Bhutto before her assassination: "hold Musharraf responsible" if she's killed in Pakistan "I have been made to feel insecure by his minions"
"In
the end, it was Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who phoned
Bhutto in early October, telling her to return to Pakistan to serve
essentially as an instrument of US policy and a prop for the Musharraf
regime. In doing so, Rice sent Bhutto to her death." (World Socialist Web Site, 12/29/07, Bill Van Auken)
Everything
Condoleezza Rice touches dies. That's what she's good at: condemning
people to die; sending people to their deaths; ordering her occupation
minions to slaughter those being occupied. Rice is going down in
history as another Vlad the Impaler. Not one of affirmative action's
finer moments.
The ties between Pakistan's military and
intelligence and Al Qaeda, the Taliban and Islamists are well
documented. US imperialism and its Pakistani puppet dictators going
back to General Zia have used Islamic fundamentalists as a
counterweight to Marxists and secular leftists.
Once again, Al
Qaeda, born and bred by US intelligence, is being used as a cover for
US military aggression to advance Wall Street's objective of
controlling the world's oil and gas supplies.--Jan. 3, 2008
No doubt because Zubaydah claimed he had ties to Saudi monarchy and Pakistani intelligence.
Torture
is illegal. Waterboarding is torture. It has been since the
Inquisition. Washington itselt prosecuted a Japanese officer for it
during World War II. The CIA destroyed the torture tapes because the
judge in the Moussaoui trial asked for them. No doubt the tapes
weakened the government's case against Moussaoui. There's also a good
chance that Zubadayh's torture-extracted testimony contradicted
Washington's official version of 9/11.
Bush ordered the tapes'
destruction and his entire criminal gang--including the Congressional
Democrats--knew about the torture being carried out as US state policy.
Torture
is illegal under US and international law. Period. There are no
exceptions. It's not a question of whether it "works"--which it doesn't
and isn't intended to.
You want to stop terrorist attacks? Open
all files of, and then abolish, US, British and Israeli intelligence,
since they either know about or are behind nearly every terrorist
attack that's occurred.
Solidarity forever! Solidarity forever! Solidarity forever! For the union makes us strong
When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run, There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun. Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one? But the union makes us strong.
They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn, But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn. We can break their haughty power; gain our freedom when we learn That the Union makes us strong.
In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold; Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold. We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old For the Union makes us strong.
Written by Industrial Workers of the World organizer Ralph Chaplin in 1915, based on the music of Julia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Sooner
or later, it comes down to this question. And the axis of choice is not
George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden; it's not between Christian
fundamentalists and Islamic fundamentalists; it's not even between
Western civilization and Islamic jihadists. It's between working people
and capitalist exploiters; between wage slaves and subprime speculators.
Chorus: This land is your land, this land is my land From California, to the New York Island From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters This land was made for you and me
As I was walking a ribbon of highway I saw above me an endless skyway I saw below me a golden valley This land was made for you and me
Chorus
I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts And all around me a voice was sounding This land was made for you and me
Chorus
The sun comes shining as I was strolling The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling The fog was lifting a voice come chanting This land was made for you and me
Chorus
As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there And that sign said - no tress passin' But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin! Now that side was made for you and me! [emphasis added]
Chorus In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple Near the relief office - I see my people And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin' If this land's still made for you and me.
Behind
the "no tress passin'" sign stands Bill O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs, Glenn
Beck, Ann Coulter, Tom Tancredo, the Minutemen, David Horowitz, and the
rest of the national chauvinistic, xenophobic slimeballs polluting the
national discourse with their special brand of hate mongering and
flag-waving jingoism designed to scapegoat immigrant workers for the
deepening economic crisis of capitalism.
"The other side was
made for you and me"--meaning working people; Black, brown, white;
native born and immigrants; English speaking and Spanish speaking.
If Bill O'Reilly is the most dangerous man in America to workers, Hillary Clinton has to be the most dangerous woman.
She
just can't wait to send US workers to their deaths on behalf of
America's corporate elite. American, Iranian, and Iraqi blood is
already dripping from her fangs.
Memo to Senator Dodd and Wolf
Blitzer (who, if he had an ounce of personality or one tenth of
O'Reilly's influence, would merit a website similar to this one): the
presidential oath of office issued on January 20 does not obligate the
new president to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United
States and protect our country against enemies both foreign and domestic."
[emphasis added] Article II, section reads: "I [name], do solemnly
swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of
President of the United States, and I will to the best of my ability,
preserve protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." [emphasis added]
Now,
it is true that the military oath one takes upon enlisting is more
expansive, mandating that you defend the Constitution "against all
enemies foreign and domestic." But ultra right wingers like Glenn Beck
should be careful before quoting those words--they can be validly used
to argue that the military should defend the Constitution against the
number 1 domestic enemy of the Constitution--George W. Bush. --November 17, 2007
So do we all, comrades. But at least the French--and the German workers--are fighting back.
"It
is no accident that German train drivers are on strike simultaneously
with French railway workers. On both sides of the Rhine they are
fighting against the subordination of the public services as well as
every aspect of their personal lives to the diktat of big
business."--World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board, Nov. 19, 2007
And let's not forget the rising combativity of
the Russian workers--who started it all and changed history by making
the first socialist revolution in October 1917--and whose principal
leader, Vladimir Lenin, still strikes fear in the hearts of capitalists
everywhere.--Nov. 20, 2007
Bullshit. Carole
Anne Gotbaum was murdered in police custody. The autopsy is a fraud and
transparent whitewash of still another homicide at the hands of a
member of the US capitalist state apparatus that is increasingly
desperate, out of control, and operating with impunity and a license to
kill.
The Gotbaum family should sue the city of Phoenix, the
cops, and Phoenix Airport for everything they've got. Pauperize the
bastards. And those responsible--those security pigs and cops at
Phoenix Airport--should be arrested, prosecuted, convicted and given
the harshest sentence possible.--November 11, 2007
Whether
or not they realize it, when the 60 kids from West Morton High School
staged their courageous sit-in against the war in Iraq, they were
standing up to the entire US capitalist power structure, first and
foremost the imperialist military and its chief media propagandist, Bill O'Reilly.
“Army recruiters are there three times a week. Why not let them [students] counter-recruit?”--Mark Serpico, father of one of the student protesters.
Take that, Bill O'Reilly, to the point where it stops your heartbeat.
But first, take Kids Are Americans, Too
and wipe your ass with it. Because that's what it's worth to the kids
in West Morton High and those at Boulder High School who occupied their
school back in November 2004 to protest the war.--November 9, 2007
It's about the oil; it's about controlling the Middle East; it's how imperialism works
"I'm
not saying this is a war for oil, but I am saying that oil fuels an
awful lot of moves that political powers may have there" --Retired Army General John Abizaid, explaining why US troops will be in the Middle East for 50 years.
"Guided
by American legal advisers, the Iaqi government has canceled a
controversial development contract with the Russian company Lukoil for
a vast oil field in Iraq's southern desert, freeing it up for potential
international investment in the future" --Andrew E. Kramer, NY Times 11/4/07 article, "Iraq, With U.S. Support, Voids a Russian Oil Contract"
“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil” --Alan Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve
It
wasn't about weapons of mass destruction. It wasn't about Iraq's
connection to 9/11, or Baghdad's links to Al Qaeda. It wasn't about
liberating Iraqis. And it certainly wasn't about bringing peace,
freedom and democracy to Iraq. The invasion and occupation of Iraq is
about Washington controlling Iraq's oil and its strategic position in
the Middle East to get a leg up on its imperialist rivals in
controlling the world's booty. And it's becoming clearer that
Washington's conquering of Iraq was a stepping stone to conquering Iran.
