Not Your Daddy’s “Time” Magazine Posted on December 18, 2016 by admin

Growing up “Time” was just another establishment magazine, part of the Henry Luce empire, obsessed with fighting “Red China” and communism. It’s different these days

It did pick Trump for “Person of the Year”, but he was arguably the person who had (or going to have) the most impact on world affairs. Yet the photo on the cover by Nadav Kander is not at all flattering. We see a scheming conspiratorial figure looking down on us. The weekly newspaper Forward has a whole article about the political meaning of the photo.

It brings to mind the classic Edward Steichen photo of banker (robber baron) J.P. Morgan where he appears to be thrusting a knife at the viewer.

In the same “Time” issue there’s an insert, a mini-sized issue of Time, the “Man of the Year” cover of 1963. Actually it’s an ad for the Amazon video series “The Man in the High Castle” (based on the early 1950’s Phillip Dick novel of alternate history). In the novel it’s the Nazi and the Japanese Empire that won World War II. In the alternate 1963 “Man of the Year” issue we read “But more than the symbols the fabric of the nation has been profound altered under Nazi rule. Once our borders were open to the tired, the poor and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Now the very idea of wretched refuse upon our teeming shore is repellent.” Is it a a subversive look at the “alternate history” we’re going to have to endure under Trump?

Also worth reading in the issue is “Recep Tayyip Erdogan” by their Middle East editor Jared Malsin. He ends the piece “Peace at home, peace abroad” was the slogan Turkish schoolchildren learned from Ataturk. Under Erdogan, the country may end up with neither”. One thing I hoped he had gone into in detail, Erdogan’s role in Syria. The U.S. “anti-imperialists” say he helped every kind of Islamic force including ISIS. A Kurdish YPG writer says he was lavishly supply fundamentalists and running things in eastern Aleppo. Now Erdogan seems to be only interested in fighting Kurds and has patched up things with Putin and Netanyahu. Would like some evidence-based look at this question.

Did She Faint Over Obama’s Awful Aleppo Answer? Posted on December 17, 2016 by admin About 1:30 into Obama’s final press conference an unnamed reporter faints and has to be taken out of the room. It was just after President Obama answered at length a Bloomberg News reporter’s question over whether he felt “any personal moral responsibility for the carnage” in Syria.

I like to feel that the woman fainted after hearing his mealy- mouthed answer. Obama starts by saying he does feel responsible, but quickly shows that he was just, as they say, “concerned and troubled” about Syria just like South Sudan and everyplace else in the world. “Was there something better that I could do?”, he piously exclaims.

He says, “The challenge was that short of putting large numbers of U.S. troops on the ground, uninvited without any international law mandate, without sufficient support from Congress at a time when we still had troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and had gone through a decade and just had spent trillions of dollars, and when the opposition on the ground was not cohesive enough to govern a country and when you had a superpower in Russia prepared to do whatever it took to keep its client state involved… unless we were ‘all in’ and willing to take over Syria, we were going to have problems.”

About then the woman faints, as we all should on hearing that answer.

Obama is saying unless the U.S. goes in to conquer Syria there’s nothing that can be done. Not one word about the million under sieges in Syria. He doesn’t mention his responsibility to go to the U.N. and demand the U.N. take action to enforce the U.N.’s own 2014 decision on Syria. Not one word about airdropping food to the areas under siege as the U.S. air force was prepared to do in January.

The Democrats in Congress are meekly following Obama’s lead. I was part of a group that met with Senator Richard Blumenthal’s foreign policy staff a couple weeks ago. We implored him to work on the bill that had passed the House with severe sanctions on those assisting Assad’s atrocities. We asked for airdrops of food. The staff listened and made sympathetic comments. Yet in Congress nothing at all happened. The bill disappeared with a trace. No one talked about airdrops. Blumenthal himself said nothing. Tim Kaine (who had run for vice-president and who at one point had gone to a rally with Syrians) said nothing. As Aleppo fell only Republican warmonger John McCain made an angry statement, but only to take a potshot at Obama.

As the strongmen “white nationalists” take over worldwide we see the complete collapse establishment politics. Fool Al Gore goes and talks to Trump about the climate. The next day Trump appoints people to head the EPA who intend to wipe it out.

I had talked about the folly of thinking that “Hindenburg” could protect us against “Hitler” in an article in July. I didn’t think the truth of it would be shown so quickly. There’s an Irish poem of 1845 called “Ourselves Alone”. It ends:

That hour of weak delusion’s past—

The empty dream has flown:

Our hope and strength, we find at last,

Is in OURSELVES ALONE.

Should We Be Surprised “Anti-War” Gabbard Auditions for Trump? Posted on November 26, 2016 by admin After tens of thousands of young people rushed to the streets to denounce Trump’s election, “Sanderista” ’s made different kind of headlines. She answered ’s call and went to a vetting meeting. Yes, after the election all the Democrat pols gave the usual clichés about cooperation with Trump on certain matters, as if Trump were just some other Republican. That’s bad enough, but this was something more. Gabbard was actually looking to join the Trump Administration. She denies it. She ludicrously claims this was just a meeting to talk about Syria and the need for peace. As if “peace” was uppermost on Trump’s mind now. As if he wasn’t spending all his time visiting Alt-Right sewers and billionaire clubs to staff his cabinet.

Gabbard was pretty unknown on the Left until February when she became one of the few members of Congress to support bid for the presidency. However, on international issues (as Louis Proyect clearly pointed out) she’s far, far from the Left. On Israel she’s about as far Right as you can get, appearing at a 2015 conference of the batshit crazy CUFI, Christians United For Israel. This is the group whose minister John Hagee welcomed world war with Iran as a step to Armageddon and who John McCain had break with in 2008 on account of Hagee’s remarks saying Hitler had helped fulfill God’s will. In July 2014 while Israel was pummeling Gaza she co-sponsored a total whitewash of Netanyahu’s warfare which among other things claimed Israel “goes to extraordinary lengths to target only terrorist actors.”

She’s very friendly to military budget increases and supports assassinations by drones. Her views on Islam should be better known. She broke with the Obama line of trying to oppose al- Qaeda without inciting people against Islam. No George W Bush or Obama nice words for her about Islam. She wants to talk about “extremism” 24/7. The right wing National Review just loved her. So did “all religion is bad, but Muslims are worse” Bill Maher who brought her on his show.

Then there’s her warm relationship with the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi and his BJP. The BJP is a Hindu Nationalist Party (you do know what nationalist means?). In 2002 Modi was chief minister of Gujarat. In February of that year 56 Hindus were burned to death on a train. Without evidence Modi blamed Pakistan and paraded the charred bodies of Hindu victims through the streets. Mobs attacked Muslims killing around a thousand. An Indian court cleared Modi of criminal responsibility, but many would agree with Aditya Chakrabortty who wrote that Modi has a “massacre on his hands”. That was then. Now Modi rules all of India and Al Jazeera notes a big increase in attacks on Muslims and people who eat beef. None of this bother Gabbard. Here is video of an appearance in Atlanta in 2014 of Gabbard with “Friends of the BJP”.

These days Syria is Gabbard’s big issue and she’s been public in criticizing Obama for supposedly causing the war as another U.S. “regime change” operation. When the Russians began bombing Syria directly in September 2015 she was a supporter! She was the only Democrat to vote against a resolution condemning war crimes against civilians in Syria.

Could it be…and I’m going way out on a limb here…that Gabbard’s “anti-war” sentiments have more to do with opposing Islam that supporting peace? Just sayin.

You would think her Trump meeting would be universally denounced by the Left. It wasn’t. Two on the Left who are consumed with making sure no one comes to the aide of Syrians looked upon the Gabbard-Trump meeting sympathetically.

Robert Parry is among those who see the puppet masters of American Imperialism behind everything that happens.. In his piece on the meeting with Trump, Parry highlights her claim that she had to rush in “before the drumbeat of war that neocons have been beating drag us into an escalation of the war to overthrow the Syrian government”. Sure the neocons are rushing to talk about Assad horrors, but so is every human rights organization and medical aid society that help Syrians. Is it really war- mongering for Washington Post and the New York Times to allow the White Helmets to mention that medical facilities are all being blasted to hell or that a million Syrians are under siege and hungry.

Parry speculates, without a morsel of evidence, that Trump might go after the Saudis “President Trump might eschew the “whack-a- mole” approach that has bedeviled the “war on terror” and instead go after the “mole nest” – if you will – the Saudi monarchy”. Parry summarizes, warning that the neocons still are strong, but “the Trump transition is showing some creativity in assembling a national security team that may go in a very different direction.” Give me a break.

Then there’s Stephen Kinzer, who in April wrote a piece entitled “Trump’s Refreshing Foreign Policy Heresy”. This week he ran true to form. He tweeted congratulations to Gabbard for meeting with Trump to avoid “escalation” and “regime change warfare”. This is madness. Balance the people Trump is appointing to his cabinet as opposed to his “anti-war” mumblings and see what he really believes.

