Bulletin
N° 813
“THE LAB”
(documentary film, 51 mins)
An interview by Shir Hever with the filmmaker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk-uGss0jKE
Subject : The Forgotten History of Class Struggle and Surveillance.
28 August 2018
Grenoble,
France
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
The
unconscionable mass murder of 30,000 French revolutionaries in the period of
eight days in Paris (Bloody Week, 21-28 May 1871) led
predictably to a deep despair among the working classes and others in Europe
and beyond. It was a severe lesson for the late 19th-century
Socialists who had to learn what the ruling class was truly capable of doing in
order to protect their political and economic hegemony.
In
England, following this event, a Socialist movement grew out of callow
Romanticism and Radicalism, and beginning in the early 1880s one of the
architects of this new movement was William Morris, the famous painter,
poet, designer, architect, inventor, and community organizer, par
excellence. William Morris, scion of a wealthy industrial family, had
evolved to devote himself to bringing revolutionary culture to the working
masses of England. At a time when British bourgeois biases imbedded a
near-slave like mentality in English workers, Morris made a clean break with
his social class, an event in his life which he called “crossing the river of
fire.” Very few of his upper-class friends and acquaintances joined him, least
of all is wife. He described the class he deserted in a letter to his former
radical associate, T. C. Horsfall in 1884:
You think that individuals of good will belonging to
all classes of men can . . . bring about the change. I on the contrary think
that the basis of all change must be, as it has always been, the antagonism of
classes . . . . Though here and there a few men of the upper and middle
classes, moved by their conscience and insight, may and doubtless will throw in
their lot with the working classes, the upper and middle classes as a body will
by the very nature of their existence, and like a plant grows, resist the
abolition of classes . . . . I do not say that there is not a terrible side to
this: but how can it be otherwise? . . . . For my part I have never under-rated
the power of the middle-class, whom, in spite of their individual good nature
and banality, I look upon as a most terrible and implacable force: so terrible
that I think it not unlikely that their resistance to inevitable change may, if
the beginnings of change are too long delayed, ruin all civilization for a time.(p.376)
The
story of Morris’ odyssey has been carefully mapped in a powerful 900 + page
study by the famous British social historian E.P. Thompson, William Morris, Romantic to Revolutionary (London,1955).
In many ways this fascinating life is a social history of revolutionary
aesthetics in the early stages of industrial capitalism and with the birth of
the Third Republic in France. The owners of capital had taken their gloves off
to domesticate the working class, and the so-called “liberal” regimes in
Western Europe had revealed themselves for what they really were, a philistine
gang of men ready to commit any crimes necessary to preserve their privilege
and power, which was essentially based on managing labor exploitation so that
they could get what they valued most. This continual class warfare was not the invention of workers, who sought to
defend their human rights against political and economic oppression, but rather
this war was contrived by capitalists as one essential tactic within the larger general
strategy of capitalist class plunder, which requires also nationalist wars
and, similar in purpose, ethnic and religious wars, so that class-conscious
struggles can be displaced by identity
politics and fratricide, also
conducted for the profit of capitalist owners. (It has been pointed out that
even a mosquito knows the advantage of not drawing attention to his exploits.)
In
an environment of extreme inequalities, it can only be expected that the
economic injustice will produce various forms of violence, including
class-conscious struggle. The accumulation of wealth through egregious
exploitation of alienated labor expropriates our lives from our own control and
brings social production into the hands of a few private managers of capital.
This involves a protection racket,
i.e. the Security Industry which today has expanded beyond national borders and
into a world market, producing guns and technology for hire around the world.
Traditionally, this industry exploits minority ethnic/religious groups who are
more or less alienated from the rest of society and can sometimes be recruited
to act against the interests of society and,
when necessary, with extreme violence. This alienation is cultivated and
serves to smooth the relationship between the security “hardware” and the human
agent operating it. Thus, the efficient interface between man and his security
technology - a nearly perfect human adaptation to a sort of prosthesis, or extension of the man’s
body (his weapon and weaponized ideas) – assure no
psychological/technical adjustment problems. This industrial unit becomes a
valuable commodity to guarantee high performance on the job. But the advertised
value must be demonstrated before it enters as a commodity on the World Market,
before any sales can be concluded.
