SIRATYST (Stuff I Read and Thought You Should Too) --
“To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
(Calgacus, as quoted by Tacitus, Agricola 30-31)"
Sign the petition to keep Human Rights Defender Issa Amro from going to military prison. Call on the UN and EU to tell Israel to drop the baseless, politically motivated charges. Stand With Issa
Yannick Giovanni Marshall is an academic and scholar of African Studies.
Former
President Barack Obama speaks at a rally as he campaigns for Democratic
presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden on Monday,
November 2, 2020, at Turner Field in Atlanta [File:P/Brynn Anderson]
“If
you believe, as I do, that we should be able to reform the criminal
justice system so that it’s not biased and treats everybody fairly, I
guess you can use a snappy slogan, like ‘Defund the Police’, but, you
know, you lost a big audience the minute you say it.”
The quote above is taken from an interview the former United States
President Barack Obama gave to Snapchat show Good Luck America.
If there must be leaders – and leaders on fairness – they should not
be men who once presided over an imperialist state. There is no fairness
in drone strikes, deportations and detention, the attempted felling of
democratically-elected leaders or being the chief caretaker of colonial
land theft and the institutional violence that renders Indigenous and
Black populations at the greatest risk of succumbing to poverty and
police violence.
It is problematic for the former president to perform the role of
communication sage when his own sloganeering of “hope” and “change” did
not prove sufficient to meet the hopes for an end to torture and deaths
in custody. Or change in any satisfactory way discriminatory systems of
punishment and civil asset forfeiture. Or stymie the efforts of the
succeeding, less racial-equity-minded administration to resume a killing
spree on death row via the resumption of federal executions or the
deliberate mismanagement of a pandemic that disproportionately kills
non-white people.
Problematic, too, is associating activists’ articulation of a
programme to immediately divest from and incapacitate a classist and
historically anti-Black institution with a marketing strategy.
Far worse, however, is Obama’s work to reinforce the myth that
campaigns for Black survival must, first and foremost, work to present
themselves in the best light to invite wider society. Wider society is
the problem.
The
course of history is often changed by small groups of like-minded
people. The Combahee River Collective, the Black Panthers, MOVE, small
cells of enslaved people overthrowing the slave wagon en route to
transport them like cargo to a plantation. If these groups abandoned the
truth they felt in their bones, if they adjusted their message to
accommodate broader swaths of society they would not have been as
effective as they were.
The work of radical Black freedom is directed against dominant
society. What that society has been conditioned to find acceptable, what
it finds pleasing, what it finds warranted and the limits to what it
thinks is possible is our problem. We get to no satisfactory place by
conforming or drawing nearer to anti-Black society.
If all Black movements adjust their language as Obama suggests we
should, there would be no record of our truth, nor our fundamental and
passionate disagreement with the state of things. Unadulterated radical
Black imagining and voicings of a future free from anti-Blackness would
be erased from history. The only record we would have of our dissent is
sheepish pleadings to a racist society, sanded down to fit inoffensively
into fragile liberal ears.
There exists no audience that would be roused from the edges of their
seats by a clever, well-crafted motto. None who were not already
elbowing their way to the front lines of struggle as soon as they heard
about George Floyd, or Atatiana Jefferson or the Zong massacre. It is
not so much that our demands risk losing a big audience, as the big
audience window-shops our struggle. We have entirely too much faith in
the revolutionary will of those who respond to the ten-thousandth racist
murder with “it is so sad”.
Obama, himself, admitted that he was the kind of person who read
Frantz Fanon and Gwendolyn Brooks not for what they meant to our lives
but to pick up women. In this, he models the fleeting, parasitical
interest in the intellectual labour of Black radical thinkers that is
not always convertible to useful activism.
One wonders if Toni Morrison might have wriggled out of their
photographed embrace if she knew Obama may have sprayed the CliffsNotes
of her novels on himself like cheap cologne.
The
great white whale of support for Black lives will always prove elusive.
Polls have shown that the increase in support for the uprising against
racist killing is a chimera, vanishing almost as soon as it becomes
measurable. Those genuinely affected by George Floyd’s death in a
life-changing way are now radical and will not be turned away by what
may feel to some as a too-angry chant or too impractical demand.
Those, on the other hand, who were pushed by the swell of a crowd
forced to sit and watch an eight minute and 46-second killing so nakedly
discriminatory it debilitated, for a moment, their go-to excuses of
“bad apples” and see-through calls for retraining, are now relievedly
ebbing away with that crowd back to their settled places of faith in
“America, the fundamentally good”. To devote one’s talents to the work
of getting them back is a fool’s errand.
