A View From The Left-WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

RACIALIZED ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT BACKLASH – THERE AND HERE

The news and the blogosphere are all a twitter over the British vote for “Brexit” and the rising xenophobia in the UK and on the European continent. Of course, there is a lot in common with elements of the Trump phenomenon in the US.  

The commentariat – and some on the Left -- tend to focus on the supposed “innate” racism of the less-educated and angry white voters.  But what is largely ignored is that the movements here and there are led by elements of the Establishment elites – and that the backlash reflects a genuine outrage at the “austerity” of falling wages and living conditions experienced by large numbers of the electorate.  White workers, denied in the mass media any genuine class explanation for their plight – or any (to them) plausible political outlet to oppose elite-led and Big Capital-driven Globalization – became vulnerable to racial appeals, with the self-defeating scapegoating of immigrants and people of color.

 

BREXIT: The Triumph of “Tabloid Politics”

There is a lot of talk right now about an angry, mainly old working class who used Brexit as a way of kicking back at an establishment that had brought them nothing but grief over the last decade. The Leave campaign managed to channel that into anger at the EU, even though it had precious little to do with the EU…  In 2015 the electorate voted Cameron back in because they thought the Conservatives were more competent at running the economy, and that Cameron would be a better leader than Miliband. In the last few hours we can clearly see that both beliefs are incorrect…  The tabloid press has groomed its readers for Brexit… Brexit is perhaps the first major casualty of the political populism that has followed the financial crisis and austerity. That populism triumphed in the UK because the establishment underestimated its power and did nothing to tackle the resentment on which it feeds and the misinformation on which it thrives.   More

 

Why Did White Workers Leave the Democratic Party?

The popular thesis today is that the New Deal could only be popular with white workers because, thanks to the Dixiecrats, it excluded black workers.  If the New Deal was simply for whites, why did blacks switch from the GOP to the Democratic Party in 1934 and 1936, led by the working-class black districts? Were they stupid? Or did they see something in the New Deal that these people don’t? … National Democratic leaders did not nurture a biracial, class politics… Yes, some working-class whites in the South turned to the Republican Party, especially when it was the party of power in their city and county. But many more just stopped voting… It is never a question of trade, but the rules of trade. What is permissible, and what is not, is a matter of government policy. And for all the talk about jobs by both parties, when it comes to trade deals, it is the corporations that have the most influence.  Political elites were willing to sacrifice jobs (although they would not put it that way) to national security during the era of the Cold War. They also enabled economic elites to solve their industrial problems through foreign cheap labor in the 1990s and afterward.  In the 1980s, corporations struggled, but in the 1990s with NAFTA and then the entry of China into the World Trade Organization, corporations through offshoring were rejuvenated.  Together these policies produced deindustrialization, a primary source of worker alienation from politics.   More

 

Economic policy increases inequality and hurts the vast majority of American families

Bivens argues that the rise in inequality in recent decades has been essentially zero-sum, with gains at the top of the distribution coming almost directly from gains at the bottom and middle. The zero-sum character of the rise in inequality means that policies aimed at progressively redistributing income can benefit the vast majority of working people without harming overall economic growth.  The rise of inequality over recent decades has been largely driven by a host of discrete policy changes that have regressively redistributed income to those at the very top. Many of these policy changes were championed by claims that they would boost overall growth rates, but Bivens argues that they have clearly failed on that front. The outcome of these policy changes have been a steadily rising “inequality tax” that has stunted income growth for the bottom 90 percent of households relative to what the economy had to the potential to deliver.    More

 

Abigail Fisher’s Supreme Court loss: A massive blow to racial privilege

Fisher’s case before the Supreme Court, in which she demanded that she be admitted to the University of Texas at Austin despite not having the grades to get in, confirmed every liberal suspicion about the opposition to affirmative action, namely that it’s not about “equality” at all, but about making sure white people are always first in line, ahead of all people of color, for job and education opportunities. That her lawyer, Edward Blum, has made a career out of creative litigation designed to keep people of color from getting jobs, schooling, and even political representation simply confirms it further… In 2008, 47 such students were admitted who had lower grades or test scores than Fisher. Forty-two of them were white. Only five were people of color.   Fisher and her lawyer Blum were not challenging the admission of the 42 white students… Thursday is a victory all the same, because it’s a blow to this ridiculous notion that any time a person of color gets an opportunity, they are stealing it from a more deserving white person.   More

 

HOW ABOUT WE JUST BAN ALL ASSAULT WEAPONS INSTEAD?