Working
people should keep that in mind as Washington ratchets up the bellicose
rhetoric and military preparations for the coming aggression against
Iran. Once again, the reasons given for an illegal preemptive war will
have nothing to do with the truth. It won't be about Iran having or
getting nu clear weapons. It won't be because Iran threatens peace and
stability in the Middle East or the world. It won't be because
Ahmadinejad intends to wipe Israel off the map. It won't be because
Iran is helping Iraqi insurgents kill US soldiers.
9/11 Protesters Disrupt Maher's HBO Program
Host Leaps into Audience, Urges Security, "Don't be gentle with them"
Incident reveals Maher's reactionary side
"What's needed here is some ass-kicking." "If this were a microcosm of America, I'd vote for Rudy Guiliani." "It's the only time I defend Bush."
In
the midst of a less than stimulating discussion with brain dead guests
"journalist" Joel Stein, Texas Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Jackson
Lee and Hardball windbag Chris Matthews, inaudible shouts suddenly broke out from the studio audience during a live broadcast of Real Time With Bill Maher.
When the shouting persisted, Maher, not wanting to be compared with
Bush's frozen response to the second attack on the WTC, stood up and
demanded, "Where's the fucking security? I'll kick your ass myself"
before leaping into the audience toward the hecklers, several of whom
were then forcibly ejected from the studio.
A few minutes later the heckling resumed, but this time the shouts were understandable: "What about Building 7?"
Maher replied with disdain, "You know what that's about? The World Trade Center was brought down by a controlled explosion"--his emphasis dripping with sarcasm. "It's the only time I defend Bush."
Sure,
anyone who thinks that must be some crazy conspiracist looney tune,
right, Bill. Here Maher makes the same mistake that regular Bush
defender Bill O'Reilly does. They ignore the multitude of scientists,
engineers, military and intelligence officials, and diplomats--here and
abroad--who have examined the evidence and conclude that yes, Buildings
1, 2 and 7 of the World Trade Center appear to have been destroyed by
controlled demolitions.
Perhaps if Maher had some of these
individuals on his program, instead of empty-headed dolts like Stein,
Leigh and Matthews, he and his viewers would be privy to the kind of
evidence that would shatter Maher's smug self righteous sarcasm--the
eyewitness testimony, seismic recordings and videos that point to an
explosive detonation at the base of WTC 1; the testimony by NYC firefighters that suggest explosions occurred in WTC 2; the BBC video broadcast in which the reporter announces the collapse of Building 7 26 minutes before it actually did; the suspicious testimony from WTC owner Larry Silverstein that he and the NY Fire Department decided to "pull it" [Building 7].
If
Maher had this kind of information on his show, there wouldn't be a
need for anyone to disrupt his program. But when Maher censors this
evidence from the public realm, he shouldn't be surprised that Friday's
incident took place.
And it's not that Bush personally directed
the demolition of the WTC; he obviously lacks the intelligence to
conjure up such a complex plan. It's about the history of Washington
using false flag operations and staging provocations to justify going
to war. Did you ever hear of Operation Northwoods, Bill Maher, the
false flag proposal from the US Joint Chief of Staffs that involved
widespread domestic terrorism--including the hijacking of airplanes and
significant civilian casualties as a pretext for invading Cuba in 1962?
If Maher has heard of Northwoods, then he's consciously suppressing it
for political reasons. If Maher hasn't heard of Northwoods, then he's
not as smart as he thinks he is, and instead of attacking the heckler,
he should invite him on the program so Bill might learn something.
There's
another reason why Maher has a problem with 9/11 "conspiracy
theories"--most of them point to his precious state of Israel. If Maher
allowed his program to be a forum for 9/11 skeptics, sooner or later
the discussion would turn to the "dancing Israelis" who celebrated the
destruction of the Towers from a Jersey City location and who were
connected to a moving van company serving as a front for Mossad; or the
discussion might uncover the Israeli spy ring that had been tailing
the 9/11 hijackers for months, and then Maher might have to deal with
the FOX News' Carl Cameron's report that was going in the same
direction but was halted upon hearing that all intelligence files
concerning Israel and 9/11 were classified.
And then Maher may
have to confront Israel's penchant for carrying out false flag
terrorist operations designed to frame Arabs like the 1954 Levon affair
and the more recent fake Al Qaeda cells on the West Bank. Have pity on
Maher, a zealous Zionist and rabid Palestinian hater who is still
recovering from statements by recent guests Michael Scheuer and Janeane Garafolo that Israel is not worth one US dollar or life.
Recently
I came upon a blog entry from a supporter of Republican Representative
Ron Paul criticizing a Washington Post article that glibly lumped Paul
alongside Pat Buchanan, Oliver North and former Pennsylvania senator
Rick Santorum as recipients of cash donations from Blackwater boss and
Bush pal Eric Prince.
It turns out that Prince gave $1000 to
Paul in 1995 and another thousand the following year; a fraction of
what Prince gave most GOP recipients. Paul has long been an orthodox
Republican conservative. While a candidate for the 2008 Republican
nomination, Paul has broken with the neoconservative, prowar wing of
the party while giving voice to millions of Americans who oppose the
Iraq war and sense that Washington has lied about 9/11.
The
blogger, someone named Daniel McAdams, accurately characterized the
Post article as "disinformation" then proceeded to engage in some
disinformation of his own: "...disinformation, and from Ron Paul to the
wars they are shilling for against Iran and Syria, the Washington Post
is proving itself a master [in disinformation] that would have made
Trotsky proud."
The only substantiation offered by McAdams for
this slimy piece of historical misrepresentation and slander against
Trotsky comes from linking the latter's name to a Wikipedia entry naming him as Pravda's founder in 1912. Yes, Trotsky in 1912 founded the newspaper of Russia's Social Democratic Party. Its name was Pravda,
which means truth, and in the days when Trotsky founded the
newspaper and had responsibility for it, it was a revolutionary organ
that did tell the truth to Russia's workers.
Pravda
did not become an instrument of manipulation and falsification until
Joseph Stalin's bureaucratic counterrevolution transformed the
previously revolutionary and communist party of Lenin and Trotsky's
Bolsheviks into a counterrevolutionary party that represented the
emerging privileged petty bourgeois bureaucratic caste. In other words,
McAdams, the Pravda you speak of had nothing to do with Leon Trotsky.
It had everything to do with Stalin--the dictator who murdered
Trotsky--the revolutionary who fo unded the revolutionary workers paper
that told the truth. Which is more than Daniel McAdams does.
As Trotsky himself once noted, even slander should make some sense.--November 9, 2007
"...So
I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III,
it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have
the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of
Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously..."
Washington has
10,000 nuclear weapons. It is the only government to drop atomic bombs
on human beings, incincerating hundreds of thousands. It refuses to
renounce a first-strike attack. Credible reports indicate the US is
considering tactical nuclear warfare against Iran. Iran has 0 nuclear
weapons. It is developing nuclear power, as is its legal right to do so
under international law.
Iran is an obstacle to US domination of
the energy rich region, including Iran's vast oil and natural gas
supplies. Washington wants a puppet regime in Tehran like it had with
the Shah and like it is trying to impose in Iraq. The Iranian masses
and the anti-imperialist revolution that overthrew the Shah in 1979
stand in Washington's way. That is the reason for Bush's threats and
nuclear blackmail against Iran.