Instead of appealing to the people who can always stomach a bit more
anti-Black state violence, it may be better to rally those who have had
enough. Those who are not moved due to the efficacy of slogans but by
their disgust with institutionalised and constantly legitimated white
supremacist violence.
Liberal support is not indispensable to the cause of Black freedom.
In fact, liberalism is one of the most effective tools in keeping Black
liberation at bay. It glorifies waiting peacefully for justice. Not even
dogs are asked to sit during their abuse.
And it is liberals Obama has in mind when he speaks about a potential
audience. As a man who has had his effigy lynched and is called an
American-hating terrorist more than any person alive, he knows better
than most that conservatives do not come around no matter how much
deference is shown, how many times magnanimity is performed, or how many
times a Black hand reaches across to “the other side”.
Maybe slogans designed to save our lives should not be designed,
primarily, for others. Maybe direct and forthright statements have
longer longevity, provide better comfort and inspiration to those they
are intended to serve than the ones watered down to please an audience
ambivalent on the question of justice.
The
black glove-fisted chants of “Black Power” may, in the end, prove to
have done more good for the cause of freedom than “keep hope alive”.
Maybe #landback addresses a specific injury, agitates for material
reparations, and is a necessary cutting through the colonising culture
that trained its young to sing “this land is your land, this land is my
land”.
The bugle has sounded but the liberal reinforcements are not coming.
Instead, they have pretty much carried on with their lives save the
occasional nod to the phrase “the country is going through a racial
reckoning”. A phrase that suggests the demand for “accountability” is
the equal and opposite reaction to a hemisphere’s half a millennium of
anti-Black asphyxiation.
It is not clear how we would arrive at a criminal justice system that
treats everybody fairly in a country where half of the electorate voted
for the re-election of a white supremacist administration. Some of
these 73 million are senators, wardens, police union presidents,
security guards, judges and correctional officers. It is no more likely
that they are interested in an equitable society than yesterday’s
segregationists and confederates whose monuments they fight to preserve.
Revolutionaries, when they are white, are held up as models by
politicians like Obama. Even when their “snappy slogans” are a good deal
more aggressive, polarising and threatening than “Defund the Police”.
Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death!” was likely not
warmly received by British loyalists and yet he is praised.
Certainly, the Black people he enslaved and had whipped had just as
much right to be just as forceful. Certainly, the protest against the
“general warrant” that gave British colonial administrators the right to
rampage through settler homes can also be adopted by Black people
against the institution these settlers birthed. The one which broke down
Breonna Taylor’s door and shot. The one which gropes teenagers against
cars and stops and searches the vehicles of Black people who seem to be
addicted to having their tail lights out.
Obama’s implication that substantial change only comes about after a
door-knocking campaign and recruitment from those who have shown a
passing interest in Black survival is not supported by historical
evidence. It is a nationalist myth. One that shouts we are in this
together as one American people instead of bearing witness to society as
it is: a concatenation of local struggles, warring classes and
interests, historical patterns of discrimination, and an entrenched and
popular disinterest in justice for Black people.
The
liberals are not coming. Their war horses will never leave the stable
no matter how flowery the invitation. We would do well to stop listening
to Obama and get on with the business of uncompromising struggle for
freedom.
"Whoever speaks of “crisis” today risks being dismissed as a bloviator, given the term’s banalization through endless loose talk. But there is a precise sense in which we do face a crisis today. If we characterize it precisely and identify its distinctive dynamics, we can better determine what is needed to resolve it. On that basis, too, we might glimpse a path that leads beyond the current impasse—through political realignment to societal transformation.?
Even if one views these predictions as too ... cynical, the initial questions remains, but can be rephrased as an appeal for clarity among climate progressives:
Will the Sunrise Movement, Bill McKibben, and Eric Holthaus reject any policy that provides more net money and resources to ICE and Border patrol?
Will the Sunrise Movement, Bill McKibben and Eric Holthaus reject any policy that provides more net monies to the Pentagon?
I’d love to get an answer to these two questions — sincerely. The militarization of our climate response compels clarity on these issues before it’s too late.
[INCLUDES VIDEO: "Allegations of anti-Semitism, a damning report by the EHRC and ultimately suspension: how the British political establishment, mainstream media and Zionist lobby ran a targeted smear campaign against former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the leftist wing of the party."
