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A Nonviolent Strategy to Liberate Syria

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Editor’s note: While we do not completely agree with the author’s analysis of factors leading to the strife in Syria, we share his desire for greater peace, freedom and stability in the region.

By Robert J. Burrowes

In early 2011, as the Arab Spring was moving across North Africa and the
Middle East, small groups of nonviolent activists in Syria, which has
been under martial law since 1963, started protesting against the brutal
dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad and demanding democratic reforms, the
release of political prisoners, an increase in freedoms, abolition of
the emergency law and an end to corruption.

By mid-March these protests, particularly in cities such as Damascus,
Aleppo and Daraa, had escalated and the ‘Day of Rage’ protest on 15
March 2011 is considered by many to mark the start of the nationwide
uprising against the Assad dictatorship. The dictatorship’s reaction to
the protests became violent on 16 March and on 18 March, after Friday
prayers, activists gathered at the al-Omari Mosque in Daraa were
attacked by security forces with water cannons and tear gas, followed by
live fire; four nonviolent activists were killed.

Within months, as the nonviolent protests expanded and spread, the
regime had killed hundreds of activists and arbitrarily arrested
thousands, subjecting many of them to brutal torture in detention. This
pattern has continued unchecked. For the earliest of a succession of
reports that document this regime violence against nonviolent activists,
see the Human Rights Watch report ‘”We’ve Never Seen Such Horror” Crimes
against Humanity by Syrian Security Forces‘.

For the most recent report, see the UN Human Rights Council report ‘Out
of Sight, Out of Mind: Deaths in Detention in the Syrian Arab Republic‘.

In recent commentaries on the war in Syria, both long-time solidarity
activist Terry Burke – see ‘U.S. Peace Activists Should Start Listening
to Progressive Syrian Voices‘
– and long-term Middle East scholar Professor Stephen Zunes have
encouraged the anti-war movement to listen to Syrian voices in framing
their response, particularly given the tendency within some sections of
it to support ‘the extraordinarily brutal Assad regime – a family
dictatorship rooted in the anti-leftist military wing of the Baath
Party’. See ‘Anti-war movement must listen to voices within Syria’s
civil war’.

One such Syrian voice is that of scholar and nonviolent activist
Professor Mohja Kahf. In her account of the Syrian uprising against the
Assad dictatorship – see ‘Then and Now: The Syrian Revolution to Date. A
young nonviolent resistance and the ensuing armed struggle‘
– Professor Kahf offers the following introductory paragraphs:

‘The Syrian uprising sprang from the country’s grassroots, especially
from youth in their teens, and adults in their twenties and thirties.
They, not seasoned oppositionists, began the uprising, and are its core
population. They share, rather than a particular ideology, a
generational experience of disenfranchisement and brutalization by a
corrupt, repressive, and massively armed ruling elite in Syria.

‘The uprising began nonviolently and the vast majority of its populace
maintained nonviolence as its path to pursue regime change and a
democratic Syria, until an armed flank emerged in August 2011.

‘The Syrian Revolution has morphed. From midsummer to autumn 2011, armed
resistance developed, political bodies formed to represent the
revolution outside Syria, and political Islamists of various sorts
entered the uprising scene. Since then, armed resistance has
overshadowed nonviolent resistance in Syria.

‘…political bodies and support groups for the revolution’s militarized
wing, have become venues for internal power struggles among opposition
factions and individuals, and entry-points for foreign powers attempting
to push their own agendas into a revolution sprung from Syrian
grievances, grown from the spilling of Syrian blood on Syrian soil.

‘Many in the global peace community can no longer discern the Syrian
uprising’s grassroots population through the smoke of armed conflict and
the troubling new actors on the scene. Further, some in the global left
or anti-imperialist camp understand the Syrian revolution only through
the endgame of geopolitics. In such a narrative, the uprising population
is nothing but the proxy of U.S. imperialism.

‘Such critics may acknowledge that the Assad regime is brutal, but
maintain from their armchairs that Syrians must bear this cost, because
this regime has its finger in the dike of U.S. imperialism, Zionism, and
Islamism. Or, perhaps they agree that a revolution against a brutal
dictator is not a bad idea, but wish for a nicer revolution, with better
players. Eyes riveted to their pencils and rulers and idées fixés, such
critics abandon a grassroots population of disenfranchised human beings
demanding basic human freedoms in Syria. This is a stunning and cruel
failure of vision.

‘The voices of the original grassroots revolution of Syria are
nonviolent, nonsectarian, noninterventionist, for the fall of the Assad
regime, and for the rise of a democratic, human rights upholding Syria
that is bound by the rule of law. They are still present in this
revolution. Who will hear them now, after so much dear blood has been
spilled, so much tender flesh crushed under blasted blocks of cement, so
much rightful anger unleashed?’

Other Syrian voices offer a similar account. See, for example, the
recent book by Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila al-Shami titled ‘Burning
Country: Syrians in Revolution and War’
reviewed in ‘Book Review: Burning Country‘.

If Syrians and their solidarity allies are to develop and implement a
successful nonviolent grassroots strategy to end the war in/on Syria and
remove the Assad dictatorship, then we need a sound strategic framework
that guides the comprehensive planning of our strategy. Obviously, there
is no point designing a strategy that is incomplete or cannot be
successful.