Liberals like Keith Olbermann
act confused and disoriented over Bush's threat of world war. Is he in
control of his faculties, Olbermann wonders. While it's true that Bush
resembles Nero and Caligula in his callousness, sadism, and
derangement, he is nothing more than the personification of the class
of capitalist exploiters he represents. Bush uses violence and state
terrorism because it's the cold-blooded assessment of the US
capitalists that these measures are required to ensure their domination
of the world's resources and markets.
The Socialist Workers
Party said in the early 1990s that the first Iraq war was the opening
guns of World War III. The party meant that we had entered a new epoch
of interimperialist wars between rival capitalist powers to control the
planet's booty. Bush's comments today about World War III only confirms
the validity of that assessment.
Bush's remarks threw liberals
like Olbermann in a tizzy. "Oh, maybe he's lost his faculties. Now he's
talking World War III. Where does that come from?"
Communists
have been telling working people for 2 decades where it comes from. It
comes from the contradictions and conflicts that flow from the laws of
the international class struggle and capitalism that drive rival
capitalist nations to war.
As Lenin told the Bolsheviks in 1917,
"We must patiently explain. The masses will turn to us. They have no
alternative."--October 17, 2007
When
the US military says the dead are "insurgents" or "suspected
terrorists," it means they're usually women, children and the elderly.
The fact that Bush and his gang of war criminals in both parties and
the media, particularly Bill O'Reilly, show no remorse and are poised
to unleash another bloodbath in Iran, should be taken into account
after they are convicted for these war crimes before an international
tribunal and it comes time to sentence them. There should be no mercy
shown toward these murderous scoundrels.--October 16, 2007
US Capitalist State Apparatus Out of Control
Epidemic of Deaths, Beatings by Cops, Security Thugs
Blackwater's
got their own rules of engagement--the unfettered right to mow down
innocent civilians with complete immunity. In fact, as US militarism
continues to erupt alongside the building of a police state, the rules
of engagement allow all agents of the capitalist armed state--legal and
extralegal--to murder anyone with impunity.
Individual soldiers
who commit atrocities like My Lai and Haditha should be prosecuted and
convicted for war crimes--but only after the top civilian leadership
and military brass who ordered and trained them meet the same fate.
Rank
and file soldiers in the imperialist armed forces are themselves
victims; victims of a brutalized training designed to break their
humanity and turn them into callous killers; victims of depleted
uranium; victims of post traumatic stress syndrome; victims of
inadequate medical care; victims of the kind of criminal neglect
revealed at Walter Reed Hospital; victims of being deceived and
hoodwinked into thinking they are sent thousands of miles away to
defend their country when the true reason they're killing and dying is
for capitalist profits.
Every level of the US capitalist
state--military, cops, security agents-- is terrorizing people from
Phoenix to Baghdad. The propensity of this state power--the "armed
bodies of men," as Marxist leader Frederic Engels put it--to commit
violence is a reflection of the desperation permeating the US
capitalist exploiters.
It was sickening to watch CNN's Barbie
and Ken-like talking heads blame Gotbaum's death on her drinking and
emotional problems while ignoring the responsibility of the cops and
airport security. What's that you said, Malcolm X? That imperialist
stooges turn the victims into criminals?--October 6, 2007
And
there you go. Further confirmation that the violence inflicted by the
US capitalist state in Iraq is of a piece with the violence inflicted
on American working people; that the increasingly desperate US rulers
are gearing up to unleash terror and violence against anyone who
resists their domination--from Baghdad to New Orleans.
"The
training and potential political indoctrination of police officers by
the extreme right-wing and proto-fascist Blackwater, coupled with the
politicization of the Justice Department and U.S. courts, has the
potential for the streets of Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Atlanta, New
York, and Washington, DC, as well as Chillicothe, Harvey Cedars, and
Elmira to turn as bloody as the streets of Baghdad and Fallujah."[Wayne
Madsen Report, 10/15/07]
Bush
vetoed a health insurance program for working class children that costs
what he spends on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in four months.
George
W. Bush is the personification of the greed and callousness that
characterizes the US capitalist class he represents, much as Joseph
Stalin was the personification of the conservative bureaucracy that
usurped political power from the workers and peasants, crushed Soviet
democracy and consolidated a political counterrevolution in the 1920s.
Bush: "...I believe in private medicine, not the federal government running the health care system..."
This
arrogant, aristocratic parasite can't restrain himself from admitting
he believes in the sanctity of private profit more than the health of
the nation's children.
Someone, and it's a good bet it won't be
a member of the servile, kept bourgeois press, should remind this moron
that the federal government has played a huge role in running the
health care system in the form of Medicare and Medicaid for five
decades.--October 7, 2007
Striking UAW workers in Flint, Michigan, 9/25/07 (Reuters)
Sept.
25, 2007--Despite a climate of rampant militarism and jingoism, this
strike by United Auto Workers against General Motors reflects the
growing militance, resistance, and combativity of the US working class.
As
the WSWS explained, this strike is not just against one auto company;
it's against the entire capitalist political establishment. It's
against the war in Iraq.
Think of the possibilities if the
strikers organized rank and file committees throughout the country that
actively sought solidarity from union and nonunion workers alike. Think
of how politics could change if the UAW rank and file strike committee
reached out to not just workers but students, farmers, intellectuals,
housewives and all strata of society by connecting the strike to the
war in Iraq and linked the demands of the auto workers to the demand
for an immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all US troops.
Think
about how the face of US politics could be changed if this type of
militant struggle waged by UAW strikers results in the formation of a
labor party that wins the broad support of US working people. Think of
the possibilities if this revitalized labor movement was infused with
the principles of solidarity, democracy and internationalism.
Paves Way for Massive Cuts in Wages, Health Care, Pensions
Auto Workers Should Reject Contract, Form Rank and File Strike Committees
Gaza kids murdered by Israeli Zionists
Israel Escalates its War Against Palestinians
Limits Fuel and Electricity into Gaza
Gaza's population on brink of starvation
Tel Aviv's collective punishment of Gaza's people is ongoing violation of international law and human rights
Israel's blockade of Gaza and its recent airstrikes inside
Syria are part of Washington and Tel Aviv's drive to militarily conquer
the energy-rich Middle East. The United States and Israel are the true
axis of evil in the world.--Sept. 22, 2007
MoveOn's Ad Unveils its Flawed Politics
It's not that MoveOn.org's "Betray Us" ad was wrong in saying General Petraeus cooked the books for Bush. He did say in 2004 that there was "tangible progress" in Iraq. He has
echoed Bush's justification for the "surge." Not one m ember of the US
capitalist political establishment who has participated in the
McCarthyite attack against MoveOn has disputed this or attempted to
debate the organization on the facts.
The problem with the liberal, pro-Democratic MoveOn.org is that it had illusions in Petraeus in the first place. In
order to feel betrayed by someone, you must have confidence and trust
in that person. Working people are not obliged and should not be
coerced into genuflecting before an imperialist general. Petraeus is a
war criminal who has enthusiastically backed Washington's brutal,
blood-drenched, colonial invasion and occupation of Iraq. Petraeus has
consciously and willingingly served as a political hack for George W.
Bush.
Working people should stop allowing those who serve
capitalist warmakers from using misty-eyed patriotism to hoodwinking us
into supporting wars waged for Wall Street's profits. Patriotism is the
last refuge of scoundrels like Bill O'Reilly who are all too willing to
send working class youth to their graves for corporate profits.