“Since 1945, the U.S. has a history of imposing conflicts on other
places,” says renowned Indian historian and journalist Vijay Prashad. “I
don’t like terms like Vietnam War, Iraq War—these are very ideological
ways of understanding history. No, these are U.S.-imposed wars on the
Vietnamese and Iraqi people.”
For today’s show, Allen reflects on the history of post-WWII U.S. imperialism with Vijay Prashad and discusses his new book, Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations.
“One of the more far-reaching is that that
favorite question of American social scientists — whether race or class
‘variables’ better explain “American reality” — is a false one. Class
and race are concepts of a different order; they do not occupy the same
analytical space, and thus cannot constitute explanatory alternatives to
each other. At its core, class refers to a material circumstance: the
inequality of human beings from the standpoint of social power. Even the
rather diffuse definitions of applied social science — occupation,
income, status — reflect this circumstance, though dimly. The more
rigorous Marxian definition involving social relations of production
reflects it directly. Of course, the objective core of class is always
mediated by ideology, which is the refraction of objective reality in
human consciousness. No historical account of class is complete or
satisfying that omits the ideological mediations…. Race, on the other
hand, is a purely ideological notion. Once ideology is stripped away,
nothing remains except an abstraction which, while meaningful to a
statistician, could scarcely have inspired all the mischief that race
has caused during its malevolent historical career. The material
circumstance upon which the concept purports to rest — the biological
inequality of human beings — is spurious: there is only one human
species, and the most dramatic differences of appearance can be wiped
out in one act of miscegenation. The very diversity and arbitrariness of
the physical rules governing racial classification prove that the
physical emblems which symbolize race are not the foundation upon which
race arises as a category of social thought.”
Former US President Barack Obama has sparked an anti-war
backlash after saying in his new memoir he “took no joy” in ordering
deadly drone strikes, reasoning that his administration “couldn't afford
to look soft on terrorism.”
The ex-president’s new
book ‘A Promised Land’ sheds some light on the Obama administration’s
controversial expansion of the US drone program, which was launched
under his predecessor George W. Bush.
One of Obama’s original
campaign promises was for US withdrawal from middle-eastern conflicts.
However, that promise was not fulfilled during his eight years in
office, and the Democrat is now often accused of having further
escalated violence in the region through his policies in Libya, Syria,
and elsewhere.
In excerpts from the memoir published by Business Insider, Obama claims that his first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was “obsessed” with the administration’s infamous terrorist “kill list.” Rahm had “spent enough time in Washington to know that his new, liberal president couldn't afford to look soft on terrorism,” Obama writes.
Despite his willingness to ramp up the drone program, Obama confessed he “took no joy in any of this” and that it did not make him feel “powerful.” However, he adds that the work was “necessary” and that it was his responsibility “to make sure our operations were as effective as possible.”
However,
the liberal political icon’s anti-war critics don’t typically argue
that the drone program was ineffective, rather that it was more often
than not imprecise, killing many civilians in the process. The ‘Drone
Papers’ leak in 2015 revealed that, at least during one period, 90
percent of US drone strike victims were“not the intended targets.”
Obama infamously joked about the supposedly joyless drone strikes
during a well-remembered White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2010.
The then-president jokingly threatened boyband the Jonas Brothers with
assassination should they make a move on one of his daughters. “Boys, don't get any ideas,” he said, “I have two words for you: predator drones.”
It did not take long for Obama’s critics to express their outrage over the new book excerpt. He was accused of being “Machiavellian” for signing off on drone strikes “for optics.” Others were appalled by the idea that he would kill “to look tough.”
“I'm sure [his comments] makes the families of innocent civilian casualties feel better,” another person wrote.
One person quipped that he had only “pretended to be into drone assassinations” so he would “have something to talk about with the generals.”
"Fascism seems to have risen up zombie-like from the past, but
philosopher and political theorist Gabriel Rockhill argues that it's
been with us all along.
Today on the show, Allen traces a
counter-history of fascism—including its relationships to liberalism,
capitalism, and colonialism and how we understand/misunderstand its role
in the U.S.—with Gabriel Rockhill.
Gabriel Rockhill is a
professor of philosophy at Villanova University and the founding
director of the Critical Theory Workshop (Atelier de Théorie Critique).
He is the author or editor of nine books, including Radical History and
the Politics of Art (Columbia University Press, 2014), Interventions in
Contemporary Thought: History, Politics, Aesthetics (Edinburgh
University Press, 2016), Counter-History of the Present: Untimely
Interrogations into Globalization, Technology, Democracy (Duke
University Press, 2017). He recently published a series of articles
about fascism in Counterpunch and Black Agenda Report."