A sound strategic framework simply enables us to think and plan
strategically so that once our strategy has been elaborated, it can be
widely shared and clearly understood by everyone involved. It also means
that nonviolent actions can then be implemented because they are known
to have strategic utility and that precise utility is understood in
advance. There is little point taking action at random, especially if
our opponent is powerful and committed (even if that ‘commitment’ is
insane, which is frequently the case).

There is a simple diagram presenting a 12-point strategic framework
illustrated here in the form of the ‘Nonviolent Strategy Wheel‘.

In order to think strategically about nonviolently resolving a violent
conflict, a clearly defined political purpose is needed; that is, a
simple summary statement of ‘what you want’. However, given the
complexity of the multifaceted conflict in the case of Syria, it is
strategically simpler to identify two political purposes. These might be
stated thus: 1. To end the war in/on Syria, and 2. To establish a
democratic form of government in Syria (which, obviously, requires
removal of the dictatorship).

Once the political purpose has been defined, the two strategic aims
(‘how you get what you want’) of the strategy acquire their meaning.
These two strategic aims (which are always the same whatever the
political purpose) are as follows: 1. To increase support for your
campaign by developing a network of groups who can assist you. 2. To
alter the will and undermine the power of those groups who support the
war/dictatorship.

While the two strategic aims are always the same, they are achieved via
a series of intermediate strategic goals which are always specific to
each struggle. To keep this article reasonably straightforward, I have
only identified a set of strategic goals that would be appropriate in
the context of ending the war in/on Syria below. For a basic set of
strategic goals appropriate for ending the dictatorship, see ‘Strategic
Aims‘.

Before listing the strategic goals for ending the war, I wish to
emphasize that I have only briefly discussed two aspects of a
comprehensive strategy to end the war in/on Syria: its political purpose
and its two strategic aims (with its many subsidiary strategic goals).
For the strategy to be effective, all twelve components of the strategic
framework should be planned (and then implemented). See Nonviolent
Defense/Liberation Strategy.
This will require, for example, that tactics that will achieve the
strategic goals must be carefully chosen and implemented bearing in mind
the vital distinction between the political objective and strategic goal
of any such tactic. See ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of
Nonviolent Actions‘.

Strategic goals to end the war in/on Syria

I have outlined a basic list of strategic goals below although, it
should be noted, the list would be considerably longer as individual
organizations should be specified separately.

Many of these strategic goals would usually be tackled by action groups
working in solidarity with Syria campaigning within their own country.
Ideally they would be undertaken by activist groups with existing
expertise in the relevant area (for example, experience in campaigning
against a weapons corporation) but this is not essential.

Of course, individual activist groups would usually accept
responsibility for focusing their work on achieving just one or a few of
the strategic goals (which is why any single campaign within the overall
strategy is readily manageable).

It is the responsibility of the struggle’s strategic leadership to
ensure that each of the strategic goals, which should be identified and
prioritized according to their precise understanding of the
circumstances in Syria, (so, not necessarily precisely as identified
below) is being addressed (or to prioritize if resource limitations
require this).

So here is a set of strategic goals to end the war in/on Syria:

(1) To cause the women in [women’s organizations WO1, WO2, WO…] in Syria
to join the liberation strategy by participating in [your nominated
nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program
activities]. For example, simple nonviolent actions would be to wear a
national symbol (such as a badge of the Syrian revolutionary flag and/or
ribbons in the national colors) and/or to boycott all media outlets
supporting the war. For this item and many items hereafter, see the list
of possible actions that can be taken here: ‘198 Tactics of Nonviolent Action‘.

(2) To cause the workers in [trade unions T1, T2, T…] in Syria to join
the liberation strategy by participating in [your nominated nonviolent
action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities]. For
example, this might include withdrawing their labor from occupations
that support the Syrian military forces.

(3) To cause young people in Syria to resist conscription into the
Syrian military forces.

(4) To cause young people in Syria to refuse recruitment into the Free
Syrian Army, al-Qaeda and its affiliates/allies, the Islamic State
(Daesh) and its allies.

(5) To cause the members of [religious denominations R1, R2, R…] in
Syria to join the liberation strategy by participating in [your
nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program
activities].

(6) To cause the members of [ethnic communities EC1, EC2, EC…] in Syria
to join the liberation strategy by participating in [your nominated
nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program
activities].

(7) To cause the activists, artists, musicians, intellectuals and other
key social groups in [organizations O1, O2, O…] in Syria to join the
liberation strategy by participating in [your nominated nonviolent
action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities].

(8) To cause the students in [student organizations S1, S2, S…] in Syria
to join the liberation strategy by participating in [your nominated
nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program
activities].

(9) To cause the soldiers in [military units M1, M2, M…] to refuse to
obey orders from the dictatorship to arrest, assault, torture and shoot
nonviolent activists and the other citizens of Syria.

(10) To cause the police in [police units P1, P2, P…] to refuse to obey
orders from the dictatorship to arrest, assault, torture and shoot
nonviolent activists and the other citizens of Syria.

(11) To cause young people in [the US, NATO countries, Russia and other
countries fighting in Syria] to refuse recruitment into their respective
military forces.

(12) To cause conscripts into the military forces of [NATO countries,
Russia and other countries fighting in Syria] that still use
conscription to conscientiously refuse to perform military duties.

(13) To cause military personnel in the military forces of [the US, NATO
countries, Russia and other countries fighting in Syria] to refuse
deployment to the war in/on Syria.

(14) To cause young people in [your country] to refuse recruitment into
the Free Syrian Army, al-Qaeda and its affiliates/allies, the Islamic
State (Daesh) and its allies.