The
white kids who hung the nooses on the "whites only" tree get suspended,
not expelled. In the ensuing escalation of racist provocations, Black
kids who get into a fight with a white kid get charged with attempted
murder.
A white man pulls a gun in a fight with Black students, who disarm him. The Black students get charged with theft of a firearm.
The
militant protests by Black folks from Jena and all over the country
played no small role in influencing the court to overturn the
aggravated battery conviction against Mychal Bell, one of the Jena Six.
Hundreds
of buses brought demonstrators from Los Angeles to Harlem to the
September 20 action, some of them chartered by AFSCME District Council
37. (Workers World, Sept. 20, 2007)
The size and militancy of
this Jena protest speaks to the growing opposition to war, social
inequality and repression. As the WSWS stated, this opposition "will
increasingly take the form of mass protest and social struggle."
The
Jena protest is only a glimpse of what is coming in this country. It
also confirms the validity of Leon Trotsky's prediction 70 years
ago--that African Americans will play a vanguard role in the coming US
socialist revolution.--Sept. 21, 2007
Not bad for a fractured antiwar movement. Let's see what the September 29 Troops Out Now action can mobilize.
While
the September 15 and 29 demonstrations remain important, they are not
enough. Elevating mobilizations as a strategy in and of themselves,
mobilizations designed to pressure the Democratic Party and keep the
protesters tied to the Democratic Party, will not stop imperialist wars
in the 21st century. The World Socialist Web Site is right:
"The
building of a genuine mass movement against the war can only be
achieved by the mobilization of the working class on an international
scale, completely independent of and against the two capitalist parties
as part of a mass independent socialist movement."--September 17, 2007
...a B-52 armed with 6 nuclear cruise missiles flying over the United States.
But judging from the US capitalist media's coverage of this incident, nothing much happened here. Move along now.
The
fact that we've known since 2006 that Bush was contemplating a tactical
nuclear strike against Iran, and that just recently two British
analysts noted in their report on US plans to bomb Iran that "clear
evidence that nuclear weapons use [against Iran] is being given serious
political consideration" has nothing to do with the little-noticed
"accident."
As Gore Vidal always says, there's no such thing as conspiracies. Just coincidences.--Sept. 15, 2007
This
on top of the $30,000 in fines the government has levied against the
ANSWER Coalition, sponsor of the upcoming September 15 Mass March to
End the War in Washington, DC, for posting signs about the
demonstration.
More signs of the accelerating erosion of bourgeois democracy in the US.--Sept. 8, 2007
Listen
to the tape. The student wasn't asking Kerry about voter suppression,
as the You Tube headline falsely states. He was asking about Kerry's
shared membership with George W. Bush in Yale's twisted, sadistic
secret society of America's corporate elite known as Skull and Bones.
Watch
in horror as these demented pigs taser the student him like the
sadistic bastards they are. The poor kid was arrested for disrupting a
public event. Bullshit. The only thing he was guilty of is asking a
public "leader" a question. The only disrupting of a public event
resulted from thug cops viciously attacking a student exercising his
constitutional right to free speech.--Sept. 17, 2007
ALL OUT SEPTEMBER 29!
March on Washington to STOP THE WAR NOW!
Troops Out Now! Impeach Bush & Cheney for War Crimes! End All Occupations--from Iraq to Palestine to Haiti to the Philippines!
Stop the War at Home and Abroad! Healthcare, not Warfare!
* No War Against Iran * End all occupations now - from Iraq to Palestine, the Philippines, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Afghanistan * Support The Right to Return - from Palestine to New Orleans * No to U.S. intervention - Hands off Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Zimbabwe, and the Sudan * Stop the raids against immigrant workers -- Full rights for undocumented workers * Justice for Katrina survivors - End racist police terror - Stop the war against Muslims * Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, the Cuban Five, and all political prisoners * Money for health care, jobs and education, not endless war
The
September 29 action was called by the Troops Out Now Coalition; it will
follow a week of various protests centered around an Encampment to Stop
the War in which protesters will inhabit an "antiwar tent city" on the
Mall across from the Capitol. A companion protest will be held in Los
Angeles, California.
A separate mass march on Washington, DC
demanding an immediate end to the Iraq war will occur on September 15.
This action is sponsored by the ANSWER coalition, the antiwar
organizing vehicle formed shortly after 9/11 that was closely
affiliated by the Workers World Party, whose leader's capitulation to
Stalinism in the late 1950s caused him to leave the then-Trotskyist
Socialist Workers Party.
The competing demonstrations are the
result of a 2004 split in the Workers World Party that saw the birth of
a new organization, the Party for Socialism and Liberation. The
original ANSWER forces went with the PSL, whose central leader is Brian
Becker. Workers World, whose central leader remains Larry Holmes, is
behind the Troops Out Now Coalition. Unfortunately, the factionalism
and squabbles besetting these organizations appear to be preventing a
united antiwar action this fall, much to the benefit and delight of the
US imperialist warmakers and their stooges in the corporate
media.--August 31, 2007
"Once
again, official Washington is focused with hysterical intensity on the
private conduct of an individual politician, while the great public
crimes being committed by the Bush administration and abetted by the
Democratic-controlled Congress go unpunished.
"...The
circumstances under which Craig was arrested are themselves an exposure
of the degraded conditions of life in contemporary America....Such
entrapment tactics [undercover cops looking to bust gay men in bathroom
stalls] are deeply repugnant. What 'crime'were the airpot police
preventing with their dragnet? ...The very fact that tens of millions
of dollars are expended by police departments all over the United
States on such witch-hunts, with relatively little public outcry or
even comment, is an expression of the decay of democratic rights in the
United States.
"....More importantly, such lurid sex
scandals do nothing to illuminate the real political and social issues
confronting the broad mass of the people, or reveal the class issues
that underlie the policies of militarism and social reaction that
prevail throughout the entire political system. On the contrary, such
media-fueled scandals appeal to the basest instincts and serve to
obscure the social and political realities of American society.
"In particular, the media uproar over
Senator Craig has largely overshadowed any coverage of the series of
military court martial decisions this week whitewashing the abuse of
Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and bloody atrocities by US soldiers in
Haditha and other Iraqi towns.
"....The entire Craig affair is a political
diversion. Monstrous crimes are taking place in official Washington,
and they are being committed, not in public restrooms, but in the White
House, Pentagon, State Department and CIA—and in the halls of Congress."
Not
surprisingly, homophobia has characterized this entire sordid episode,
manifested by the comparatively ho-hum response to Louisiana Senator
David Vitter's frequent use of the DC Madam's services.
Second,
while the WSWS is correct that "there is nothing politically positive
in the destruction of ...a reactionary senator because of his sexual
orientation..." it's also true that in 1982 Craig gave a preemptive
denial to the media that he was involved in a cocaine and sex scandal
with congressional page boys--a scandal that erupted in 1983 and
continued throughout the decade, ensnaring GOP rising star and boss of
the Franklin Community Credit Union in Omaha, Lawrence King, and
rumored to include President George H .W. Bush.
It takes a predator indeed.
Meanwhile,
the individual who comes out looking even worse than Craig is Sgt.
David Karsnia, the arresting undercover cop, who can't be accused of
not throwing himself into his job if not the toilet. Particularly
revealing was when Karsnia revealed his profound disappointment in what
he perceived as Craig's dishonesty: "I expect this from the guy that we
get out of the hood. I mean, people vote for you."