Excerpt (as an independent Marxist, I found this essay very inspiring):
Dixi et salvavi animam meam. With these Latin words Karl Marx concludes his Critique of the Gotha Program (1875) – “I have spoken and saved my soul.” One is unaccustomed to religious expression from the great communist, unless it be sarcastic, yet here he uses it to conclude a devastating analysis of the program of German workers party. What is Marx’s soul? How did he save it? And what about ours?
"If Biden has, in fact, received so
many more votes, why is the CNN-led media flock in such a hurry to
declare him the winner? Is it the media’s job to decide the winner in a
democracy? How will Trump and his sympathisers, about half of the people, react to what they must see as a provocation?
Why is Biden also offering no hope for the US itself and the world? How to explain this utterly strange happening and where will the US be in January 2021?
Robert Fisk was best known for his coverage of the Middle East, where he began reporting from in the 1970s
Veteran foreign correspondent Robert Fisk has died of a suspected stroke at the age of 74.
He
had been admitted to St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin after falling ill
at his home on Friday, and died shortly afterwards, the Irish Times
reported.
Fisk won numerous awards for his reporting on the Middle East, starting from the 1970s.
But he also drew controversy for his sharp criticism of the US and Israel, and of Western foreign policy.
Covering wars in the Balkans, Middle East and North Africa for UK newspapers over five decades, Fisk was described by the New York Times, in 2005, as "probably the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain".
Born in Maidstone, Kent in 1946, he later took Irish citizenship and had a home in Dalkey outside the capital Dublin.
Irish President Michael D Higgins has expressed his "great sadness" about Fisk's death on Sunday.
"With his passing the world of journalism and informed commentary on the Middle East has lost one of its finest commentators," he said in a statement.
After
starting his career at the Sunday Express, Fisk moved to Belfast in
1972 to cover the Troubles as Northern Ireland correspondent for the
Times. He became the paper's Middle East correspondent in 1976.
Based
in Beirut, he reported on the civil war in Lebanon, as well as the
Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the
Iran-Iraq War.
He
resigned from the Times in 1989 after a dispute with the owner Rupert
Murdoch and moved to the Independent, where he worked for the remainder
of his career.
In
the 1990s he interviewed Osama Bin Laden three times for the paper. He
described him as a "shy man" and looking "every inch the mountain
warrior of mujahedin legend" in their first interview in 1993.
'Gutsy and admired'
Robert
Fisk was brave and controversial. He was a brilliant writer, who did
his best work in wars, transporting readers to his side in some burning
village. He relished making enemies, especially if they defended US or
Israeli activities in the Middle East.
Fisk
could be obsessive. He collected bits of shrapnel, often American made
and fired by Israel, so he could use serial numbers to trace their
origins.
When
I visited Beirut from Jerusalem in the 1990s he served me gin and
tonics on his balcony overlooking the Mediterranean in a Yasser Arafat
souvenir glass. Robert was old school. He poked fun at the flak jacket I
brought to Lebanon from the former Yugoslavia, sniffing it to check for
slivovitza plum brandy.
Journalism
can be a dog-eat-dog trade. Fisk's colleagues were not always kind
about his work. I was an admirer, eating up his vivid reportage from
Beirut when I was at school, and was awestruck when first I met him.
I'll miss Robert, his guts and his appetite for the fight, even though
usually he followed a warm hello with some crack about the evils of
television news or the BBC.
After
the 11 September attacks plotted by Bin Laden, Fisk, an Arabic speaker,
spent the next two decades covering conflicts throughout the Middle
East, including in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
He
was highly regarded for his knowledge of, and deep experience in, the
region, and often dismissed journalists who sat behind desks instead of
venturing out into the field.
But
he also drew criticism for his attacks on Western policy in the Middle
East and was accused of being lenient towards the Syrian government in
his reporting of the country's long and brutal civil war.
Articles
by Fisk about the US and Israel were often considered highly
controversial. He said the Trump administration's acceptance in 2019 of
Israel's annexation of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights showed Israel had effectively annexed the US, and repeatedly accused Israel of committing war crimes against the Palestinians.
In 2011 Fisk was forced to apologise
after the Independent was successfully sued by the then-Saudi interior
minister over a report that alleged the minister had ordered police to
shoot and kill unarmed protesters, based on a document which turned out
to be fake.