Rather than read the Parry and Kinzer, folks should follow Charles Blow, a very moderate New York Times columnist, who supported Clinton in the election, but whom from day one understand what Trump represents. In “America Elects a Bigot” he wrote about Trump, “That is not a person worthy of applause. That is a person who must be placed under unrelenting pressure. Power must be challenged, constantly. That begins today.” In a second column about a NYT meeting with Trump he wrote, “I will say proudly and happily that I was not present at this meeting. The very idea of sitting across the table from a demagogue who preyed on racial, ethnic and religious hostilities and treating him with decorum and social grace fills me with disgust.” In the first column he wrote this sentence, “Count me among the resistance”. Magnificent. It should be our motto. “Count me among the resistance”.

How Many Tons of Greenhouse Gas Would be Released in Making Trump’s Wall? Posted on November 24, 2016 by admin

By Stanley Heller

Driving I listened to NPR news show. They were interviewing a contractor who was eager to build Trump’s Mexico wall. He estimated that it would take 250,000 truckloads of concrete to do the job. Knowing that concrete production is a big greenhouse gas producer I did a quick calculation.

3600 pounds in a cubic yard of concrete 10 cubic yards per concrete truck So there’s 36,000 pounds of concrete per truck

250,000 trucks of concrete needed for Trump’s 1,000 mile wall according to contractor who is willing to build the wall (NPR) That’s 9 billion pounds of concrete = 4.5 million tons

Producing a ton of cement requires 4.7 million BTU of energy, equivalent to about 400 pounds of coal, and generates nearly a ton of CO2. That’s 4.5 million tons of CO2 to produce the concrete for the wall.

Of course driving all those cement mixers to the Texas/Mexico border would release lots more CO2, but that’s not in my calculation. That would be on top of the 4.5 million.

So though climate activist Bill McKibben warns us that we shouldn’t launch a single new pipeline or dig a new fossil fuel mine, Trump wants to build a wall on the Mexico border that would cause cement factories to belch forth 4,500,000 tons of CO2.

Not to mention that the wall is an asinine project in the first place…

Demand Things from Obama Now, Too Posted on November 13, 2016 by admin

It’s great that people are out in the streets expressing rage against Trump and vowing solidarity with all the people he intends to persecute, but some of the demands should be right at Obama. He has power for two months. He can do things by presidential order. FDR issued over 3,500 Executive Orders, Obama less than 250. Even Herbert Hoover and William Howard Taft issued more orders. So President Obama:

*** Free federal political prisoners: Free Leonard Peltier for one. Call on the Democratic Party governors to do the same for their political prisoners and for all those arrested for marijuana charges (because it’s obvious MJ will be soon be legal everywhere)…and Snowden!

*** Close Guantanomo – Take the prisoners out and shut the gates. Let Congress figure out what do next.

*** Destroy the Data Bases on Innocent People – Have the NSA erase all the data about people who have not done anything wrong, all the snoopy stuff that Trump will use to jail people

*** Deny Pipeline permits – Start with Standing Rock. Yes, Trump can countermand, but draw the line for all to see.

*** Send some $$$ to communities – You have enormous money available for emergencies. The Trump Apocalypse is an emergency. *** And instead of taking a round the world trip on the taxpayers dime let your last foreign policy action be one of mercy. Airdrop food to cities in Syria under siege – Its approaching Warsaw Ghetto conditions in Aleppo. The United Nations airdrops to one city in Syria. Let them expand operations to all cities under siege there. And if the U.N. won’t do it let the U.S. airforce drop the food and medicine. (And if you’re part of the Left that still things the carnage in Syria is mostly a U.S. plot read my piece from March). What else? What can Obama do protect to protect wages and Social Security from the ravages to come?

2015

Stocks Drop Another 588 Points…Move Along…Nothing to See Here Posted on August 24, 2015 by admin

The stockbrokers and newscasters put on their happy faces and tell the hoi poloi to stay calm, and to not sell off their stocks as the values crash. On the other hand the big players are selling. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a rout. And some are making lot of money. They saw this crash (sorry, I mean “correction”) coming and sold short. That means they bought stocks on one date and agree to pay for it at a certain time in the future (when hopefully for them) the price is way down. A number of hedge fund managers made out like bandits betting stocks would go down.

Irresponsible credit like subprime mortgages brought on the Great Recession. Rather than fight it with jobs programs like FDR in the ‘30’s, or something even more radical, Obama had the Federal Reserve open the spigot charging the big banks 0% for prime loans. Eventually things picked up. But the banksters and titans of coporate America didn’t invest all of the loans in new factories and machines, not by a long shot. Last week Pam and Russ Martens of the site Wall Street on Parade wrote: “Corporations have issued a stunning $9.3 trillion in bonds since the beginning of 2009. The major beneficiary of this debt binge has been the stock market rather than investment in modernizing the plant, equipment or new hires to make the company more competitive for the future. Bond proceeds frequently ended up buying back shares or boosting dividends, thus elevating the stock market on the back of heavier debt levels on corporate balance sheets.”

In other words the execs had the company borrow cheap money to buy back stock to raise its price so they could personally get richer. Whatever.

Now it’s quite possible this all could be a kerfuffle with no lasting effect. Stocks have crashed plenty of times in the past and then come right back. This time it looks a little more real. China’s economy is having real trouble. Production and retail sales are slowing. The Communist Party went long on stocks and bonds and their response to the crash is to send worker pension funds into the breach.

How does a falling stock market affect the “real” business of buying and selling? Well, for one thing all those people who invested in stocks because banks were offering 0.000001% interest rates go into shock and stop buying refrigerators, cars, IPhones and the like. Some companies who gambled in stocks go belly up…and so it starts.

Next Time Do it Right

Sooner or later there will be another crash, recession, depression or some other name that the big shots think is not too frightening. Hopefully some clear-thinking people will realize that neither another blank check to the banks nor the populist nostrums offered by Bernie Sanders and his ilk will do the trick.

We need to get rid of capitalism. We need to replace it with eco- socialism, a planned economy based on 100% renewable energy with full workplace democracy. All the rest is a diversion as we run out of time, as the clock ticks down and climate catastrophe is locked in and humanity is screwed.

After the Trump Apocalypse – Time for a New Strategy for Labor Posted on November 11, 2016 by admin by Stanley Heller, a 40+ year American Federation of Teachers member and former Central Labor Council representative

For at least 3 decades now we’ve been putting all our eggs in the Democratic Party basket. Strikes and serious boycott…just honored things of the past. Look where it’s go us. The Democrats lost the House, then the Senate and now they’ve lost the presidency to a man who thinks he is a king or worse. He didn’t make a big deal about fighting unions, but we know that Republicans in Congress just lust to do nationally what Scott Walker did in Wisconsin.

How much did labor put in Hillary’s campaign? $100 million? More? What did we get for it? Did she ever say the words “Join a union”. I didn’t hear that in her acceptance speech. In the first debate she was asked about what could be done to end inequality. Did she mention unions? I didn’t hear it. You would think we could get a bit more for $100 million.

Does any of this explain why 40% of the people earning under 50K a year voted for arrogant billionaire boss Trump? Well the shit has hit the fan and what are we going to do? Go back to the Democrats and do the same losing thing all over again? Frankly with Trump in there we don’t even know if there will be another presidential election (see Germany in the ‘30’s)

There is an alternative The young people are already out in the streets in the tens of thousands. Of course that’s not going to make Trump resign. He thinks it will all blow over. But one thing will restrain Trump, if there’s enough turmoil in the streets AND THE WORKPLACES so that the billionaires fear for their profits. (Of course, peaceful but of course disruptive too). Then Congress and the courts and the state bureaucrats will yank him but good. That’s labor’s old time religion and it needs a revival.

And labor has to stop thinking it can win by only talking about bread and butter issues and ignore all the allies we could make fighting various hatreds from racism to Islamophobia to mistreatment of women. Here’s two examples:

*** The AFL-CIO decision to support the DAPL pipeline across Indian land and in the face of the 100%-for-sure growing climate catastrophe is @#$#$*! insane. #NODAPL

*** Likewise the wall to wall support of the labor big wigs for apartheid Israel. It’s not in our interest in any way. It is what the Democrats want and they get a lot of money from Jewish billionaires (this coming from a Jewish very non-billionaire) and …who cares? That’s the game that was lost, lost, lost.

It’s time to stop playing their game and go back to old time wisdom of Gene Debs, Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood and the rest.

More coming. and read this piece by Lois Weiner. After reading the AFT President’s twisted non-apology for putting the union behind Clinton, Weiner was moved to write what she should have said.

Rage for Aleppo and Syria Posted on September 28, 2016 by admin By Stanley Heller

They say that generals usually prepare for the last war. This has happened to the peace movement, too. The anti-war coalitions in the U.S. and UK are acting as if this was 2003 and everyone needed to focus on Western imperial adventures. Instead circumstances are quite different. The main carnage right now has little to do with “the Empire”. A dictator from a family dynasty is using his entire military, every weapon the country owns, to bring a nation to heel. He’s assisted (and in some ways commanded) by foreign powers, one semi-fascist, the other a theocracy. The larger anti-war organizations and coalitions have nothing to say or bleat, “Our main responsibility is to criticize our own government’s abuses” or airily call for all foreign forces to stop intervening while refusing to condemn the barrel bombs or the obliteration of hospitals. (There are also the unspeakable organizations licking the dictator’s boot in the name of “anti- imperialism”.)