Not only is
Karsnia ignorant and perverted, but it appears he can't hide his
racism, either. And it's almost touching, isn't it, to witness his
illusions in the capitalist government he serves being dashed to
bits.--September 3, 2007
Keith Olbermann: Worst Person in the World
Fidel by Heine
Olbermann
won his own "Worst Person in the World" award today by nominating Fidel
Castro for the same distinction. Fidel raised Olbermann's ire for
having the audacity to offer his opinion that a Clinton/Obama ticket
was unbeatable.
Olbermann wailed: "Exactly what in hell does Castro know about elections?"
Obviously a lot more than Olbermann.
First, at least they can count the votes
in Cuba, Olbermann--something US bourgeois democracy in its advanced
state of decay is incapable of doing. Second, Cuban workers know where
to go to vote, unlike Us workers. Third, Cuban workers aren't expunged
from voter registration polls as increasing numbers of Americans,
particularly African Americans are.
Fourth, there are all kinds
of elections in Cuba--and they are far more democratic than the rigged
frauds masquerading as elections in the US. This flows from the fact
that a social revolution was made by that nation's workers and
peasants--that would be the majority, Olbermann. Workers directly elect
their representatives to their workers parliament, or National
Assembly, at the neighborhood, municipal, regional and national levels.
Tens of thousands of candidates are workers, peasants, housewives, and
intellectuals. Unlike workers in the United States, Cubans are born
with the right to vote and enjoy universal and automatic voter
registration.
Unlike in the US, where working people are
disenfranchised, where the two major parties represent the corporate
elite, that would be the capitalists, Olbermann, who pay you millions
to hoodwink US workers into believing they have a meaningful choice;
where these 2 capitalist parties share a monopoly of political power;
where socialist views are essentially censored; unlike this fraudulent
and undemocratic system straitjacketing US workers, Cuba's workers and
peasants have state power. They correctly see the government as their
government; a government of workers and peasants--a tidbit of history
that the US imperialist government in Washington recognizes, even if
Olbermann does not.
Notice how Olbermann had nothing to say on
the merits of Fidel's assessment of the 2008 US presidential: a
Clinton/Obama presidential ticket no doubt would win the election.
Olbermann is right to avoid taking on Fidel Castro on the merits of any
political issue. He knows he'll lose every time because Fidel is on
another level.
Olbermann is no doubt concerned that Republicans
will have a field day linking Fidel to the Countdown host's friends in
the Democratic Party. Don't worry, Keith, Fidel wasn't endorsing a
Clinton/Obama ticket, as your "competition" at FOX News falsely stated.
Castro has nothing but contempt for Clinton and Obama; the following
remarks were directed, as he stated, at "increasing the conscience of
the Cuban people":
"Today,
talk is about the seemingly invincible ticket that might be created
with Hillary for President and Obama for Vice President. Both of them
feel the sacred duty of demanding 'a democratic government in Cuba'.
They are not making politics: they are playing a game of cards on a
Sunday afternoon."
The fact that Castro's competition for the
Worst Person in the World was rightist scoundrel Glenn Beck and the
Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration is an insult to working
people everywhere. Consider that Olbermann gave the bronze award to the
MSHA because this tool of the coal bosses rejected the attempt
by families of the 6 Utah coal miners buried alive in the Crandall
Canyon Mine to have the United Mineworkers Union represent them in the
investigation. The MSHA's reasoning is that since the mine was
nonunion, the miners themselves will have to sign the paperwork
authorizing the UMW as their representative. That's a little hard to do
when you're trapped underground and no doubt dead.
This would never happen in Cuba, where the trade unions are an integral part of the workers government; where most Cubans are members of real unions
that fight for the workers; unlike the US, where less than 10% of
workers belong to unions that have been so weakened by decades of class
collaborationism they have been transformed into appendages of the
companies.
That
should be the response of working people to the Zionist-led witch hunt
in New York City that forced the resignation of Debbie Almontaser as
principal of an Arabic public school. Her crime? She wore a t-shirt
that said "Intifada NYC." She was courageous enough to express
solidarity in a Zionist stronghold like New York City with the
Palestinian people for their heroic 4-decade struggle against the
monstrous Zionist theft and occupation of their land. The yellow
journalism crusade by rightist NYC tabloids against Almontaser
represents still another ferocious assault on the First Amendment by
the US capitalist political establishment.
Give
it up, Chuck Bennett of the New York Post. You're totally out of your
element here. You have no chance against true journalists with
brains. You've only embarrassed yourself.
"Your article generally falls under the
category of a right-wing hit job. Its inspiration came from the
protracted campaign waged by a group of Republican and Zionist
ideologues who have seized upon the school to promote their virulently
anti-Arab and anti-Islamic agenda."
"It
is a measure of the putrid and right-wing atmosphere dominating
America’s political and educational establishments—an atmosphere that
Murdoch’s Post and Fox News [led by Bill O'Reilly] by have
played no small part in generating—that Almontaser’s failure to issue a
categorical denunciation of the T-shirts could be used to force her out
of her job."
Just 4 Days After Utah Mine Collapse that Imperils Lives of 6 Miners, 3 More Miners Sacrificed Before Free Market Altar
60 miners dead since Jan 2006, including 12 at Sago Mine
Robert
Murray, founder, president and CEO of Murray Energy, half owner of the
Utah Crandall Canyon Mine, tried to divert attention away from the 325
safety violations issued to his mine by immediately attributing the
cause of the collapse to an earthquate--a claim contradicted by
seismologists, who say the mine collapse caused the seismic shock.
"Murray,
a major donor to the Republican Party who is well connected to the Bush
administration and the Republican congressional leadership." (WSWS: The
Utah mine disaster: A tragic consequence of government/industry
collusion," 8/8/07 [linked above]).
When it comes time to mete
out revolutionary justice to the likes of Robert Murray and George W.
Bush, their arrogance and utter lack of remorse for the death and
destruction their devotion to the profit motive has caused should rule
out serious considerations of leniency.--August 11, 2007
Nationalize the Coal Mines! Expropriate and Confiscate Coal Bosses' Wealth With No Compensation!
Put Mines Under Workers Control Run by Democratically Elected Committees of Rank and File Union Members
Organize Every Single Miner into United Mineworkers Union!
Bush's Threat to America: Let Me Eavesdrop or I'll Allow Another 9/11
"Time is running short."
And just how would you know, you demented wretch. Maybe Bush should be tortured for what he knows. Metaphorically speaking, of course; it's barbaric, illegal, and doesn't work. But you get my satirical point.
Gutless Democrats Willing Accomplices to Bush's Assault on Fourth Amendment Proving
still again that no faction of the US capitalist class is capable of
mounting a defense of democratic rights. Only the US working class can
accomplish that.
"First comes the verdict, then comes the trial"--Alice in Wonderland
The
legislation passed by the US House of Representatives legalizes and
expands the National Security Agency secret wiretapping of Americans
that Bush authorized shortly after 9/11--surveillance that violates the
Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures
without probable cause.
The American Civil Liberties Union
correctly warns the law may"allow mass collection of Americans'
communications" that would "permit the vast amount of data to be
subsequently data-mined."