Fisk married US journalist Lara Marlowe in 1994 but the pair divorced in 2006. He had no children.
The good news is that this can be done while at the same time
accomplishing our goals of ending poverty and improving human
well-being. Indeed, this is the core principle of degrowth. Recent
research has found that we can ensure good lives for all – for a global
population of 10 billion people by 2050 – with 60 per cent less energy than we presently use. Another study found that high-income nations could cut their material use by up to 80 per cent, while still providing for everyone’s needs at a high standard.
How do we get there? Scale down ecologically destructive and socially
less necessary production (SUVs, McMansions, industrial beef, food
waste, planned obsolescence, advertising, etc); shorten the working week
and introduce a public job guarantee, with a living wage, to maintain
full employment and mobilize labour for the transition; decommodify
public goods, disaccumulate capital, and distribute income more fairly.
All of these policies have significant public support. I describe
feasible pathways toward this end in Chapter 5 of Less is More (or see here for
a post-Keynesian approach). Doing this would enable us to accomplish a
rapid transition to renewables, in a matter of years, not decades.
In other words, we cannot reverse ecological breakdown while at the same time pursuing growth; but we can reverse
ecological breakdown while at the same time ensuring flourishing lives
for all. That’s the story we need to be telling. That is where hope
lies.
This week, people are planning protests across the nation beginning
the day after the election. Some, like Democratic Party-aligned groups
and unions, will only demonstrate if President Trump loses and refuses
to leave office. Trump will fail if he tries because the ruling class
has clearly shifted its support to Biden. Professor Adrienne Pine explains this in her analysis of the opposition to Trump. Others such as issues-based groups, coalitions and community groups are planning to take the streets no matter what the outcome of the election is.
This is good news because a mass mobilization of left and progressive
groups is needed to change the rightward direction in which the United
States is headed. Michael J. Smith’s explanation
of the “ratchet effect” describes the roles both Republicans and
Democrats have played in moving our politics in that direction since
1968. In a nutshell, each time the Republicans moved to the right, the
Democrats followed with the excuse that it’s necessary to win votes.
This locks in the rightward motion, opening space for Republicans to
move to the rightward again.
But Smith also writes, “the Democratic Party has assumed the
role of ensuring that the countervailing pressure from the Left doesn’t
happen. The party contains and neutralizes the Left, or what there is of
it. Left voters are supposed to support the Democrat, come what may.”
This is one of the reasons why the expression “the Democratic Party is
the graveyard of social movements” exists. How do we counteract that?
In a recent episode of Eleanor Goldfield’s series, Deception 2020, she and Eugene Puryear discuss
why the trope of “this is the most important election ever” is recycled
in every presidential election. It serves as a great distractor that
puts the focus on personalities rather than the broader social context
of where we are. It pits Republican and Democratic voters against each
other while the ruling class plays both sides, putting the most money on
the one that has the best chance of winning. The people hold their
noses and vote for whomever they consider to be the lesser evil while
the wealthy class knows their interests will be served no matter who
wins.
The year 2020 has brought into clear focus that we are living in a
failed state and can’t afford to be drawn into this distraction. The
number of new COVID-19 cases surpassed 100,000 in one day. The recession
is likely to deepen into a prolonged depression due to Congress’
failure to provide supports for families and their businesses and farms.
The climate crisis is raging. And structural racist violence goes on in
all of its forms while the Pentagon continues its insatiable
consumption of the federal budget leaving austerity for the rest of us
Instead of being caught up in this “political ping pong”, as Kevin
Zeese would call it, we need to focus on these grave issues before us. I
learned some lessons to avoid this ping pong during my involvement with
the health reform process in 2009-10 when we were advocating for
national improved Medicare for all while the Democrats were pushing
their version of a healthcare bill that protected the profits of the
health insurers, pharmaceutical companies and big businesses.
The lesson is best summarized using the acronym “ICU.” Think of it as
what is needed, especially in a time of crisis. The “I” stands for
independent. It is important not to tie our issue to the agenda of a
political party but to maintain independence from them while we press
for what we need, lest our struggle be co-opted. The “C” stands for
clarity, meaning we must be clear about what we are demanding. Members
of the corporate duopoly will always try to water our demands down with
proposals that may sound positive but are less than what we need. Look
at the Democrat’s Green New Deal as a current example that protects the
dirty energy industries and is too little, too late. And the “U” stands
for uncompromising. The ruling class will always tell us we are asking
for too much but we can’t compromise on fundamentals such as health
care, housing, education, financial security and an end to violence
against us. These are universal basic needs that nobody should be
denied.
