actual reality, they are burying the freedom of their own people together with the independence of the other nations in the places of devastation.
New fetters, new chains, new burdens are arising, and it is the proletariat of all countries, of the victorious as well as of the conquered countries, that will have to bear them. Improvement in welfare was proclaimed at the outbreak of the war – want and privation, unemployment and high prices, undernourishment and epidemics are the actual results. The burdens of war will consume the best energies of the peoples for decades, endanger the achievements of social reform, and hinder every step forward. Cultural devastation, economic decline, political reaction these are the blessings of this horrible conflict of nations. Thus the war reveals the naked figure of modern capitalism which has become irreconcilable, not only with the interests of the laboring masses, not only with the requirements of historical development, but also with the elementary conditions of human intercourse.
The ruling powers of capitalist society who held the fate of the nations in their hands, the monarchic as well as the republican governments, the secret diplomacy, the mighty business organizations, the bourgeois parties, the capitalist press, the Church – all these bear the full weight of responsibility for this war which arose out of the social order fostering them and protected by them, and which is being waged for their interests.
Workers!
Exploited, disfranchised, scorned, they called you brothers and comrades at the outbreak of the war when you were to be led to the slaughter, to death. And now that militarism has crippled you, mutilated you, degraded and annihilated you, the rulers demand that you surrender your interests, your aims, your ideals – in a word, servile subordination to civil peace. They rob you of the possibility of expressing your views, your feelings, your pains; they prohibit you from raising your demands and defending them. The press gagged, political rights and liberties trod upon – this is the way the military dictatorship rules today with an iron hand.
This situation which threatens the entire future of Europe and of humanity cannot and must not be confronted by us any longer without action. The Socialist proletariat has waged a struggle against militarism for decades. With growing concern, its representatives at their national and international congresses occupied themselves with the ever more menacing danger of war growing out of imperialism. At Stuttgart, at Copenhagen, at Basel, the international Socialist congresses have indicated the course which the proletariat must follow.
Since the beginning of the war, Socialist parties and labor organizations of various countries that helped to determine this course have disregarded the obligations following from this. Their representatives have called upon the working class to give up the class struggle, the only possible and effective method of proletarian emancipation. They have granted credits to the ruling classes for waging the war; they have placed themselves at the disposal of the governments for the most diverse services; through their press and their messengers, they have tried to win the neutrals for the government policies of their countries; they have delivered up to their governments Socialist Ministers as hostages for the preservation of civil peace, and thereby they have assumed the responsibility before the working class, before its present and its future, for this war, for its aims and its methods. And just as the individual parties, so the highest of the appointed representative bodies of the Socialists of all countries, the International Socialist Bureau, has failed them.
These facts are equally responsible for the fact that the international working class which did not succumb to the national panic of the first war period, or which freed itself from it, has still, in the second year of the slaughter of peoples, found no ways and means of taking up an energetic struggle for peace simultaneously in all countries.
In this unbearable situation, we, the representatives of the Socialist parties, trade unions and their minorities, we Germans, French, Italians, Russians, Poles, Letts, Rumanians, Bulgarians, Swedes, Norwegians, Dutch, and Swiss, we who stand, not on the ground of national solidarity with the exploiting class, but on the ground of the international solidarity of the proletariat and of the class struggle, have assembled to retie the torn threads of international relations and to call upon the working class to recover itself and to fight for peace.
This struggle is the struggle for freedom, for the reconciliation of peoples, for Socialism. It is necessary to take up this struggle for peace, for a peace without annexations or war indemnities. Such a peace, however, is only possible if every thought of violating the rights and liberties of nations is condemned. Neither the occupation of entire countries nor of separate parts of countries must lead to their violent annexation. No annexation, whether open or concealed, and no forcible economic attachment made still more unbearable by political disfranchisement. The right of self-determination of nations must be the indestructible principle in the system of national relationships of peoples.
Proletarians!
Since the outbreak of the war, you have placed your energy, your courage, your endurance at the service of the ruling classes. Now you must stand up for your own cause, for the sacred aims of Socialism, for the emancipation of the oppressed nations as well as of the enslaved classes, by means of the irreconcilable proletarian class struggle.
It is the task and the duty of the Socialists of the belligerent countries to take up this struggle with full force; it is the task and the duty of the Socialists of the neutral states to support their brothers in this struggle against bloody barbarism with every effective means. Never in world history was there a more urgent, a more sublime task, the fulfillment of which should be our common labor. No sacrifice is too great, no burden too heavy in order to achieve this goal: peace among the peoples.
Working men and working women! Mothers and fathers! Widows and orphans! Wounded and crippled! We call to all of you who are suffering from the war and because of the war: Beyond all borders, beyond the reeking battlefields, beyond the devastated cities and villages –
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Zimmerwald, September 1915.
In the name of the International Socialist Conference:
For the German delegation: Georg Ledebour, Adolf Hoffmann.
For the French delegation: A. Bourderon, A. Merrheim.
For the Italian delegation: G.E. Modigliani, Constantino Lazzari.
For the Russian delegation: N. Lenin, Paul Axelrod, M. Bobrov.
For the Polish delegation: St. Lapinski, A. Warski, Cz. Hanecki.
For the Inter-Balkan Socialist Federation: In the name of the Rumanian delegation: C. Rakovsky; In the name of the Bulgarian delegation: Wassil Kolarov.
For the Swedish and Norwegian delegation: Z. Hoglund, Ture Nerman.
For the Dutch delegation: H. Roland-Holst.
For the Swiss delegation: Robert Grimm, Charles Naine.
International Socialist Commission at Berne,
Bulletin No. 1, p. 2,
September 21, 1915.
On a day when I am in high dudgeon after the October 2nd One Nation Democratic Party pep rally (that is what it was, politically, as intended by the organizers) I will keep this one short and sweet for now. And let history speak, the history of real anti-war work done in the throes of World War I, the Zimmerwald conference. I am glad that this One Nation demonstration occurred now as a "show of colors." But, politically, it was a rally to stir up the troops for the Democrats in November and nothing more. Christ, I am glad our committee did not endorse this thing. It is now clear, clearer than ever, that we have much, much, much work to do to get people to break from Obama's wars, and Obama's party. For those who think along those same lines going back to Zimmerwald in 1915 is like a breathe of fresh air.
With that sense of history in mind , and with and understanding that our anti-war tasks are about the same now as then, and as daunting, I am posting some thoughts from a recent comment concerning a few steps in my own personal anti-war evolution in the early 1960s that seem germane today because I have run up against many of the arguments recently:
“…In many ways 1965 was a watershed year in the struggle against the Kennedy-Johnson Vietnam War. Not only was there a grievous escalation of troop levels and bombing attacks based on the usual frame-up set-up (the Gulf of Tonkin incident) that seem to be conveniently available when the tom-toms of war get beating but the fledgling anti-war movement (at least in the East) was getting organized in more than a token manner. Thus, on the serious matter of which way forward for that movement in order to drive it to victory those New York meetings (the early meetings to organize the growing opposition to the Vietnam War-Markin), the epicenter of the East Coast opposition, took on added meaning both for the immediate struggle against the war and the long term prospects for a real anti-imperialist opposition to American aggression in the world. And, maybe, more.
Listen though, in 1965, I was at the height of my Catholic Worker/ Americans for Democratic Action (ADA)-tinged left liberal pacifistic political views. Although not philosophically absolutely committed to non-violence or to working totally within the parliamentary system I was no embryonic Bolshevik ready to raise all kinds of hell. I still believed that “sweet” reason could be brought into play in bourgeois politics and the “better angels of our nature” (a term that I was fond of even then) would prevail. I was in no way hostile to communists, of whatever tendency, but merely saw them as another set of partners in the struggle against war. In short, I held a very popular frontist attitude, to use a term of art in our communist movement that I was not familiar with, and would not have used, then.
All of the above is by way of saying that had I been at the New York anti-war meetings, as I had been at various Boston meetings with the same kind of groups, including SANE (a group that I had worked with on their nuclear disarmament campaigns in the very early 1960s) which drove anti-war efforts around here in those days, I would have been nonplussed by the wishy-washy politics of using “sweet” reason on the Johnson Administration (basically coalescing around “stop the war” versus “immediate, unconditional withdrawal of American troops” slogans). Now, of course, long after the fact, I can see that the commitment of the vast majority of anti-war groups to “sweet” reason toward Johnson Administration war policy and a commitment to an essentially pacifist, parliamentary opposition that could easily be pieced off was doomed to failure. Failure, that is if the object, as it was for me, was to stop the bloody bastards in their tracks.
Fortunately the North Vietnamese army (DNV) and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam took matters into their own hands and saved the day by beating the American imperialist forces and ending the war. No one can say truthfully that the American anti-war movement was minimal in that effort but it was, in the end, hardly decisive as some would have it in the fog of memory. Those famous pictures of the United States Embassy in Saigon being frantically and desperately evacuated by helicopter from the rooftops graphically make the point for those who want to argue otherwise.
History is full of little twists and turns, and maybe, just maybe, we can learn something from studying it. Here is the lesson that we can use today. The next time that you are in an anti-war planning meeting and someone argues for immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all troops and mercenaries from (name the then current imperial adventure) as a central slogan for an anti-war demonstration vote for that proposal with both hands (and feet if you have to). That, in effect, is today’s anti-war version of those 1965 events.”
***********
International Socialist Conference at Zimmerwald
Manifesto
Source: The Bolsheviks and War, by Sam Marcy ;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
Proletarians of Europe!
The war has lasted more than a year. Millions of corpses cover the battlefields. Millions of human beings have been crippled for the rest of their lives. Europe is like a gigantic human slaughterhouse. All civilization, created by the labor of many generations, is doomed to destruction. The most savage barbarism is today celebrating its triumph over all that hitherto constituted the pride of humanity.
Irrespective of the truth as to the direct responsibility for the outbreak of the war, one thing is certain. The war which has produced this chaos is the outcome of imperialism, of the attempt on the part of the capitalist classes of each nation, to foster their greed for profit by the exploitation of human labor and of the natural treasures of the entire globe.
Economically backward or politically weak nations are thereby subjugated by the Great Powers who, in this war, are seeking to remake the world map with blood and iron in accord with their exploiting interests. Thus entire nations and countries, like Belgium, Poland, the Balkan states, and Armenia are threatened with the fate of being torn asunder, annexed as a whole or in part as booty in the game of compensations.
In the course of the war, its driving forces are revealed in all their vileness. Shred after shred falls the veil with which the meaning of this world catastrophe was hidden from the consciousness of the peoples. The capitalists of all countries who are coining the red gold of war-profits out of the blood shed by the people, assert that the war is for defense of the fatherland, for democracy, and the liberation of oppressed nations! They lie. In actual reality, they are burying the freedom of their own people together with the independence of the other nations in the places of devastation.
New fetters, new chains, new burdens are arising, and it is the proletariat of all countries, of the victorious as well as of the conquered countries, that will have to bear them. Improvement in welfare was proclaimed at the outbreak of the war – want and privation, unemployment and high prices, undernourishment and epidemics are the actual results. The burdens of war will consume the best energies of the peoples for decades, endanger the achievements of social reform, and hinder every step forward. Cultural devastation, economic decline, political reaction these are the blessings of this horrible conflict of nations. Thus the war reveals the naked figure of modern capitalism which has become irreconcilable, not only with the interests of the laboring masses, not only with the requirements of historical development, but also with the elementary conditions of human intercourse.
The ruling powers of capitalist society who held the fate of the nations in their hands, the monarchic as well as the republican governments, the secret diplomacy, the mighty business organizations, the bourgeois parties, the capitalist press, the Church – all these bear the full weight of responsibility for this war which arose out of the social order fostering them and protected by them, and which is being waged for their interests.
Workers!
Exploited, disfranchised, scorned, they called you brothers and comrades at the outbreak of the war when you were to be led to the slaughter, to death. And now that militarism has crippled you, mutilated you, degraded and annihilated you, the rulers demand that you surrender your interests, your aims, your ideals – in a word, servile subordination to civil peace. They rob you of the possibility of expressing your views, your feelings, your pains; they prohibit you from raising your demands and defending them. The press gagged, political rights and liberties trod upon – this is the way the military dictatorship rules today with an iron hand.
This situation which threatens the entire future of Europe and of humanity cannot and must not be confronted by us any longer without action. The Socialist proletariat has waged a struggle against militarism for decades. With growing concern, its representatives at their national and international congresses occupied themselves with the ever more menacing danger of war growing out of imperialism. At Stuttgart, at Copenhagen, at Basel, the international Socialist congresses have indicated the course which the proletariat must follow.
Since the beginning of the war, Socialist parties and labor organizations of various countries that helped to determine this course have disregarded the obligations following from this. Their representatives have called upon the working class to give up the class struggle, the only possible and effective method of proletarian emancipation. They have granted credits to the ruling classes for waging the war; they have placed themselves at the disposal of the governments for the most diverse services; through their press and their messengers, they have tried to win the neutrals for the government policies of their countries; they have delivered up to their governments Socialist Ministers as hostages for the preservation of civil peace, and thereby they have assumed the responsibility before the working class, before its present and its future, for this war, for its aims and its methods. And just as the individual parties, so the highest of the appointed representative bodies of the Socialists of all countries, the International Socialist Bureau, has failed them.
These facts are equally responsible for the fact that the international working class which did not succumb to the national panic of the first war period, or which freed itself from it, has still, in the second year of the slaughter of peoples, found no ways and means of taking up an energetic struggle for peace simultaneously in all countries.
In this unbearable situation, we, the representatives of the Socialist parties, trade unions and their minorities, we Germans, French, Italians, Russians, Poles, Letts, Rumanians, Bulgarians, Swedes, Norwegians, Dutch, and Swiss, we who stand, not on the ground of national solidarity with the exploiting class, but on the ground of the international solidarity of the proletariat and of the class struggle, have assembled to retie the torn threads of international relations and to call upon the working class to recover itself and to fight for peace.
This struggle is the struggle for freedom, for the reconciliation of peoples, for Socialism. It is necessary to take up this struggle for peace, for a peace without annexations or war indemnities. Such a peace, however, is only possible if every thought of violating the rights and liberties of nations is condemned. Neither the occupation of entire countries nor of separate parts of countries must lead to their violent annexation. No annexation, whether open or concealed, and no forcible economic attachment made still more unbearable by political disfranchisement. The right of self-determination of nations must be the indestructible principle in the system of national relationships of peoples.
Proletarians!
Since the outbreak of the war, you have placed your energy, your courage, your endurance at the service of the ruling classes. Now you must stand up for your own cause, for the sacred aims of Socialism, for the emancipation of the oppressed nations as well as of the enslaved classes, by means of the irreconcilable proletarian class struggle.
It is the task and the duty of the Socialists of the belligerent countries to take up this struggle with full force; it is the task and the duty of the Socialists of the neutral states to support their brothers in this struggle against bloody barbarism with every effective means. Never in world history was there a more urgent, a more sublime task, the fulfillment of which should be our common labor. No sacrifice is too great, no burden too heavy in order to achieve this goal: peace among the peoples.
Working men and working women! Mothers and fathers! Widows and orphans! Wounded and crippled! We call to all of you who are suffering from the war and because of the war: Beyond all borders, beyond the reeking battlefields, beyond the devastated cities and villages –
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Zimmerwald, September 1915.
In the name of the International Socialist Conference:
For the German delegation: Georg Ledebour, Adolf Hoffmann.
For the French delegation: A. Bourderon, A. Merrheim.
For the Italian delegation: G.E. Modigliani, Constantino Lazzari.
For the Russian delegation: N. Lenin, Paul Axelrod, M. Bobrov.
For the Polish delegation: St. Lapinski, A. Warski, Cz. Hanecki.
For the Inter-Balkan Socialist Federation: In the name of the Rumanian delegation: C. Rakovsky; In the name of the Bulgarian delegation: Wassil Kolarov.
For the Swedish and Norwegian delegation: Z. Hoglund, Ture Nerman.