This law has nothing to do with
preventing a terrorist attack. That will come--the deepest bowels of US
intelligence will ensure that tragedy. This law is about spying on the
American people in preparation for the police state tyranny that the US
capitalist government must use to preserve Wall Street's rule.--August
7, 2007
One
more reason why we need a socialist workers government that puts human
and social needs before private profit; why we need a planned economy
democratically run by workers and farmers that would forge a national plan to upkeep the nation's infrastructure.
Whether
it's health care, health insurance, education, transportation, disaster
relief, electricity grids, roads, and bridges, we literally can't
afford the profit motive. We can't afford the "free" market. We can't
afford "free" enterprise. They're killing us. And it's not just the
demented Caligula/Nero in the White House.
"The president,
George W. Bush, personifies the incompetence, stupidity and inhumanity
that characterize so much of America’s money-crazed corporate elite....
"Events like the collapse of the Minnesota
bridge are exposing the bankruptcy of the political establishment and
the corporate elite, along with their insistence that the unchecked
operations of capitalism are the solution to all of society’s problems.
"This poses the most fundamental
questions before the working class. What are the priorities of society
to be: the social interests of the many or the accumulation of personal
wealth by the privileged few? It is not a matter of pressuring the
ruling elite, or replacing one section of that elite with another. The
working class must organize itself as a political force and make itself
the master of society. This requires the creation of a new political
party of the working class, independent of and opposed to the Democrats
and Republicans, and based on a socialist program."--August 5, 2007
Chertoff's "gut" instinct that another 9/11 looms: Be afraid. Be very afraid
He
should know. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff is part of the
same US intelligence establishment that either sponsored or permitted
9/11. Chertoff, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Secretary of
State Condoleeza Rice, Bill O'Reilly, and other leaders of America's
political and media capitalist establishment are pining for another
terrorist attack on US soil. They know it's the only way the US ruling
class can wage the wars it needs to shore up its declining empire.
July
4, 2007--From the standpoint of US working people, this trial wasn't
about the White House conspiracy to discredit Joseph Wilson by outing
his wife and CIA agent Valerie Plame. It was about the criminal
conspiracy on the part of Bush, Cheney, Libby, Addington, Rice,
Rumsfeld and others--aided and abetted by the corporate media--to drag
the US into a bloody, barbaric war of unprovoked aggression based on
lies about WMD and Iraq's links to Al Qaeda and September 11.
The
ulrarightists and others who constitute Bush's fascistic base have
stridently lobbied for Libby's full pardon--which Bush has not ruled
out--out of the ideological conviction that the invasion and occupation
of Iraq which Bush and Libby lied to carry out is completely justified.
This lack of remorse should not be forgotten at any future
international war crimes tribunal when mercy is being considered for
not only Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Libby, Feith, Wolfowitz et al,
but their willing accomplices in the corporate media, first and
foremost Bill O'Reilly, the modern-day equivalent of Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl.
Libby
trial judge Reggie Walton revealed he'd been the recipient of numerous
"angry, harassing, mean-spirited" letters and phone calls "wishing bad
things on me and my family."
Two-to-one at least some of those
threatening messages were sent by O'Reilly's most rabid fans, no doubt
the most fanatic "Premium Bill O'Reilly" Web site members.
Cheney to Congress on Request for Energy Task Force Minutes: I'm in the Executive Branch, so I Get Executive Privilege The
same Energy Task Force meetings in which Cheney and his gang of
corporate looters salivated over maps of Iraqi oil fields before the
March 2003 invasion.
Cheney to National Archives and
Records Administration: I'm in the Legislative Branch, so don't ask me
about Executive handling of classified documents This episode is directly related to the Bush/Cheney commutation of Libby's sentence. As the World Socialist Web Site reminds
us, Cheney complied with the NARA's requests for documentation in the 2
years before the invasion of Iraq, but after 2003, his office hasn't
released a single document relating to classified information:
"The
timing is significant, because in May-June 2003, in response to the
mounting criticism of the invasion of Iraq and the failure to find any
trace of weapons of mass destruction--the pretext for the war--Cheney
spearheaded a counteroffensive by the Bush administration that involved
the systematic leaking of classified documents to journalists selected
for their friendliness to the administration and willingness to serve
as its conduits."
Cheney and Bush to US Public:
Actually, we're above the law, in case you haven't noticed; we're a
"fourth branch" of government, accountable to no one, which is why we
didn't even consult the Justice Department on commuting Libby's jail
sentence Bush
and Cheney, with virtually no opposition from the Democrats, have been
erecting a presidential dictatorship on behalf of the ruthless, greedy,
rapacious capitalist class they represent, in anticipation of the
working class resistance to their policies of imperialist war,
repression, depressions and austerity.
Cynical demagoguery about "special treatment" for "rich and powerful"
"What
hypocrisy! In a country where Wall Street swindlers and Washington war
criminals not only go scot-free, but are routinely celebrated by the
media! Hilton, it should be remembered, is guilty of driving with a
suspended license."--David Walsh, World Socialist Web Site, 6/9/07
In
fact, overcrowded Los Angeles jails routinely result in early release
for non-violent inmates. If anything, Hilton "did about double to
triple what anybody else would have done..." according to attorney Mark
Geragos.
Walsh writes:
"As conditions have worsened in the US for
millions, as social mobility has declined and as real-life
opportunities have dried up, the need to live vicariously through
celebrities—athletes, supermodels, film stars, etc.—has grown
exponentially. Great numbers of Americans pursue imaginary lives
through their idols and project their fantasies onto the objects of
their fascination.
"At the same time, this is a highly
volatile and fluid relationship. The same processes breeding vicarious
living, i.e., stunted real lives, also produce resentment,
jealousy and even rage, of a generally unformed and even anti-social
variety. This is not, for the most part, a class-conscious rejection of
the celebrity’s status and the very need for celebrities. Hostility
toward such figures is often linked with envy.
".... To help retard the development of a rational opposition to the current political and social state of affairs, the media cultivates an artificial hostility toward much easier
targets. A seething but politically confused population is fed victims,
sacrificial lambs, so to speak, while the real criminals go about their
business.
The aim, conscious or otherwise, is to
make sorting out what is actually taking place in the country more
difficult by encouraging a facile and undemanding (and perhaps
temporarily cathartic) outrage against a Paris Hilton or some other
such figure. The population is intended to feel, falsely, that its
cause has been served and blows have been delivered against the rich
and powerful, when all that’s happened is a young woman guilty of a
misdemeanor has gone to jail for a month or more.
"Anyone who falls for the supposed ‘egalitarian’ aims of the campaign to keep Hilton in prison is fooling him- or herself."
Sought to Reverse Justice Department Opposition to Illegal NSA Spying
Former Deputy Attorney General Comey: Bush Authorized Spying Without Justice Department Approval
This
sordid episode confirms what COSMOS LEFT and the World Socialist Web
Site have been saying all along: Washington's "anti-terror" measures
like the NSA eavesdropping program have nothing to do with fighting
terrorism and everything to do with using police state methods to crush
political dissent.
The fact that such anti-democratic stalwarts
like former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Comey and FBI Director
Robert Mueller opposed Bush's policy of spying on Americans without a
warrant proves that Bush intentionally violated the law and spit on the
Constitution--actions that call for immediate impeachment proceedings.