With this 2020 vision, we can mobilize a broad movement that puts
forth a bold agenda of what we need and fights for it, no matter who is
elected. This is how we reverse the ratchet effect. We can look to Chile
as a recent example of a people succeeding in their struggle to reverse
the ravages of neoliberalism. Patricio Zamorano describes
how a similar situation to what we face, great inequality and
injustice, drove people to mobilize despite severe repression and win
the right to remake their Constitution.
Jeff Bachner/New York Daily News.
Violence on the rise
One reality we must prepare for is the continued rise in right wing
violence no matter who wins the election. If Trump wins and people
continue to struggle to end the injustices we face, right wing
extremists will be emboldened by a president who encourages them. If
Biden wins, they will be angered at what they view as a threat to the
gains they have made and may lash out.
In light of this, communities need to organize to be vigilant to what
is happening around them and to be proactive in creating structures
that provide safety and mutual aid, particularly for those who are most
vulnerable.
We live in an era of great polarization.
This is expected because it goes hand in hand with great inequality and
it often precedes moments of social transformation. Think of it as
heightening the contradictions and forcing a choice. Who are we and how
do we want our society to be?
George Lakey puts the polarization
into historical context. Almost one hundred years ago, when extreme
polarization existed in Europe, some countries moved to fascist
dictatorships while others moved to socialized democracies. The
difference was how the people organized and mobilized. Lakey suggests a
road map.
If people who consider themselves left or progressive fail to
organize and mobilize, we may go the way of a fascist dictatorship no
matter who wins this presidential election. If Trump wins, he may do
what others have done by trying to further consolidate his power into an
authoritarian state. If Biden wins, and he continues the neoliberal and
repressive policies that have marked his 47 years in elected office,
then the conditions will be created in 2024 or beyond for another
Democratic Party loss and an opening for a right wing leader who is more
effective than Trump at consolidating power.
Either way we must mobilize and protect our rights. While most of our
organizing will take place outside the electoral system because that is
where we have power, it will also be necessary to focus on preserving
whatever democratic rights exist and strengthening them.
Common Cause NY.
Protecting and improving the election process
As flawed as the electoral process in the United States is, it is the
system we currently have. Fair election and third party activists have
been working to change it for decades. Now, as it is on so many issues,
the major problems with that system – voter suppression, lack of
transparency and the process for choosing a president – are more
evident.
While the United States has never been a democracy, in fact a look at
the founding of the country shows the ruling class who wrote the
Constitution were afraid of it, the people believe in democracy.
Focusing on democratic rights in this election will bring people
together and build momentum to change the system.
Focusing on what President Trump says is a distraction. Recall that Trump was also saying that
he would not commit to accepting the outcome in the lead up to the 2016
election. The Democrats and the groups aligned with them are amplifying
fears to drive voter turn out, and it seems to be working. The latest Gallup Poll finds
almost 70% of registered voters are enthusiastic about the election,
which is an increase from the 50% who were enthusiastic in 2016 and
similar to 2008 levels. This is highest among registered Democrats.
Five Thirty Eight predicts
that due to the electoral process in a few states, for example
Pennsylvania is not allowed to start counting mail-in ballots until
Tuesday, and the way the states are looking right now, neither of the
major party candidates could reach the required 270 electoral votes on
election night. It could take a few days.
This is not cause for panic. Instead, let’s take a collective deep
breath and watch for problems with the process in our states.
Documenting these can be used to challenge and improve the process for
the next round. Already, people have been challenging the election process with more than 300 lawsuits filed in 44 states.
There is a small chance that President Trump will be re-elected. If
that happens, it will be critical to respect that result. To reject an
outcome of the election process we have opens the door to a breakdown of
that system and a vacuum that could threaten the hope of building more
democratic structures.
Remember, no matter what happens on November 3, our struggle goes on.
It is a long term struggle against deeply entrenched structures of
racism, capitalism, colonialism and imperialism that will have successes
and failures. Our best chance for a better future is to keep our eye on
the world we hope to create and keep working toward that goal.
PressTV’s
motto is to give “voice to the voiceless” and so we have given priority
to non-mainstream political groups during our coverage of the US
presidential election. We have spoken with socialists, Greens,
Libertarians and more, but the Democratic Socialists of America -
perhaps best exemplified by failed presidential candidate Bernie Sanders
- has openly blacklisted Iranian media.