For the Dutch delegation: H. Roland-Holst.
For the Swiss delegation: Robert Grimm, Charles Naine.
International Socialist Commission at Berne,
Bulletin No. 1, p. 2,
September 21, 1915.
*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Leadbelly's "Bourgeois Blues"
Click on the title to link a YouTube film clip of Leadbelly performing his classic Washington, D.C. blues, Bourgeois Blues.
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist. Sadly though, hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground and have rather more often than not been fellow-travelers. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
*******
Markin comment:
On a day when I am in high dudgeon after the October 2nd One Nation Democratic Party pep rally (that is what it was, politically, and as intended by the organizers) this old Leadbelly tune has been in the back of my mind.
******
Bourgeois Blues-Leadbelly
Note: the "n" word is from his original version and in the interest of lyrical accuracy, if not political and social correctness, they are posted as is. Markin
Me and my wife went all over town
And everywhere we went people turned us down
Lord, in a bourgeois town
It's a bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
Well, me and my wife we were standing upstairs
We heard the white man say'n I don't want no niggers up there
Lord, in a bourgeois town
Uhm, bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
Home of the brave, land of the free
I don't wanna be mistreated by no bourgeoisie
Lord, in a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
Well, them white folks in Washington they know how
To call a colored man a nigger just to see him bow
Lord, it's a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
I tell all the colored folks to listen to me
Don't try to find you no home in Washington, DC
'Cause it's a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist. Sadly though, hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground and have rather more often than not been fellow-travelers. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
*******
Markin comment:
On a day when I am in high dudgeon after the October 2nd One Nation Democratic Party pep rally (that is what it was, politically, and as intended by the organizers) this old Leadbelly tune has been in the back of my mind.
******
Bourgeois Blues-Leadbelly
Note: the "n" word is from his original version and in the interest of lyrical accuracy, if not political and social correctness, they are posted as is. Markin
Me and my wife went all over town
And everywhere we went people turned us down
Lord, in a bourgeois town
It's a bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
Well, me and my wife we were standing upstairs
We heard the white man say'n I don't want no niggers up there
Lord, in a bourgeois town
Uhm, bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
Home of the brave, land of the free
I don't wanna be mistreated by no bourgeoisie
Lord, in a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
Well, them white folks in Washington they know how
To call a colored man a nigger just to see him bow
Lord, it's a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
I tell all the colored folks to listen to me
Don't try to find you no home in Washington, DC
'Cause it's a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
Monday, October 04, 2010
*From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America)- Some Lessons of the Toledo Strike
Click on the headline to link to the article described in the title.
Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement that in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League. A recent example of that linkage in this space was when I argued in this space that, for those who stand in the Trotskyist tradition, one must examine closely the fate of Marx’s First International, the generic socialist Second International, Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolshevik Revolution-inspired Communist International, and Trotsky’s revolutionary successor, the Fourth International before one looks elsewhere for a centralized international working class organization that codifies the principle –“workers of the world unite.”
On the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I am speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Deb’s Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that made up the organization under review, the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive. Beyond that there are several directions to go in but these are the bedrock of revolutionary Marxist continuity, at least through the 1960s. If I am asked, and I have been, this is the material that I suggest young militants should start of studying to learn about our common political forbears. And that premise underlines the point of the entries that will posted under this headline in further exploration of the early days, “the dog days” of the Socialist Workers Party.
Note: I can just now almost hear some very nice and proper socialists (descendents of those socialism for dentist-types) just now, screaming in the night, yelling what about Max Shachtman (and, I presume, his henchman, Albert Glotzer, as well) and his various organizational formations starting with the Workers party when he split from the Socialist Workers Party in 1940? Well, what about old Max and his “third camp” tradition? I said the Trotskyist tradition not the State Department socialist tradition. If you want to trace Marxist continuity that way, go to it. That, in any case, is not my sense of continuity, although old Max knew how to “speak” Marxism early in his career under Jim Cannon’s prodding. Moreover at the name Max Shachtman I can hear some moaning, some serious moaning about blackguards and turncoats, from the revolutionary pantheon by Messrs. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. I rest my case.
********************
Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement that in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League. A recent example of that linkage in this space was when I argued in this space that, for those who stand in the Trotskyist tradition, one must examine closely the fate of Marx’s First International, the generic socialist Second International, Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolshevik Revolution-inspired Communist International, and Trotsky’s revolutionary successor, the Fourth International before one looks elsewhere for a centralized international working class organization that codifies the principle –“workers of the world unite.”
On the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I am speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Deb’s Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that made up the organization under review, the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive. Beyond that there are several directions to go in but these are the bedrock of revolutionary Marxist continuity, at least through the 1960s. If I am asked, and I have been, this is the material that I suggest young militants should start of studying to learn about our common political forbears. And that premise underlines the point of the entries that will posted under this headline in further exploration of the early days, “the dog days” of the Socialist Workers Party.
Note: I can just now almost hear some very nice and proper socialists (descendents of those socialism for dentist-types) just now, screaming in the night, yelling what about Max Shachtman (and, I presume, his henchman, Albert Glotzer, as well) and his various organizational formations starting with the Workers party when he split from the Socialist Workers Party in 1940? Well, what about old Max and his “third camp” tradition? I said the Trotskyist tradition not the State Department socialist tradition. If you want to trace Marxist continuity that way, go to it. That, in any case, is not my sense of continuity, although old Max knew how to “speak” Marxism early in his career under Jim Cannon’s prodding. Moreover at the name Max Shachtman I can hear some moaning, some serious moaning about blackguards and turncoats, from the revolutionary pantheon by Messrs. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. I rest my case.
********************
*From National Public Radio-Poor Economy Forces Irish To Find Work Elsewhere- The Trials Of The Diaspora
Click on the headline to link to an NPR report on the latest news from the Irish diaspora trail.
Markin comment:
As a child of the Irish diaspora on my mother's side, her forebears coming over on famine ships of the 1840s, this story has a very familar ring about the latest leavings from the old country.
Markin comment:
As a child of the Irish diaspora on my mother's side, her forebears coming over on famine ships of the 1840s, this story has a very familar ring about the latest leavings from the old country.
Life in Devastated Haiti - by Stephen Lendman
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Life in Devastated Haiti
Life in Devastated Haiti - by Stephen Lendman
Nine months after the January 12 earthquake, Haitians still have little relief. Over one and a half million left homeless continue struggling to survive, despite billions in aid raised or pledged. It's for development, predatory NGOs, not them. That's the problem, and they suffer as a result, little media attention paid to their plight.
On September 15, Los Angeles Times writer Joe Mozingo headlined, "No plan in sight for Haiti's homeless," saying:
Where to put them is contentious, reconstruction "hang(ing) on the potentially explosive issue" of who owns the land. For example, pre-quake, tenant farmers used to plant corn and sugar cane on a wealthy family's 20-acre parcel "below the city's main transmission lines of the Delmas 33 road."
"Now an estimated 25,000 people call it home," living in one of many temporary camps, poorly protected against heavy rain, severe weather or hurricanes. When security men try to evict them, they're chased off with "rocks, sticks and machetes."
"It's not like we're comfortable here," says Katlyne Camean. "Last night when it rained, I filled three buckets of water from my house. But no one is telling us where they want us to go. I don't want to go somewhere worse."
They're pitted against an indifferent government, woefully little aid, and conditions unacceptable for anyone, including inadequate food, poor sanitation, little safe drinking water, weather-beaten makeshift shelters, too little of everything needed, no resolution of their homelessness, and the world community turning a blind eye to their plight.
Rubble is everywhere, only 2% of it removed. On September 11, AP's Tamara Lush reported that Port-au-Prince is strewn with "cracked slabs, busted-up cinder blocks, half-destroyed buildings," demolished homes, and "pulverized concrete" on streets and sidewalks. "By some estimates, the quake left about 33 million cubic yards of debris in Port-au-Prince - more than seven times the amount of concrete" used for Hoover Dam.
Overall, it's little different from nine months ago, authorities offering excuses that don't hold water, including little heavy equipment, problems navigating some roads, and few dump sites to put rubble collected.
There's no master plan, says Eric Overvest, the UN Development Program's country director. Also, no one's in charge, Haitian architect Leslie Voltaire saying:
"Everybody is passing the blame on why things haven't happened yet. There should be one person in charge. Resettlement has not even begun yet, and it can't until the city has been cleared."
Allocating funding for other purposes and bureaucratic delays complicate things. Most of all, it's Haiti, the hemisphere's poorest country, exploited ruthlessly for centuries. If a comparable quake struck San Francisco, restoration would begin at once. It takes time, money and commitment, available to well-off White communities, not poor Black ones.
Katrina-ravaged New Orleans residents understand, facing dire conditions five years later, those in Black communities on their own like millions of other poor Americans unaffected by natural disasters. In many respects, their lives are little different, given little aid during dire economic times.
Refugee International (RI) on Haiti
RI "advocates for lifesaving assistance and protection for displaced people and promotes solutions to displacement crises." Its challenge is helping 41 million world refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs), living in limbo without citizenship rights.
Emilie Parry and Melanie Teff just returned from Haiti after conducting RI's second field assessment "of the humanitarian response and related protection issues..."
Parry's September 13 article titled, "Haiti: Emergency Paralysis" describes what she calls:
Haitians "caught up in a protracted state of emergency. In the way that a spinal cord injury's paralysis leads to bedsores, atrophy, and skin rot in the patient, the (poor) humanitarian response in Haiti feels paralyzed. The local community networks and linkages are atrophying, the spontaneous camps are developing bedsores, and the momentum, the window of opportunity within this emergency, may be turning to rot."
Why? Because of world indifference. Planned reconstruction is for profit, leaving poor Haitians on their own to survive, the world community indifferent to their plight.
RI spent time in Haiti shortly after the quake, reporting on March 2 "From the Ground Up," explaining the toll on survivors, their desperate need for everything, including "food, water, shelter and protection from abuse and exploitation." They need an enormous amount of humanitarian aid. It's pledged but not provided.
RI recommended linking humanitarian efforts to Haiti's civil society network, comprised of grassroots community-based organizations plus the well-established internal NGOs. Most, however, are more self-serving than for poor Haitians, a topic a previous article addressed, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/02/haiti-is-open-for-business.html
RI said few needs so far were addressed, including little or no "coordination and communication between Haitian civil society and UN and international NGOs...." Grassroots locals were mostly shut out to give corporate and well-connected NGOs free reign to profit from the vast human misery.
Locals had "a hard time accessing meetings at the UN compound in Port-au-Prince" to be part of a coordinated response. RI also interviewed displaced Haitians "who expressed concern about security," especially women and children vulnerable to rape other violence, and abuse. Then and now, they also lacked minimal amounts of everything, RI saying:
"Most people who lost their homes sleep under makeshift dwellings of sheets and sticks providing little protection from rain," and none from hurricanes. "The sanitation in the camps does not meet minimal international standards. The need for shelter poses immense logistical challenges....intrinsically linked to land ownership and property rights," an issue the Preval government is doing nothing to resolve.
Affected Haitians then and now need everything they're not getting, receiving pathetically little of the pledged aid. "By all accounts, the leadership of the humanitarian country team is ineffectual. Following the earthquake, it took three weeks for the Humanitarian Coordinator to call a meeting with aid organizations."
Damage to affected and surrounding areas "have far-reaching implications that go beyond" reconstructing Port-au-Prince. The entire country needs help, mostly for its deeply impoverished, neglected and exploited people, the quake affected ones desperate for help, so far not forthcoming.
In her September 13 article, Parry said:
"....in every part, semi-open space or crossroads in Port-au-Prince and the environs, we see a gathering of quake-displaced persons, make-shift lean-tos (few donated), tents....packed closely together, filling every space. There are no latrines, no showers, no (minimal) SPHERE standards observed, and no communications with international or local agencies responding to the emergency."
Chaotic conditions have risen to "extreme heights." Everything needed is in short supply or not provided. Security is lacking, forcing women to sleep in shifts to protect them and others from rape and abuse. The problem for thousands of unaccompanied children is enormous.
Present day Haiti is like January's, except for "the overwhelming stench of sewage and garbage," and the toll on Haitians after months of neglect.
"Children and adults have developed skin rashes and infections due to the poor water and sanitary conditions in the camps. The tents and lean-tos are tattered and torn; hundreds blew away in the recent storms, none remain dry (when it) rains, and it is the middle of hurricane season."
Across the city and surrounding areas, grassroots networks "are weakening," without enough resources, support, or ability to work with established NGOs or world humanitarian organizations.
Of the 1,000 - 1,300 camps, only six are policed by UNPOL/MINISTAH - there but doing little besides writing up incidences of rapes, other crimes, and botched "street abortions" for girls as young as 10.
Camp Coordination and Management, under the leadership of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) "is a confused and contradictory mess, with an overwhelming number of cases where local camp groups have no idea" who's in charge or what needs to be done to help.
"The numbers in the camps have grown," some displaced people having returned to Port-au-Prince from rural areas. Nothing is being done to help them. Little coordinated aid is provided, many camp residents saying "they feel they are being left to rot, left in the camps to die."
Scheduled November Elections
On November 28, first round legislative and presidential elections will be held. Democracy, however, will be absent because the nation's most popular party, Fanmi Lavalas, and 13 others are excluded, the system rigged to "elect" Washington friendly candidates.
Lawyer Ira Kurzban, an immigration and employment law expert and former legal counsel to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, calls the process "unfair, unconstitutional and undemocratic."
Haitians know a charade is planned. Many will opt out, their choice in April 2009 for the sham process to fill 12 open Senate seats that saw an estimated 5 - 10% turnout. Why bother this time when virtually no one running gives a damn about ordinary Haitians. It makes a mockery of real elections - illegitimate, farcical, and little more than bad theater. Nonetheless, unless the fluid date is changed, it'll be hailed as democracy in action. Millions of Haitians know better.
A Final Comment
Haiti remains in emergency. For growing numbers, aid is "too little, too late." It presents an enormous challenge for those who care, to "do better, in order to support the possibility of hope, the possibility of recovery, and the opportunity to build back better."
So far, it's planned only for the privileged, ordinary Haitians are on their own to survive. Other generations faced it earlier for centuries, helped only by the brief interregnum under Aristide, why millions in the country so badly want him back. His presence alone would make a world of difference, helping and providing many with what's now fading - hope.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
Life in Devastated Haiti
Life in Devastated Haiti - by Stephen Lendman
Nine months after the January 12 earthquake, Haitians still have little relief. Over one and a half million left homeless continue struggling to survive, despite billions in aid raised or pledged. It's for development, predatory NGOs, not them. That's the problem, and they suffer as a result, little media attention paid to their plight.
On September 15, Los Angeles Times writer Joe Mozingo headlined, "No plan in sight for Haiti's homeless," saying:
Where to put them is contentious, reconstruction "hang(ing) on the potentially explosive issue" of who owns the land. For example, pre-quake, tenant farmers used to plant corn and sugar cane on a wealthy family's 20-acre parcel "below the city's main transmission lines of the Delmas 33 road."
"Now an estimated 25,000 people call it home," living in one of many temporary camps, poorly protected against heavy rain, severe weather or hurricanes. When security men try to evict them, they're chased off with "rocks, sticks and machetes."
"It's not like we're comfortable here," says Katlyne Camean. "Last night when it rained, I filled three buckets of water from my house. But no one is telling us where they want us to go. I don't want to go somewhere worse."
They're pitted against an indifferent government, woefully little aid, and conditions unacceptable for anyone, including inadequate food, poor sanitation, little safe drinking water, weather-beaten makeshift shelters, too little of everything needed, no resolution of their homelessness, and the world community turning a blind eye to their plight.
Rubble is everywhere, only 2% of it removed. On September 11, AP's Tamara Lush reported that Port-au-Prince is strewn with "cracked slabs, busted-up cinder blocks, half-destroyed buildings," demolished homes, and "pulverized concrete" on streets and sidewalks. "By some estimates, the quake left about 33 million cubic yards of debris in Port-au-Prince - more than seven times the amount of concrete" used for Hoover Dam.