Enter
Gaza: The laboratory for managing future class struggles around the world, with
proven results. The Israelization
of the world!
Military
and paramilitary history since WW II, is full of examples of this phenomena of
capital management, including various Fascist groups for hire in Europe,
including, of course, the infamous Secret Army Organisation
(Organisation armée secrète or OAS), a gang of torturers in Algeria during the
War of Independence, who, once defeated in North Africa, were recruited by the
CIA to train torturers in South America for the US imperialist cause. [Please
listen to discussions at the November 23, 2006 CEIMSA conference on the University of
Grenoble Campus which followed the viewing of Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 film The Battle of Algiers and was led
by Professors Charles Lancha (professor emeritus
of Spanish-language cultures at UGA and the late Mohamed Benrabah
(UGA professor of social linguistics) who spoke on the subject of French torture
techniques in Algeria which were valued highly by the CIA and were ultimately purchased by
the United States government for police instruction in Latin America.]
The
21 items below will serve to remind readers that class struggle exists
as the historic bedrock of social change. We can ignore it only at great
peril. President Harry S Truman once
quipped: “The only thing new in the world is the history I didn’t know.”
Sincerely,
Francis
Feeley
Professor
emeritus of American Studies
University
Grenoble-Alpes
Director
of Research
University
of Paris-Nanterre
Center
for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and Social Movements
The
University of California-San Diego
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
a.
From:
Jim
O'Brien
Sent: Wednesday, 22 August, 2018
Subject:
H-PAD
Notes 8/22/18: Links to recent articles of interest
https://www.historiansforpeace.org/
Links to Recent
Articles of Interest
"Beijing's Bid for Global Power
in the Age of Trump"
By Alfred
W. McCoy, TomDispatch.com, posted August 21
The author
teaches history at the University of Wisconsin and is author of the
recent In
the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power.
"How
to Interfere in a Foreign Election"
By Stephen
Kinzer, Boston Globe, posted
August 19
On heavy-handed
US support for Boris Yeltsin's reelection in 1996
"American
History Is Full of Immigrant Haters Like Stephen
Miller"
By Clive
Irving, The Daily Beast, posted August 17
"The War Piece to End All
War Pieces, or How to Fight a War of Ultimate Repetitiousness"
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com, posted August 16
A retrospective
on the first near-17 years of the US war in Afghanistan
"US
Nuclear War Plan Option Sought Destruction of China and Soviet Union as
'Viable' Societies"
By the National
Security Archive at George Washington University, posted August 15
Newly
declassified documents on nuclear planning in the 1960s
"Gina
Haspel CIA Torture Cables Declassified"
By the National
Security Archive, posted August 10
The documents
were released in response to a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act.
By Gary Leupp, CounterPunch.org, posted August 9
The author
teaches history at Tufts University.
"What I Found When I
Visited Japan's Hiroshima Memorial"
By Fred
Pearce, History News Network, posted August 4
The author is a
journalist whose latest book is Fallout: Disasters, Lies, and the Legacy
of the Nuclear Age (2018).
"Trump,
the Republican Party, and Westmoreland County"
By Margaret
Power, Political Research Associates, posted August 4
The author
teaches history at Illinois Institute of Technology and is a co-chair of
Historians for Peace and Democracy. She grew up in Westmoreland County,
Pennsylvania and in this article she describes and analyzes its shift from
"blue" to "red."
"We
Quit Our U-Va. History Center Because It Hired an Enabler of Trump's
Anti-Truth"
By William
I. Hitchcock and Melvyn P. Leffler, Washington
Post, posted July 31
The authors both
teach history at the University of Virginia.
"Trump's
Foreign Policy Is Awful, but There's a Better Alternative than the
Establishment Version"
By Lawrence
S. Wittner, Foreign Policy in Focus, posted
July 31
The author is a
professor of history emeritus at SUNY Albany.
Thanks to an
anonymous reader for suggesting some of the articles in the above list list and to Steve Gosch for
suggesting some and consulting on all of them. Suggestions can be sent to jimobrien48@gmail.com.
===========
b.