After repeated requests, the Chicago chapter of DSA wrote to Press TV
that, “The officers of our organization have decided that it would not
serve our interests to do an interview.”
This caused PressTV management to contact DSA’s headquarters in New
York City to confirm if this allegedly-leftist political group was
really enforcing a blacklist on the entire media of an
internationally-recognized nation. As expected, no response was given,
so - crucially - no denial either.
It is a disheartening policy for a group which openly promises that -
if elected in greater numbers - their members will push the Democratic
Party and thus the entire nation to an unprecedentedly progressive left.
Take, for example, their most prominent member, Representative
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She said as recently as September, "I think,
overall, we can likely push Vice-President Biden in a more progressive
direction across policy issues. I think foreign policy is an enormous
area where we can improve; immigration is another one.”
That begs obvious questions: How can DSA officials from the national
down to the local level make US foreign policy more progressive if they
refuse to talk to foreigners and their representatives? Should DSA
members get elected or be appointed to public office, their members are
willfully ignorant of foreign viewpoints.
Just as worrying regarding the quality of the public service they
will provide, DSA cadres are being trained to use a unilateral approach
when dealing with non-Americans. Lastly, how authentic and patriotic is
DSA if they are not reflecting the values which the average American
seems to champion, such as the freedom of the press?
While Americans are days away from voting in their election, Iran’s next presidential election is in June.
It appears critical for Iranian voters to consider that if DSA - the
allegedly-leftist wing of the Democratic Party - refuses to engage in
normal cooperation with friendly Iranian media, then what is the
likelihood that such people are going to truly push Washington’s Iran
policy in a more open and progressive direction?
So even if Democrats win next week, DSA’s blacklist raises the
question: How could a Joe Biden presidency drastically alleviate the
US-led sanction war on Iran?
The Democratic Socialists of America should immediately reform their
wrongly-guided decision to blacklist Iranian media. Refusal to do so
would be an extremely belligerent policy which only helps to lay the
groundwork for ignorance, murderous sanctions, war and
anti-internationalism, and by a group which claims to be "Democratic"
and “Socialist.”
Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:
Two Saturdays ago, a theater company near me presented
a reading of the play, “My Name Is Rachel Corrie,” with four young
women speaking Rachel’s words on a simple stage 50 feet from commuter
rails.
About 60 people were in the audience, and there was none of the
political drama that accompanied the play’s New York premiere in 2006.
Israel’s friends did not succeed in shutting down a progressive theater company‘s
production of the show… When the show did get staged, no one handed out
flyers outside the theater.with pictures of Israeli girls killed in
suicide bombings
Yet in a way the play had more raw power last Saturday night than it
did when I first saw it 14 years ago. Director Christine Bokhour chose
the work because she was looking for a piece that would tie into Black
Lives Matter and other protests. “[Rachel Corrie’s] passion for social
activism, and willingness to put her own life on the line for it, is
what is inspiring to me,” Bokhour wrote in the program. “I cannot
imagine a time when I would have had the courage to do what she did.”
For anyone who doesn’t know: Corrie was an Olympia, WA, writer who
died at 23 in 2003 in Rafah, Gaza, as a volunteer for the International
Solidarity Movement, when an Israeli bulldozer crushed her as she was
trying to protect a Palestinian home from demolition.
Her words are familiar to me. Her published journals, letters and
poems helped propel me into this work in the first place. I can see her
book on my shelf as I am working now: “Let Me Stand Alone“.
But Rachel Corrie’s words were new to my wife and two friends in the
audience that night. And at the end of the show they all sat quietly
with their eyes on the ground. My friends were both too upset to talk
that night, so I caught up with them later.
Each said the play’s power lay in the fact that we get to reimagine the conflict through an young American’s idealistic eyes.
Reading of “My Name Is Rachel Corrie.” Four players are (l to r) Freya Wood-Gallagher, Faith Jones, Phoebe Bokhour and Tess Dul. Photo Courtesy Philipstown Depot Theatre, Garrison, N.Y.
“It resonated in a small town way,” said Sheila Rauch. “The
seriousness of what she was doing came through because of the four small
town girls on the stage. I thought, Rachel Corrie could have been just
like them. No, not every person is as socially conscious as Rachel
Corrie was. But all those girls were relating to her.”
Rauch went on, “All the things you have heard before about this
conflict — they were in the play, but through the eyes of someone so
young, so unprotected, and so American, whose whole understanding is
American. When she said, I’m so pathetic, how can I be the best hope for
these people who are being so hospitable to me — I was overwhelmed by
the tragedy of it.”