Overall, it's little different from nine months ago, authorities offering excuses that don't hold water, including little heavy equipment, problems navigating some roads, and few dump sites to put rubble collected.
There's no master plan, says Eric Overvest, the UN Development Program's country director. Also, no one's in charge, Haitian architect Leslie Voltaire saying:
"Everybody is passing the blame on why things haven't happened yet. There should be one person in charge. Resettlement has not even begun yet, and it can't until the city has been cleared."
Allocating funding for other purposes and bureaucratic delays complicate things. Most of all, it's Haiti, the hemisphere's poorest country, exploited ruthlessly for centuries. If a comparable quake struck San Francisco, restoration would begin at once. It takes time, money and commitment, available to well-off White communities, not poor Black ones.
Katrina-ravaged New Orleans residents understand, facing dire conditions five years later, those in Black communities on their own like millions of other poor Americans unaffected by natural disasters. In many respects, their lives are little different, given little aid during dire economic times.
Refugee International (RI) on Haiti
RI "advocates for lifesaving assistance and protection for displaced people and promotes solutions to displacement crises." Its challenge is helping 41 million world refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs), living in limbo without citizenship rights.
Emilie Parry and Melanie Teff just returned from Haiti after conducting RI's second field assessment "of the humanitarian response and related protection issues..."
Parry's September 13 article titled, "Haiti: Emergency Paralysis" describes what she calls:
Haitians "caught up in a protracted state of emergency. In the way that a spinal cord injury's paralysis leads to bedsores, atrophy, and skin rot in the patient, the (poor) humanitarian response in Haiti feels paralyzed. The local community networks and linkages are atrophying, the spontaneous camps are developing bedsores, and the momentum, the window of opportunity within this emergency, may be turning to rot."
Why? Because of world indifference. Planned reconstruction is for profit, leaving poor Haitians on their own to survive, the world community indifferent to their plight.
RI spent time in Haiti shortly after the quake, reporting on March 2 "From the Ground Up," explaining the toll on survivors, their desperate need for everything, including "food, water, shelter and protection from abuse and exploitation." They need an enormous amount of humanitarian aid. It's pledged but not provided.
RI recommended linking humanitarian efforts to Haiti's civil society network, comprised of grassroots community-based organizations plus the well-established internal NGOs. Most, however, are more self-serving than for poor Haitians, a topic a previous article addressed, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/02/haiti-is-open-for-business.html
RI said few needs so far were addressed, including little or no "coordination and communication between Haitian civil society and UN and international NGOs...." Grassroots locals were mostly shut out to give corporate and well-connected NGOs free reign to profit from the vast human misery.
Locals had "a hard time accessing meetings at the UN compound in Port-au-Prince" to be part of a coordinated response. RI also interviewed displaced Haitians "who expressed concern about security," especially women and children vulnerable to rape other violence, and abuse. Then and now, they also lacked minimal amounts of everything, RI saying:
"Most people who lost their homes sleep under makeshift dwellings of sheets and sticks providing little protection from rain," and none from hurricanes. "The sanitation in the camps does not meet minimal international standards. The need for shelter poses immense logistical challenges....intrinsically linked to land ownership and property rights," an issue the Preval government is doing nothing to resolve.
Affected Haitians then and now need everything they're not getting, receiving pathetically little of the pledged aid. "By all accounts, the leadership of the humanitarian country team is ineffectual. Following the earthquake, it took three weeks for the Humanitarian Coordinator to call a meeting with aid organizations."
Damage to affected and surrounding areas "have far-reaching implications that go beyond" reconstructing Port-au-Prince. The entire country needs help, mostly for its deeply impoverished, neglected and exploited people, the quake affected ones desperate for help, so far not forthcoming.
In her September 13 article, Parry said:
"....in every part, semi-open space or crossroads in Port-au-Prince and the environs, we see a gathering of quake-displaced persons, make-shift lean-tos (few donated), tents....packed closely together, filling every space. There are no latrines, no showers, no (minimal) SPHERE standards observed, and no communications with international or local agencies responding to the emergency."
Chaotic conditions have risen to "extreme heights." Everything needed is in short supply or not provided. Security is lacking, forcing women to sleep in shifts to protect them and others from rape and abuse. The problem for thousands of unaccompanied children is enormous.
Present day Haiti is like January's, except for "the overwhelming stench of sewage and garbage," and the toll on Haitians after months of neglect.
"Children and adults have developed skin rashes and infections due to the poor water and sanitary conditions in the camps. The tents and lean-tos are tattered and torn; hundreds blew away in the recent storms, none remain dry (when it) rains, and it is the middle of hurricane season."
Across the city and surrounding areas, grassroots networks "are weakening," without enough resources, support, or ability to work with established NGOs or world humanitarian organizations.
Of the 1,000 - 1,300 camps, only six are policed by UNPOL/MINISTAH - there but doing little besides writing up incidences of rapes, other crimes, and botched "street abortions" for girls as young as 10.
Camp Coordination and Management, under the leadership of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) "is a confused and contradictory mess, with an overwhelming number of cases where local camp groups have no idea" who's in charge or what needs to be done to help.
"The numbers in the camps have grown," some displaced people having returned to Port-au-Prince from rural areas. Nothing is being done to help them. Little coordinated aid is provided, many camp residents saying "they feel they are being left to rot, left in the camps to die."
Scheduled November Elections
On November 28, first round legislative and presidential elections will be held. Democracy, however, will be absent because the nation's most popular party, Fanmi Lavalas, and 13 others are excluded, the system rigged to "elect" Washington friendly candidates.
Lawyer Ira Kurzban, an immigration and employment law expert and former legal counsel to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, calls the process "unfair, unconstitutional and undemocratic."
Haitians know a charade is planned. Many will opt out, their choice in April 2009 for the sham process to fill 12 open Senate seats that saw an estimated 5 - 10% turnout. Why bother this time when virtually no one running gives a damn about ordinary Haitians. It makes a mockery of real elections - illegitimate, farcical, and little more than bad theater. Nonetheless, unless the fluid date is changed, it'll be hailed as democracy in action. Millions of Haitians know better.
A Final Comment
Haiti remains in emergency. For growing numbers, aid is "too little, too late." It presents an enormous challenge for those who care, to "do better, in order to support the possibility of hope, the possibility of recovery, and the opportunity to build back better."
So far, it's planned only for the privileged, ordinary Haitians are on their own to survive. Other generations faced it earlier for centuries, helped only by the brief interregnum under Aristide, why millions in the country so badly want him back. His presence alone would make a world of difference, helping and providing many with what's now fading - hope.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
From "The San Francisco Eight" Blog-Wiretaps in SF8 case after all? Report on court Sep 17, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Wiretaps in SF8 case after all?
Report on court Sep 17, 2010
A brief court appearance on September 17 for the last of the San Francisco 8 defendants, Francisco (Cisco) Torres, turned out to be not so routine.
Cisco's attorney, Chuck Bourdon, with attorney Rai Sue Sussman, filed a motion for an evidentiary hearing to be held before the ever-receding Preliminary Hearing on the one remaining charge (murder). The evidentiary hearing for which they are calling is to examine the existence of possible wiretap evidence from 1971 which may have been "lost," hidden, or destroyed. While the prosecution has denied that such wiretap evidence exists, a retired San Francisco police officer has claimed knowledge of them (in a vile rant against the memory of the late Marilyn Buck, along with a threat to disrupt her upcoming memorial).
There was a large and moving show of solidarity from supporters in the courtroom and hallways. Cisco sent his appreciation.
Come to court October 13 at 9:30, Department 9 at which time dates will be set for hearings on the motion to dismiss charges due to prejudicial delay. Representing our continuing support is crucial, even at these "routine" court appearances – and sometimes we are witness to something completely unexpected.
Wiretaps in SF8 case after all?
Report on court Sep 17, 2010
A brief court appearance on September 17 for the last of the San Francisco 8 defendants, Francisco (Cisco) Torres, turned out to be not so routine.
Cisco's attorney, Chuck Bourdon, with attorney Rai Sue Sussman, filed a motion for an evidentiary hearing to be held before the ever-receding Preliminary Hearing on the one remaining charge (murder). The evidentiary hearing for which they are calling is to examine the existence of possible wiretap evidence from 1971 which may have been "lost," hidden, or destroyed. While the prosecution has denied that such wiretap evidence exists, a retired San Francisco police officer has claimed knowledge of them (in a vile rant against the memory of the late Marilyn Buck, along with a threat to disrupt her upcoming memorial).
There was a large and moving show of solidarity from supporters in the courtroom and hallways. Cisco sent his appreciation.
Come to court October 13 at 9:30, Department 9 at which time dates will be set for hearings on the motion to dismiss charges due to prejudicial delay. Representing our continuing support is crucial, even at these "routine" court appearances – and sometimes we are witness to something completely unexpected.
Sunday, October 03, 2010
*Once Again-Out In The Be-Bop Night- The School Dance Last Chance
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Platters performing their classic last dance number, Only You.
CD Review
The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: The ‘50s: Keep On Rocking, Last Dance, Time-Life, 1989
I have spent tons of time and reams of cyberspace “paper” in this space reviewing the teenage culture of the 1950s, especially the inevitable school dance and the also equally inevitable last dance. That event, the last dance that is, was the last chance for even shy boys like me to prove that we were not wallflowers, or worst. The last chance to rise (or fall) in the torrid and relentless pecking order of the social scene at school. And moreover to prove to that certain she that you were made of some sort of heroic stuff, the stuff of dreams, of her dreams, thank you very much. Moreover, to make use of that social capital you invested in by learning to dance, or the “shadow” of learning to dance.
But all of that social stuff is neither here nor there at last dance time. The real question, the world historic question, is whether that song will be a slow one or a fast one. A slow one means that you have to dance close and hope, hope to high heaven, that you do not ruin your partner’s feet and shoes (shoes, moreover, brought for just this occasion, damn). A fast one brings a sigh of relief as you know; know as sure as you are born, that you can fake that one with a couple of wiggly moves. This compilation has both types of songs for the nostalgically-inclined AARP demographics this item is pitched to. And for the younger set a chance to giggle at what your parents and grandparents got all heated up about and along the way thank someone, some blessed spirit, that as members in good standing of hip-hop nation you avoided all of that.
Stick outs here include: legendary rocker Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Rock and Roller (fast); The Fireflies’ You Were Mine (slow, ouch); Sandy Nelson’s Teen Beat (fast); and The Platter’s classic (the one you prayed they would play) Only You. How is that for dee-jay even-handedness?
CD Review
The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: The ‘50s: Keep On Rocking, Last Dance, Time-Life, 1989
I have spent tons of time and reams of cyberspace “paper” in this space reviewing the teenage culture of the 1950s, especially the inevitable school dance and the also equally inevitable last dance. That event, the last dance that is, was the last chance for even shy boys like me to prove that we were not wallflowers, or worst. The last chance to rise (or fall) in the torrid and relentless pecking order of the social scene at school. And moreover to prove to that certain she that you were made of some sort of heroic stuff, the stuff of dreams, of her dreams, thank you very much. Moreover, to make use of that social capital you invested in by learning to dance, or the “shadow” of learning to dance.
But all of that social stuff is neither here nor there at last dance time. The real question, the world historic question, is whether that song will be a slow one or a fast one. A slow one means that you have to dance close and hope, hope to high heaven, that you do not ruin your partner’s feet and shoes (shoes, moreover, brought for just this occasion, damn). A fast one brings a sigh of relief as you know; know as sure as you are born, that you can fake that one with a couple of wiggly moves. This compilation has both types of songs for the nostalgically-inclined AARP demographics this item is pitched to. And for the younger set a chance to giggle at what your parents and grandparents got all heated up about and along the way thank someone, some blessed spirit, that as members in good standing of hip-hop nation you avoided all of that.
Stick outs here include: legendary rocker Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Rock and Roller (fast); The Fireflies’ You Were Mine (slow, ouch); Sandy Nelson’s Teen Beat (fast); and The Platter’s classic (the one you prayed they would play) Only You. How is that for dee-jay even-handedness?
From The United For Justice With Peace (UJP) Website- The October 2nd "One Nation" Washington Demonstration
Click on the headline to link to a UJP entry for the October 2, 2010 One Nation demonstration in Washington, D.C.
Markin comment:
I will keep this one short and sweet for now. I am glad that this demonstration occurred as a "show of colors." But, politically, it was (as advertised) a rally to stir up the troops for the Democrats in November. Christ, I am glad our committee did not endorse this thing. We have much, much, much work to do to get people to break from Obama's wars, and Obama's party. More later.
Markin comment:
I will keep this one short and sweet for now. I am glad that this demonstration occurred as a "show of colors." But, politically, it was (as advertised) a rally to stir up the troops for the Democrats in November. Christ, I am glad our committee did not endorse this thing. We have much, much, much work to do to get people to break from Obama's wars, and Obama's party. More later.
From The New Left Archives- Carl Davidson's Guardian Series- "Trotskyism- Left In Form, Right In Essence" (1973)
Click on the headline to link to a Marxist Internet Archive entry, Carl Davidson's Trotskyism- Left In Form, Right In Essence (1973).
Markin comment:
Somehow the day's postings would not be complete without a little historic overview on the writings of one current radical travelogue writer, Carl Davidson. Actually, I think I like his old-time pro-Stalinist stuff better than his reporting from the Basque country today. At least then we could fight it out for the "soul" of the international working class, or our approximation of it, before he apparently decided that "communism was dead."
Markin comment:
Somehow the day's postings would not be complete without a little historic overview on the writings of one current radical travelogue writer, Carl Davidson. Actually, I think I like his old-time pro-Stalinist stuff better than his reporting from the Basque country today. At least then we could fight it out for the "soul" of the international working class, or our approximation of it, before he apparently decided that "communism was dead."
*From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-"The Intelligentsia And Socialism"
Click on the headline to link to the Workers Vanguard website for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.
Markin comment:
I have spilled a great deal of ink in this space arguing for the young, including young intellectuals, to emulate John Reed, Harvard Class of 1910, and come over and join us in the fight for our communist future. The international workers movement, and particularly its revolutionary wing, is in constant need of writers, thinkers, and speakers to preach “the good news.” This task continues today although over the years the number of hardened intellectuals has dwindled on our side of the struggle.
As Trotsky points out, in the normal course of events, intellectuals, young idealistic ones and old long-in-the-tooth entombed ones alike, are trained to run the apparatuses of the bourgeois state and the lure of socialism, even if short-lived, is usually just a way station to that end. Generations of young intellectuals, and wanna-be intellectuals, have previously given the best two years or so of their lives to the fresh ideas swirling around the socialism milieu before becoming ensnared in the groves of academia. But every once in a while... A John Reed. A Leon Trotsky. A Lenin. And that is what we fight for on the campuses. .
Note: Although the polemic presented in this linked article by Leon Trotsky is closely reasoned it is hardly the best example of his literary flair. Maybe it was the subject matter, maybe it was the opponent he was arguing against (Max Adler) but this one is not guaranteed to set any youth’s heart a-flutter. Or any old man’s either.
Markin comment:
I have spilled a great deal of ink in this space arguing for the young, including young intellectuals, to emulate John Reed, Harvard Class of 1910, and come over and join us in the fight for our communist future. The international workers movement, and particularly its revolutionary wing, is in constant need of writers, thinkers, and speakers to preach “the good news.” This task continues today although over the years the number of hardened intellectuals has dwindled on our side of the struggle.
As Trotsky points out, in the normal course of events, intellectuals, young idealistic ones and old long-in-the-tooth entombed ones alike, are trained to run the apparatuses of the bourgeois state and the lure of socialism, even if short-lived, is usually just a way station to that end. Generations of young intellectuals, and wanna-be intellectuals, have previously given the best two years or so of their lives to the fresh ideas swirling around the socialism milieu before becoming ensnared in the groves of academia. But every once in a while... A John Reed. A Leon Trotsky. A Lenin. And that is what we fight for on the campuses. .