European
Holocaust had Roots in Africa, Now Namibia is Suing Germany
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50102.htm
by Andre Vltchek
Without understanding what happened to the Herero
and Nama people, it is impossible to understand what
occurred right before and during World War II
In 2014, after I published my report about Namibia,
exposing the German ‘semi-denial’ that it had committed a Holocaust in its
former Southwest African colony; a renowned German university sent me a letter.
I paraphrase here, but the essence of the letter is kept intact:
“Dear
Professor Vltchek, we are impressed by your research
and your conclusions, and we would like to translate and publish your
groundbreaking analyses in German language. Unfortunately, we cannot afford any
payment…”
It was one of the major universities in the country,
with tremendous budgets and an international reputation.
I replied, asking why, with all those scholars and
academics, with PhDs and experts, they had never sent a team of experts to
Namibia, to investigate one of the most horrid crimes committed in the 20th
Century? I wanted to know, why they would suddenly want to rely on the work of
a foreigner, an outsider, an internationalist who refuses to call himself an
academic (for me it is now a totally discredited term)? Murdering the Herero
and Nama people in Southwest Africa by Germans was,
after all, the key for comprehending what happened several decades later, in
Europe itself, during the Holocaust that Germany went on to commit against the
Jewish and Roma people.
The university never replied. I suppose they sensed
that I was ‘dragging them’ into some extremely dangerous waters. They did not
want to ‘be there’; they preferred the safe, calm waters, where some foreign
left-wing intellectual writes something, they translate and publish it, putting
a disclaimer that this doesn’t necessarily reflects the position of their
respected journal and the university. As far as they were concerned, taboos
should remain taboos, and the dunes of Namibia should be stirred just a little
bit, for a limited intellectual discussion only. No storm, please!
It doesn’t take rocket science to discover what I did
in Namibia. There, I met common people, in slums and universities. I met UN
experts and Namibian government officials. I undusted various archive
documents. I consulted scholars in neighboring South Africa.
In Africa, Namibian history is no secret. Nothing is
taboo. This is what is common knowledge in Windhoek or in
Cape Town in neighboring South Africa:
The Germans drove into the desert, and then
exterminated, over 80% of the entire nation – the Herero. The Nama people lost around 50% of its population. The
concentration and extermination camps were built; monstrous medical experiments
on human beings were perpetrated. German ‘doctors’including
those who were working on ‘the pure
race doctrine’ in Namibia (the doctrine later used by the Nazis in
Europe), subsequently ‘educated’ many German racist physicians, including the
notorious ‘Angel of Death’ – Mengele. The most
notorious doctor, who experimented on human beings in Africa, was Eugen Fischer.
Not surprisingly, the first German governor of the
colony was the father of Hitler’s deputy, Herman Goering.
The holocaust in Africa is directly connected to the
holocaust in Europe.
===========
c.
The Anti-Empire
Report #159
The mind of the
mass media: Email exchange between myself and a leading Washington Post foreign
policy reporter:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50078.htm
by William Blum
July 18, 2018
Dear Mr. Birnbaum,
You write Trump “made no mention of Russia’s
adventures in Ukraine”. Well, neither he nor Putin nor you made any mention of
America’s adventures in the Ukraine, which resulted in the overthrow of the
Ukrainian government in 2014, which led to the justified Russian adventure. Therefore …?
If Russia overthrew the Mexican government would
you blame the US for taking some action in Mexico?
William Blum
Dear Mr. Blum,
Thanks for your
note. “America’s adventures in the Ukraine”: what are you talking about? Last
time I checked, it was Ukrainians in the streets of Kiev who caused Yanukovych to turn tail and run. Whether or not that was a
good thing, we can leave aside, but it wasn’t the Americans who did it.
It is, however,
Russian special forces who fanned out across Crimea in
February and March 2014, according to Putin, and Russians who came down from
Moscow who stoked conflict in eastern Ukraine in the months after, according to
their own accounts.
Best, Michael Birnbaum
===========
d.
The CIA Owns the
US and European Media
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50079.htm
by Paul Craig
Roberts
William Blum shares with us his correspondence
with Washington Post presstitute Michael Birnbaum. As you can tell from Birnbaum’s
replies, he comes across as either very stupid or as a CIA asset.