Half a million people have died because the Assad gang is determined to hold on no matter what. The Russians are blowing up whole blocks in Aleppo, systematically destroying medical facilities and White Helmet rescue facilities. Assad has hundreds of thousands of people under siege. Palestinians refugees from camps like Yarmouk are exiled once again. The “world community” has fed refugees, but is paralyzed about action within Syria. The U.N. airdrops food to only one city, the Assad run Deir al-Zour surrounded by ISIS. Worse they’ve been sending aid money right into the pockets of members of the regime.

It has the feel of the late ‘30’s, Spain to be exact. In 1938 the Spanish democratic forces were being drowned in blood by the internal and foreign fascists. That by and large is the situation in Syria today (that in Syria the fascists are the “government” and the rebels the progressive forces is immaterial). Yes, the rebels are not pure. After years of neglect religious based armed groups predominate. Some ally with some very nasty Islamic supremacist groups. Before anyone points fingers remember that in Spain in 1936-8 the democratic and revolutionary forces were allied with and armed by the Soviet Union. That land was led by a dictator who had just killed millions in Ukraine and purged immense numbers of Soviet communists. He was a monster, but few today say the Spanish republic should have spurned that alliance.

No-fly Zone?

Syrians have called for a no-fly zone for years. In October 2011 the BBC reported 170 demonstrations calling for a no-fly zone in a single day. The Left was dubious. The history of those zones was not encouraging. In Iraq a no-fly zone was established in 1991 over the north of the country, supposedly to protect the Iraqi Kurds . It did stop Saddam Hussein from ravaging them (and Shia in the south), but it was seen as a step in the full scale “Shock and Awe” invasion and occupying of Iraq by the West. In Libya in 2011 France, Italy, Britain and the U.S. set up a non-fly zone supposedly to protect the civilian population from threats of immense violence from Omar Gaddafi. They got U.N. support for it but used it as an excuse to assist rebels to oust and kill Gaddafi. Today Libya looks like a mess. On the other hand in the light of what happened in Syria those who warned that Gaddafi very well could have committed a bloodbath seem on solid ground. Clay Claiborne recently wrote a piece about Libya and pointed to a 2012 Gallop poll of Libyans which he says shows that Libyans “overwhelmingly” supported NATO airstrikes.

I heard speak in New Britain, CT last week to mostly students at a local college. She said virtually nothing about foreign policy, but she did take time out to bash Hillary Clinton for comments she’s made supposedly supporting a no-fly zone. Stein said it was risking war with a nuclear armed power. And that was all she has to say about Syria. If she had an alternative or even expressed horror about what Assad/Russia/Iran were doing I could respect what she was saying. But what I heard really deflated respect I had for her (and I’ve written in support of her candidacy even with neo-fascist Trump making his run).

You may be surprised but there actually is a no-fly zone in Syria. It’s one small area where Assad troops attacked the Kurdish YPD force that’s getting U.S. military aid. After it happened the U.S. sent up jets and buzzed Assad planes and said in no uncertain terms that no air force was to touch the YPD And that was that. There was no repetition. A portion of northeast Syria was made a no-fly zone and World War III did not break out. I’m not saying that the peace movement should call for a no-fly zone, but I respect desperate Syrians who do and am repulsed by the “anti-imperialist” left who demonize as an “agent of the Pentagon” anyone who demand a NFZ .

Ideas for Action A number of us on the RPM network have come up with a letter with a few ideas. Basically it amounts to 1)denouncing the Lavrov-Kerry plan for a temporary ceasefire and then joint expansion of the bombing to anti-Assad forces 2) demanding airdrops of food and supplies to break every siege in Syria and 3) open denunciation of Russian and Iranian participation and support for Assad war crimes. As Russia proceeds to use bunker busters inside of Aleppo and have produced scenes of unparalleled horror, activists have called for days of protest this weekend, especially on Sat. Oct. 1 for a “Global Day of Rage for Aleppo”

Other ideas: Urge the media to interview some of the 150 Syrian secular intellectuals featured in “The Nation” article this week. Urge them to talk about the Right Livelihood Award (co)Winner of 2016, the White Helmets. Have them investigate why the World Food Program can airdrop food to Deir al-Zour and nowhere else. In 1943 hundreds of rabbis marched from the Lincoln Memorial in DC to demand action against what we now call the Holocaust. Couldn’t a large of groups of imams, and other clergy lead something similar?

Put pressure on the candidates for president. Only Hillary Clinton expresses any sentiments about doing something to protect Syrian civilians (though she didn’t do much as Secretary of State). She talked about a no-fly zone before the Democratic Convention, but neither Clinton or Trump have talked about Syria since August. A number of Syrians are campaigning for Hillary, but if she wins she doesn’t even take office until January. By then Aleppo may go the way of Darayya, or worse. Why not a major demonstration in front of one of the remaining debates with a messages, #DropFoodNotBombs #BreaktheSieges #SaveAleppo?

U.S. Green Platform Mentions the Word “Syria”

Posted on August 12, 2016 by admin After five years of revolution, unrelenting savage attacks by Assad’s military, and massive foreign intervention by Russia and Iran (and to a far lesser extent by the U.S., the Saudis and other Gulf monarchies), the Green Party platform has finally included the word “Syria” in its platform. Here is the section. It’s in D. Foreign Policy:

7. Kurdistan 8. The Kurdish people are the largest ethnic group in the world that is without an independent state. As a result, Kurdish people have historically suffered persecution and injustice. The Kurdish people have been besieged to the point of a current humanitarian crisis in towns such as Kobani, Syria. The GPUS expresses solidarity for and affirms the right to self-determination, self- defense, communal autonomy, freedom from persecution, and release of political prisoners for the Kurdish population.

That’s it. There’s no call for the Russia stop bombing hospitals or that Iran withdraw its troops and its Lebanese, Iraqi and Afghan Shia buddies, no support for the U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding the Assad regime stop a whole host of crimes. No suggestion that Israel should take back the Palestinians that were exiled in Syria. There’s not even a suggestion that the U.S. and its allies should stop bombing the country and airdrop food.

Nothing.

A Challenge to the Green Party on Syria Posted on August 4, 2016 by admin by Stanley Heller

August 4. The uprising and fighting in Syria have gone on for over five years and your platform doesn’t say a word about it. Delegates to this weekend’s convention, how about adding these five sentences?

1. We stand with the Arab revolutions and uprisings for democracy that started in Tunisia and Egypt 2. Syrians have a right to reject the Assad dynasty 3. We support the democratic forces in Syria against all reactionary killers from Assad to ISIS to al-Qaeda and others 4. We demand that the great powers abide by the promises to airdrop food and supplies to Syrian areas under siege as of June 1, 2016 #DropFoodNotBombs 5. We denounce any deal by the U.S. government with Russia that makes cooperation against ISIS dependent on giving Assad, Russia and Iran a free hand to crush the Syrian uprising

This should fit in perfectly with your principles, but I admit it may be a hard sell. It conflicts with the reigning Conspiracist worldview on the Left that everything is the fault of the U.S. including Syria. On the face of it Russia and Iran (and plenty of other countries outside the NATO orbit) are grasping capitalist powers on the make, but in the Conspracist worldview they’re all just poor victims of imperialism and if they appear to stomp on their own citizens or some other nation it’s really a U.S. plot. Jill Stein’s pick for vice president Ajamu Baraka certainly sees Syria that way. He thinks Syrians voted for Assad to continue running the country after shooting down peaceful demonstrations and torturing to death thousands of prisoners. Continued opposition supposedly is the fault of the U.S., Saudis and Turkey. Look at this July 6 piece on his website http://www.ajamubaraka.com/ He even says ISIS is a creation of the West that went a little sour. Here are some of his claims in that July 6 article.

“This was evident when the Bush administration and then the Obama administration decided to re-empower these radical jihadists as part of their strategy to put pressure on the al-Maliki government in Iraq and effect governmental change in Syria. In short, they encouraged a jihadist invasion and then framed it as a “civil war.” “…the Administration didn’t appear to be too concerned when ISIS broke off from al-Qaeda and began to establish its own independent economic base once it captured the oil fields in Syria. It all seemed like part of the plan, especially when it became clear that NATO member Turkey was being used to get the Syrian oil to world markets.

“…But this Frankensteinian strategy turned farce into disaster when ISIS double-crossed their benefactors by breaking the rules and attacking the “good Kurds” in Iraq. The strategy appeared to be more concerned with holding territory in Iraq and Syria than carrying out their assignment to overthrow the Assad government and completing the dismemberment of the Syrian state – the strategic objective of U.S. and Israeli policy to counter the regional power of the Iranians.”

So according to him the U.S. fostered ISIS to pressure Iraqi government leaders. They then lost billions in money and weapons and half the Iraqi army in the process, but that was OK because ISIS’ job was then supposedly to get rid of Assad. This is nonsense.