Note: Although the polemic presented in this linked article by Leon Trotsky is closely reasoned it is hardly the best example of his literary flair. Maybe it was the subject matter, maybe it was the opponent he was arguing against (Max Adler) but this one is not guaranteed to set any youth’s heart a-flutter. Or any old man’s either.
*From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-"Troy Davis Appeal Turned Down"- Down With The Death Penalty
Click on the headline to link to the Workers Vanguard website for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist mentioned in this day's other posts.
Additionally, as was pointed out in the linked article, Troy Davis, and countless other now middle-aged innocent black men, have been railroaded through the bourgeois "justice" system only to have it proven by their innocent many years and dollars later that justice had not been not served in their cases. Enough! Free Troy Davis! Free All Class-War Prisoners!
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist mentioned in this day's other posts.
Additionally, as was pointed out in the linked article, Troy Davis, and countless other now middle-aged innocent black men, have been railroaded through the bourgeois "justice" system only to have it proven by their innocent many years and dollars later that justice had not been not served in their cases. Enough! Free Troy Davis! Free All Class-War Prisoners!
From "The Rag Blog" -FILM / Danny Schechter : Stone's 'Wall Street' Sequel Goes Soft
FILM / Danny Schechter : Stone's 'Wall Street' Sequel Goes Soft
Journalist, author, Emmy winning television producer, and independent filmmaker Danny Schechter will be Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio on KOOP 91.7 FM in Austin, Tuesday, September 28, 2-3 p.m. (CST). To stream Rag Radio live, go here. To listen to this show after the broadcast, or to listen to earlier shows on Rag Radio, go here.
'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps'
Oliver Stone's sequel misses the mark
By Danny Schechter / The Rag Blog / September 27, 2010
Lack of focus on corruption mars Stone's new Wall Street movie. It's heavy on atmosphere, light on anger.
The lead headline in The New York Times is “Extensive Fraud Appears to Mar Afghan Election." The line below is "A Blow to Credibility," as if anyone who follows Afghanistan, a country known for blatant and notorious corruption, would be at all surprised by this latest “blow.” This “blow” followed an earlier “blow” a few weeks back with the disclosure of the crash of the Kabul Bank with $300 billion still unaccounted for.
In America, another fraud: CNN reported the next morning that the pathetic blonde beauty-celebrity Lindsay Lohan put up $300,000 to get out of jail. That’s the kind of story American media considers worthy of constant “Breaking News” attention.
When will we see the headlines like "Extensive Fraud Appears to Mar Economic Recovery" or "Extensive Fraud Led to Financial Collapse"?
I ask this question, sort of knowing the answer, after two recent back-to-back film experiences.
Last Thursday I spoke at a packed screening of my film Plunder: The Crime of our Time that indicts financial crimes and corruption behind the financial crisis. The audience seemed overwhelmingly positive except for one Wall Streeter in the house who insisted that while there may have been “ethical lapses,” no crimes were committed, an expression of a conventional wisdom that most of the media has reinforced without investigating any evidence.
At a reception after the film in Suburban Long Island’s Cinema Arts Center, several people told me that one impact the crisis has had on them is sleeplessness because of anxiety over whether they can pay their bills and avoid joblessness and foreclosure.
Ironically, film director Oliver Stone also had sleep on his mind, as "Money Never Sleeps” is the subtitle of his remake of the movie Wall Street. To my surprise, the theater was not packed for a film distributed ironically by the money of mad mogul Rupert Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox company.
After watching the movie, I realized why the right-wing Rupert Murdoch could be comfortable enough releasing the latest from the nominally left-wing Oliver Stone.
The movie built an “explainer” around a love story that in the end was as much about child-parent conflicts and pretentious philosophizing as the background of the collapse of Wall Street -- which is treated, ultimately, from a “we are all to blame” viewpoint. In many ways the movie celebrates the brash culture of greed and excess of our era while we watch Michael Douglas' portrayal of Gordon Gekko, known in earlier times for the slogan “Greed Is Good.”
Now, greed is everywhere, and there ain’t much we can do about it.
Oh Oliver, really.
Personally, I saw many of the stories I reported in my film turn up in his -- with even the same lines -- leading me to unprovable suspicions after having given my film personally to Stone with a request for his help months earlier.
How naive of me. We are in different leagues, clearly, and maybe on different sides.
In an interview on CNN, Stone seemed to argue that free speech is more of an issue than the insolvency of the banks. He became totally obsessed with the rumors that brought down Bear Stearns, an issue I explore in depth. Stone told CNN:
What I found out, what shocked me back in 2009, was that Goldman Sachs and those type of banks were really going long and short at the same time and were actually selling out on their clients. I thought that was shocking information to me, as well as the power of rumor, which, amazing. We show the power of that and how it can destroy a company...
I'm not so sure that's good for the system, although it's more transparent. But it does lead to circles of viciousness and rumor and hype and a stock, as you know, drops. I mean, look at what happened a few months ago, right? The market just crashed. So what's going to happen?
It does scare me, and I think it's the nature of the modern world, I suppose.
The following comment was on the website Ml-implode.com, where the intervew was excerpted:
There you go, "rumor,” mentioned as a causative factor 4 or 5 times; insolvency/leverage? Zero. Those poor, poor Wall Street banks -- they're victims, you know.
The movie dances on all sides of the issues, actually featuring an on camera cameo by Stone, of course and, Grayon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, who I quote in my film and book, The Crime of our Time, because he labeled the crisis “the greatest non-violent crime in history” Stone feigns to that view but ultimately rejects it.
Hedge Fund investor Jim Chanos, who I also quote, and who has called for the prosecution of wrongdoers, was even an advisor. It seems like he was wanted for his insight more on the atmospherics of the scene, not his demand for more perp walks.
Wall Street 2 features a father-son subtext as the young banker played by Shia LaBeouf watches as his mentor -- at a firm made to resemble Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers -- commits suicide after the company is brought down by rumors and dirty tricks. In the end he marries and has a son with Gekko’s daughter who, natch, runs a left wing website.
The kid is named Louie after the banker who died. Undisclosed is that Stone’s dad who worked on Wall Street was also a Lou. Clearly this movie was as much about the personal psychodrama of Stone’s life as many of his earlier films were about the ghosts of Vietnam. His movies about Nixon and W also featured father-son conflicts. The banker who died by jumping into the subway, Frank Langella, recently played Nixon in the movie about David Frost’s interview.
More disturbing was the film’s failure to call for any action. It starts with Gekko getting out of jail and getting back in the industry. So jail, in the end means nothing.
Many Wall Streeters interviewed about the film seemed confused about its message and meandering plot points. Most (including myself) liked the luscious cinematography of New York that even profiled Bernie Madoff’s former office, as well as David Byrne’s great music. Said former banker Nomi Prins who is in Plunder, “ I liked it until halfway through, and then it was a hodge-podge bunch of events.”
The pro-free market Daily Bell wrote:
Always, Oliver Stone seems a propagandist and apologist... One so successful and perspicacious as Oliver Stone must know generally where the truth lies. Would it be any news to him that the United States is over-extended from a monetary and military standpoint? Or that Fed money printing was the proximate cause of the economic crash. It should not be too hard to figure this out. The Internet is full of such analyses.
Critic Roger Ebert liked the film but added, "I wish it had been angrier. I wish it had been outraged. Maybe Stone's instincts are correct, and American audiences aren't ready for that. They haven't had enough of Greed."
Did those “instincts” lead to the pandering, or was it just the logic of the market or Murdoch’s neutering its critical edge with an insistence to “just tell us a story, Oliver, if you want this to be big.”
In my experience, audiences I met were furious about what’s happened to them and the country. Late last week Paul Volker warned that the financial system is still broken. Others fear another crash is only just a matter of time. This reality is not evident on Oliver Stone’s radar screen.
After my screening, a man named Milton told me he is active in the Democratic Party, but that the Dems will not really act against Wall Street. “They don’t have the guts,” he said. Can the same be said about Oliver Stone, who loves the Hugo Chavez’s of the world South Of The Border, but echoes CNBC here at home?
["News Dissector" Danny Schechter is a journalist, author, Emmy award winning television producer, and independent filmmaker who also writes, blogs, and speaks about media issues. Schechter directed Plunder: The Crime of Our Time, and a companion book, The Crime of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail. Contact him at dissector@mediachannel.org.]
The Rag Blog
Posted by thorne dreyer at 11:00 AM
Labels: Banking, Corporate Corruption, Danny Schechter, Film, Financial Crisis, Oliver Stone, Rag Bloggers, Wall Street
1 Make/read comments:
Sherman De Brosse said...
This was a good review. The film sort of dragged at the end.
Stone left the clear impression that the financial system will implode again and again. The recent reregulation might cushon the shock somewhat.
I don't see much anger out there directed at Wall Street. It has been effectively redirected toward President Obama and the dreaded liberals.
You have to hand it to the Republicans. They are slick communicators.
They say no more bail-outs while they are getting ready to scrap the recent financial reform bill. That will guarantee that the taxpayer will have to bail out Wall Street again, and again, and again.
There may be a few dim-witted GOP congressmen who do not understand this, but I'll bet most do.
Sep 28, 2010 2:28:00 PM
Post a Comment
Journalist, author, Emmy winning television producer, and independent filmmaker Danny Schechter will be Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio on KOOP 91.7 FM in Austin, Tuesday, September 28, 2-3 p.m. (CST). To stream Rag Radio live, go here. To listen to this show after the broadcast, or to listen to earlier shows on Rag Radio, go here.
'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps'
Oliver Stone's sequel misses the mark
By Danny Schechter / The Rag Blog / September 27, 2010
Lack of focus on corruption mars Stone's new Wall Street movie. It's heavy on atmosphere, light on anger.
The lead headline in The New York Times is “Extensive Fraud Appears to Mar Afghan Election." The line below is "A Blow to Credibility," as if anyone who follows Afghanistan, a country known for blatant and notorious corruption, would be at all surprised by this latest “blow.” This “blow” followed an earlier “blow” a few weeks back with the disclosure of the crash of the Kabul Bank with $300 billion still unaccounted for.
In America, another fraud: CNN reported the next morning that the pathetic blonde beauty-celebrity Lindsay Lohan put up $300,000 to get out of jail. That’s the kind of story American media considers worthy of constant “Breaking News” attention.
When will we see the headlines like "Extensive Fraud Appears to Mar Economic Recovery" or "Extensive Fraud Led to Financial Collapse"?
I ask this question, sort of knowing the answer, after two recent back-to-back film experiences.
Last Thursday I spoke at a packed screening of my film Plunder: The Crime of our Time that indicts financial crimes and corruption behind the financial crisis. The audience seemed overwhelmingly positive except for one Wall Streeter in the house who insisted that while there may have been “ethical lapses,” no crimes were committed, an expression of a conventional wisdom that most of the media has reinforced without investigating any evidence.
At a reception after the film in Suburban Long Island’s Cinema Arts Center, several people told me that one impact the crisis has had on them is sleeplessness because of anxiety over whether they can pay their bills and avoid joblessness and foreclosure.
Ironically, film director Oliver Stone also had sleep on his mind, as "Money Never Sleeps” is the subtitle of his remake of the movie Wall Street. To my surprise, the theater was not packed for a film distributed ironically by the money of mad mogul Rupert Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox company.
After watching the movie, I realized why the right-wing Rupert Murdoch could be comfortable enough releasing the latest from the nominally left-wing Oliver Stone.
The movie built an “explainer” around a love story that in the end was as much about child-parent conflicts and pretentious philosophizing as the background of the collapse of Wall Street -- which is treated, ultimately, from a “we are all to blame” viewpoint. In many ways the movie celebrates the brash culture of greed and excess of our era while we watch Michael Douglas' portrayal of Gordon Gekko, known in earlier times for the slogan “Greed Is Good.”
Now, greed is everywhere, and there ain’t much we can do about it.
Oh Oliver, really.
Personally, I saw many of the stories I reported in my film turn up in his -- with even the same lines -- leading me to unprovable suspicions after having given my film personally to Stone with a request for his help months earlier.
How naive of me. We are in different leagues, clearly, and maybe on different sides.
In an interview on CNN, Stone seemed to argue that free speech is more of an issue than the insolvency of the banks. He became totally obsessed with the rumors that brought down Bear Stearns, an issue I explore in depth. Stone told CNN:
What I found out, what shocked me back in 2009, was that Goldman Sachs and those type of banks were really going long and short at the same time and were actually selling out on their clients. I thought that was shocking information to me, as well as the power of rumor, which, amazing. We show the power of that and how it can destroy a company...
I'm not so sure that's good for the system, although it's more transparent. But it does lead to circles of viciousness and rumor and hype and a stock, as you know, drops. I mean, look at what happened a few months ago, right? The market just crashed. So what's going to happen?
It does scare me, and I think it's the nature of the modern world, I suppose.
The following comment was on the website Ml-implode.com, where the intervew was excerpted:
There you go, "rumor,” mentioned as a causative factor 4 or 5 times; insolvency/leverage? Zero. Those poor, poor Wall Street banks -- they're victims, you know.
The movie dances on all sides of the issues, actually featuring an on camera cameo by Stone, of course and, Grayon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, who I quote in my film and book, The Crime of our Time, because he labeled the crisis “the greatest non-violent crime in history” Stone feigns to that view but ultimately rejects it.
Hedge Fund investor Jim Chanos, who I also quote, and who has called for the prosecution of wrongdoers, was even an advisor. It seems like he was wanted for his insight more on the atmospherics of the scene, not his demand for more perp walks.
Wall Street 2 features a father-son subtext as the young banker played by Shia LaBeouf watches as his mentor -- at a firm made to resemble Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers -- commits suicide after the company is brought down by rumors and dirty tricks. In the end he marries and has a son with Gekko’s daughter who, natch, runs a left wing website.
The kid is named Louie after the banker who died. Undisclosed is that Stone’s dad who worked on Wall Street was also a Lou. Clearly this movie was as much about the personal psychodrama of Stone’s life as many of his earlier films were about the ghosts of Vietnam. His movies about Nixon and W also featured father-son conflicts. The banker who died by jumping into the subway, Frank Langella, recently played Nixon in the movie about David Frost’s interview.
More disturbing was the film’s failure to call for any action. It starts with Gekko getting out of jail and getting back in the industry. So jail, in the end means nothing.
Many Wall Streeters interviewed about the film seemed confused about its message and meandering plot points. Most (including myself) liked the luscious cinematography of New York that even profiled Bernie Madoff’s former office, as well as David Byrne’s great music. Said former banker Nomi Prins who is in Plunder, “ I liked it until halfway through, and then it was a hodge-podge bunch of events.”
The pro-free market Daily Bell wrote:
Always, Oliver Stone seems a propagandist and apologist... One so successful and perspicacious as Oliver Stone must know generally where the truth lies. Would it be any news to him that the United States is over-extended from a monetary and military standpoint? Or that Fed money printing was the proximate cause of the economic crash. It should not be too hard to figure this out. The Internet is full of such analyses.
Critic Roger Ebert liked the film but added, "I wish it had been angrier. I wish it had been outraged. Maybe Stone's instincts are correct, and American audiences aren't ready for that. They haven't had enough of Greed."
Did those “instincts” lead to the pandering, or was it just the logic of the market or Murdoch’s neutering its critical edge with an insistence to “just tell us a story, Oliver, if you want this to be big.”
In my experience, audiences I met were furious about what’s happened to them and the country. Late last week Paul Volker warned that the financial system is still broken. Others fear another crash is only just a matter of time. This reality is not evident on Oliver Stone’s radar screen.
After my screening, a man named Milton told me he is active in the Democratic Party, but that the Dems will not really act against Wall Street. “They don’t have the guts,” he said. Can the same be said about Oliver Stone, who loves the Hugo Chavez’s of the world South Of The Border, but echoes CNBC here at home?