(15) To cause former soldiers in [your country] to refuse recruitment as
mercenaries by corporations that supply ‘military contractors’ to fight
in Syria.

(16) To cause the activists in [peace groups P1, P2, P…] in [your
town/city/country] to resist the war on Syria by encouraging their
members to boycott [all/specified nonmilitary products] of [weapons
corporations W1, W2, W…]. For example, this might include boycotting all
commercial flights that use Boeing and Airbus passenger aircraft given
the heavy involvement of these corporations in the production of
military aircraft.

(17) To cause the activists in [environment groups E1, E2, E…] in [your
town/city/country] to resist the war on Syria by encouraging their
members to boycott [all/specified nonmilitary products] of [weapons
corporations W1, W2, W…]. For example, this might including boycotting
all commercial products of General Electric given the heavy involvement
of this corporation in the production of military engines, systems and
services.

(18) To cause the workers in [trade unions or labor organizations T1,
T2, T….] in [your town/city/country] to resist the war on Syria by
encouraging their members to boycott [all/specified nonmilitary
products] of [weapons corporations W1, W2, W…].

(19) To cause the women in [women’s organizations WO1, WO2, WO…] in
[your town/city/country] to resist the war on Syria by encouraging their
members to boycott [all/specified nonmilitary products] of [weapons
corporations W1, W2, W…].

(20) To cause the members of [religious denominations R1, R2, R…] in
[your town/city/country] to resist the war on Syria by encouraging their
members to boycott [all/specified nonmilitary products] of [weapons
corporations W1, W2, W…].

(21) To cause the members of [ethnic communities EC4, EC5, EC…] in [your
town/city/country] to resist the war on Syria by encouraging their
members to boycott [all/specified nonmilitary products] of [weapons
corporations W1, W2, W…].

(22) To cause the artists, musicians, intellectuals and other key social
groups in [organizations O4, O5, O…] in [your town/city/country] to
resist the war on Syria by encouraging their members to boycott
[all/specified nonmilitary products] of [weapons corporations W1, W2,
W…].

(23) To cause the students in [student organizations S1, S2, S…] in
[your town/city/country] to resist the war on Syria by encouraging their
members to boycott [all/specified nonmilitary products] of [weapons
corporations W1, W2, W…].

(24) To cause the consumers in [your town/city/country] to resist the
war on Syria by boycotting [all/specified nonmilitary products] of
[weapons corporations W1, W2, W…].

(25) To cause more individuals in [your town/city/country] to resist the
war on Syria by conscientiously resisting paying [part/all] of their
taxes for war.

(26) To cause more organizations in [your town/city/country] to resist
the war on Syria by conscientiously resisting paying [part/all] of their
taxes for war.

(27) To cause [weapons corporations W4, W5, W…] to convert from the
manufacture of military weapons to [the specified/negotiated
socially/environmentally beneficial products].

(28) To cause [banks B1, B2, B…] to cease financing the weapons
industry.

(29) To cause bank customers to shift their deposits to ethical banks
and credit unions that do not finance (or are otherwise involved in) the
weapons industry.

(30) To cause [religious organizations R4, R5, R…] to divest from the
weapons industry.

(31) To cause [superannuation funds S1, S2, S…] to divest from the
weapons industry.

(32) To cause superannuation fund customers to shift their money to
ethical funds that do not finance (or are otherwise involved in) the
weapons industry.

(33) To cause [insurance companies I1, I2, I…] to divest from the
weapons industry.

(34) To cause insurance customers to shift their policies to ethical
insurance companies that do not finance (or are otherwise involved in)
the weapons industry.

(35) To cause [corporations C1, C2, C…] that provide
[services/components] for [weapons corporations W1, W2, W…] to cease
doing so.

(36) To cause the workers in [trade unions or labor organizations T4,
T5, T…] to withdraw their labor from [weapons corporations W1, W2, W…]
[partially/wholly], [temporarily/permanently].

(37) To cause the workers in [trade unions or labor organizations T7,
T8, T…] to withdraw their labor from [corporations C1, C2, C…]
[partially/wholly], [temporarily/permanently].

(38) To cause [corporations C4, C5, C…] that provides
[services/supplies] to [military bases MB1, MB2, MB…] to cease doing so.

(39) To cause the workers in [trade unions or labor organizations T10,
T11, T…] who work in/supply [military bases MB1, MB2, MB…] to withdraw
their labor [partially/wholly], [temporarily/permanently].

(40) To cause the workers in [trade unions or labor organizations T13,
T14, T…] to withdraw their labor from [corporations C4, C5, C…]
[partially/wholly], [temporarily/permanently].

(41) To cause [corporations C7, C8, C…] that manufacture and supply spy
satellites for military purposes to cease doing so.

(42) To cause the workers in [trade unions or labor organizations T16,
T17, T…] to withdraw their labor from [corporations C7, C8, C…]
[partially/wholly], [temporarily/permanently].

(43) To cause [corporations C10, C11, C…] that provide
[services/components] for the militarization of space to cease doing so.

(44) To cause the workers in [trade unions or labor organizations T19,
T20, T…] to withdraw their labor from [corporations C10, C11, C…]
[partially/wholly], [temporarily/permanently].

(45) To cause [corporations C13, C14, C…] that provide private military
contractors (mercenaries) to fight in wars to cease doing so.

(46) To cause the private military contractors (mercenaries) who fight
in wars to withdraw their labor from [corporations C13, C14, C…].