When I received my briefing as staff associate,
House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, which required top secret clearance,
I was told by senior members of the staff that the Washington Post was a CIA
asset. Watching the Washington Post’s takedown of President Richard Nixon with
the orchestrated Watergate story, that became obvious. President Nixon had made
too many overtures to the Soviets and too many arms limitations agreements, and
he opened to China. Watching President Nixon’s peace initiatives water down the
threat level from the Soviet Union and Maoist China, the military/security
complex saw a threat to its budget and power and decided that Nixon had to go.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy had resulted in far too much
skepticism about the Warren Commission Report, so the CIA decided to use the
Washington Post to get rid of Nixon. To keep the clueless American left hating
Nixon, the CIA used its assets in the leftwing to keep Nixon blamed for the
Vietnam war, a war that Nixon inherited and did not
want.
===========
e.
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from
the black left.
Toward a New Vision for the
Palestine Solidarity Movement
https://blackagendareport.com/toward-new-vision-palestine-solidarity-movement
by
Brandon Do
“For 70 years
Israel has been the biggest purveyor of war and chaos in what colonizers termed
as the “Middle East.”
May 15th, 2018, referred to as Nakba Day by the Palestinian
people, marked the 70th anniversary of the ethnic cleansing of over 700,000
Palestinians from their homeland by what would become the State of Israel. In
demonstration against Israel’s ongoing theft of land and systematic genocide of
the Palestinian people, the Great March of Return that began on March
30th served as a testament to the native Palestinian peoples’ striving for a
future without occupation, a future in which they can determine their own
destiny. Israel responded by gunning down hundreds of
demonstrators.
This crackdown on the Great March of Return
generated international protest, most notably from the football star, Lionel Messi, who refused to compete in an
exhibition match with Israel set to take place in a stadium that was built on
top of a demolished Palestinian
village .
However, the violence of Israel was also met with overwhelming support from the
United States. On May 14th, as children were being slaughtered by the Israeli
state, the United States initiated the move of its embassy to Jerusalem, bringing
to fruition the Jerusalem Embassy Act
of 1995 ,
which recognized the ancient city as the State of Israel’s capital and set
aside funds for the relocation of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
===========
f.
Israel is arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine
https://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-arming-neo-nazis-ukraine/24876
by
Asa Winstanley
The Azov Battalion uses the Nazi Wolfsangel
symbol as its logo. Its founder Andriy Biletsky (center) has moved to ban “race mixing” in the Ukranian parliament. (Azov/Twitter)
Israeli arms are being sent to a heavily armed neo-Nazi militia in Ukraine, The Electronic Intifada has
learned.
Azov Battalion online propaganda shows
Israeli-licensed Tavor rifles in the fascist group’s
hands, while Israeli human rights activists have protested arms sales to
Ukraine on the basis that weapons might end up with anti-Semitic militias.
In a letter “about licenses for Ukraine” obtained by
The Electronic Intifada, the Israeli defense ministry’s arms export agency says
they are “careful to grant licenses” to arms exporters “in full coordination
with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other government entities.”
The 26 June letter was sent in reply to Israeli lawyer
Eitay Mack who had written a detailed request demanding Israel
end all military aid to the country.
Azov’s official status in the Ukrainian armed forces
means it cannot be verified that “Israeli weapons and training” are not being
used “by anti-Semitic or neo-Nazi soldiers,” Mack and 35 other human rights
activists wrote.
They had written that Ukrainian armed forces use
rifles made in Israel “and are trained by Israelis,” according to reports in
the country.
The head of the Israeli arms export agency declined
to deny the reports, or to even discuss cancellation of the weapons licenses,
citing “security” concerns.
But Racheli Chen, the head
of the agency, confirmed to Mack she had “carefully read your letter,” which
detailed the fascist nature of Azov and the reports of Israeli arms and
training.
Both the defense ministry letter and Mack’s original
request can be read in the original Hebrew below.
===========
g.
Mattis: Putin Is Trying
To “Undermine America’s Moral Authority”
by Caitlin
Johnstone
At a graduation ceremony for the US Naval War
College (barf), US Secretary of Defense James Mattis asserted that Russian President Vladimir Putin “aims to
diminish the appeal of the western democratic model and attempts to undermine
America’s moral authority,” and that “his actions are designed not to challenge
our arms at this point but to undercut and compromise our belief in our
ideals.”