Jill Stein’s position is only somewhat better. In Moscow (of all places) she said “US pursuit of regime change in Libya, Iraq, and Syria created the chaos that promotes power grabs by extremist militias.” So there was no popular uprising. It was all a U.S. plot against Assad. I heard her speak in CT in February and she said more or less the same thing, lumping Syria in with Iraq and Afghanistan as being just another U.S. inspired disaster, no mention of Assad’s torture- to-death prisons, no anger over the 1,400 killed by sarin gas, no outrage about what the Russian and Iranians were doing, no demands that the sieges end. Instead she issued a call for diplomacy to settle things. I’ve heard that song many times from the U.S. leaders talking about Palestine. It goes, “Continue with the peace process and ignore the horrendous human rights abuses. All will be well.” Her analysis is not only wrong, but naïve. The enemy of our enemy is not automatically our friend. Instead we have to realize we’re walking in a minefield with mines and pits and enemies all over the place and we have to figure out how to navigate it and how not to lose our souls in the process.

Green Party convention delegates, you all determine party policy. How about standing up for an Arab people undergoing horrific violence? How about voting in a section on Syria on the Green platform like the five points I propose above?

Not One Word from Hillary about Syria Either Posted on July 29, 2016 by admin

July 29. As I predicted Hillary Clinton had nothing to say about Syria in her HISTORIC (by law we have to add that adjective) acceptance speech last night. Not a single phrase of sympathy for the people suffering under siege or bombardment. Not a word about refugees and certainly nothing about the United Nations demands on the Assad gang. There are a number of people who look only at words she and Kaine once said about support for a “no-fly” zone and think she supports the Syrian people. This is a naïve view of American politics. Yes, she and Kaine are happy to support military measures everywhere particularly where the Israeli government thinks it will benefit, but she won’t stick her neck out an inch for suffering Syrian people.

Just look at the words in the Democratic Party platform that HER people put through on Syria (without objection from Sanders people BTW). These are the exact words: “Syria The Syrian crisis is heartbreaking and dangerous, and its impact is threatening the region, Europe, and beyond. Donald Trump would inflame the conflict by alienating our allies, inexplicably allowing ISIS to expand in Syria, and potentially starting a wider war. This is a reckless approach. Democrats will instead root out ISIS and other terrorist groups and bring together the moderate Syrian opposition, international community, and our regional allies to reach a negotiated political transition that ends Assad’s rule. Given the immense scale of human suffering in Syria, it is also imperative that we lead the international community in providing greater humanitarian assistance to the civilian victims of war in Syria and Iraq, especially displaced refugees.” p.42 It is nothing more or less than the current Obama policy. Nothing in there at all to think that Clinton isn’t trying to work out some deal with Putin. #DropFoodNotBombs #ExposeDirtyDeals I wrote this on Facebook on July 28:

I didn’t watch the convention but when I look at the prepared text I see that VP nominee Tim Kaine, who many Syrians think is so supportive, didn’t say one word about Syria. Millions were watching him and he didn’t say a thing about the need to break the sieges, the promise to do air drops by June 1, Russian bombing of hospitals and their support for King Barrel Bomb, the need to bring in tens of thousands of refugees into the US. etc. Am I wrong? Did he add some words about the agony of Syria in his speech? Tonight is Hillary. Will she demand Obama do something to relieve the new siege of liberated Aleppo? Don’t hold your breath. http://2016.democratic-convention.org/?speech=Tim-Kaine

Bernie Sanders’ Lousy Speech Posted on July 28, 2016 by admin By Stanley Heller

July 28. I won’t bother criticizing Bernie Sanders for endorsing Hillary. He said he’d do it all along, endorse the winner of the Democratic Party primaries. It was only the willfully blind who thought he was going to stage a walk out and start a new party or join with the Greens. I will criticize him for the way he did it, though, becoming a Hillary “yes-man” and throwing overboard the best of what he stood for.

His big moment was speech at the Democratic Convention, covered live by the major networks. It was his big chance to give HIS message. The prepared text is here First let’s talk about what he didn’t mention. The biggest thing is Palestine. Bernie had a terrible record on Palestine coming into the campaign. In the decades he was in Congress he never engaged in any meaningful criticism of Israeli. In 2014 as Israel wiped out hundreds of children in Gaza Bernie was an Israeli government apologist. We forget because he did change. He was smart enough to see that among his base the rights of Palestinians are a big issue so he made some statements criticizing Israel. In April of this year he said Israel’s attacks on Gaza were “disproportionate”. He gave a Palestinian and hijab wearing Palestinian Linda Sarsour a visible part of his campaign. He appointed Jim Zogby and Cornel West as his reps on the Democratic Platform committee. They were given leeway to push for something on Palestine though Clinton’s people refused any compromise. The platform on Palestine/Israel is awful and explicitly condemns the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (see page 49). The platform was done and I guess adopted without further changes Monday or Tuesday. So Bernie had nothing to lose by speaking some truth to the millions who were ready to listen to him, but he said nothing. Would it have been …gasp…impolite to bring up Palestine? He’s all in with Hillary, but couldn’t he give a little bit to his base, some hint, some nod. No, nothing. He did a , bringing the issue up in his 1988 campaign and dropping it in his biggest moment. So the question then comes up for activists who spent the last nine months working for Bernie how was worth it? You helped bring thousands into the Democratic Party, the graveyard of progressive politics, the slave of Wall Street and the enemy of direct action. If Trump(Hitler) does win the Democrats surely will do nothing but bleat. Why weren’t you instead building up an independent candidate or spend your time on BDS campaigns or concentrating on building in-your-face street protests like Black Lives Matter?

Sanders didn’t mention Syria either. The last road to the liberated section of Aleppo is now completely cut and another 300,000 people are under siege. King Barrel Bomb and the Russians blow up hospitals with impunity. The U.S. along with the other big powers pledged that come June 1 if the sieges hadn’t ended there would be air drops of food and supplies. The pledge apparently is erased from U.S. government memory. Sanders could have at least said something about refugees. Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan have taken in millions without question. The much much richer U.S. has begrudgingly allowed in a few thousand refugees at most. Bernie didn’t have a word to say about this or any other refugee issue.

Come to think of it Sanders didn’t mention any foreign policy or military issue, not the Saudi-U.S. war on Yemen nor the reckless NATO drive to move right to the Russian border, nor the trillion that will spent to “modernize” nuclear weapons or U.S. military bases all over the world or our economy’s addiction to weapons sales. Mostly he went back to his stump speech on inequality.

He couldn’t talk about out of control hyper-militarized police or say the words “racism” or “Black Lives Matter”. The most he could remark is that we should “repair a broken criminal justice system”.

He did talk about climate change, but even here he blew his big chance. He said the election is about “the greatest environmental crisis facing our planet” but then he completely pulled his punches. He said, “Unless we act boldly and transform our energy system in the very near future – there will be more drought, more floods, more acidification of the oceans, more rising sea levels.” That’s it, just some “more” problems with the weather? What about the grave warning from top climate scientist Robert Howarth that we’re on the path to blow past the crucial 1.5 degree Celsius world temperature increase level in just 13 years. After that feedback loops start kicking in and the world temperature rises even more rapidly and very very quickly we hit a temperature where the temperature increases are irreversible, meaning we can’t do anything to fix the situation. Why not talk about THE top climate issue of our time, how progress on limiting greenhouse gases is being undone because of the huge increase in methane in the atmosphere coming about because of fracking?

On Sunday 5,000 to 10,000 people took to the streets of Philadelphia to demand an end to fracking and to call for 100% renewable energy. I filmed portions of the whole two hour march and I’d say a good 1/3 of the people who walked in 95 degree heat were carrying or wearing some kind of Bernie sign or banner. Sanders could easily have saluted them and mentioned their anti-fracking demand, but no he said nothing.

I’ll give it to Sanders. He saw the radical Left dissatisfaction out there and he organized it and used it to get millions of votes and dollars. But after the smoke clears and he goes on to campaign for the Hillary Clinton, MAKER OF HISTORY, what do we have to show for it?

Big Greens and Nuclear Power Embraces: What the WSJ Got Right Posted on July 14, 2016 by admin by Dan Fischer

Writing for the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), Miranda Spencer leveled strong charges against a June 16th Wall Street Journal article by reporter Amy Harder. Harder’s original article reported that some of America’s largest environmental groups were softening their traditional opposition to nuclear power and that this change was “lowering one of the biggest political hurdles facing the nuclear power industry.”

Miranda Spencer’s June 24th response for FAIR, “WSJ Fakes a Green Shift Toward Nuclear Power,” argues that the alleged shift amounts to little more than the WSJ editors’ wishful thinking: “In publishing this piece as edited, perhaps it is telling a story it wishes were true.”

However, Spencer and her publisher FAIR engage in more than their own share of wishful thinking. They fail to point their critical lens at the quick-to- compromise “Big Green” groups, who have long been constrained by funding from elite donors and foundations. In the words of environmental historian Mark Dowie, the Big Greens “carefully avoid challenging the power structures and relationships that have the most profound environmental impacts.”

Sometimes the Big Greens will say they oppose nuclear power. Other times, they’ll tell audiences they’re open to the technology. In either case, beneath the rhetoric they’ll enthusiastically campaign for pro-nuclear policies and pro-nuclear candidates. They’ll stay virtually silent when new nuclear reactors open.

In other words, there is an awful lot that the Wall Street Journal got right.