["News Dissector" Danny Schechter is a journalist, author, Emmy award winning television producer, and independent filmmaker who also writes, blogs, and speaks about media issues. Schechter directed Plunder: The Crime of Our Time, and a companion book, The Crime of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail. Contact him at dissector@mediachannel.org.]
The Rag Blog
Posted by thorne dreyer at 11:00 AM
Labels: Banking, Corporate Corruption, Danny Schechter, Film, Financial Crisis, Oliver Stone, Rag Bloggers, Wall Street
1 Make/read comments:
Sherman De Brosse said...
This was a good review. The film sort of dragged at the end.
Stone left the clear impression that the financial system will implode again and again. The recent reregulation might cushon the shock somewhat.
I don't see much anger out there directed at Wall Street. It has been effectively redirected toward President Obama and the dreaded liberals.
You have to hand it to the Republicans. They are slick communicators.
They say no more bail-outs while they are getting ready to scrap the recent financial reform bill. That will guarantee that the taxpayer will have to bail out Wall Street again, and again, and again.
There may be a few dim-witted GOP congressmen who do not understand this, but I'll bet most do.
Sep 28, 2010 2:28:00 PM
Post a Comment
Growing Poverty in America - by Stephen Lendman
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Growing Poverty in America
Growing Poverty in America - by Stephen Lendman
The newly released US Census report on "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2009" way understates a growing problem as do most other government data. Unemployment for one, the Labor Department's headlined (U-3) 9.6% masks the true 22% based on 1980 calculations.
With America in economic crisis, the new Census report portends much worse ahead under a president and Congress doing little to address it, the Brookings Institution Isabel Sawhill expecting the problem to "get much worse long before it gets better." More on the new data below. First, some other confirmations of economic trouble.
The Federal Reserve's September-released Flow of Funds report shows household Q 2 2010 net worth plunged $1.5 trillion because of a $0.9 trillion drop in corporate equities and a $0.7 reduction in pension fund holdings. Overall, total household financial assets declined by $1.7 trillion to $43.7 trillion, a trend expected to continue for some time.
On September 15, RealtyTrac reported another disturbing one, saying:
"The number of homes taken back by lenders hit a new record high last month:" 95,364 foreclosures, about 2% higher than the previous May 2010 peak. According to its CEO, James J. Saccacio:
"The trend lines of decreasing default notices and increasing bank repossessions converged in August, with virtually the same number (of both) - a clear indication that the clogged foreclosure pipeline is being carefully managed on both ends by lenders and servicers." However, they can't mask a housing depression, the worst since the 1930s, showing no signs of ebbing. In Q 1, 2010, one of every seven mortgages was either delinquent or in foreclosure, now likely even more.
On September 9, Bloomberg writers Bob Willis and Vincent Del Giudice headlined, "Record Plunge in US Consumer Credit Signals Weakened Spending," saying:
"A record $21.6 billion drop in borrowing by Americans" provided more confirmation of a continuing trend. "Consumer credit fell by 10 percent at an annual rate in July to $2.5 trillion, according to a (newly released) Federal Reserve report....The drop was more than five times larger than economists' forecasts. Credit fell for a sixth (straight) month, the longest series of declines since 1991."
In early August, the US Department of Agriculture reported a record 40.8 million Americans (one in eight) on food stamps, a 19% increase year over year, and 18 straight months of record highs.
In January 2010, Feeding America (FA, formerly America's Second Harvest) confirmed the growing problem in its report titled, "Hunger in America 2010," a topic an earlier article addressed, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/02/growing-hunger-in-america.html
Since 2005, it cited a 27% increase, saying one in eight Americans are food insecure, meaning they don't get enough to eat. Included are 14 million children and three million seniors, and these numbers keep rising as the economy weakens.
The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty estimates over three million Americans experience homelessness annually, including about 1.3 million children. Even more are at risk because of growing numbers losing jobs and homes. For others, one health emergency makes them homeless.
In July, the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY) and First Focus reported about one million homeless students. Based on Department of Education data, the total rose by over 40% from the 2006-07 school year - 2008-09, a number well over a million now and rising.
Since mid-2007, total household wealth plunged $13.9 trillion, another disturbing trend, confirming so many others, showing up poverty and other data.
The US Census Bureau Report
On September 16, the Census Bureau reported that US poverty rose to 43.6 million in 2009, an increase of 3.8 million in the past year - the largest total since the first 1959 estimates. It shows one in seven Americans are impoverished, the official 14.3% rate the highest since 1994, by the Bureau's conservative measures. Black and Hispanic Americans fared much worse at 25.8% and 25.3% respectively.
Child poverty also rose, those under 18 to 20.7% - at least one in five children, but according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), it's one in four at yearend 2009. For Blacks it's well over one in three and for Hispanics nearly the same.
The Bureau computes several alternative income and poverty measures in two categories:
-- one based on the 1995 National Academy of Sciences Panel on Poverty and Family Assistance, called NAS-based measures; and
-- the other from the Effect of Benefits and Taxes on Income and Poverty series (R&D).
Critics, however, maintain that government figures way understate the gravity of today's crisis, and even the Bureau admits that official thresholds were developed over 40 years ago. They haven't taken into account true rising inflation levels; other expenses like child care, transportation, high tuition and medical expenses, as well as stagnant or falling incomes in recent years. In addition, cost of living levels vary greatly around the country - among regions, between large and small cities, and between urban and rural areas.
For a family of four, the official poverty threshold is an annual $22,050 income, a figure far below reality. For example, a family of four in Peoria, IL needs $42,900 to be above poverty. In Chicago, it's $49,000 and in New York $72,000.
The Bureau also excludes 2.4 million prisoners, elderly residents in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, students living at school, undocumented immigrants, itinerants, and families or individuals forced to double up for economic reasons, counted as a single higher-income household.
According to David Johnson, the Bureau's Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division head:
"If the poverty status of related subfamilies were determined by only their own income, their poverty would be 44.2%. When their poverty is determined based on the resources of all related household members, it is about 17%."
Income and poverty estimates are also pre-tax, excluding non-cash benefits, partly employer-provided, but diminishing as they shift the cost burden to employees. However, disposable personal income, after income, payroll, sales, property, and other taxes reveals a far higher poverty level than Bureau figures, and a much graver crisis for growing millions sinking below the real poverty threshold.
The Bureau's entire report is depressing, including saying one in three Americans had incomes below the $45,000 minimum on average a family of four needs to "make ends meet" at a basic level.
More as well from its section on health insurance coverage. Again, understating the gravity of the problem, it said people without insurance increased to 16.7% in 2009 from 15.4% in 2008, numbering 50.7 million and rising monthly.
Further, for the first time since 1987 (the first year comparable data was collected), the number of people with coverage dropped to 253.6 million in 2009 from 255.1 in 2008 because those with private health insurance fell by 6.5 million year over year. Included are over 7.5 million uninsured children and high percentages of poor Blacks and Hispanics.
Health care reform won't mitigate the problem. According to Dr. Olveen Carrasquillo of Physicians for a National Health Program:
The Bureau overlooked the pervasive and growing underinsurance problem, certain to keep growing annually. In addition, "Not having health insurance, or having poor quality (coverage) is a source of mounting stress and poor medical outcomes for people across our country." New research, he points out, shows that about 14.1 million children and 25 million non-elderly adults were underinsured in 2007, the figures far higher today and rising.
Further, "The government subsidies under the new health law will not be sufficient to provide quality (or even adequate) and affordable coverage to the vast majority of Americans. Tens of millions will remain uninsured, underinsured and without access to care."
Obamacare enriches providers at the expense of solving this enormous problem for most people, and in the out years, far greater numbers as costs rise exponentially and employers shift more of the burden to workers.
Growing poverty creates a deplorable burden overall, as America slips closer to third world status. For millions today, it's already arrived. Fiscal austerity is accelerating it when stimulus is desperately needed. Yet it's not forthcoming or planned because the Treasury and Fed won't put their money where our mouths are.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
Growing Poverty in America
Growing Poverty in America - by Stephen Lendman
The newly released US Census report on "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2009" way understates a growing problem as do most other government data. Unemployment for one, the Labor Department's headlined (U-3) 9.6% masks the true 22% based on 1980 calculations.
With America in economic crisis, the new Census report portends much worse ahead under a president and Congress doing little to address it, the Brookings Institution Isabel Sawhill expecting the problem to "get much worse long before it gets better." More on the new data below. First, some other confirmations of economic trouble.
The Federal Reserve's September-released Flow of Funds report shows household Q 2 2010 net worth plunged $1.5 trillion because of a $0.9 trillion drop in corporate equities and a $0.7 reduction in pension fund holdings. Overall, total household financial assets declined by $1.7 trillion to $43.7 trillion, a trend expected to continue for some time.
On September 15, RealtyTrac reported another disturbing one, saying:
"The number of homes taken back by lenders hit a new record high last month:" 95,364 foreclosures, about 2% higher than the previous May 2010 peak. According to its CEO, James J. Saccacio:
"The trend lines of decreasing default notices and increasing bank repossessions converged in August, with virtually the same number (of both) - a clear indication that the clogged foreclosure pipeline is being carefully managed on both ends by lenders and servicers." However, they can't mask a housing depression, the worst since the 1930s, showing no signs of ebbing. In Q 1, 2010, one of every seven mortgages was either delinquent or in foreclosure, now likely even more.
On September 9, Bloomberg writers Bob Willis and Vincent Del Giudice headlined, "Record Plunge in US Consumer Credit Signals Weakened Spending," saying:
"A record $21.6 billion drop in borrowing by Americans" provided more confirmation of a continuing trend. "Consumer credit fell by 10 percent at an annual rate in July to $2.5 trillion, according to a (newly released) Federal Reserve report....The drop was more than five times larger than economists' forecasts. Credit fell for a sixth (straight) month, the longest series of declines since 1991."
In early August, the US Department of Agriculture reported a record 40.8 million Americans (one in eight) on food stamps, a 19% increase year over year, and 18 straight months of record highs.
In January 2010, Feeding America (FA, formerly America's Second Harvest) confirmed the growing problem in its report titled, "Hunger in America 2010," a topic an earlier article addressed, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/02/growing-hunger-in-america.html
Since 2005, it cited a 27% increase, saying one in eight Americans are food insecure, meaning they don't get enough to eat. Included are 14 million children and three million seniors, and these numbers keep rising as the economy weakens.
The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty estimates over three million Americans experience homelessness annually, including about 1.3 million children. Even more are at risk because of growing numbers losing jobs and homes. For others, one health emergency makes them homeless.
In July, the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY) and First Focus reported about one million homeless students. Based on Department of Education data, the total rose by over 40% from the 2006-07 school year - 2008-09, a number well over a million now and rising.
Since mid-2007, total household wealth plunged $13.9 trillion, another disturbing trend, confirming so many others, showing up poverty and other data.
The US Census Bureau Report
On September 16, the Census Bureau reported that US poverty rose to 43.6 million in 2009, an increase of 3.8 million in the past year - the largest total since the first 1959 estimates. It shows one in seven Americans are impoverished, the official 14.3% rate the highest since 1994, by the Bureau's conservative measures. Black and Hispanic Americans fared much worse at 25.8% and 25.3% respectively.
Child poverty also rose, those under 18 to 20.7% - at least one in five children, but according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), it's one in four at yearend 2009. For Blacks it's well over one in three and for Hispanics nearly the same.
The Bureau computes several alternative income and poverty measures in two categories:
-- one based on the 1995 National Academy of Sciences Panel on Poverty and Family Assistance, called NAS-based measures; and
-- the other from the Effect of Benefits and Taxes on Income and Poverty series (R&D).
Critics, however, maintain that government figures way understate the gravity of today's crisis, and even the Bureau admits that official thresholds were developed over 40 years ago. They haven't taken into account true rising inflation levels; other expenses like child care, transportation, high tuition and medical expenses, as well as stagnant or falling incomes in recent years. In addition, cost of living levels vary greatly around the country - among regions, between large and small cities, and between urban and rural areas.
For a family of four, the official poverty threshold is an annual $22,050 income, a figure far below reality. For example, a family of four in Peoria, IL needs $42,900 to be above poverty. In Chicago, it's $49,000 and in New York $72,000.
The Bureau also excludes 2.4 million prisoners, elderly residents in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, students living at school, undocumented immigrants, itinerants, and families or individuals forced to double up for economic reasons, counted as a single higher-income household.
According to David Johnson, the Bureau's Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division head:
"If the poverty status of related subfamilies were determined by only their own income, their poverty would be 44.2%. When their poverty is determined based on the resources of all related household members, it is about 17%."
Income and poverty estimates are also pre-tax, excluding non-cash benefits, partly employer-provided, but diminishing as they shift the cost burden to employees. However, disposable personal income, after income, payroll, sales, property, and other taxes reveals a far higher poverty level than Bureau figures, and a much graver crisis for growing millions sinking below the real poverty threshold.
The Bureau's entire report is depressing, including saying one in three Americans had incomes below the $45,000 minimum on average a family of four needs to "make ends meet" at a basic level.
More as well from its section on health insurance coverage. Again, understating the gravity of the problem, it said people without insurance increased to 16.7% in 2009 from 15.4% in 2008, numbering 50.7 million and rising monthly.
Further, for the first time since 1987 (the first year comparable data was collected), the number of people with coverage dropped to 253.6 million in 2009 from 255.1 in 2008 because those with private health insurance fell by 6.5 million year over year. Included are over 7.5 million uninsured children and high percentages of poor Blacks and Hispanics.
Health care reform won't mitigate the problem. According to Dr. Olveen Carrasquillo of Physicians for a National Health Program:
The Bureau overlooked the pervasive and growing underinsurance problem, certain to keep growing annually. In addition, "Not having health insurance, or having poor quality (coverage) is a source of mounting stress and poor medical outcomes for people across our country." New research, he points out, shows that about 14.1 million children and 25 million non-elderly adults were underinsured in 2007, the figures far higher today and rising.
Further, "The government subsidies under the new health law will not be sufficient to provide quality (or even adequate) and affordable coverage to the vast majority of Americans. Tens of millions will remain uninsured, underinsured and without access to care."
Obamacare enriches providers at the expense of solving this enormous problem for most people, and in the out years, far greater numbers as costs rise exponentially and employers shift more of the burden to workers.
Growing poverty creates a deplorable burden overall, as America slips closer to third world status. For millions today, it's already arrived. Fiscal austerity is accelerating it when stimulus is desperately needed. Yet it's not forthcoming or planned because the Treasury and Fed won't put their money where our mouths are.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
From The "Renegade Eye" Blog -Stratfor: Pakistan and the U.S. Exit From Afghanistan
Stratfor: Pakistan and the U.S. Exit From Afghanistan
By George Friedman
September 28, 2010
Bob Woodward has released another book, this one on the debate over Afghanistan strategy in the Obama administration. As all his books do, the book has riveted Washington. It reveals that intense debate occurred over what course to take, that the president sought alternative strategies and that compromises were reached. But while knowing the details of these things is interesting, what would have been shocking is if they hadn’t taken place.
It is interesting to reflect on the institutional inevitability of these disagreements. The military is involved in a war. It is institutionally and emotionally committed to victory in the theater of combat. It will demand all available resources for executing the war under way. For a soldier who has bled in that war, questioning the importance of the war is obscene. A war must be fought relentlessly and with all available means.
But while the military’s top generals and senior civilian leadership are responsible for providing the president with sound, clearheaded advice on all military matters including the highest levels of grand strategy, they are ultimately responsible for the pursuit of military objectives to which the commander-in-chief directs them. Generals must think about how to win the war they are fighting. Presidents must think about whether the war is worth fighting. The president is responsible for America’s global posture. He must consider what an unlimited commitment to a particular conflict might mean in other regions of the world where forces would be unavailable.