(47) To cause the soldiers in [military units M1, M2, M…] in [your
town/city/country] to refuse to obey orders to [arrest, assault, torture
and shoot, depending on your local circumstances] nonviolent activists
campaigning against the war.

(48) To cause the police in [police units P1, P2, P…] in [your
town/city/country] to refuse to obey orders to [arrest, assault, torture
and shoot, depending on your local circumstances] nonviolent activists
campaigning against the war.

(49) To cause individual members of the military forces at [Military
Base MB1/Drone Base DB1/Navy Ship NS1/Air Force Base AFB1/Army unit
AU1/Marines unit MU1] in [your town/city/country] to resign.

(50) To cause individual members of those corporations that
employ/supply private military contractors (mercenaries) to resign.

As you can see, the two strategic aims are achieved via a series of
intermediate strategic goals.

Not all of the strategic goals will need to be achieved for the strategy
to be successful but each goal is focused in such a way that its
achievement functionally undermines the power of those conducting the
war.

The difference between success and failure in any struggle is the
soundness of the strategy.

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘ His email address is flametree@riseup.netand his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

Robert J. Burrowes
P.O. Box 68
Daylesford
Victoria 3460
Australia
Email: flametree@riseup.net

Websites:
Nonviolence Charter
Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth
‘Why Violence?’
Nonviolent Campaign Strategy
Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy
Anita: Songs of Nonviolence
Robert Burrowes
Global Nonviolence Network

The Age of Disintegration

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Neoliberalism, Interventionism, the Resource Curse, and a Fragmenting World

By Patrick Cockburn

Source: TomDispatch.com

We live in an age of disintegration. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Greater Middle East and Africa. Across the vast swath of territory between Pakistan and Nigeria, there are at least seven ongoing wars — in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and South Sudan. These conflicts are extraordinarily destructive. They are tearing apart the countries in which they are taking place in ways that make it doubtful they will ever recover. Cities like Aleppo in Syria, Ramadi in Iraq, Taiz in Yemen, and Benghazi in Libya have been partly or entirely reduced to ruins. There are also at least three other serious insurgencies: in southeast Turkey, where Kurdish guerrillas are fighting the Turkish army, in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula where a little-reported but ferocious guerrilla conflict is underway, and in northeast Nigeria and neighboring countries where Boko Haram continues to launch murderous attacks.

All of these have a number of things in common: they are endless and seem never to produce definitive winners or losers. (Afghanistan has effectively been at war since 1979, Somalia since 1991.) They involve the destruction or dismemberment of unified nations, their de facto partition amid mass population movements and upheavals — well publicized in the case of Syria and Iraq, less so in places like South Sudan where more than 2.4 million people have been displaced in recent years.

Add in one more similarity, no less crucial for being obvious: in most of these countries, where Islam is the dominant religion, extreme Salafi-Jihadi movements, including the Islamic State (IS), al-Qaeda, and the Taliban are essentially the only available vehicles for protest and rebellion. By now, they have completely replaced the socialist and nationalist movements that predominated in the twentieth century; these years have, that is, seen a remarkable reversion to religious, ethnic, and tribal identity, to movements that seek to establish their own exclusive territory by the persecution and expulsion of minorities.

In the process and under the pressure of outside military intervention, a vast region of the planet seems to be cracking open. Yet there is very little understanding of these processes in Washington. This was recently well illustrated by the protest of 51 State Department diplomats against President Obama’s Syrian policy and their suggestion that air strikes be launched targeting Syrian regime forces in the belief that President Bashar al-Assad would then abide by a ceasefire. The diplomats’ approach remains typically simpleminded in this most complex of conflicts, assuming as it does that the Syrian government’s barrel-bombing of civilians and other grim acts are the “root cause of the instability that continues to grip Syria and the broader region.”

It is as if the minds of these diplomats were still in the Cold War era, as if they were still fighting the Soviet Union and its allies. Against all the evidence of the last five years, there is an assumption that a barely extant moderate Syrian opposition would benefit from the fall of Assad, and a lack of understanding that the armed opposition in Syria is entirely dominated by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda clones.

Though the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is now widely admitted to have been a mistake (even by those who supported it at the time), no real lessons have been learned about why direct or indirect military interventions by the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East over the last quarter century have all only exacerbated violence and accelerated state failure.

A Mass Extinction of Independent States

The Islamic State, just celebrating its second anniversary, is the grotesque outcome of this era of chaos and conflict. That such a monstrous cult exists at all is a symptom of the deep dislocation societies throughout that region, ruled by corrupt and discredited elites, have suffered. Its rise — and that of various Taliban and al-Qaeda-style clones — is a measure of the weakness of its opponents.

The Iraqi army and security forces, for example, had 350,000 soldiers and 660,000 police on the books in June 2014 when a few thousand Islamic State fighters captured Mosul, the country’s second largest city, which they still hold. Today the Iraqi army, security services, and about 20,000 Shia paramilitaries backed by the massive firepower of the United States and allied air forces have fought their way into the city of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, against the resistance of IS fighters who may have numbered as few as 900. In Afghanistan, the resurgence of the Taliban, supposedly decisively defeated in 2001, came about less because of the popularity of that movement than the contempt with which Afghans came to regard their corrupt government in Kabul.

Everywhere nation states are enfeebled or collapsing, as authoritarian leaders battle for survival in the face of mounting external and internal pressures. This is hardly the way the region was expected to develop. Countries that had escaped from colonial rule in the second half of the twentieth century were supposed to become more, not less, unified as time passed.