It’s easy to understand why FAIR, a self-described “progressive” organization, would want to defend the integrity of the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Environmental Defense Fund against a newspaper owned by the arch-Republican Rupert Murdoch. However,grassroots anti-nuclear activists would be wise to watch the major environmental organizations just as critically as they would read the Wall Street Journal. “We’re not opposed to nuclear energy”

Consider the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and their president Fred Krupp. The WSJ reported that the EDF is “deciding to what extent it should adjust its policy, potentially lending its support to keeping open financially struggling reactors.” Writing for FAIR, Spencer dismisses this“vague assertion” but counters it with an even vaguer assertion that the EDF “is not exactly a nuclear booster.” Spencer’s sole piece of evidence is the irrelevant fact that a single, short EDF blog post about climate solutions didn’t happen to mention nuclear power. Actually, the EDF is quite open to nuclear power. In a December 2015 discussion on PBS News Hour, EDF president Fred Krupp insisted, “First of all,we’re not opposed to nuclear energy.” Throughout the segment, Krupp did not mention a single concern about nuclear power plants’ safety risks or environmental impacts. In an earlier MSNBC interview, Krupp said, “Well, nuclear power is a carbon-free source of energy so it should be on the table, absolutely. The concerns right now are cost.” The EDF’s economist Jamie Fine has further spelled it out on the group’s website: “EDF is not an anti-nuclear organization.” Then there is the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Spencer quotes NRDC’s blog affirming “NRDC’s long-held concerns” about nuclear power, leaving the impression that the NRDC has a principled opposition to the technology.

In reality, the NRDC supports keeping a large number of nuclear reactors open. As Ben Adler reports for Grist, the NRDC “supports relicensing plants in situations where it’s safer and the plants can’t yet be replaced by renewable energy, and it calls for rejecting those — such as Indian Point in Westchester, N.Y. — that are uniquely dangerous.” Notice Adler’s word choice and the implication that the NRDC is only rushing to close “uniquely” dangerous facilities and actively “supports” keeping others open. There are serious flaws with the NRDC’s reasoning, which will be explored at the end of this article. According to a statement quoted by Spencer, the Sierra Club “remains opposed to dangerous nuclear power.” Contradicting this assertion, however, the WSJ reports the Sierra Club’s leaders “see existing reactors as a bridge to renewable electricity and an alternative source of energy.”

It’s unlikely that the WSJ is lying about what Sierra Club representatives said. As Noam Chomsky explains in Understanding Power, “take the Wall Street Journal, the prototypical business press: the editorial pages are just comical tantrums, but the news coverage is often quite interesting and well done, they have some of the best reporting in the country, in fact. And I think the reason for that is pretty clear….people in the business world have to have a realistic picture of what’s happening in the world if they’re going to make sane decisions about their money” (New Press, 2002, 28).Chomsky would know; FAIR’s website justifiably recommends Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent as “a probing expose of biased reporting.”

The WSJ piece goes on to directly quotes Sierra Club’s executive director Michael Brune: “We’re actively debating the timeline in which nuclear plants should be decommissioned as we reduce our reliance on coal and gas in the electric sector.” In other words, Brune himself directly admits there are at least some elements in the Sierra Club leadership that want nuclear plants to stay open for a while.

The Big Greens’ wishy-washiness on nuclear energy may be partly explained by their reliance on the elite foundations and donors. Nuclear power supporter has given the Sierra Club some $80 million since 2011. That’s almost an entire year’s budget for the organization.Politico reported in 2012, “Michael Bloomberg thinks [that…] nuclear energy, isn’t so bad.” Bloomberg’s company owns Nuclear Matters, a public relations group that preaches “the clear benefits” of nuclear energy. Endorsements and Silence Back in 2010, the EDF, NRDC and Sierra Club all campaigned vigorously for the American Power Act, a pro-nuclear climate action bill in the US Senate. Two hundred grassroots groups signed a letter opposing the bill and calling it a “bailout of the nuclear power industry” and “ineffective at addressing the climate crisis.” The Act mandated minuscule cuts in carbon emissions but then undid these cuts with enormous loopholes in the form of a fraud-prone mechanism called “carbon offsetting.”

Many of the Big Greens championed the American Power Act despite acknowledging its potential to revive the nuclear power industry. The NRDC admitted the bill contained “excessive subsidies for constructing new nuclear power plants” and “weakening changes” to nuclear regulation.

The bill never passed, and since then, efforts to implement federal climate policy have shifted from the legislature to the executive branch. Since then, the Big Greens have been gearing to put in charge the nuclear power cheerleader Hillary Clinton. According to her policy director, Clinton thinks “nuclear energy has an important role to play in our clean-energy future.”

The League of Conservation Voters endorsed Clinton in November 2015. The NRDC endorsed Clinton in May, and the Sierra Club endorsed her in June. These groups all misleadingly portrayed Clinton as an unabashed environmental leader. The Sierra Club’s Michael Brune, for instance, claimed Clinton “will be the strong environmental champion that we need.” Brune made no mention of Clinton’s support for nuclear power and fracking, her taking $4.5 million from fossil fuel interests, or her prior support for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

The Sierra Club would likely risk its funding from the Democracy Alliance and other mainstream foundations if it were to endorse an actual environmentalist such as Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Still, it would have been possible for Brune to back Clinton as the lesser evil without misleading the public about her record.

In June, Tennessee’s Watts Bar nuclear plant opened a new nuclear reactor. It was the country’s first new nuclear reactor to open in two decades. The Sierra Club did not seem very concerned.

“In the environmental community, though, reaction to the new reactor appears fairly muted,” reported Chris Mooney of the Washington Post.According to Mooney, the Sierra Club’s representative Jonathan Levenshus “did not critique [the new reactor] in particular on safety or other grounds; he was simply pessimistic about the future of nuclear power in general.” As Harder reported in the WSJ story, the Sierra Club, EDF, and NRDC were negotiating with power company Exelon Corporation about Illinois energy legislation. Exelon had proposed a deal which would reverse their June decision to close two reactors. (Since then, the company submitted a plan to move forward with closing the reactors.)

The NRDC had at best a very soft opposition to Exelon’s proposal. In an NRDC blog post described by Spencer as “debunking” the WSJ story, the NRDC’s midwest program director hinted the organization would have accepted keeping the nuclear reactors temporarily open as part of an “orderly and just transition.” More tellingly, the post linked to an analysis by the NRDC’s midwestern policy director Nick Magrisso. Despitecriticizing the possible inclusion of a nuclear reactor bailout, Magrisso praised the overall legislation as a “forward-looking energy policy.” It doesn’t take much reading between the lines to see that the NRDC was willing to compromise on the issue.

The flawed reasoning of compromise

So what, one might ask. The nuclear industry seems to be in trouble anyway. Only a handful of new nuclear reactors are under construction. Recently the operators of California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant announced they will shut down the plant next decade, with encouragement from the Big Greens criticized above. This announcement prompted Harvey Wasserman to pronounce the “end of an atomic era.” But the nail is not in the coffin yet, and the Big Greens aren’t going to put it there themselves.

Some might think the NRDC and similar groups have a point in saying it would be better to keep some nuclear plants open than to burn more fossil fuels. But this reasoning relies on a false choice. Nuclear power plants produce only a tenth of the world’s electricity and a fifth of the United States’. This capacity could be rapidly replaced with a combination of conservation and already- existing clean power sources (see the Energy Justice Network’s “Solutions” page).

Every single existing nuclear reactor is dangerous and, in the words of Karl Grossman, a “pre-deployed Weapon of Mass Destruction,” since they are prime terrorist targets.

Every existing reactor also entails the risk of an accidental meltdown like the one at Fukushima in 2011. Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) have estimated the Fukushima disaster will ultimately be responsible for as many as 66,000 cancers, half of them fatal.

PSR advocates rapidly shutting down all nuclear plants. So does Naoto Kan, who was Japan’s prime minister when the Fukushima meltdown persuaded him to stop supporting nuclear technology. Kan told Democracy Now!, “It’s impossible to totally prevent any kind of accident or disaster happening at the nuclear plants.” All the proposals for long-term nuclear waste storage are on lands used by and sacred to indigenous peoples. The government has long been considering sending nuclear waste to earthquake-prone Yucca Mountain. Not only does the site leak, but it is sacred to the Western Shoshone people, who make up some of nuclear power’s strongest opponents. Since the NRDC is apparently willing to back the creation of additional nuclear waste, one wonders where they want this waste to be sent, if not to vulnerable Western Shoshone land.

The WSJ story indicates that the nuclear industry is in trouble. “Roughly a dozen nuclear reactors have either shut down or are set to shut down in the coming years, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.” To finish the job, however, grassroots environmentalists will need to be willing to pressure and criticize the foundation-funded “nonprofit-industrial complex,” including the Big Greens and, for that matter, FAIR.

To defeat Hitler Vote for Hindenburg! “Lesser Evil” Voting Then and Now Posted on July 2, 2016 by admin

By Stanley Heller

In 1932 in Germany there were four national elections including two for the powerful position of president. The two leading candidates for president of Germany were Adolf Hitler and Paul von Hindenburg. Today when we hear the word Hindenburg we think of the zeppelin with that name that burned in New Jersey in 1937, but Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg was a very famous man for decades in Germany. During “the Great War”, which we now call World War I, he was Chief of the General Staff of the German army. In the last years of the war he was in effect military dictator of Germany. The German revolution ousted the Kaiser from power, but the leaders of the SPD (the very big German socialist party which supported the war) allied with counterrevolutionary forces and after massacres of the revolutionary Left made Germany into a capitalist republic. Hindenburg, who should have been in disgrace for his failed war leadership, came through the period with his reputation unscathed.