Their opposition is historically analogous to former FBI boss J. Edgar
Hoover's rejection of the "Huston Plan," a program of spying,
surveillance, and detention camps cooked up by White House aide Tom
Huston that was so blatantly unconstitutional it offended
Hoover's limited democratic sensibilities.--May 20, 2007
As
with every other terrorist "plot" supposedly foiled by Washington, the
driving force behind this plan to attack US soldiers at Ft. Dix, New
Jersey was an informant and agent provocateur working for the FBI.--May
10, 2007
A Reply to Mike Rivero, Rense, Bill O'Reilly, and All Purveyors of Anti-Immigrant Filth
Stay tuned for this one. I've had enough of this anti-immigrant crap; I
don't care how right Rivero is about 9/11 and Iraq. On this issue, his
ultranationalist chauvinism against Mexican toilers is a dead-end and
political suicide for workers on this side of the border. Anyone who
posts this kind
of xenophobic garbage will hear from COSMOS LEFT. Rivero's description
of the Rense link, "Just the facts, maam," proves yet again that
figures don't lie, but liars can figure.
A COSMOS LEFT reader agrees:
I
just came across your comments about Michael Rivero and his
anti-immigrant rants. I have long noticed that he has a pronounced
"America First" nationalism, which to a socialist, is complete
anathema. He is also a gun-nut and a reactionary anti-global warming
freak. True, he is right about a lot of other things, including 9/11
and Iraq and the general criminal kleptocracy of the capitalist
imperialists, but he is completely wrong about other things. His denial
of the facts of global warming and his baiting of those who are trying
to reduce the lethal carbon emissions of capitalist culture are as
backward as the rest of the Bushites' anti-science rantings. I have
written him a number of times about this and received no answer. Also,
his defense of the NRA gun nuts is unconscionable. There is nothing
wrong with obtaining weapons legally, being required to have a license
for them and being required to have training to use them safely. But he
condemns any and all attempts to reign in those who think anyone should
be able to possess assault weapons or should be able to have as many
guns as they want without licenses or training. That is pure nonsense
and paranoia. But it is his repeated "America first, second and third"
position that is so reactionary. Instead of blaming the IMF, the
corporations and the international bankers for impoverishing the entire
world, he falls back onto xenophobia and blaming the victims. It is not
a pretty sight.
Thanks for putting that up on your site. And I look forward to more about Rivero.
March 15, 2007: Note
from COSMOS LEFT: We haven't forgotten the above-promised answer to
Mike Rivero and the racist garbage from Rense.com that he posted ("The
Illegal Alien Conquest of Los Angeles County"). In the meantime,
Carolyn, the loyal COSMOS LEFT reader quoted above, continues to carry
the baton against still another manifestation of Rivero's
national-chauvinist poison recently posted on his What Really Happened
site:
Dear WRH: In comments relating to a SFGate article about undocumented workers posted on WRH you wrote: You just have to love that phrase "undocumented workers": these people are illegal immigrants, period, end of discussion. This is just plain xenophobic. There is NO SUCH THING as an illegal human being. Period, end of discussion. In
addition to believing that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by some
mysterious force against who knows who (we’ll never know because you’ve
never explained that one), you seem to be more than a borderline
xenophobe and racist. Remarks like the one quoted above prove that you
support the old “divide and rule” doctrine of the capitalists: get the
workers of the US to blame their loss of jobs and benefits on
“foreigners” or “illegal aliens” and they will back off holding
corporate America responsible. The greatest fear of the capitalists, of
course, is the banding together of all the workers of the world to
overturn capitalism and kick the parasites the hell out. Seems you side
with the bosses. It
also seems that you are capable of seeing very clearly the apartheid
regime of Israel (and I agree that they are an apartheid regime), yet
you cannot see the same tactics being used in the United States to
demonize workers who fled here after the US and the World Bank and the IMF destroyed their countries’ economies. The US is responsible for the fact that Mexicans and Guatemalans and Salvadoreans
and the rest cannot survive where they were born. And the US can just
shut up about immigrant workers and suck it up. Oh, and let’s not
forget the corporations who really profit from hiring immigrants at low
wages and no benefits and how that really contributes to the lowering
of wages and benefits of (Norte)American workers. But that’s right.
Let’s blame the immigrants. Kind of like blaming the Iraqis for sitting
on top of all that American oil, right? Your credibility is slipping, sir.
COSMOS
LEFT: Well put, Carolyn. And I like your polemical touch. Rivero's
confusion is a classic example of the plight of the petty
bourgeoisie--one foot in the workers' camp; the other firmly planted in
the capitalists' camp. Comedian Bill Maher is another example. He's
just a little more entertaining than Rivero.
May 13, 2007:
Reader
Carolyn has demolished Rivero's reactionary politics again--this time
regarding his ignorant denial of global warming as illustrated in this
May 12 post on
WRH that shows the results of an admittedly nonscientific poll
published in the Daytona Beach News. Evidence of this poll's complete
lack of scientific credibility can be found in the very statement
Rivero is so excited about: "I don't buy into the global warming hysteria so there's no need" [emphasis added]
Objection, Rivero. That is the equivalent of a leading question; a transparent example of a poll blatantly trying to shape public opinion, not gauge it. But let's turn things over to Carolyn, who slays Rivero with all the polemical fury that Lenin once unleashed on Karl Kautsky.
Dear WRH:
I
see by your link to the Daytona Beach paper's poll on global warming
that you are once again promoting ignorance. Using the results of a
poll taken in the Bible Belt, where the majority of the fundamentalists
believe they will be raptured and therefore that preserving the
environment here in the real world is unnecessary, puts you on the side
of the fantasy-led religious fools. This poll result is supposed to
convince us that global warming doesn't exist? Pathetic.
Your continued
campaign to impugn the facts of global warming undermine your
credibility. While you call for facts to support other arguments,
particularly those of the Iraq war and the undue influence of the state
of Israel on American politics, you are way out in the wilderness
(what's left of it) on the subject of climate change. Who are you
supporting in this effort? The polluting corporations who, not unlike
the rapture-believing mystics, don't give a damn about the future of
the planet as long as they get their short-term profits before they
die? In that case, you seem to be very confused about the world
situation. On the one hand, you condemn (rightly) the Bush
administration and its warmongering and the state of Israel for its
crimes against humanity. On the other hand, you attack the fact of
global warming with all the vehemence of a fundamentalist preacher
condemning Darwin.
Using
this little poll from Florida bolster your specious arguments against
the movement to stop the deleterious effects of unrestrained capital's
destruction of the environment is a new low, even for you.
More Right Wing Nativist Idiocy to Demolish
Not
long ago a reader forwarded one of those ultrarightist pieces of drivel
polluting cyberspace in the form of mass emails. This one's called "How
long do we have?" [Not long, fool, not long. ]
COSMOS LEFT's reply follows the awe-inspiring political analysis by "Stan Fritz."
>>Subject: How long do we have?
>>
>> About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new
>> constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor
at
>> the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the
>> Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:
>>
>> "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as
a
>> permanent form of government."
>>
>> "A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters
>> discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public
>> treasury."
>>
>> "From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who
>> promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result
that
>> every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy,
which
>> is always followed by a dictatorship."
>>
>> "The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the
>> beginning of history, has been about 200 years."
>>
>> "During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the
>> following sequence:
>>
>> 1. from bondage to spiritual faith;
>>
>> 2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
>>
>> 3. from courage to liberty;
>>
>> 4. from liberty to abundance;
>>
>> 5. from abundance to complacency;
>>
>> 6. from complacency to apathy;
>>
>> 7. from apathy to dependence;
>>
>> 8. From dependence back into bondage"
>>
>> Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul,
>> Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000
>> Presidential election:
>>
>> Number of States won by:
>>
>> Gore: 19
>>
>> Bush: 29
>>
>> Square miles of land won by:
>>
>> Gore: 580,000
>>
>> Bush: 2,427,000
>>
>> Population of counties won by:
>>
>> Gore: 127 million
>>
>> Bush: 143 million
>>
>> Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:
>>
>> Gore: 13.2
>>
>> Bush: 2.1
>>
>> Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush
won
>> was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great
>> country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in
>> government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government
>> welfare..."