Between 1950 and 1975, nationalist leaders came to power in much of the previously colonized world. They promised to achieve national self-determination by creating powerful independent states through the concentration of whatever political, military, and economic resources were at hand. Instead, over the decades, many of these regimes transmuted into police states controlled by small numbers of staggeringly wealthy families and a coterie of businessmen dependent on their connections to such leaders as Hosni Mubarak in Egypt or Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

In recent years, such countries were also opened up to the economic whirlwind of neoliberalism, which destroyed any crude social contract that existed between rulers and ruled. Take Syria. There, rural towns and villages that had once supported the Baathist regime of the al-Assad family because it provided jobs and kept the prices of necessities low were, after 2000, abandoned to market forces skewed in favor of those in power. These places would become the backbone of the post-2011 uprising. At the same time, institutions like the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) that had done so much to enhance the wealth and power of regional oil producers in the 1970s have lost their capacity for united action.

The question for our moment: Why is a “mass extinction” of independent states taking place in the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond? Western politicians and media often refer to such countries as “failed states.” The implication embedded in that term is that the process is a self-destructive one. But several of the states now labeled “failed” like Libya only became so after Western-backed opposition movements seized power with the support and military intervention of Washington and NATO, and proved too weak to impose their own central governments and so a monopoly of violence within the national territory.

In many ways, this process began with the intervention of a U.S.-led coalition in Iraq in 2003 leading to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the shutting down of his Baathist Party, and the disbanding of his military. Whatever their faults, Saddam and Libya’s autocratic ruler Muammar Gaddafi were clearly demonized and blamed for all ethnic, sectarian, and regional differences in the countries they ruled, forces that were, in fact, set loose in grim ways upon their deaths.

A question remains, however: Why did the opposition to autocracy and to Western intervention take on an Islamic form and why were the Islamic movements that came to dominate the armed resistance in Iraq and Syria in particular so violent, regressive, and sectarian? Put another way, how could such groups find so many people willing to die for their causes, while their opponents found so few? When IS battle groups were sweeping through northern Iraq in the summer of 2014, soldiers who had thrown aside their uniforms and weapons and deserted that country’s northern cities would justify their flight by saying derisively: “Die for [then-Prime Minister Nouri] al-Maliki? Never!”

A common explanation for the rise of Islamic resistance movements is that the socialist, secularist, and nationalist opposition had been crushed by the old regimes’ security forces, while the Islamists were not. In countries like Libya and Syria, however, Islamists were savagely persecuted, too, and they still came to dominate the opposition. And yet, while these religious movements were strong enough to oppose governments, they generally have not proven strong enough to replace them.

Too Weak to Win, But Too Strong to Lose

Though there are clearly many reasons for the present disintegration of states and they differ somewhat from place to place, one thing is beyond question: the phenomenon itself is becoming the norm across vast reaches of the planet.

If you’re looking for the causes of state failure in our time, the place to start is undoubtedly with the end of the Cold War a quarter-century ago. Once it was over, neither the U.S. nor the new Russia that emerged from the Soviet Union’s implosion had a significant interest in continuing to prop up “failed states,” as each had for so long, fearing that the rival superpower and its local proxies would otherwise take over. Previously, national leaders in places like the Greater Middle East had been able to maintain a degree of independence for their countries by balancing between Moscow and Washington. With the break-up of the Soviet Union, this was no longer feasible.

In addition, the triumph of neoliberal free-market economics in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse added a critical element to the mix. It would prove far more destabilizing than it looked at the time.

Again, consider Syria. The expansion of the free market in a country where there was neither democratic accountability nor the rule of law meant one thing above all: plutocrats linked to the nation’s ruling family took anything that seemed potentially profitable. In the process, they grew staggeringly wealthy, while the denizens of Syria’s impoverished villages, country towns, and city slums, who had once looked to the state for jobs and cheap food, suffered. It should have surprised no one that those places became the strongholds of the Syrian uprising after 2011. In the capital, Damascus, as the reign of neoliberalism spread, even the lesser members of the mukhabarat, or secret police, found themselves living on only $200 to $300 a month, while the state became a machine for thievery.

This sort of thievery and the auctioning off of the nation’s patrimony spread across the region in these years. The new Egyptian ruler, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, merciless toward any sign of domestic dissent, was typical. In a country that once had been a standard bearer for nationalist regimes the world over, he didn’t hesitate this April to try to hand over two islands in the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia on whose funding and aid his regime is dependent. (To the surprise of everyone, an Egyptian court recently overruled Sisi’s decision.)

That gesture, deeply unpopular among increasingly impoverished Egyptians, was symbolic of a larger change in the balance of power in the Middle East: once the most powerful states in the region — Egypt, Syria, and Iraq — had been secular nationalists and a genuine counterbalance to Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf monarchies. As those secular autocracies weakened, however, the power and influence of the Sunni fundamentalist monarchies only increased. If 2011 saw rebellion and revolution spread across the Greater Middle East as the Arab Spring briefly blossomed, it also saw counterrevolution spread, funded by those oil-rich absolute Gulf monarchies, which were never going to tolerate democratic secular regime change in Syria or Libya.