A president must take a more dispassionate view than his generals. He must calculate not only whether victory is possible but also the value of the victory relative to the cost. Given the nature of the war in Afghanistan, U.S. President Barack Obama and Gen. David Petraeus — first the U.S. Central Command chief and now the top commander in Afghanistan — had to view it differently. This is unavoidable. This is natural. And only one of the two is ultimately in charge.
The Nature of Guerrilla Warfare
In thinking about Afghanistan, it is essential that we begin by thinking about the nature of guerrilla warfare against an occupying force. The guerrilla lives in the country. He isn’t going anywhere else, as he has nowhere to go. By contrast, the foreigner has a place to which he can return. This is the core weakness of the occupier and the strength of the guerrilla. The former can leave and in all likelihood, his nation will survive. The guerrilla can’t. And having alternatives undermines the foreigner’s will to fight regardless of the importance of the war to him.
The strategy of the guerrilla is to make the option to withdraw more attractive. In order to do this, his strategic goal is simply to survive and fight on whatever level he can. His patience is built into who he is and what he is fighting for. The occupier’s patience is calculated against the cost of the occupation and its opportunity costs, thus, while troops are committed in this country, what is happening elsewhere?
Tactically, the guerrilla survives by being elusive. He disperses in small groups. He operates in hostile terrain. He denies the enemy intelligence on his location and capabilities. He forms political alliances with civilians who provide him supplies and intelligence on the occupation forces and misleads the occupiers about his own location. The guerrilla uses this intelligence network to decline combat on the enemy’s terms and to strike the enemy when he is least prepared. The guerrilla’s goal is not to seize and hold ground but to survive, evade and strike, imposing casualties on the occupier. Above all, the guerrilla must never form a center of gravity that, if struck, would lead to his defeat. He thus actively avoids anything that could be construed as a decisive contact.
The occupation force is normally a more conventional army. Its strength is superior firepower, resources and organization. If it knows where the guerrilla is and can strike before the guerrilla can disperse, the occupying force will defeat the guerrilla. The occupier’s problems are that his intelligence is normally inferior to that of the guerrillas; the guerrillas rarely mass in ways that permit decisive combat and normally can disperse faster than the occupier can pinpoint and deploy forces against them; and the guerrillas’ superior tactical capabilities allow them to impose a constant low rate of casualties on the occupier. Indeed, the massive amount of resources the occupier requires and the inflexibility of a military institution not solely committed to the particular theater of operations can actually work against the occupier by creating logistical vulnerabilities susceptible to guerrilla attacks and difficulty adapting at a rate sufficient to keep pace with the guerrilla. The occupation force will always win engagements, but that is never the measure of victory. If the guerrillas operate by doctrine, defeats in unplanned engagements will not undermine their basic goal of survival. While the occupier is not winning decisively, even while suffering only some casualties, he is losing. While the guerrilla is not losing decisively, even if suffering significant casualties, he is winning. Since the guerrilla is not going anywhere, he can afford far higher casualties than the occupier, who ultimately has the alternative of withdrawal.
The asymmetry of this warfare favors the guerrilla. This is particularly true when the strategic value of the war to the occupier is ambiguous, where the occupier does not possess sufficient force and patience to systematically overwhelm the guerrillas, and where either political or military constraints prevent operations against sanctuaries. This is a truth as relevant to David’s insurgency against the Philistines as it is to the U.S. experience in Vietnam or the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.
There has long been a myth about the unwillingness of Americans to absorb casualties for very long in guerrilla wars. In reality, the United States fought in Vietnam for at least seven years (depending on when you count the start and stop) and has now fought in Afghanistan for nine years. The idea that Americans can’t endure the long war has no empirical basis. What the United States has difficulty with — along with imperial and colonial powers before it — is a war in which the ability to impose one’s will on the enemy through force of arms is lacking and when it is not clear that the failure of previous years to win the war will be solved in the years ahead.
Far more relevant than casualties to whether Americans continue a war is the question of the conflict’s strategic importance, for which the president is ultimately responsible. This divides into several parts. This first is whether the United States has the ability with available force to achieve its political goals through prosecuting the war (since all war is fought for some political goal, from regime change to policy shift) and whether the force the United States is willing to dedicate suffices to achieve these goals. To address this question in Afghanistan, we have to focus on the political goal.
The Evolution of the U.S. Political Goal in Afghanistan
Washington’s primary goal at the initiation of the conflict was to destroy or disrupt al Qaeda in Afghanistan to protect the U.S. homeland from follow-on attacks to 9/11. But if Afghanistan were completely pacified, the threat of Islamist-fueled transnational terrorism would remain at issue because it is no longer just an issue of a single organization — al Qaeda — but a series of fragmented groups conducting operations in Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, North Africa, Somalia and elsewhere.
Today, al Qaeda is simply one manifestation of the threat of this transnational jihadist phenomenon. It is important to stop and consider al Qaeda — and the transnational jihadist phenomenon in general — in terms of guerrillas, and to think of the phenomenon as a guerrilla force in its own right operating by the very same rules on a global basis. Thus, where the Taliban apply guerrilla principles to Afghanistan, today’s transnational jihadist applies them to the Islamic world and beyond. The transnational jihadists are not leaving and are not giving up. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, they will decline combat against larger American forces and strike vulnerable targets when they can.
There are certainly more players and more complexity to the global phenomenon than in a localized insurgency. Many governments across North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia have no interest in seeing these movements set up shop and stir up unrest in their territory. And al Qaeda’s devolution has seen frustrations as well as successes as it spreads. But the underlying principles of guerrilla warfare remain at issue. Whenever the Americans concentrate force in one area, al Qaeda disengages, disperses and regroups elsewhere and, perhaps more important, the ideology that underpins the phenomenon continues to exist. The threat will undoubtedly continue to evolve and face challenges, but in the end, it will continue to exist along the lines of the guerrilla acting against the United States.
There is another important way in which the global guerrilla analogy is apt. STRATFOR has long held that Islamist-fueled transnational terrorism does not represent a strategic, existential threat to the United States. While acts of transnational terrorism target civilians, they are not attacks — have not been and are not evolving into attacks — that endanger the territorial integrity of the United States or the way of life of the American people. They are dangerous and must be defended against, but transnational terrorism is and remains a tactical problem that for nearly a decade has been treated as if it were the pre-eminent strategic threat to the United States.
Nietzsche wrote that, “The most fundamental form of human stupidity is forgetting what we were trying to do in the first place.” The stated U.S. goal in Afghanistan was the destruction of al Qaeda. While al Qaeda as it existed in 2001 has certainly been disrupted and degraded, al Qaeda’s evolution and migration means that disrupting and degrading it — to say nothing of destroying it — can no longer be achieved by waging a war in Afghanistan. The guerrilla does not rely on a single piece of real estate (in this case Afghanistan) but rather on his ability to move seamlessly across terrain to evade decisive combat in any specific location. Islamist-fueled transnational terrorism is not centered on Afghanistan and does not need Afghanistan, so no matter how successful that war might be, it would make little difference in the larger fight against transnational jihadism.
Thus far, the United States has chosen to carry on fighting the war in Afghanistan. As al Qaeda has fled Afghanistan, the overall political goal for the United States in the country has evolved to include the creation of a democratic and uncorrupt Afghanistan. It is not clear that anyone knows how to do this, particularly given that most Afghans consider the ruling government of President Hamid Karzai — with which the United States is allied — as the heart of the corruption problem, and beyond Kabul most Afghans do not regard their way of making political and social arrangements to be corrupt.
Simply withdrawing from Afghanistan carries its own strategic and political costs, however. The strategic problem is that simply terminating the war after nine years would destabilize the Islamic world. The United States has managed to block al Qaeda’s goal of triggering a series of uprisings against existing regimes and replacing them with jihadist regimes. It did this by displaying a willingness to intervene where necessary. Of course, the idea that U.S. intervention destabilized the region raises the question of what regional stability would look like had it not intervened. The danger of withdrawal is that the network of relationships the United States created and imposed at the regime level could unravel if it withdrew. America would be seen as having lost the war, the prestige of radical Islamists and thereby the foundation of the ideology that underpins their movement would surge, and this could destabilize regimes and undermine American interests.
The political problem is domestic. Obama’s approval rating now stands at 42 percent. This is not unprecedented, but it means he is politically weak. One of the charges against him, fair or not, is that he is inherently anti-war by background and so not fully committed to the war effort. Where a Republican would face charges of being a warmonger, which would make withdrawal easier, Obama faces charges of being too soft. Since a president must maintain political support to be effective, withdrawal becomes even harder. Therefore, strategic analysis aside, the president is not going to order a complete withdrawal of all combat forces any time soon — the national (and international) political alignment won’t support such a step. At the same time, remaining in Afghanistan is unlikely to achieve any goal and leaves potential rivals like China and Russia freer rein.
The American Solution
The American solution, one that we suspect is already under way, is the Pakistanization of the war. By this, we do not mean extending the war into Pakistan but rather extending Pakistan into Afghanistan. The Taliban phenomenon has extended into Pakistan in ways that seriously complicate Pakistani efforts to regain their bearing in Afghanistan. It has created a major security problem for Islamabad, which, coupled with the severe deterioration of the country’s economy and now the floods, has weakened the Pakistanis’ ability to manage Afghanistan. In other words, the moment that the Pakistanis have been waiting for — American agreement and support for the Pakistanization of the war — has come at a time when the Pakistanis are not in an ideal position to capitalize on it.
In the past, the United States has endeavored to keep the Taliban in Afghanistan and the regime in Pakistan separate. (The Taliban movements in Afghanistan and Pakistan are not one and the same.) Washington has not succeeded in this regard, with the Pakistanis continuing to hedge their bets and maintain a relationship across the border. Still, U.S. opposition has been the single greatest impediment to Pakistan’s consolidation of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and abandoning this opposition leaves important avenues open for Islamabad.
The Pakistani relationship to the Taliban, which was a liability for the United States in the past, now becomes an advantage for Washington because it creates a trusted channel for meaningful communication with the Taliban. Logic suggests this channel is quite active now.
The Vietnam War ended with the Paris peace talks. Those formal talks were not where the real bargaining took place but rather where the results were ultimately confirmed. If talks are under way, a similar venue for the formal manifestation of the talks is needed — and Islamabad is as good a place as any.
Pakistan is an American ally which the United States needs, both to balance growing Chinese influence in and partnership with Pakistan, and to contain India. Pakistan needs the United States for the same reason. Meanwhile, the Taliban want to run Afghanistan. The United States has no strong national interest in how Afghanistan is run so long as it does not support and espouse transnational jihadism. But it needs its withdrawal to take place in a manner that strengthens its influence rather than weakens it, and Pakistan can provide the cover for turning a retreat into a negotiated settlement.
Pakistan has every reason to play this role. It needs the United States over the long term to balance against India. It must have a stable or relatively stable Afghanistan to secure its western frontier. It needs an end to U.S. forays into Pakistan that are destabilizing the regime. And playing this role would enhance Pakistan’s status in the Islamic world, something the United States could benefit from, too. We suspect that all sides are moving toward this end.
The United States isn’t going to defeat the Taliban. The original goal of the war is irrelevant, and the current goal is rather difficult to take seriously. Even a victory, whatever that would look like, would make little difference in the fight against transnational jihad, but a defeat could harm U.S. interests. Therefore, the United States needs a withdrawal that is not a defeat. Such a strategic shift is not without profound political complexity and difficulties. But the disparity between — and increasingly, the incompatibility of — the struggle with transnational terrorism and the war effort geographically rooted in Afghanistan is only becoming more apparent — even to the American public.
RENEGADE EYE
Posted by Renegade Eye at 12:56 AM Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Google Buzz
Labels: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Stratfor
2 comments:
The Pagan Temple said...
The only way this situation is going to be solved satisfactorily is by putting the warlords in charge of the country.
Actually, I should be more concise than that. I should say that we should recognize the reality that the warlords are the natural leaders of the country, help shore them up, support them, guide them into the formation of a stable government, and then get out of their way.
Forget the idea of political and religious freedom, that's not happening, though we could encourage with some degree of success access to education and economic opportunity, which is really all that matters.
The death of the Taliban and the transnational jihad movement as applies to Afghanistan would then be heralded by the sickening sweet stench of tens of thousands of burning bodies. And that suits me fine.
30 September, 2010 05:45
Renegade Eye said...
When the socialist government was in power, it was Afghanistan's golden age. Your comment proves it.
30 September, 2010 22:45
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Newer Post
By George Friedman
September 28, 2010
Bob Woodward has released another book, this one on the debate over Afghanistan strategy in the Obama administration. As all his books do, the book has riveted Washington. It reveals that intense debate occurred over what course to take, that the president sought alternative strategies and that compromises were reached. But while knowing the details of these things is interesting, what would have been shocking is if they hadn’t taken place.
It is interesting to reflect on the institutional inevitability of these disagreements. The military is involved in a war. It is institutionally and emotionally committed to victory in the theater of combat. It will demand all available resources for executing the war under way. For a soldier who has bled in that war, questioning the importance of the war is obscene. A war must be fought relentlessly and with all available means.
But while the military’s top generals and senior civilian leadership are responsible for providing the president with sound, clearheaded advice on all military matters including the highest levels of grand strategy, they are ultimately responsible for the pursuit of military objectives to which the commander-in-chief directs them. Generals must think about how to win the war they are fighting. Presidents must think about whether the war is worth fighting. The president is responsible for America’s global posture. He must consider what an unlimited commitment to a particular conflict might mean in other regions of the world where forces would be unavailable.
A president must take a more dispassionate view than his generals. He must calculate not only whether victory is possible but also the value of the victory relative to the cost. Given the nature of the war in Afghanistan, U.S. President Barack Obama and Gen. David Petraeus — first the U.S. Central Command chief and now the top commander in Afghanistan — had to view it differently. This is unavoidable. This is natural. And only one of the two is ultimately in charge.
The Nature of Guerrilla Warfare
In thinking about Afghanistan, it is essential that we begin by thinking about the nature of guerrilla warfare against an occupying force. The guerrilla lives in the country. He isn’t going anywhere else, as he has nowhere to go. By contrast, the foreigner has a place to which he can return. This is the core weakness of the occupier and the strength of the guerrilla. The former can leave and in all likelihood, his nation will survive. The guerrilla can’t. And having alternatives undermines the foreigner’s will to fight regardless of the importance of the war to him.
The strategy of the guerrilla is to make the option to withdraw more attractive. In order to do this, his strategic goal is simply to survive and fight on whatever level he can. His patience is built into who he is and what he is fighting for. The occupier’s patience is calculated against the cost of the occupation and its opportunity costs, thus, while troops are committed in this country, what is happening elsewhere?
Tactically, the guerrilla survives by being elusive. He disperses in small groups. He operates in hostile terrain. He denies the enemy intelligence on his location and capabilities. He forms political alliances with civilians who provide him supplies and intelligence on the occupation forces and misleads the occupiers about his own location. The guerrilla uses this intelligence network to decline combat on the enemy’s terms and to strike the enemy when he is least prepared. The guerrilla’s goal is not to seize and hold ground but to survive, evade and strike, imposing casualties on the occupier. Above all, the guerrilla must never form a center of gravity that, if struck, would lead to his defeat. He thus actively avoids anything that could be construed as a decisive contact.
The occupation force is normally a more conventional army. Its strength is superior firepower, resources and organization. If it knows where the guerrilla is and can strike before the guerrilla can disperse, the occupying force will defeat the guerrilla. The occupier’s problems are that his intelligence is normally inferior to that of the guerrillas; the guerrillas rarely mass in ways that permit decisive combat and normally can disperse faster than the occupier can pinpoint and deploy forces against them; and the guerrillas’ superior tactical capabilities allow them to impose a constant low rate of casualties on the occupier. Indeed, the massive amount of resources the occupier requires and the inflexibility of a military institution not solely committed to the particular theater of operations can actually work against the occupier by creating logistical vulnerabilities susceptible to guerrilla attacks and difficulty adapting at a rate sufficient to keep pace with the guerrilla. The occupation force will always win engagements, but that is never the measure of victory. If the guerrillas operate by doctrine, defeats in unplanned engagements will not undermine their basic goal of survival. While the occupier is not winning decisively, even while suffering only some casualties, he is losing. While the guerrilla is not losing decisively, even if suffering significant casualties, he is winning. Since the guerrilla is not going anywhere, he can afford far higher casualties than the occupier, who ultimately has the alternative of withdrawal.