This would be the same James Mattis
who’s been overseeing the war crimes
committed by America’s armed forces during their illegal occupation of Syria.
This would be the same United States of America that was born of the genocide
of indigenous tribes and the labor of African slaves, which slaughtered millions
in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Libya and Syria for no legitimate reason,
which is partnered with Ukrainian Nazis,
jihadist factions in Syria and Iranian terror cultists,
which supports 73 percent of
the world’s dictators, which interferes constantly
in the electoral processesof other countries as a matter of policy, which stages coups around the world,
which has encircled the globe
with military bases,
whose FBI still targets black civil rights activists for persecution to this very day,
which routinely enters into undeclared wars of aggression against noncompliant
governments to advance plutocratic
interests, which remains the only country ever to use nuclear
weapons on human beings after doing so completely needlessly
in Japan, and which is functionally a corporatist oligarchy with no meaningful “democratic model” in place at
all.
===========
h.
Gina Haspel CIA Torture Cables Declassified
===========
i.
Lest We Forget
What I've Learned About U.S. Foreign Policy
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24441.htm
Video
Posted - March 06, 2012
The
history of the terrorism conducted by the CIA, since the end of the World War
II when countries in Asia and Latin America, were trying to make changes to
improve their economical and political situation, the Unite States realized
that it was not good for their status as new super power; and began a new
campaign, with only one rule, Anything Goes.
This is
the story of the terrorism of the CIA.
===========
j.
The chimera of British anti-Semitism (and how not to
fight it if it were real)
by
Norman G. Finkelstein
The current
hysteria engulfing the British Labour Party resolves
itself into a pair of interrelated, if discrete, premises: Anti-Semitism in
British society at large and the Labour Party in
particular have reached crisis proportions. If neither of these premises can be
sustained, then the hysteria is a fabrication. In fact, no evidence has been
adduced to substantiate either of them; on the contrary, all the evidence
points in the opposite direction. The rational conclusion is that the brouhaha
is a calculated hoax—dare it be said, plot?—to oust Jeremy
Corbyn and the principled leftist politics he
represents from British public life.
But even if the
allegations were true, the solution would still not be to curb freedom of
thought in the Labour Party. At its worthiest, the
Left-Liberal tradition has attached a unique, primordial value to Truth; but
Truth cannot be attained if dissentients, however obnoxious, are silenced.
Given the fraught history of anti-Semitism, on the one hand, and its crude
manipulation by Jewish elites, on the other, an objective, dispassionate
assessment could appear beyond reach. Still, it must be attempted. The prospect
of a historic victory for the Left might otherwise be sabotaged as, thus far, Corbyn’s supporters, whether it be from fear, calculation,
or political correctness, dare not speak the name of the evil that is afoot.
The degree of
anti-Semitism infecting British society has been the subject of numerous polls
over a sustained period of time. These surveys have uniformly,
consistently, and unambiguously concluded that anti-Semitism (1) has long been
a marginal phenomenon in British society, infecting under 10 percent of the
population, (2) is far less salient than hostility to other British minorities,
and (3) is less pronounced in the UK than almost anywhere else in Europe. One
might suppose that settled matters. But in 2017 the British Institute for
Jewish Policy Research (JPR) published a study that purportedly refined
conventional wisdom by measuring the “elasticity” of anti-Semitism: that is,
not just the percentage of confirmed anti-Semites, but also the prevalence of
stereotypes that stigmatize Jews.[1]
It found that, whereas a mere 2-5 percent of the British population can be
reckoned anti-Semites, fully 30 percent harbor at least one anti-Semitic
stereotype.
===========
k.
"What's
Happening To Corbyn Is A
Trial Run
For Bernie
Sanders"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50105.htm
by Professor
Norman Finklestein And George Galloway
Joining George on the Mother of All Talk Shows is
Professor Norman Finklestein, who calls in to discuss
the ongoing Antisemitism row
within the Labour Party.
===========
l.
A Gangster State
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50104.htm
by
Craig Murray
Max Weber defined a key attribute of a state as
holding the monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence within a given
territory. For anybody other than the state to use substantive physical force
against you or to imprison you is regarded as an extremely serious crime. The
state itself may however constrain you, beat you, imprison you and even kill you. That link is on deaths
in police custody. I might also quote the state murder
of 12 year old British child Jojo Jones, deliberately
executed by drone strike by the USA with prior approval from the British
government.