Add in one more process at work making such states ever more fragile: the production and sale of natural resources — oil, gas, and minerals — and the kleptomania that goes with it. Such countries often suffer from what has become known as “the resources curse”: states increasingly dependent for revenues on the sale of their natural resources — enough to theoretically provide the whole population with a reasonably decent standard of living — turn instead into grotesquely corrupt dictatorships. In them, the yachts of local billionaires with crucial connections to the regime of the moment bob in harbors surrounded by slums running with raw sewage. In such nations, politics tends to focus on elites battling and maneuvering to steal state revenues and transfer them as rapidly as possible out of the country.

This has been the pattern of economic and political life in much of sub-Saharan Africa from Angola to Nigeria. In the Middle East and North Africa, however, a somewhat different system exists, one usually misunderstood by the outside world. There is similarly great inequality in Iraq or Saudi Arabia with similarly kleptocratic elites. They have, however, ruled over patronage states in which a significant part of the population is offered jobs in the public sector in return for political passivity or support for the kleptocrats.

In Iraq with a population of 33 million people, for instance, no less than seven million of them are on the government payroll, thanks to salaries or pensions that cost the government $4 billion a month. This crude way of distributing oil revenues to the people has often been denounced by Western commentators and economists as corruption. They, in turn, generally recommend cutting the number of these jobs, but this would mean that all, rather than just part, of the state’s resource revenues would be stolen by the elite. This, in fact, is increasingly the case in such lands as oil prices bottom out and even the Saudi royals begin to cut back on state support for the populace.

Neoliberalism was once believed to be the path to secular democracy and free-market economies. In practice, it has been anything but. Instead, in conjunction with the resource curse, as well as repeated military interventions by Washington and its allies, free-market economics has profoundly destabilized the Greater Middle East. Encouraged by Washington and Brussels, twenty-first-century neoliberalism has made unequal societies ever more unequal and helped transform already corrupt regimes into looting machines. This is also, of course, a formula for the success of the Islamic State or any other radical alternative to the status quo. Such movements are bound to find support in impoverished or neglected regions like eastern Syria or eastern Libya.

Note, however, that this process of destabilization is by no means confined to the Greater Middle East and North Africa. We are indeed in the age of destabilization, a phenomenon that is on the rise globally and at present spreading into the Balkans and Eastern Europe (with the European Union ever less able to influence events there). People no longer speak of European integration, but of how to prevent the complete break-up of the European Union in the wake of the British vote to leave.

The reasons why a narrow majority of Britons voted for Brexit have parallels with the Middle East: the free-market economic policies pursued by governments since Margaret Thatcher was prime minister have widened the gap between rich and poor and between wealthy cities and much of the rest of the country. Britain might be doing well, but millions of Britons did not share in the prosperity. The referendum about continued membership in the European Union, the option almost universally advocated by the British establishment, became the catalyst for protest against the status quo. The anger of the “Leave” voters has much in common with that of Donald Trump supporters in the United States.

The U.S. remains a superpower, but is no longer as powerful as it once was. It, too, is feeling the strains of this global moment, in which it and its local allies are powerful enough to imagine they can get rid of regimes they do not like, but either they do not quite succeed, as in Syria, or succeed but cannot replace what they have destroyed, as in Libya. An Iraqi politician once said that the problem in his country was that parties and movements were “too weak to win, but too strong to lose.” This is increasingly the pattern for the whole region and is spreading elsewhere. It carries with it the possibility of an endless cycle of indecisive wars and an era of instability that has already begun.

 

Patrick Cockburn is a Middle East correspondent for the Independent of London and the author of five books on the Middle East, the latest of which isChaos and Caliphate: Jihadis and the West in the Struggle for the Middle East(OR Books).

Washington moves to silence WikiLeaks

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By Bill Van Auken

Source: WSWS.org

The cutting off of Internet access for Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is one more ugly episode in a US presidential election campaign that has plumbed the depths of political degradation.

Effectively imprisoned in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for over four years, Assange now is faced with a further limitation on his contact with the outside world.

On Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry of Ecuador confirmed WikiLeaks’ charge that Ecuador itself had ordered the severing of Assange’s Internet connection under pressure from the US government. In a statement, the ministry said that WikiLeaks had “published a wealth of documents impacting on the US election campaign,” adding that the government of Ecuador “respects the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states” and “does not interfere in external electoral processes.” On that grounds, the statement claimed, the Ecuadorian government decided to “restrict access” to the communications network at its London embassy.

This statement from the bourgeois government of Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa is a study in hypocrisy and cowardice. By abetting the US government’s suppression of WikiLeaks, Quito has intervened in the US elections on the side of the ruling establishment and against the rights of the American people. If Correa expects that his professed sensitivity toward the “principle of non-intervention” will be reciprocated, he should recall the fate of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who was toppled in a coup orchestrated by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2009.

WikiLeaks cited reports that Secretary of State John Kerry had demanded that the government of Ecuador carry out the action “on the sidelines of the negotiations” surrounding the abortive Colombian peace accord last month in Bogota. The US government intervened to prevent any further exposures that could damage the campaign of Clinton, who has emerged as the clear favorite of the US military and intelligence complex as well as the Wall Street banks.

Whether the State Department was the only entity placing pressure on Ecuador on behalf of the Clinton campaign, or whether Wall Street also intervened directly, is unclear. The timing of the Internet cutoff, in the immediate aftermath of the release of Clinton’s Goldman Sachs speeches, may be more than coincidental.