The asymmetry of this warfare favors the guerrilla. This is particularly true when the strategic value of the war to the occupier is ambiguous, where the occupier does not possess sufficient force and patience to systematically overwhelm the guerrillas, and where either political or military constraints prevent operations against sanctuaries. This is a truth as relevant to David’s insurgency against the Philistines as it is to the U.S. experience in Vietnam or the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.
There has long been a myth about the unwillingness of Americans to absorb casualties for very long in guerrilla wars. In reality, the United States fought in Vietnam for at least seven years (depending on when you count the start and stop) and has now fought in Afghanistan for nine years. The idea that Americans can’t endure the long war has no empirical basis. What the United States has difficulty with — along with imperial and colonial powers before it — is a war in which the ability to impose one’s will on the enemy through force of arms is lacking and when it is not clear that the failure of previous years to win the war will be solved in the years ahead.
Far more relevant than casualties to whether Americans continue a war is the question of the conflict’s strategic importance, for which the president is ultimately responsible. This divides into several parts. This first is whether the United States has the ability with available force to achieve its political goals through prosecuting the war (since all war is fought for some political goal, from regime change to policy shift) and whether the force the United States is willing to dedicate suffices to achieve these goals. To address this question in Afghanistan, we have to focus on the political goal.
The Evolution of the U.S. Political Goal in Afghanistan
Washington’s primary goal at the initiation of the conflict was to destroy or disrupt al Qaeda in Afghanistan to protect the U.S. homeland from follow-on attacks to 9/11. But if Afghanistan were completely pacified, the threat of Islamist-fueled transnational terrorism would remain at issue because it is no longer just an issue of a single organization — al Qaeda — but a series of fragmented groups conducting operations in Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, North Africa, Somalia and elsewhere.
Today, al Qaeda is simply one manifestation of the threat of this transnational jihadist phenomenon. It is important to stop and consider al Qaeda — and the transnational jihadist phenomenon in general — in terms of guerrillas, and to think of the phenomenon as a guerrilla force in its own right operating by the very same rules on a global basis. Thus, where the Taliban apply guerrilla principles to Afghanistan, today’s transnational jihadist applies them to the Islamic world and beyond. The transnational jihadists are not leaving and are not giving up. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, they will decline combat against larger American forces and strike vulnerable targets when they can.
There are certainly more players and more complexity to the global phenomenon than in a localized insurgency. Many governments across North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia have no interest in seeing these movements set up shop and stir up unrest in their territory. And al Qaeda’s devolution has seen frustrations as well as successes as it spreads. But the underlying principles of guerrilla warfare remain at issue. Whenever the Americans concentrate force in one area, al Qaeda disengages, disperses and regroups elsewhere and, perhaps more important, the ideology that underpins the phenomenon continues to exist. The threat will undoubtedly continue to evolve and face challenges, but in the end, it will continue to exist along the lines of the guerrilla acting against the United States.
There is another important way in which the global guerrilla analogy is apt. STRATFOR has long held that Islamist-fueled transnational terrorism does not represent a strategic, existential threat to the United States. While acts of transnational terrorism target civilians, they are not attacks — have not been and are not evolving into attacks — that endanger the territorial integrity of the United States or the way of life of the American people. They are dangerous and must be defended against, but transnational terrorism is and remains a tactical problem that for nearly a decade has been treated as if it were the pre-eminent strategic threat to the United States.
Nietzsche wrote that, “The most fundamental form of human stupidity is forgetting what we were trying to do in the first place.” The stated U.S. goal in Afghanistan was the destruction of al Qaeda. While al Qaeda as it existed in 2001 has certainly been disrupted and degraded, al Qaeda’s evolution and migration means that disrupting and degrading it — to say nothing of destroying it — can no longer be achieved by waging a war in Afghanistan. The guerrilla does not rely on a single piece of real estate (in this case Afghanistan) but rather on his ability to move seamlessly across terrain to evade decisive combat in any specific location. Islamist-fueled transnational terrorism is not centered on Afghanistan and does not need Afghanistan, so no matter how successful that war might be, it would make little difference in the larger fight against transnational jihadism.
Thus far, the United States has chosen to carry on fighting the war in Afghanistan. As al Qaeda has fled Afghanistan, the overall political goal for the United States in the country has evolved to include the creation of a democratic and uncorrupt Afghanistan. It is not clear that anyone knows how to do this, particularly given that most Afghans consider the ruling government of President Hamid Karzai — with which the United States is allied — as the heart of the corruption problem, and beyond Kabul most Afghans do not regard their way of making political and social arrangements to be corrupt.
Simply withdrawing from Afghanistan carries its own strategic and political costs, however. The strategic problem is that simply terminating the war after nine years would destabilize the Islamic world. The United States has managed to block al Qaeda’s goal of triggering a series of uprisings against existing regimes and replacing them with jihadist regimes. It did this by displaying a willingness to intervene where necessary. Of course, the idea that U.S. intervention destabilized the region raises the question of what regional stability would look like had it not intervened. The danger of withdrawal is that the network of relationships the United States created and imposed at the regime level could unravel if it withdrew. America would be seen as having lost the war, the prestige of radical Islamists and thereby the foundation of the ideology that underpins their movement would surge, and this could destabilize regimes and undermine American interests.
The political problem is domestic. Obama’s approval rating now stands at 42 percent. This is not unprecedented, but it means he is politically weak. One of the charges against him, fair or not, is that he is inherently anti-war by background and so not fully committed to the war effort. Where a Republican would face charges of being a warmonger, which would make withdrawal easier, Obama faces charges of being too soft. Since a president must maintain political support to be effective, withdrawal becomes even harder. Therefore, strategic analysis aside, the president is not going to order a complete withdrawal of all combat forces any time soon — the national (and international) political alignment won’t support such a step. At the same time, remaining in Afghanistan is unlikely to achieve any goal and leaves potential rivals like China and Russia freer rein.
The American Solution
The American solution, one that we suspect is already under way, is the Pakistanization of the war. By this, we do not mean extending the war into Pakistan but rather extending Pakistan into Afghanistan. The Taliban phenomenon has extended into Pakistan in ways that seriously complicate Pakistani efforts to regain their bearing in Afghanistan. It has created a major security problem for Islamabad, which, coupled with the severe deterioration of the country’s economy and now the floods, has weakened the Pakistanis’ ability to manage Afghanistan. In other words, the moment that the Pakistanis have been waiting for — American agreement and support for the Pakistanization of the war — has come at a time when the Pakistanis are not in an ideal position to capitalize on it.
In the past, the United States has endeavored to keep the Taliban in Afghanistan and the regime in Pakistan separate. (The Taliban movements in Afghanistan and Pakistan are not one and the same.) Washington has not succeeded in this regard, with the Pakistanis continuing to hedge their bets and maintain a relationship across the border. Still, U.S. opposition has been the single greatest impediment to Pakistan’s consolidation of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and abandoning this opposition leaves important avenues open for Islamabad.
The Pakistani relationship to the Taliban, which was a liability for the United States in the past, now becomes an advantage for Washington because it creates a trusted channel for meaningful communication with the Taliban. Logic suggests this channel is quite active now.
The Vietnam War ended with the Paris peace talks. Those formal talks were not where the real bargaining took place but rather where the results were ultimately confirmed. If talks are under way, a similar venue for the formal manifestation of the talks is needed — and Islamabad is as good a place as any.
Pakistan is an American ally which the United States needs, both to balance growing Chinese influence in and partnership with Pakistan, and to contain India. Pakistan needs the United States for the same reason. Meanwhile, the Taliban want to run Afghanistan. The United States has no strong national interest in how Afghanistan is run so long as it does not support and espouse transnational jihadism. But it needs its withdrawal to take place in a manner that strengthens its influence rather than weakens it, and Pakistan can provide the cover for turning a retreat into a negotiated settlement.
Pakistan has every reason to play this role. It needs the United States over the long term to balance against India. It must have a stable or relatively stable Afghanistan to secure its western frontier. It needs an end to U.S. forays into Pakistan that are destabilizing the regime. And playing this role would enhance Pakistan’s status in the Islamic world, something the United States could benefit from, too. We suspect that all sides are moving toward this end.
The United States isn’t going to defeat the Taliban. The original goal of the war is irrelevant, and the current goal is rather difficult to take seriously. Even a victory, whatever that would look like, would make little difference in the fight against transnational jihad, but a defeat could harm U.S. interests. Therefore, the United States needs a withdrawal that is not a defeat. Such a strategic shift is not without profound political complexity and difficulties. But the disparity between — and increasingly, the incompatibility of — the struggle with transnational terrorism and the war effort geographically rooted in Afghanistan is only becoming more apparent — even to the American public.
RENEGADE EYE
Posted by Renegade Eye at 12:56 AM Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Google Buzz
Labels: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Stratfor
2 comments:
The Pagan Temple said...
The only way this situation is going to be solved satisfactorily is by putting the warlords in charge of the country.
Actually, I should be more concise than that. I should say that we should recognize the reality that the warlords are the natural leaders of the country, help shore them up, support them, guide them into the formation of a stable government, and then get out of their way.
Forget the idea of political and religious freedom, that's not happening, though we could encourage with some degree of success access to education and economic opportunity, which is really all that matters.
The death of the Taliban and the transnational jihad movement as applies to Afghanistan would then be heralded by the sickening sweet stench of tens of thousands of burning bodies. And that suits me fine.
30 September, 2010 05:45
Renegade Eye said...
When the socialist government was in power, it was Afghanistan's golden age. Your comment proves it.
30 September, 2010 22:45
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*From "An Unrepentant Communist" Blog- On The Workers Struggles In Europe
Click on headline to link to the blog entry mentioned in the title.
From The "HistoMat" Blog- Jack London on the historic failure of the capitalist class
Sunday, October 03, 2010
Jack London on the historic failure of the capitalist class
There are many counts of the indictment which the revolutionists bring against the capitalist class, but for present use only one need be stated, and it is a count to which capital has never replied and can never reply.
The capitalist class has managed society, and its management has failed. And not only has it failed in its management, but it has failed deplorably, ignobly, horribly. The capitalist class had an opportunity such as was vouchsafed no previous ruling class in the history of the world. It broke away from the rule of the old feudal aristocracy and made modern society. It mastered matter, organized the machinery of life, and made possible a wonderful era for mankind, wherein no creature should cry aloud because it had not enough to eat, and wherein for every child there would be opportunity for education, for intellectual and spiritual uplift. Matter being mastered, and the machinery of life organized, all this was possible. Here was the chance, God-given, and the capitalist class failed. It was blind and greedy. It prattled sweet ideals and dear moralities, rubbed its eyes not once, nor ceased one whit in its greediness, and smashed down in a failure as tremendous only as was the opportunity it had ignored.
But all this is like so much cobwebs to the bourgeois mind. As it was blind in the past, it is blind now and cannot see nor understand. Well, then, let the indictment be stated more definitely, in terms sharp and unmistakable...The capitalist class has mismanaged, is to-day mismanaging. In New York City 50,000 children go hungry to school, and in New York City there are 1320 millionnaires. The point, however, is not that the mass of man kind is miserable because of the wealth the capitalist class has taken to itself. Far from it. The point really is that the mass of mankind is miserable, not for want of the wealth taken by the capitalist class, but for want of the wealth that was never created. This wealth was never created because the capitalist class managed too wastefully and irrationally. The capitalist class, blind and greedy, grasping madly, has not only not made the best of its management, but made the worst of it. It is a management prodigiously wasteful. This point cannot be emphasized too strongly.
With the natural resources of the world, the machinery already invented, a rational organization of production and distribution, and an equally rational elimination of waste, the able-bodied workers would not have to labor more than two or three hours per day to feed everybody, clothe everybody, house everybody, educate everybody, and give a fair measure of little luxuries to everybody. There would be no more material want and wretchedness, no more children toiling out their lives, no more men and women and babes living like beasts and dying like beasts. Not only would matter be mastered, but the machine would be mastered. In such a day incentive would be finer and nobler than the incentive of to-day, which is the incentive of the stomach. No man, woman, or child would be impelled to action by an empty stomach. On the contrary, they would be impelled to action as a child in a spelling match is impelled to action, as boys and girls at games, as scientists formulating law, as inventors applying law, as artists and sculptors painting canvases and shaping clay, as poets and statesmen serving humanity by singing and by statecraft. The spiritual, intellectual, and artistic uplift consequent upon such a condition of society would be tremendous. All the human world would surge upward in a mighty wave.
This was the opportunity vouchsafed the capitalist class. Less blindness on its part, less greediness, and a rational management, were all that was necessary. A wonderful era was possible for the human race. But the capitalist class failed. It made a shambles of civilization. Nor can the capitalist class plead not guilty. It knew of the opportunity. Its wise men told it of the opportunity, its scholars and its scientists told it of the opportunity. All that they said is there to-day in the books, just so much damning evidence against it. It would not listen. It was too greedy. It rose up (as it rises up to-day), shamelessly, in our legislative halls, and declared that profits were impossible without the toil of children and babes. It lulled its conscience to sleep with prattle of sweet ideals and dear moralities, and allowed the suffering and misery of mankind to continue and to increase. In short, the capitalist class failed to take advantage of the opportunity. But the opportunity is still here. The capitalist class has been tried and found wanting. Remains the working-class to see what it can do with the opportunity...
Jack London, 'Revolution', 1905
Labels: America, capital, crisis, socialism
posted by Snowball @ 6:48 PM
2 Comments:
At 9:54 PM, Rick said...
An impressive elaboration of the Marx and Engels in The manifesto of the communist party:
"And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an overriding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society."
At 3:41 PM, Snowball said...
Cheers Rick - yep, it sounded kind of familiar and so having the exact quote from the masters themselves is great.
Jack London on the historic failure of the capitalist class
There are many counts of the indictment which the revolutionists bring against the capitalist class, but for present use only one need be stated, and it is a count to which capital has never replied and can never reply.
The capitalist class has managed society, and its management has failed. And not only has it failed in its management, but it has failed deplorably, ignobly, horribly. The capitalist class had an opportunity such as was vouchsafed no previous ruling class in the history of the world. It broke away from the rule of the old feudal aristocracy and made modern society. It mastered matter, organized the machinery of life, and made possible a wonderful era for mankind, wherein no creature should cry aloud because it had not enough to eat, and wherein for every child there would be opportunity for education, for intellectual and spiritual uplift. Matter being mastered, and the machinery of life organized, all this was possible. Here was the chance, God-given, and the capitalist class failed. It was blind and greedy. It prattled sweet ideals and dear moralities, rubbed its eyes not once, nor ceased one whit in its greediness, and smashed down in a failure as tremendous only as was the opportunity it had ignored.
But all this is like so much cobwebs to the bourgeois mind. As it was blind in the past, it is blind now and cannot see nor understand. Well, then, let the indictment be stated more definitely, in terms sharp and unmistakable...The capitalist class has mismanaged, is to-day mismanaging. In New York City 50,000 children go hungry to school, and in New York City there are 1320 millionnaires. The point, however, is not that the mass of man kind is miserable because of the wealth the capitalist class has taken to itself. Far from it. The point really is that the mass of mankind is miserable, not for want of the wealth taken by the capitalist class, but for want of the wealth that was never created. This wealth was never created because the capitalist class managed too wastefully and irrationally. The capitalist class, blind and greedy, grasping madly, has not only not made the best of its management, but made the worst of it. It is a management prodigiously wasteful. This point cannot be emphasized too strongly.