Long story short. The SPD steadily weakens. Hindenburg is elected President of Germany in 1925. The Great Depression hits Germany like a hammer and the Nazis go from getting 3% of the vote in 1928 to 18% in 1930. Their goons are running the streets. The German communists (KPD) follow the orders of Soviet ruler Joe Stalin to totally go it alone. They claim that the SPD were just another kind of fascist, “social fascists”. For its part the SPD refuses to work with the communists. In 1932 Hindenberg runs for reelection, the KPD runs its own candidate and the SPD supports Hindenburg as the “lesser of two evils”.

Most people will agree that Hitler was the ultimate evil, so Hindenburg was certainly “lesser”, but the SPD strategy did not work as planned. Hindenburg won the April 1932 run-off presidential with a solid 53% of the vote. “Mission accomplished” or so the SPD thought. Hindenburg stayed in office and he continued to choose the Chancellors and cabinet. However, the string of men he picked totally failed to rescue the German economy. Then Hindenburg made a fateful decision. In January 1933 he appointed Adolph Hitler as chancellor in a deal that gave the Nazis only 3 of the 11 cabinet positions. This was thought all that would be needed to keep Hitler under control. Brilliant plan. Hindenburg was putty in Hitler’s hands. Within two months Hitler had bullied Hindenburg to sign an “Enabling” Act” which gave the Nazi leader dictatorial powers.

So what has this got to do with today? Well, we have a candidate running for president who a lot of people have compared to Hitler. And we have as his opponent a woman who stands for the status quo, a millionaire who does the bidding of Wall Street, a bloody war “hawk” with notches on her belt from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Libya, a blind supporter of Israeli war crimes in Palestine and elsewhere. Yet people are running to her to defeat Trump, to save them from “Hitler”. (See Halle/Chomsky defense of lesser evil voting )

Now obviously, obviously things are a lot different in the U.S. now compared to Germany in the ‘30’s. Joblessness though a lot higher than the “unemployment rate” is not as massive as in the ‘30’s. The U.S. hasn’t felt the shock of a terrible defeat in war and a loss of territory. Though Trump has been embraced by enthusiastic neo-Nazis their gangs are not (yet) running riot. On the other hand there are two threats we live under that were unheard of in the 1930’s. One is nuclear war. We were told with communism gone there would be an “end of history” and the danger of nuclear war would be gone, but any chance for nuclear disarmament in the 1990’s was completely thrown away by . At present the U.S. government still has hundreds of nuclear weapons on hair trigger, meaning they could launch in minutes. Russia probably still has the same. With NATO expanding and Putin conquering, the two nuclear powers are eyeball to eyeball again.

The other threat is out of control global warming. Climate scientist Robert Howarth (who was on the short list in 2011 for Time magazine’s person of the year) says we’re on a path to go over the crucial 1.5 degree centigrade increase in just 13 years. Carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. have leveled off in recent years, but methane emissions from fracking have undone all the good and the total global warming gases are increasing at record levels. This is a path to catastrophe, a catastrophe from which there may not be a recovery. Somewhere between 1.5 and 2 degrees world temperature increase the permafrost releases massive amounts of methane and we go into a feedback loop of another big jump in temperatures. One of many results is that large areas of the world become either under water or uninhabitable. If you think we have refugee problems now, wait until there’s tens or scores of millions of climate refugees.

Hillary Clinton will absolutely not save the world from either menace. She raised no objection to Obama’s trillion dollar nuclear modernization program or his (or was it her) drive to stick NATO right in the face of Putin. Clinton supported the Keystone XL pipeline as Secretary of State and only changed her mind under relentless pressure from Bernie Sanders. She calls for an 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2050. That sounds like a big deal, but it’s a totally inadequate measure to stop the warming that’s coming, a death sentence for coastal cities and genocide for Africa. Let me emphasize this climate menace is on the way. The balance of nuclear terror may hold for more decades, but the things that balance global gases, like the world’s oceans can no longer do the job.

So who should we vote for in the U.S. presidential election?

Before we answer that question there are others to deal with first. What is the minimum we need for continued human civilization (as opposed to a global war of all against all as livable land areas dwindle) and what would create the force, the movement, the organization necessary to win the minimum changes?

For climate I see no way to avoid intolerable climate change unless there is a government takeover of the energy, heating and transportation industries and a “Manhattan Project” crash program for 100% renewable energy by 2030. The bloated armaments industry which lives on wars and the need for ever more nuclear “modernization” should be nationalized, too. Its industries need to be converted to peace time use and its workers hired in “green” jobs. This has to planned at the highest level and worker run at the day to day level. We need a new system, a social democracy that is able to maintain a sustainable ecology, in short “ecosocialism”.

Now the Democrats and Republicans are both staunch defenders of (somewhat different versions of) capitalism and nothing in the short run is going to change that. Unfortunately, if we have 13 years to fix the climate all we have is the short run. The recent farce at the Democratic platform committee where every proposed method of weaning away from fossil fuel was rejected should disabuse those who think the Democrats can be a vehicle for the necessary drastic changes need in the next decade. The largest Left party is the Green Party which gets a miniscule vote in national elections and gets denounced for taking away votes that naturally belong to the “lesser evil”. It’s hampered by a voting system totally stacked against third parties. (As a result no party other than the Democrats and Republicans has won a single presidential electoral vote in almost 50 years.) It sees its role as running in elections, period. It rarely takes part in creating social movement or anti-war actions.

That’s not enough. There needs to be something else, something that will run in elections, but that will also organize massive disruption to undo the power structure and build a new ecosocialist society. It has to be an ever rising tide of democracy and environmentalism. We must do what is necessary to build the build that movement, that force and we can’t be intimidated by the fear of being taunted as the “spoiler” in elections. We have to say in advance that if our actions result in a more repressive, more racist and environmental Know Nothing party taking over for a while, so be it. We’ll have to grit our teeth and deal with it. There’s no time for glacial progress. Human society is at stake.

On June 20 Juan Gonzalez, the great journalist, former Young Lords leader and current co-anchor on Democracy Now! spoke at the Bernie Sanders’ “Peoples Summit” . He told the thousands attending, “Don’t make the mistakes of 1968 that elected Nixon.” What were those mistakes according to Gonzalez? People came to Chicago to “confront” the Democrats who were about to nominate Hubert Humphrey. Also SDS told people not to vote. Gonzales claimed “there would have been a positive change, if Nixon had not been elected.” The lesson, though Gonzalez didn’t say it outright is “vote for Hillary”.

Actually, what Gonzalez proposed would have been suicide for the movement. Hubert Humphrey was Lyndon Johnson’s lickspittle and junior partner in war crimes against Vietnam. A Humphrey victory could well have led to eight more years of genocide for the people of Vietnam. Instead Chicago in ’68 was a milestone of direct action. Neither the Chicago police riot nor the prosecution of protest leaders on bogus charges dampened spirits . The Yippie and Left protests of ‘68 led to many more direct actions and the eventual radicalization of part of the U.S. military. Thousands of U.S. soldiers would no longer fight for the empire. They refused to be cannon fodder. That scared the bejeezus out of the power structure and that’s what ended the war.

Two more recent movements come to mind, the 2006 immigrant “boycott” and what’s going on in France today. On May 1, 2006 millions of Latinos “boycotted” work , maybe five million undocumented and documented workers went on a one day strike. They came out into the street to protest an anti-immigrant law that was making its way through Congress. The law was never passed. Fast forward ten years and the neoliberal Socialist Party of France proposes a labor law to reduce labor rights. For a month tens of thousands have come into the streets night after night to demand its defeat.

So what do we do here in the U.S. this election year? As far as the election I’d counsel voting for Jill Stein of the Green Party for president. I don’t have illusions that the Green Party will win the presidency. Nor do I think a “Green New Deal” is at all an adequate way to dealing with capitalism and I don’t like Stein’s blindness about Russia’s horrific role in Syria . However, the Green Party will actually be on the ballot in 30 or 40 states. A vote for the Green Party will be noticed and it’s the best vehicle we have to send out a certain message.

The message the vote will deliver to the public is that we’re uncompromising, yes “uncompromising”. We’re not dogmatic about some belief or program, but we’re uncompromising about the need to preserve human civilization and to avoid a massive die off of human and animal life. We realize that politics as usual is a death sentence and we won’t participate in our own executions. We intend to promote an ecosocialist tide and turn it into an unstoppable deluge.

Our main work is not electoral. During and after the election we continue our base work, organizing in the neighborhoods, workplaces and in the streets, coming out to the July 24 anti- fracking march, standing with immigrants, denouncing great power aggression and indifference to the plight of Syrians, condemning the Saudi-U.S. war on Yemen. We need to organize the millions of angry people that came out for Bernie and who are now being told to dive into the Democratic Party graveyard.