In the spring of 2014, the government of Ecuador agreed to transfer more than half of its gold reserves to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for three years, in an attempt to raise cash to cover a growing deficit brought on by the collapse in oil prices. It reportedly sent 466,000 ounces of gold to Goldman Sachs, worth about $580 million at the time, in return for “high security” financial instruments and an anticipated profit on its investment. It is hardly a stretch of the imagination to believe that such a relationship would give Goldman Sachs considerable leverage in relation to the Ecuadorian government.

In any case, it is evident that the US ruling establishment is growing increasingly desperate to stanch the flow of previously secret emails and documents that are exposing the real character not only of Clinton, but of capitalist politics as a whole. While WikiLeaks has released over 17,000 emails from the account of Clinton campaign manager and top establishment Democrat John Podesta, it is believed that there are more than 33,000 still to come.

The transcripts of Clinton’s speeches to Goldman Sachs and other top banks and employers’ groups, for which she was paid on average $200,000 per appearance, are the most incriminating. They expose the workings of the oligarchy that rules America and the thinking and actions of a politician prepared to do anything to advance the interests of this ruling stratum, while simultaneously accruing ever greater riches and power for herself.

While on the campaign trail, Clinton has postured as a “progressive,” determined to hold Wall Street’s feet to the fire. But in her speeches to Goldman Sachs, she made clear her unconditional defense of the banks and financial houses. Under conditions of popular outrage against the bankers and their role in dragging millions into crisis in the financial meltdown of 2008, Clinton gave speeches praising the Wall Street financiers and insisting that they were best equipped to regulate themselves. She apologized to them for supporting the toothless Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law, saying that it had to be enacted for “political reasons.”

In front of her Wall Street audiences, Clinton made clear she had no inhibitions about ordering mass slaughter abroad. While telling her public audiences that she supports a “no-fly zone” in Syria as a humanitarian measure to save lives, she confidentially acknowledged to her Goldman Sachs audience that such an action is “going to kill a lot of Syrians” and become “an American and NATO involvement where you take a lot of civilians.” In the same speech she declared her willingness to bomb Iran.

The emails have laid bare the nexus of corrupt connections between the State Department, the Clinton Foundation, her various campaigns and her network of financial and corporate donors, which together constitute a quasi-criminal influence-peddling enterprise that could best be described as “Clinton, Inc.”

The revelations contained in the WikiLeaks material have been ignored or downplayed by the corporate media, which instead has focused unrelentingly on the charges of sexual misconduct leveled against Clinton’s Republican rival, Donald Trump.

The Clinton camp itself has sought to deflect any questions regarding what the candidate said in her speeches or the corrupt operations of her campaign by claiming, with no evidence whatsoever, that the material released by WikiLeaks had been hacked by the Russian government and therefore cannot be trusted.

This line of argumentation serves not only to divert attention from the WikiLeaks material, but also to further the Clinton campaign’s neo-McCarthyite claims of Kremlin intervention on behalf of Trump and advance a propaganda campaign aimed at preparing popular opinion for a direct military confrontation with Russia.

There is an air of desperation in the attempt to quash the WikiLeaks material. CNN news anchor Chris Cuomo, an open supporter of Clinton, went so far as to lie to his audience, claiming it was illegal for them to access the emails and insisting they could obtain any information on them only through the filter of the corporate media.

Well before the release of documents related to the Democratic Party, the determination of ruling circles to suppress WikiLeaks had found repeated and violent expression. State Department officials have come forward with a report that in 2010, in the midst of WikiLeaks’ mass release of State Department cables exposing US imperialist operations around the world, Clinton, then secretary of state, asked subordinates, “Can’t we just drone this guy?” She recently said she could not remember the remark, but if she made it, it was a joke.

During the same period, however, Clinton supporter and longtime Democratic campaign operative Bob Beckel declared in a television interview in relation to Assange: “A dead man can’t leak stuff. This guy’s a traitor, he’s treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United States… there’s only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch.”

To this point, the American ruling class has limited itself to judicial frame-ups and character assassination, counting on the help of its servants within both the media and the pseudo-left, large sections of which have either joined the witch-hunt against Assange or downplayed his victimization.

The principal vehicle for this campaign of persecution had been fabricated allegations of sexual misconduct pursued by Swedish authorities acting in league with the US and British governments. Earlier this year, the UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued findings that Assange had been “deprived of his liberty in an arbitrary manner,” meaning the body had reached the conclusion that the Swedish case constituted a politically motivated frame-up.

In the midst of the current attempt to silence Assange, an even more bizarre and filthy frame-up has been concocted, attempting to smear the WikiLeaks founder with charges of taking Russian money as well as pedophilia.

At the center of these allegations is a little known online dating service, Toddandclare.com, which first attempted to lure Assange into a supposed deal to film an ad for the site, for which he supposedly would be paid $1 million, to be provided by the Russian government. When WikiLeaks rejected this preposterous provocation, the same site claimed that Assange had been charged with inappropriate contact through the site with an eight-year-old Canadian child visiting the Bahamas. This accusation was then invoked in an attempt to pressure the UN to drop its demand for an end to the persecution of Assange.

Even a cursory investigation makes clear that these allegations constitute a grotesque fabrication. Bahamian police have stated that there are no charges or any case whatsoever against Assange. The dating service has no business address, working phone number or corporate presence anywhere in the US, having all the earmarks of a dummy company created by US intelligence for the purpose of hounding Assange.

The use of such tactics is a measure of how terrified the US ruling class has become in the face of growing mass hostility to both major political parties and their two abhorrent candidates. Their fear is that the relentless exposure of the inner workings of a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich is robbing the existing political setup of what little legitimacy it had left within the population, and creating the conditions for a political radicalization within the working class and social upheavals, whoever is elected on November 8.