>>
>> Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the
>> "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of
>> democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already
>> having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.
>>
>> If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal
>> invaders called illegals and they vote, then we can say goodbye to
the
>> USA in fewer than five years.
>>
>> Pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake,
>> knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.
Reply by COSMOS LEFT to "How long do we have?"
Figures don't lie...but liars can figure.
Professor
Olson and Stan Fritz can point all they want to the vast expanses of
Wyoming and Montana, the bottom line is that Gore won the popular vote
in 2000, and would have won the electoral vote if the US Supreme Court
didn’t block the state-wide recount ordered by the Florida Supreme
Court.
Fritz
and his ilk should revisit their civics books and become reacquainted
with the principle of one-man, one vote, a fundamental tenet of
democracy that they either don’t understand or can’t hide their
contempt for. They talk a lot about democracy and freedom and how we
should die for it, but they only mean democracy for the propertied
classes, the rich, the capitalists, and the freedom to exploit wage
labor.
Olsen’s
reference to Tyler’s observations about Athenian democracy illustrates
the problem with bandying about terms like "democracy" without infusing
it with class content, ie, democracy for what class? Greek democracy
was based on slave labor. Those slaves didn’t enjoy much democracy, but
the slave owners did. And while it’s true that the institutions
established by Greek democracy were historically progressive and paved
the way for more truly democratic society in the future, it was still
quite limited, well short of a full-fledged democracy.
Even
the democracy spawned by the American Revolution was limited to white
property owning males. It took massive struggles by farmers and other
plebian layers after the Revolution to win the far-reaching
democratic rights embodied in the Bill of Rights. It took the second
American Revolution–the Civil War, to abolish slavery. And it required
massive civil rights struggles to eradicate Jim Crow’s segregation. And
we’re still not there, because it will take a third American
Revolution–the socialist revolution, to expand democracy even further
and complete the unfulfilled tasks of the bourgeois democratic
revolution, let alone realize the most advanced form of
democracy–socialist democracy, when working people own the means of
production, when society is set up to meet human and social needs, not
private profit.
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government."
Aside
from the fact that most things in life are temporary in nature,
including life, it is also true that democracy has changed over the
last few thousands years; slave-based democracy differed from bourgeois
democracy, and socialist democracy will differ from bourgeois
democracy. It’s the struggles between the classes, the exploiters and
exploited, the haves and have nots, that drives and shapes this
evolution of democracy.
"A
democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover
they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."
It’s
more accurate to say that bourgeois democracy will continue to exist up
until the time that the capitalist rulers discover they need to ditch
it in favor of fascism in order to save the profit system and
perpetuate the dictatorship of capital over labor.
Further,
"voters" don’t "vote themselves generous gifts from the public
treasury." Every piece of the social wage, every "benefit," every
"entitlement," every human right, from unemployment compensation to
health care to Social Security to pensions to public schools , was won
by working people through struggle.And it’s not the working class that
has looted the Social Security Trust Fund, it’s capitalist politicians
on behalf of the capitalist class.
"From
that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise
the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every
democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is
always followed by a dictatorship."
Professor
Tyler wrote this in 1787. The "majority always vote..."? Where? In the
USA of 1787, where only white property owners could vote? In ancient
Greece? Some scholar these pathetic present-day capitalist ideologues
are forced to turn to as they sense their social order, their social
system’s days are numbered but have no clue as to why.
One thing Tyler said does apply to the 2000 election. The majority did vote for the candidate who promised the
most benefits from the public treasury..."–Al Gore. But this is not
FDR’s Democrats, New Deal Democrats, our parents’ Democrats, when there
was still enough fat on the capitalist bone to throw real concessions
to the masses. Those days are over. Increasingly, the Democrats are as
bipartisan with Republicans on domestic policy as they are with foreign policy–two sides of the same coin.
"...with
the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose
fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."
Here present-day bourgeois ideologues like Fritz interpret Tyler’s words to mean every capitalist democracy
is doomed, because once the rulers are forced to "give the most
benefits from the public treasury," the masses get used to the benefits
and won’t give them back without coercive dictatorial force.
Professor Olsen, that other darling of Fritz and fellow rightists, matches Tyler’s intellectual prowess:
"Gore’s
territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned
tenements and living off various forms of governmental welfare."
Translation:
Niggers on welfare voted for Gore; hardworking white taxpayers voted
for Bush. Real sophisticated political analysis to associate one’s self
with.
"Olsen
believes the United States is now somewhere between the ‘complacency
and apathy’ phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of democracy, with
some forty percent of the nation’s population already having reached
the ‘governmental dependency’ phase."
Oh
yes, "from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency; from
complacency to apathy;" etc. Abundance for which class? The rich are
getting richer; workers, middle classes and the poor are getting
poorer. Social and economic inequality are at record levels in the US.
"Governmental
dependency?" The biggest freeloaders, leeches, and parasites depending
on the government are the superrich and corporate elite. They also
depend on our labor for their profits.
"If
Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal
invaders called illegals and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the
USA in five years."
There
they go again, criminalizing 20 million working people in one
xenophobic swipe. My heart actually soars when I hear the whines and
laments of rightist nativist scoundrels like Buchanan, O’Reilly, and
Fritz as they grapple with the "browning of America" and the reality
that "their" America is changing before their eyes. As you know, from
my perspective workers have no country, and I support the democratic
right of working people everywhere to move wherever they want to.
Capital goes wherever it wants to to exploit labor and reap profits;
workers should have the right to emigrate where we want to make a
living.
Besides,
it is the very workings of world capitalism, through the machinations
of imperialist institutions and treaties like the IMF, World Bank and
NAFTA that are the driving force behind emigration in the first place.
The reason why millions of Mexicans emigrate to the North is because
Mexico is so oppressed by foreign capital, mostly US capital, that they
can’t make a living in their own country.
O’Reilly,
Dobbs, Buchanan, Fritz, and their ilk sense the tide of history is
turning against them. For the very reason they loathe the browning of
America, revolutionary socialists are thrilled by it. Unlike these
rightist elements, communists welcome our brothers and sisters from the south. We embrace the
growing multinational, multilingual composition of the US workforce.
For this is the working class that will make a socialist revolution in
the United States. The US working class is strengthened by
their presence. That’s what is really driving Fritz, Tommy, Olsen and
company crazy. And that’s a good thing. My day was made reading that
email and writing this. I may even put it on my site. Defending
immigrant labor is one of the seminal issues in the US class struggle
today. Nativist chauvinists must be confronted and politically defeated.
A
more accurate title to this rubbish would have been, "Are long does
capitalism have?" While the content of this racist, politically
backward individual would still be rubbish, at least he would have
articulated an historically relevant and accurate question.--COSMOS
LEFT, May 2007
The
hands of this counterrevolutionary scum and imperialist mercenary are
drenched with the blood of workers from Cuba to Nicaragua to Guatemala
to El Salvador.
While this terrorists walks free, five Cuban nationals sit in US prisons for telling Washington terrorist acts against Cuba were being plotted on American soil.--May 3, 2007