The Left in the ‘30’s had a slogan “socialism or barbarism”. It needs to be updated for a world that faces even greater perils. “Ecosocialism or the abyss”. #Ecosocialism #PhillyJuly24 #EcosocialistDeluge #13YearsLeft #HindenburgFail

A Generation to the Left of Bernie Sanders? Posted on June 2, 2016 by admin by Dan Fischer

As Noam Chomsky has noted, the social democratic positions of Bernie Sanders are “quite strongly supported by the general public, and have been for a long time.” Chomsky could have gone much further, had he focused on the views of the country’s largest voting-age generation, the millennials. Not only are pluralities or majorities of millennials as left-leaning as Sanders on core campaign issues—considering health care a right,distrusting Wall Street, defending Roe v. Wade—but on some critical issues such as climate change and nuclear weapons, they actually stand wellto the left of Sanders. These facts are easy to find in recent and reputable polls, including an April survey by Harvard’s Institute of Politics of more than three thousand 18 to 29 year-olds, and a poll of a thousand 18 to 34 year-olds conducted in January by Ipsos Public Affairs, commissioned by USA Today and Rock the Vote.

The findings make clear: Compared with mainstream millennials, Sanders is an environmental fraud, a Dr. Strangelove-style warmonger, and the NSA’s right-hand man.

Sanders the Reactionary

On climate change, the Sanders plan sticks close to Hillary Clinton’s corporate-friendly formula. He’d have America powered by “80 percent clean energy sources by 2050.” That’s the same target as Clinton’s, and it corresponds to a dangerous 2-degree Celsius temperature rise, a death sentence for the world’s coastal cities, which would be threatened with submersion from rising seas this century according to leading climate scientist Dr. James Hansen.

Millennials, however, support a transition closer to what scientists say is possible and necessary. 80% of millennials want a “transition to mostly clean or renewable energy by 2030” (Ipsos). This transition is entirely possible according to engineer Mark Jacobson and research scientist Mark Delucchi’s 2009 Scientific American cover story, subtitled “How to get all energy from wind, water and solar power by 2030.” Millennials are about two times more likely to agree than disagree with the notion that the government “should do more to curb climate change, even at the expense of economic growth” (Harvard).

On nuclear weapons, “Bernie Sanders looks Pretty Darn Establishment,” a February Defense One headline observed. Sanders doesn’t advocate unilateral reductions of nuclear warheads, suggesting that he would continue to use Russian behavior as an excuse to avoid making large cuts to America’s apocalyptic arsenal. Among millennials, meanwhile, a 47% plurality supports “a unilateral reduction of American nuclear warheads,”compared to only 20% opposed, as a 2015 YouGov poll found. A 45% plurality says the US made the wrong decision in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while only 31% support the historical decision. Sanders hasn’t commented on America’s 1945 nuclear bombings, even as they’ve been widely reassessed due to Obama’s historic visit to Hiroshima (I checked LexisNexis results of articles mentioning Bernie Sanders and Hiroshima).

A 2014 peer-reviewed study in Earth’s Future predicts that even 100 nukes, a small fraction of America’s enormous supply, would be enough to send large amounts of soot to the stratosphere, blocking sunlight, chilling the planet’s surface, increasing harmful ultraviolet radiation exposure, and triggering global famine. On foreign policy, the war-weary millennials make Sanders look almost as hawkish as Clinton. Sanders supports drone strikes and even says he’d maintain Obama’s “kill list” of people to be assassinated without any sort of trial. In contrast, 50% of millennials, a plurality, oppose drone strikes(as Pew found last year). Military documents leaked to The Intercept last year showed that in a five-month period in Afghanistan, nearly 90% of America’s drone victims were not the intended targets. Sanders voted twice in 1998 for regime change in Iraq, paving the way for the 2003 invasion, which he claimed to oppose but still repeatedly voted to fund. Millennials are more likely to oppose preemptive military attacks than to support them (Harvard).

Sanders leaves out civil liberties from his website’s campaign issues and wants NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden arrested and punished: “[H]e did break the law, and I think there should be a penalty to that.” Millennials, however, take civil liberties very seriously. Among those familiar with Snowden, 56% support him, according to a 2015 KRC Research poll. 47% of millennials, a plurality, disagree with the statement, “As part of a broader effort to fight terrorism, I think it is okay for the government to monitor my email or social media accounts” (Ipsos).

Sanders opposes reparations for slavery, while a shockingly significant minority of millennials support reparations. According to a May 2016 Marist poll, 40% support reparations and 11% are undecided, outnumbering the 49% who share the Senator’s right- leaning position.

While Sanders sometimes calls himself a socialist, you won’t hear him outright oppose capitalism. Instead, he’ll bash “casino capitalism,”suggesting that he only wants to reform the system, rather than replace it. Meanwhile, 51% of millennials explicitly say they don’t support capitalism (Harvard). This doesn’t necessarily reflect a well thought-out stance, but it nonetheless outdoes Sanders.

Of course, there are caveats. Millennials don’t consider themselves to be left of center. Some 59% identify as moderate or conservative (Harvard). Nonetheless, when they answer specific policy questions, a plurality or majority usually advocate left- leaning views. There are only a couple clear exceptions in the Harvard poll: a plurality opposes affirmative action and a majority wants US ground troops to fight ISIS (similarly, Sanders wants US ally Saudi Arabia to send ground troops).

A “Profound” Change?

“He’s not moving a party to the left. He’s moving a generation to the left,” Harvard’s polling director John Della Volpe said of Sanders in theWashington Post. The headline declared, “Bernie Sanders is profoundly changing how millennials think about politics.”

Don’t believe the hype. Despite what the Ivy League pollster and Washington Post say, the country’s largest voting-age generation hasn’t let a 74 year-old politician “profoundly” change their beliefs.

Actually, Harvard’s annual surveys demonstrate that, overall, the generation’s views have been consistent for years before Sanders announced his candidacy.

The Post‘s Max Ehrenfreund reports, “in 2014, the number [of millennials] who agreed that ‘basic health insurance is a right for all people’ was 42 percent. That figure increased to 45 percent last year and to 48 percent in Monday’s poll.”

It sounds impressive, but that’s only because of shortened data. Back in 2011, the percentage viewing health care as a right was 49%, higher than today’s. Since 2010, the percentage has averaged at 45, only three points lower than today’s.

Ehrenfreund continues: “The share who agreed that ‘basic necessities, such as food and shelter, are a right that government should provide to those unable to afford them’ increased from 43 percent last year to 47 percent now.” Again, it sounds impressive. But the current figure is just one percentage point above what it was in 2010 and only three above the average since then.

In other words, the difference between the current percentages and the average since 2010 are only barely outside the margin of error! No, nothing has “profoundly” changed.

What Democracy Looks Like?

Given their stances to the left of Sanders, it’s no surprise that the generation very strongly dislikes Clinton and Trump. Both candidates have a net negative approval rating among the generation. Clinton’s at -16%, and Trump’s at -57%. Sanders is the only major candidate with a net positive approval rating, 23% (Harvard).

This November, millennials will be asked to vote for one or the other business-friendly candidate, the one they abhor or the one they despise. In a democracy, this fact would be considered scandalous. But it’s taken for granted in the plainly plutocratic United States, where the political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page find, “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”

Millennials have seen their preferred candidate Bernie Sanders chewed up and spat out by the Democratic Party and the media. Virtually none of the party’s officials gave Sanders any support, allowing Clintonites to dismiss him as irrelevant or divisive. The website FiveThirtyEight puts Clinton overwhelmingly in the lead among “party elites,” by 522 to 13. Last year, the nightly news shows devoted some twenty-three times more coverage to Trump than they did to Sanders. In August, the New York Times ran four times as many stories about Clinton and 4.5 times as many stories about Trump as it did about Sanders. The paper’s public editor Margaret Sullivan has admitted, “The Times has not ignored Mr. Sanders’s campaign, but it hasn’t always taken it very seriously. The tone of some stories is regrettably dismissive, even mocking at times.”

As Clinton accepts her inevitable coronation from the Democrats, she begs for millennials’ allegiance. She has even stolen a slogan from the youthful Occupy Wall Street activists and their predecessors in the alter-globalization movement. A page on her campaign website features a sign with a Hillary logo and the words “This is what democracy looks like.” Riiight…

The Biggest Revelation in the “Panama Papers” Posted on April 5, 2016 by admin April 5. The most important service done by the releasing of the “Panama Papers” is not revealing the names of the big shots hiding money in banks where they pay no taxes. Better it makes very public the fact that trillions and trillions of dollars are hidden away from the tax man and employees by the super rich. The whining by the 1% that companies “can’t afford” raises or that taxes would “soak the rich” and kill the “golden goose” are shown to be spectacular lies.

It’s known for many years that trillions are kept “offshore”, but the writing of the tax experts never got that much attention. The term “offshore” applies to money supposedly invested in little island nations that charge little or no taxes for people to park their money there. I say supposedly because lots of the money is actually being “managed” right in the U.S. with the overseas account as a fig leaf of foreign ownership. Back in 2012 James S. Henry, former director of economic research for McKinsey and Company gave this estimate of the amount of money being held “offshore”: “A significant fraction of global private financial wealth — by our estimates, at least $21 to $32 trillion as of 2010 — has been invested virtually tax free through the world’s still expanding black hole of more than 80 “offshore” secrecy jurisdictions. We believe this range to be conservative…”

Gabriel Zucman worked at the numbers a different way in his 2015 book “The Hidden Wealth of Nations” and came up with a much lower, but still amazing $7.6 trillion in hidden money. The book was widely and positively reviewed. Henry and another hidden money researcher John Christensen say the number is “way too low”. They make a good case. At any rate the amount of money hidden away by the really rich is really, really enormous. So when they say they can’t pay you can safely and precisely say, “Bull$**&”!