It is perhaps understandable that Democratic proponents of gun control measure would protest against the blocking of any legislation – or even the chance to vote -- by the House Republican leadership.  But seeking a calculated advantage by staging a sit-in on behalf of “No Fly – No Buy” is a dangerous tactic.

 

The Cynical Sit-In

Earlier in the week four such measures were rejected, including a bill sponsored by California senator Dianne Feinstein which called for expanding the “Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment,” known more commonly as the “terrorist watchlist.”  The entire watchlist has more than eight hundred thousand names on it, far more than the “no-fly” sub-list with sixty-four thousand names. Feinstein’s legislation called for a weapons ban to be applied to the entire list.  So while Democrats were also pursuing legislation calling for stricter background checks and a ban on assault weapons, the focus of their protests have coalesced around a demand to bar people who have been placed on the “terror watchlist.”  … We should call it what it actually is: a mostly Arab and Muslim watchlist. If we accept that such a database — for which there is no formal or legal process to be placed on or removed from — is justified then we are sanctioning the institutional harassment of brown people who the US government arbitrarily charges with “suspicion” of terrorism.  Most people want something done about the threat and actual experience of pervasive gun violence in the United States. But framing the issue as one of “national security” and as part of the “war on terror” does not address the underlying causes of violence in America.   More

 

Democrats ‘no-fly, no-buy’ sit-in bolsters racist, ineffective and arbitrary surveillance of Muslims

There’s a big problem with the sit-in, though: one of the measures the Democrats want to pass would bar people on the no-fly or selectee lists–people suspected of having ties to terrorism–from buying guns. At first glance, this seems logical. Who wants a terrorist to be able to buy a gun? But the reality is that these watchlists are deeply flawed, arbitrary and disproportionately impacts Muslims. People don’t know if they’re on it, there’s virtually no way to get off it, and it leads to consequences like not being able to fly or getting pulled aside for extra questioning at airports. It is also notoriously inaccurate. A 2009 Justice Department study found that a third of watchlisted names were on there because of outdated information.  The bill in question would effectively codify reliance on a list that many Democrats–including John Lewis himself–have criticized as violating civil liberties. In fact, Lewis himself was once on the no-fly list. The legislation would also do very little to curb gun violence in the U.S…  Democrats are pushing to bar people on the no-fly list from buying guns because of the Orlando attacks. But this bill would not have stopped Omar Mateen, the gunman, from buying the assault rifle he used to shoot up the Pulse nightclub. It is unclear if Mateen was on the no-fly list. And Mateen was taken off the larger federal watchlist in 2014.    More

 

$206 Million to Hate Groups to Promote anti-Muslim Sentiment

As The Guardian notes, the end result of the activities of groups like Abstraction Fund, Clarion Project, David Horowitz Freedom Center, Middle East Forum, American Freedom Law Center, Center for Security Policy, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Jihad Watch and Act! for America, is an increase in attacks on mosques and attacks on Muslim individuals.   Some of them, such as the Middle East Forum, are part of the Israel lobbies, and apparently they believe the best way to go on keeping Palestinians stateless and without rights is to convince Americans that all Muslims are wicked and deserving of any abuse visited on them by the Likud Party.  More

 

This statistic about gun violence in America seems hard to believe, but is true

Each year for the last decade in America, more than 30,000 people have died due to firearms. That figure, which includes suicides and accidents as well as homicides, is comparable to the casualties seen in some of America's modern wars. It's nearly equal to the number of Americans who died in the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953.  In fact, if you add up the number of firearm-related deaths in America since 1968, that figure is larger than all of the battlefield casualties in all of the wars in American history.   More

 

BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS NOW

Orlando. Sandy Hook. Aurora. San Bernardino.
What do these horrific shootings have in common? Assault weapons.
Assault weapons were used to murder at least 49 people in Orlando, 26 people in Sandy Hook, 12 people in Aurora, and 14 people in San Bernardino.
Right now, these mass-killing weapons are available for purchase on-line, at trade shows, and at gun brokers across our nation. They have become the weapon of choice for mass shooters.
Assault weapons have no place in our cities and towns. No place on our streets.
We need to ban all assault weapons now, while moving quickly to enact common sense gun reform.

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