With the natural resources of the world, the machinery already invented, a rational organization of production and distribution, and an equally rational elimination of waste, the able-bodied workers would not have to labor more than two or three hours per day to feed everybody, clothe everybody, house everybody, educate everybody, and give a fair measure of little luxuries to everybody. There would be no more material want and wretchedness, no more children toiling out their lives, no more men and women and babes living like beasts and dying like beasts. Not only would matter be mastered, but the machine would be mastered. In such a day incentive would be finer and nobler than the incentive of to-day, which is the incentive of the stomach. No man, woman, or child would be impelled to action by an empty stomach. On the contrary, they would be impelled to action as a child in a spelling match is impelled to action, as boys and girls at games, as scientists formulating law, as inventors applying law, as artists and sculptors painting canvases and shaping clay, as poets and statesmen serving humanity by singing and by statecraft. The spiritual, intellectual, and artistic uplift consequent upon such a condition of society would be tremendous. All the human world would surge upward in a mighty wave.
This was the opportunity vouchsafed the capitalist class. Less blindness on its part, less greediness, and a rational management, were all that was necessary. A wonderful era was possible for the human race. But the capitalist class failed. It made a shambles of civilization. Nor can the capitalist class plead not guilty. It knew of the opportunity. Its wise men told it of the opportunity, its scholars and its scientists told it of the opportunity. All that they said is there to-day in the books, just so much damning evidence against it. It would not listen. It was too greedy. It rose up (as it rises up to-day), shamelessly, in our legislative halls, and declared that profits were impossible without the toil of children and babes. It lulled its conscience to sleep with prattle of sweet ideals and dear moralities, and allowed the suffering and misery of mankind to continue and to increase. In short, the capitalist class failed to take advantage of the opportunity. But the opportunity is still here. The capitalist class has been tried and found wanting. Remains the working-class to see what it can do with the opportunity...
Jack London, 'Revolution', 1905
Labels: America, capital, crisis, socialism
posted by Snowball @ 6:48 PM
2 Comments:
At 9:54 PM, Rick said...
An impressive elaboration of the Marx and Engels in The manifesto of the communist party:
"And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an overriding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society."
At 3:41 PM, Snowball said...
Cheers Rick - yep, it sounded kind of familiar and so having the exact quote from the masters themselves is great.
Lawless Arrests, Detentions and Torture in Iraq - by Stephen Lendman
Lawless Arrests, Detentions and Torture in Iraq
Lawless Arrests, Detentions and Torture in Iraq - by Stephen Lendman
An earlier article discussed Iraq's dire conditions after seven years of occupation, and over a decade of sanctions, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/04/iraq-today-afflicted-by-violence.html
It presents a grim overall picture, besides Gideon Polya's September 13, 2010 estimated eight million "War on Terror" deaths, mostly in Iraq, what he calls "avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality" ones, accessed through the following link:
http://www.countercurrents.org/polya130910.htm
Conditions now include:
-- 4.5 million refugees;
-- 2.8 million internal ones (IDPs), one-third in squatter slums;
-- mass impoverishment and depravation;
-- rampant human rights abuses; and
-- settlements without basic services, such as clean water, sanitation, electricity, health care, and education.
Nir Rosen's September 13, 2010 ZNet article adds more, accessed through the following link:
http://www.zcommunications.org/what-america-left-behind-in-iraq-by-nir-rosen
"Welcome to the new Iraq," he says, "same as the old Iraq," including:
-- "automatic weapons pointed at your head out of military vehicles;"
-- mountains of garbage everywhere;
-- the stench of sewage; and
-- daily violence, chaos, terror, and toxic environment, the same conditions everywhere under direct or proxy US occupations. The definition below explains how Iraqis see their "liberation."
Merriam-Webster defines dystopia as "an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives." Other definitions include extreme deprivation, oppression, and terror. These conditions apply to Iraq, a living hell under occupation, not the sanitized Western image when anything at all is reported.
New Amnesty International (AI) Report on Iraq
AI's report explains more, titled "New Order, Same Abuses: Unlawful Detentions and Torture in Iraq." It debunks Western mythology with the harsh reality of "unlawful detention(s), enforced disappearance(s) and torture or other ill-treatment of thousands of people since 2003 by the US-led Multinational Force (MNF) in Iraq and the Iraqi authorities."
Saddam's Iraq was paradise by comparison. Most Iraqis would agree, given their lack of freedom, mass impoverishment, and human misery with no hope for change under occupation. It's how America planned it.
Many detainees are held arbitrarily, "without charge or trial, for seven years" or longer. For some, it's despite Iraqi courts ordering them released for lack of evidence, and the 2008 Amnesty Law requiring it after six or 12 months, depending on the circumstances. Yet thousands remain lawlessly imprisoned, many held incommunicado, tortured or abused without access to counsel, and for some, no family visits. Many aren't told where their relatives are held.
Under US imposed rules, "An estimated 30,000 untried detainees are currently being held by the Iraqi authorities, although the exact number is not known as the authorities do not disclose such information." Most are in severely overcrowded facilities under poor conditions. As a result, untreated health problems are common.
America's January 1, 2009 implemented SOFA (status of forces agreement) instituted permanent occupation and much more, including releasing or transferring all detainees to Iraqi custody. However, nothing is said about US or Iraqi human rights obligations, what Washington doesn't now or ever cared about. Former US diplomat George Kennan explained it in his February 1948 "Memo PPS23," saying:
We must "dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming....we (cannot) afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction....We should dispense with the aspiration to 'be liked' or to be regarded as the repository of high-minded altruism....We should (avoid considering) unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. (The) less we are hampered by idealistic slogans (ideas and practices), the better."
The father of Soviet containment, Kennan was a dove. Hard-liners toughened his ideas, implementing them for over six decades, including in present day Iraq (and Afghanistan) where the vast majority of detainees are suspected of unproved terrorism or related offenses.
Iraq's Amnesty Law
Effective on February 27, 2008, its Article 1 says those detained can be pardoned and released by one of the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council's established judicial committees. Article 2 lists exceptions, including:
-- prisoners sentenced to death;
-- those convicted of terrorism causing death or permanent disability;
-- anyone convicted of crimes against humanity; and
-- others sentenced for premeditated murder, kidnapping, rape, homosexual acts, adultery, incest, forging official documents, counterfeiting, smuggling artifacts, and offenses under the Iraqi Military Criminal Code.
"In practice, the Amnesty Law appears to have been widely ignored and to have had little effect or impact on prisoner numbers. Some detainees have been released, but thousands" remain imprisoned without charges or trials in violation of international laws, including Fourth Geneva, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
For example, ICCPR's Article 9 states:
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention....Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time" or released.
Principle 4 of the UN Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment states:
"Any form of detention or imprisonment and all measures affecting the human rights of a person under any form of detention or imprisonment shall be ordered by, or be subject to the effective control of, a judicial or other authority."
Its Principle 11 says "A person shall not be kept in detention without being given an effective opportunity to be heard promptly by a judicial or other authority."
America and its puppet Iraqi regime systematically violate international law provisions, harming all Iraqis, those in detention most. In some cases, arrests weren't for suspected crimes, but to extort money from detainees and their families. America turns a blind eye, including complete disregard for human rights, civil liberties, and democratic freedoms. In today's Iraq, they don't exist, the occupation in place to assure it.
Yet "The policy of locking people up on mere suspicion (in some cases against regime critics) and denying them justice has contributed to, not alleviated" the sectarian divisions and insecurity. Worse is how they're treated, AI detailing:
"Rape or the threat of rape. Beating with cables and hosepipes. Prolonged suspension by the limbs. Electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body. Breaking of limbs. Removal of toenails with pliers. Asphyxiation using a plastic bag over the head. Piercing the body with drills. Being forced to sit on sharp objects such as broken bottles....just some of the torture methods used against men, women and children," inflicting enough pain to get anyone to confess to stop it.
One detainee told his interrogators he'd sign anything, even a blank sheet of paper to end it. He did and told AI he was innocent, yet under Iraqi "law," his confession is admissible as evidence. "The Iraqi criminal justice system relies heavily on (forced) confessions as evidence of guilt," many then convicted, including hundreds sentenced to death based on torture-extracted admissions, mostly from innocent victims.
Women are as mistreated as men, many reporting being repeatedly raped during interrogations and in detention. For others, men and women, torture results in death. Investigations aren't conducted or whitewashed, death certificates citing heart failure or other natural causes. "In all cases, those responsible for abuses have not been brought to justice. The failure to deal seriously and effectively with torture and other human rights violations....has created a culture of impunity."
At times, prison guards and other security officers were suspended, even arrested, then granted immediate amnesty and released. These practices began under George Bush. Obama continues them seamlessly and shamelessly, what major media accounts never report.
A Final Comment
In 2004, Americans and world audiences recall the horrors of torture, rape, sodomy, murder, and other abuses by US military personnel at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. Today under occupation, every US and Iraqi-controlled detention facility is Abu Ghraib or worse, their tortures, extreme abuses and appalling conditions continue.
Thousands of civilians are thus victimized by imperial Washington's lawlessness. Human lives and welfare are thus sacrificed, a shocking indictment of America's true aim and employed means, abroad and at home. Obama is as culpable as Bush. Both are unindicted war criminals.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
Lawless Arrests, Detentions and Torture in Iraq - by Stephen Lendman
An earlier article discussed Iraq's dire conditions after seven years of occupation, and over a decade of sanctions, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/04/iraq-today-afflicted-by-violence.html
It presents a grim overall picture, besides Gideon Polya's September 13, 2010 estimated eight million "War on Terror" deaths, mostly in Iraq, what he calls "avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality" ones, accessed through the following link:
http://www.countercurrents.org/polya130910.htm
Conditions now include:
-- 4.5 million refugees;
-- 2.8 million internal ones (IDPs), one-third in squatter slums;
-- mass impoverishment and depravation;
-- rampant human rights abuses; and
-- settlements without basic services, such as clean water, sanitation, electricity, health care, and education.
Nir Rosen's September 13, 2010 ZNet article adds more, accessed through the following link:
http://www.zcommunications.org/what-america-left-behind-in-iraq-by-nir-rosen
"Welcome to the new Iraq," he says, "same as the old Iraq," including:
-- "automatic weapons pointed at your head out of military vehicles;"
-- mountains of garbage everywhere;
-- the stench of sewage; and
-- daily violence, chaos, terror, and toxic environment, the same conditions everywhere under direct or proxy US occupations. The definition below explains how Iraqis see their "liberation."
Merriam-Webster defines dystopia as "an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives." Other definitions include extreme deprivation, oppression, and terror. These conditions apply to Iraq, a living hell under occupation, not the sanitized Western image when anything at all is reported.
New Amnesty International (AI) Report on Iraq
AI's report explains more, titled "New Order, Same Abuses: Unlawful Detentions and Torture in Iraq." It debunks Western mythology with the harsh reality of "unlawful detention(s), enforced disappearance(s) and torture or other ill-treatment of thousands of people since 2003 by the US-led Multinational Force (MNF) in Iraq and the Iraqi authorities."
Saddam's Iraq was paradise by comparison. Most Iraqis would agree, given their lack of freedom, mass impoverishment, and human misery with no hope for change under occupation. It's how America planned it.
Many detainees are held arbitrarily, "without charge or trial, for seven years" or longer. For some, it's despite Iraqi courts ordering them released for lack of evidence, and the 2008 Amnesty Law requiring it after six or 12 months, depending on the circumstances. Yet thousands remain lawlessly imprisoned, many held incommunicado, tortured or abused without access to counsel, and for some, no family visits. Many aren't told where their relatives are held.
Under US imposed rules, "An estimated 30,000 untried detainees are currently being held by the Iraqi authorities, although the exact number is not known as the authorities do not disclose such information." Most are in severely overcrowded facilities under poor conditions. As a result, untreated health problems are common.
America's January 1, 2009 implemented SOFA (status of forces agreement) instituted permanent occupation and much more, including releasing or transferring all detainees to Iraqi custody. However, nothing is said about US or Iraqi human rights obligations, what Washington doesn't now or ever cared about. Former US diplomat George Kennan explained it in his February 1948 "Memo PPS23," saying:
We must "dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming....we (cannot) afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction....We should dispense with the aspiration to 'be liked' or to be regarded as the repository of high-minded altruism....We should (avoid considering) unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. (The) less we are hampered by idealistic slogans (ideas and practices), the better."
The father of Soviet containment, Kennan was a dove. Hard-liners toughened his ideas, implementing them for over six decades, including in present day Iraq (and Afghanistan) where the vast majority of detainees are suspected of unproved terrorism or related offenses.
Iraq's Amnesty Law
Effective on February 27, 2008, its Article 1 says those detained can be pardoned and released by one of the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council's established judicial committees. Article 2 lists exceptions, including:
-- prisoners sentenced to death;
-- those convicted of terrorism causing death or permanent disability;
-- anyone convicted of crimes against humanity; and
-- others sentenced for premeditated murder, kidnapping, rape, homosexual acts, adultery, incest, forging official documents, counterfeiting, smuggling artifacts, and offenses under the Iraqi Military Criminal Code.
"In practice, the Amnesty Law appears to have been widely ignored and to have had little effect or impact on prisoner numbers. Some detainees have been released, but thousands" remain imprisoned without charges or trials in violation of international laws, including Fourth Geneva, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
For example, ICCPR's Article 9 states:
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention....Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time" or released.
Principle 4 of the UN Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment states:
"Any form of detention or imprisonment and all measures affecting the human rights of a person under any form of detention or imprisonment shall be ordered by, or be subject to the effective control of, a judicial or other authority."
Its Principle 11 says "A person shall not be kept in detention without being given an effective opportunity to be heard promptly by a judicial or other authority."
America and its puppet Iraqi regime systematically violate international law provisions, harming all Iraqis, those in detention most. In some cases, arrests weren't for suspected crimes, but to extort money from detainees and their families. America turns a blind eye, including complete disregard for human rights, civil liberties, and democratic freedoms. In today's Iraq, they don't exist, the occupation in place to assure it.
Yet "The policy of locking people up on mere suspicion (in some cases against regime critics) and denying them justice has contributed to, not alleviated" the sectarian divisions and insecurity. Worse is how they're treated, AI detailing:
"Rape or the threat of rape. Beating with cables and hosepipes. Prolonged suspension by the limbs. Electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body. Breaking of limbs. Removal of toenails with pliers. Asphyxiation using a plastic bag over the head. Piercing the body with drills. Being forced to sit on sharp objects such as broken bottles....just some of the torture methods used against men, women and children," inflicting enough pain to get anyone to confess to stop it.
One detainee told his interrogators he'd sign anything, even a blank sheet of paper to end it. He did and told AI he was innocent, yet under Iraqi "law," his confession is admissible as evidence. "The Iraqi criminal justice system relies heavily on (forced) confessions as evidence of guilt," many then convicted, including hundreds sentenced to death based on torture-extracted admissions, mostly from innocent victims.
Women are as mistreated as men, many reporting being repeatedly raped during interrogations and in detention. For others, men and women, torture results in death. Investigations aren't conducted or whitewashed, death certificates citing heart failure or other natural causes. "In all cases, those responsible for abuses have not been brought to justice. The failure to deal seriously and effectively with torture and other human rights violations....has created a culture of impunity."
At times, prison guards and other security officers were suspended, even arrested, then granted immediate amnesty and released. These practices began under George Bush. Obama continues them seamlessly and shamelessly, what major media accounts never report.
A Final Comment
In 2004, Americans and world audiences recall the horrors of torture, rape, sodomy, murder, and other abuses by US military personnel at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. Today under occupation, every US and Iraqi-controlled detention facility is Abu Ghraib or worse, their tortures, extreme abuses and appalling conditions continue.
Thousands of civilians are thus victimized by imperial Washington's lawlessness. Human lives and welfare are thus sacrificed, a shocking indictment of America's true aim and employed means, abroad and at home. Obama is as culpable as Bush. Both are unindicted war criminals.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
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