Here’s a mini-booklet on the subject from a couple of years ago here. It doesn’t even have to be updated.

Chris Hedges on Saudi Arabia and the Elections Posted on March 15, 2016 by admin

Video of Hedges talk CODEPINK last weekend had over 250 at a conference they called the “Saudi Summit” to examine the awful record of America’s oldest Middle East ally.

On March 6, Chris Hedges addressed the gathering. Chris Hedges is an author, activist, and former Middle East Bureau chief for the New York Times. He calls for BDS, boycott, divestment and sanctions against Saudi Arabia.

More video of the conference at “The Real News”

You Can’t Make a Revolution in a Counter- Revolutionary Party – Jill Stein Posted on February 14, 2016 by admin Video of her talk in Portland, CT 2/13/2016

Constructive if Harsh Criticism of Parts of Stein’s Speech Posted on February 13, 2016 by admin Feb. 14. Some observations about Jill Stein’s talk yesterday in CT. The crowd of about 30-40 was about 1/3 people in their twenties, almost no minorities, no “Middle Eastern” people that I noticed. She said the Democratic Party officials would deny the nomination to Sanders and hoped this would lead to a lot of interest in the Green Party.

She spent a lot of time on “student debt”, calling for the debt to be forgiven. Very good. Also a lot of time on the Saudis which was excellent, except she seemed to go overboard. She says “We know who funded 9/11, that was coming from the Saudis”. This sounds like she’s saying the Saudi government financed the attack. No proof of this astounding charge. Very discrediting. Though she talked generally about Saudi mischief making she didn’t talk about their attack on Yemen. She didn’t talk about Palestine/Israel until I brought it up in the questions.

She used the “Green New Deal” a couple of times. That might have been refreshing in 2012, but not today. Bernie talks about “socialism” and “revolution”. I know it’s mostly empty rhetoric on his part, but “Green New Deal” was tried and it’s time to move on. As she says we’re living through a global “emergency”. We don’t need just a different “deal”. Suggest “Ecosocialism” or “Eco-revolution”.

I raised a number of points in my questions. 1) that Senator Murphy had called for halting arms sales to Saudi Arabia because of Yemen and that the Green Party should help lead the anti-war fight there. 2) I mentioned the court case in CA that was expected to be found against public employee unions and called for the Green Party to lead the charge against it (the meeting was held before news of the death of Justice Scalia. That may change things.) 3) that the CT AFL-CIO passed a resolution calling for BDS against Israel and asking what she thought of that 4) that I was disturbed with her position on Russia calling for “collaborative dialogue” with Putin’s government.

I explained I had been an anti-war activist since Vietnam, but in Syria realized the biggest killers there were not the U.S. or the Saudis, but Assad-Russia-Iran. I said the Green Party should lead a picket of the Russian embassy.

She agreed on Yemen and the need to fight the California court case. She hadn’t heard about the CT AFL-CIO vote on Palestine, but said it was “wonderful and was great and that her campaign supports that”. On Russia her answer was vague, unsatisfactory, following the line that the Syrian calamity was all the fault of the U.S. government, talking about “collaborating with the Russians on an arms embargo”, talking about the U.S. provoking Russia in Europe (which is true, but not relevant here). I think her position on Russia is disastrous, falling for the naïve idea that only the U.S., the “West” and its clients are a problem and that if the U.S. government were interested it could just negotiate settlements everywhere. She said the model is Iran where talking “worked rather well”. It worked there because all the hostility was coming from the U.S.-Israeli side.

She said she wants “to push the peace offensive in Syria and it starts with the weapons embargo and above it that means the Saudis”. No mention of Russian weapons which dwarf anything the Gulf tyrannies gave Syrians in quantity and firepower. No response to my call for protests of Russian or Iranian outrages. Not a word about the sieges by Assad-Hezbollah forces that are starving people to death.

The latest report is that 470,000 have been killed in Syria. That’s overwhelmingly from attacks of Assad-Russia-Iran etc. Only they have airforces that can cause this immense scale of destruction. See this heartbreaking video Nothing gory, just an older man talking to you from his heart.

On ISIL her position was inadequate. It was: Stop dropping bombs and make the Saudis cut off funding to all Islamic extremists. I don’t believe the Saudis (that is the Saudi government) send money to ISIL. I have seen no proof of that. Furthermore ISIL is now pretty much self-financing from internal taxation and black market oil sales. It’s cruel and grotesque, Saudi Wahhabism in the extreme, but why does it and al-Qaeda and other cruel Islamist groups have so much support? The answer is that Syrians think Assad forces are so much worse. Take a look at the (Russian) video of Homs. It looks just like film of German cities after World War II. This is mostly the work of Assad and Russia.

The Green Party and every part of the Left should picket Russia and Iranian embassies and lead a fight for BDS against the leaders of those countries. No waiting for a Russian endlessly delaying “peace process” while all of Syria burns to a cinder.

I hope Jill Stein can totally reevaluate her position on Russia and Syria. She is certainly right about Bernie Sanders and the Democrats and so much more.

Finally I didn’t get a chance to say it, but Jill Stein needs a well- known vice-presidential candidate from minority community who is credible on #BlackLivesMatter. How about Michelle Alexander? In “The Nation” this week Alexander not only denounced the Clintons for their participation in the mass incarceration project, but also denounced the Democratic Party and doubted it could be fixed.

← Sanders in Debate with Clinton Asks Saudis to Put “Skin” in Game One Response to Constructive if Harsh Criticism of Parts of Stein’s Speech

1. David Michel says: February 19, 2016 at 9:40 am I beg to differ on some of your comments, what is great is this is on video. 1. The crowd was mixed indeed, i have the pics..we had all ages represented and many various backgrounds that might not necessarily be represented by “color”.. 2. She covered a lot of areas with the 45 minutes she used for her speach.. but you have to compare with other presidential candidates where the speak for an hour minimum 3. Could you also post the Q and A ? 4. I believe she was showing that she was opened to dialog with other world leaders that might have different views..

Sanders in Debate with Clinton Asks Saudis to Put “Skin” in Game Posted on January 18, 2016 by admin Again Bernie Sanders calls for the bigoted, cruel, imperial Saudi and Qatari regimes to take the lead in solving things in the Middle East. “And one point I want to make here that is not made very often, you have incredibly wealthy countries in that region, countries like Saudi Arabia, countries like Qatar. Qatar happens to be the largest — wealthiest country per capita in the world. They have got to start putting in some skin in the game and not just ask the United States to do it.” – from the 1/17 debate

Sam Husseini wrote about Sanders and the Saudi regime last year noting that Sanders had called on the Saudis to intervene more, to get their “hands dirty” in a CNN interview in February of 2015. We don’t know if the Saudi king heard about this, but a month later their hands were full of dirt bombing Yemen with abandon. In November 2015 Sanders was complaining that the Saudis weren’t doing enough to bomb ISIS saying the Saudis should lead the struggle for “the soul of Islam”. Imagine he wants the regime of headchoppers and women haters to teach Muslims how to act.

In the debate yesterday Sanders abandons even the pretense of support for Syrian people and joins the Counterpunch-National Review consensus that all the U.S. should care about is ISIS. Sanders say, “But the immediate task is to bring all interests together who want to destroy ISIS, including Russia, including Iran, including our Muslim allies to make that the major priority.”

Not one word about starvation in Syria. Not one word about getting U.N. aid into the areas under siege. Not one word about barrel bombs.

Clinton yesterday did mention Assad cruelties only to talk about “proxy war”. She said about the Syria fighting, “It is amplified by Assad, who has waged one of the bloodiest, most terrible attacks on his own people: 250,000-plus dead, millions fleeing. Causing this vacuum that has been filled unfortunately, by terrorist groups, including ISIS. So, I think we are in the midst of great turmoil in this region. We have a proxy conflict going on between Saudi Arabia and Iran. ” No mention that the U.S. winked as the Saudis and Qataris armed their proxies.

The word “Yemen” comes up in the debate once. Clinton says the word when she accuses IRAN of bad behavior there. “bad behavior in the region which is causing enormous problems in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere.” Alireza Nader, a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation says Iran’s military aid to forces in Yemen is “negligible”.

Another candidate who was interviewed on another program Jill Stein of the Green Party when asked by CNN about ISIS said, “We’re calling for a peace offensive to stop the flow of money and weapons and to focus on what are truly the threats to American lives and well-being, and that is deaths from poverty, from lack of health insurance, homelessness and gun violence.” Really weak. ISIS and its wannabees are no threat to Americans? And not a word about Syria and Yemen or Palestine.

Stein gave her answer to Obama’s State of the Union speech on RT, Russia Today, the unofficial Putin state organ. What’s with that? A month ago Stein attended a dinner with Vladamir Putin. What?