That is but one example of the British state’s decreasing
reticence over the use of extreme violence. The shameless promotion of Cressida
Dick to head the Metropolitan Police as reward for orchestrating the
cold-blooded murder of an innocent and unresisting Jean Charles de Menezes is another example. So is Savid
Javid’s positive encouragement
of the US to employ the death penalty against British men stripped of
citizenship.
There are a class of states
where the central government does not have sufficient control over its
territories to preserve its monopoly of violence. That may include violence in
opposition to the state. But one further aspect of that is state sanctioned
violence in pursuit of state aims by non state actors, done with a nod and a
wink from the government – death squads and private militias, often CIA
supplied, in South America have often acted this way, and so occasionally does
the British state, for example in the murder of Pat Finucane.
In some instances, a state might properly be described as a gangster state,
where violent groups acting for personal gain act in concert with state
authorities, with motives of personal financial profit involved on both sides.
It appears to me in this sense it is fair to call
Britain a gangster state. It has contracted out the exercise of state violence,
including in some instances to the point of death,
against prisoners and immigration detainees to companies including G4S, who
exercise that violence purely for the making of profit from it. It is a great
moral abomination that violence should be exercised against humans for profit –
and it should be clear that in even in most “humane” conditions the deprivation
of physical liberty of any person is an extreme and chronic exercise of
violence against them. I do not deny the necessity of such action on occasion
to protect others, but that the state shares out its monopoly of violence, so
that business interests with which the political class are closely associated
can turn a profit, is a matter of extreme moral repugnance.
Rory Stewart appeared on Sky News this morning and
the very first point he saw fit to make was a piece of impassioned shilling on
behalf of G4S. That this was the first reaction of the Prisons Minister to a
question on the collapse of order at Birmingham Prison due to G4S’ abject performance,
shows both the Tories’ ideological commitment to privatisation
in all circumstances, especially where it has demonstrably failed, and shows
also the extent to which they are in the pockets of financial interests – and
not in the least concerned about the public interest.
I should add to this that Tories here includes Blairites. Blair and Brown were gung-ho for prison privatisation, and even keen to extend the contracting out
of state violence for profit to the military sector by the deployment of
mercenary soldiers, which New Labour itself
consciously rebranded as “private military companies”. Iraq was a major
exercise in this with British government contracted mercenaries often outnumbering
actual British troops.
===========
m.
Why confronting
Israel is important, Alison's interview
on new apartheid
law, and more...
https://iak.salsalabs.org/blogdigest08232018/index.html?wvpId=9623ec16-0340-11e6-ab9d-12c35146c141
===========
n.
The Iron Wall
Colonisation of Palestine
Agreement with
Arabs Impossible at present
Zionism Must Go
Forward
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14801.htm
by Vladimir Jabotinsky
Originally
published in Russian under the title O Zheleznoi Stene in Rassvyet, 4 November
1923
"The Jewish
Herald" (South Africa) Friday, 26th November, 1937
===========
o.
Opposing racism in the US
while supporting it in Israel,
mass abductions, and more...
https://iak.salsalabs.org/blogdigest08162018/index.html?wvpId=9623ec16-0340-11e6-ab9d-12c35146c141
===========
p.
Genocide of the Greek Nation
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50087.htm
by
Paul Craig Roberts
The political and media cover-up of the genocide of
the Greek Nation began yesterday (August 20) with European Union and other
political statements announcing that the Greek Crisis is over. What they mean
is that Greece is over, dead, and done with. It has been exploited to the
limit, and the carcas has been thrown to the dogs.
350,000 Greeks, mainly the young and professionals,
have fled dead Greece. The birth rate is far below the rate necessary to
sustain the remaining population. The austerity imposed on the Greek people by
the EU, the IMF, and the Greek government has resulted in the contraction of
the Greek economy by 25%. The decline is the equivalent of America’s Great
Depression, but in Greece the effects were worst. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt softened the impact of massive unemployment with the Social Security
Act other elements of a social safety net such as deposit insurance, and public
works programs, whereas the Greek government following the orders from the IMF
and EU worsened the impact of massive unemployment by stripping away the social
safety net.