My second friend, Celia Barbour, also said she was familiar with
Israeli army demolitions, but overcome by hearing about them in a young
woman’s sometimes awkward voice.
“The early portions of her diary are almost wincingly personal in
places, like when she’s in middle school and high school,” Barbour said.
“But the silly parts just make her story more devastating at the end.
It makes her more human, which is the real strength of the piece.
“The way she grappled with her privilege also had huge impact on me. A
lot of us have been thinking about these issues lately. The choices we
make to support our comfort and safety, they don’t feel like political
acts. But just maintaining your own comfort and safety can have enormous
political implications.”
And Palestinian hospitality also touched Barbour.
“I was moved by her description of the hospitality of her Palestinian
hosts, especially the fact that they wouldn’t accept money from her,
their generosity of spirit and simple kindness. Because we seldom
experience that kind of open-heartedness here in America, we are so
defended and protected against one another. We don’t welcome strangers
into our houses, share our homes and tables with them. Here in the US it
seems that the more you have, the more you close your doors.”
The tensions between the child’s innocence and the activist’s worldly awareness gave the play its power to Barbour.
“What you see in the late correspondence with her parents is that she
becomes so articulate in her understanding of the politics. The
assurance in her voice in those pleas to her parents– we’ve all been in
that position; we were once that kid engaged in that discussion, finding
our voice and strength, standing up for what we believe. And it adds
more emotion to the piece. Her parents argue from what they’ve heard in
the news: there are terrorists on both sides. But by this point she has
grown to have not just an emotional and personal engagement, but an
intellectual engagement that makes her voice so much stronger. You’re
feeling the entire complexity of a person engaging in a struggle. And
all the pieces come together in a wallop. That is quite beautiful.”
Corrie herself was angered that her white Westernness protected her,
and the fact that it doesn’t in the end of course helped put the story
in headlines around the world. And led in time to this play (Corrie’s
words edited by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner) and to streets in
Palestine being named after Rachel Corrie.
I can’t help tearing up whenever I think of Rachel Corrie. I imagine
what she would have done with a longer life. But it is clear that she
made the most of what time she had… and her words will echo for a long
time in our country.
"MAYOR is a real-life political saga following Musa Hadid, the Christian mayor of Ramallah, during his second term in office. His immediate goals: repave the sidewalks, attract more tourism, and plan the city's Christmas celebrations. His ultimate mission: to end the occupation of Palestine. Rich with detailed observation and a surprising amount of humor, MAYOR offers a portrait of dignity amidst the madness and absurdity of endless occupation while posing a question: how do you run a city when you don't have a country?"
?In this episode of Going Underground, we speak to Dr. Jacob
Granville, who starred in Netflix’s Pandemic and is the CEO of
Distributed Bio. He discusses the treatments Donald Trump underwent for
coronavirus; the reports that the antibody cocktail he was given uses
tissue from aborted foetuses; how a vaccine would work, and how close we
are to getting one, including Russia’s Sputnik V; and why Covid-19
chaos will reign for a while yet… Next, we speak to Magid Magid, former
mayor of Sheffield and Member of the European Parliament. He discusses
his new book, ‘The Art of Disruption: A Manifesto For Real Change’;
fleeing Somalia as a child refugee; his time as mayor of Sheffield; his
respect for the city’s tradition of radical politics; why he vetoed an
official visit from Trump; the points-based immigration system Boris
Johnson’s government is aiming to implement, and why we should oppose
it; the health threat posed by air pollution, and more."
We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms
When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil
When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze
When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets
Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world
When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.
H/T to commenter YvonneBB on Naked Capitalism blog
“It’s a big party and you ‘ain’t in its leadership”
although your votes and your money are expected.
“Be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don’t
want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the real owners, the
big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the
important decisions. Forget the politicians. The politicians are put
there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t.
You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything.
They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations.
They’ve long since bought and paid for the senate, the congress, the
state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets
and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all
of the news and information you get to hear.”
![Former President Barack Obama speaks at a rally as he campaigns for Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden on Monday, November 2, 2020, at Turner Field in Atlanta [File: AP/Brynn Anderson]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/AP_20307723037596.jpg?resize=770%2C513)
“It’s a big party and you ‘ain’t in its leadership”
although your votes and your money are expected.
“Be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/964648-but-there-s-a-reason-there-s-a-reason-there-s-a-reason