Traditionally, when a sovereign country, whether by
corruption, mismanagement, bad luck, or unexpected events, found itself unable
to repay its debts, the country’s creditors wrote down the debts to the level
that the indebted country could service.
===========
q.
Time Has Come For Russia To
Finally Ditch US Dollar - Foreign Ministry
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50114.htm
by
RT
Russia will definitely respond to Washington’s
latest sanctions and, in particular, it is accelerating efforts to abandon the
American currency in trade transactions, said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.
“The
time has come when we need to go from words to actions, and get rid of the
dollar as a means of mutual settlements, and look for other alternatives,” he said in an interview with International Affairs
magazine.
“Thank
God, this is happening, and we will speed up this work,” Ryabkov said, explaining the move would come in addition to
other “retaliatory measures” as a response to a growing list of US sanctions.
Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak recently
noted that a growing number of countries are interested in replacing the dollar
as a medium in global oil trades and other transactions.
===========
r.
Watching
America Collapse
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50118.htm
by
Paul Craig Roberts
In the 1950s and 1960s the United States was a
vibrant society. Upward mobility was strong, and the middle class expanded.
During the 1970s the internal contradiction in Keynesian demand management
resulted in stagflation. Reagan’s supply-side economic policy cured that. With
a sound economy under him, Reagan was able to pressure the Soviet government,
which was unable to solve its economic problem, to negotiate the end of the
cold war.
This happy development was not welcomed by powerful
forces, both in the US and Soviet Union. In the US the powerful
military/security complex was unhappy about losing the Soviet Threat, under the
auspices of which its budget and power had soared. Right-wing superpatriot conservatives accused Reagan of selling out
America by trusting the Soviets. The American rightwing portrayed President
Reagan as the grade-two movie actor dupe of “cunning communists.”
In the Soviet government Gorbachev faced a larger
problem. With trust established between the two nuclear powers, Gorbachev
released the Soviet hold on Eastern Europe. Hardline
elements in the Soviet Communist Party saw too much change too rapidly and
concluded that Gorbachev had sold out the Soviet Union to Washington. This
conclusion resulted in Gorbachev’s arrest, and the consequence of his arrest
was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party.
With communism departed, the Russians forgot all of
Marx’s lessons about capitalism and naively concluded that we were all now
friends. The Yeltsin government opened to American advice and, by naively
accepting American advice, Russia was looted and reduced to penury. Russia
under Yeltsin became an American puppet state, and the
Russian people paid for it with a great reduction in their living standard.
===========
s.
Julian Assange and the Fate of
Journalism
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50106.htm
by
Lawrence Davidson
Julian Assange is the
Australian founder of Wikileaks—a website dedicated
to the public’s right to know what governments and other powerful organizations
are doing. Wikileaks pursues this goal by posting
revelatory documents, often acquired unofficially, that bring
to light the criminal behavior that results in wars and other man-made
disasters. Because Wikileaks’ very existence
encourages “leaks,” government officials fear the website, and particularly
dislike Julian Assange.
Essentially, Wikileaks
functions as a wholesale supplier of evidence. Having identified alleged
official misconduct, Wikileaks seeks to acquire and
make public overwhelming amounts of evidence—sometimes hundreds of thousands of
documents at a time—which journalists and other interested parties can draw
upon. And since the individuals and organizations being investigated are ones
ultimately responsible to the public, such a role as wholesale supplier of
evidence can be seen as a public service.
Unfortunately, that is not how most government officials
see the situation. They assert that government cannot be successful unless
aspects of its behavior are conducted in secret. The fact that those aspects in
question thereby lose any accountable connection to
the public is discounted. The assumption here is that most citizens simply
trust their governments to act in their interests, including when they act
clandestinely. Historically, such trust is dangerously naive. Often government
officials, even the democratic ones, feel no obligation to their citizens in
general, but rather only to special interests.
===========
t.
Barrett Brown discusses his recent and very public
falling out
with Julian Assange,
his perspective on Wikileaks
and the role of Assange within it,
and his exciting new “Pursuance Project”
https://store.counterpunch.org/barrett-brown-episode-109/
(1h 9mins.)
===========
u.
Julian Assange's Mother Implicates Seth Rich In
DNC Leak
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50091.htm