 

Related Article:

Real Reason Trump’s Being Treated Like He’s Crazy for Refusing to Accept Election Results by Rob Kall

US media steps up campaign for Clinton

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By Patrick Martin

Source: WSWS.org

This week has seen a series of editorials by usually pro-Republican newspapers denouncing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in scathing terms. The commentaries have been accompanied by a series of press exposés of the real estate billionaire’s shady business practices.

The stepped-up intervention by major media outlets reflects the broad consensus within the American corporate and political establishment, including prominent Republicans, behind the Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. This support is based mainly on Clinton’s bellicose stance toward Russia and her close ties to Wall Street and the military/intelligence complex.

The flurry of anti-Trump and pro-Clinton editorials is at the same time a reflection of concern within the ruling class over the lack of popular enthusiasm for Clinton, particularly among younger voters, who largely see her as a corrupt representative of the status quo. The near-unanimity of the major media in support of the Democratic candidate stands in stark contrast to the broadly felt distrust and dissatisfaction with the candidates of both major big business parties. This disjuncture is one expression of the chasm that exists between the entire political system and the general population.

USA Today, the largest-selling US newspaper, with a combined print and digital circulation over 4.1 million, denounced Trump Friday as a “dangerous demagogue” and urged its readers not to vote for him. The flagship publication of Gannett Corporation, the largest US media holding company, said it had never taken a position on a US election in its 34-year history, but was breaking with that tradition because the Manhattan real estate billionaire was “unfit for the presidency.”

The newspaper attacked Trump for appealing to racism, taking advantage of small businesses in the operation of his real estate and casino empire, refusing to release his tax returns, and systematically lying. But its main criticism was on foreign policy, where it echoed the attacks on Trump from the right by Clinton.

“Trump has betrayed fundamental commitments made by all presidents since the end of World War II,” USA Today declared. “These commitments include unwavering support for NATO allies, steadfast opposition to Russian aggression, and the absolute certainty that the United States will make good on its debts… He is ill-equipped to be commander in chief.”

The newspaper said its editorial board “does not have a consensus for a Clinton endorsement,” but it called Clinton “the most plausible alternative to keep Trump out of the White House,” while allowing that others might vote for a third-party or write-in candidate or abstain. But it categorically urged its readers not to vote for Trump.

This approach was echoed by the Chicago Tribune, long a standard-bearer for the Republican Party, which nevertheless endorsed Barack Obama for president in his two campaigns. The newspaper endorsed Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson in an editorial published Friday. Like USA Today, the Tribune called Trump “a man not fit to be president of the United States.”

Hillary Clinton, “by contrast, is undeniably capable of leading the United States,” the newspaper wrote. But it refused to support her, citing her supposedly left-wing views on expanding federal spending. Instead, it backed the Libertarian ticket, which it described as “two moderate Republicans–veteran governors who successfully led Democratic states.”

The Arizona Republic, which has never endorsed a Democratic presidential candidate in its 126-year history, endorsed Clinton earlier this week, declaring, “The 2016 Republican candidate is not conservative and he is not qualified.” The editorial declared, “Despite her tack left to woo Bernie Sanders supporters, Clinton retains her centrist roots.” In other words, Clinton is a thoroughly right-wing Democrat, completely subservient to corporate America.

Other traditionally pro-Republican newspapers that have backed Clinton over Trump include the Dallas Morning News and the Cincinnati Enquirer. Clinton has dozens of endorsements from major daily newspapers. Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, has six, including the Detroit News, the New Hampshire Union Leader, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Winston-Salem Journal. Trump so far has none.

An editorial board member of the Wall Street Journal, which spearheaded the impeachment drive against President Bill Clinton and has long vilified Hillary Clinton as a corrupt semi-socialist, denounced Trump in a column published in the newspaper Friday under the headline, “Hillary-Hatred Derangement Syndrome.”

Dorothy Rabinowitz blasted Trump’s “casual disregard for truth, his self-obsession, his ignorance, his ingrained vindictiveness.” She noted the fascistic character of the Trump campaign, writing, “No one witnessing Mr. Trump’s primary race–his accumulation of Alt-Right cheerleaders, white supremacists and swastika devotees–could fail to notice the menacing tone and the bitterness that came with it.”

The choice in the election, she continued, “will be either Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton–experienced, forward-looking, indomitably determined and eminently sane.”

Adding fuel to the anti-Trump campaign are press exposures of the operations of his business empire and his eponymous foundation. The Washington Post continued Friday with the latest in a series of investigative reports on the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which had already revealed an illegal campaign contribution of $25,000 to the Florida state attorney general just before she quashed an investigation into the bogus “educational” efforts of Trump’s real estate institute, and a dubious payment of $258,000 to settle legal bills owed by various Trump-owned businesses.

Reporter David Farenthold discovered that the Trump Foundation had never been registered with the state of New York to obtain the certification required under state law before a charity can solicit donations from the public. The Trump Foundation raised more than the $25,000 threshold for seeking certification in each of the last 10 years. By failing to seek certification, the Trump Foundation avoided audit of its transactions.

Newsweek magazine chimed in with a cover story devoted to blasting Trump as a stooge of the Castro regime in Cuba, claiming he authorized spending $68,000 in Cuba to explore potential hotel and casino operations, at a time, in 1998, when such spending was illegal without approval by the US government. The clear purpose of the article, which was of a right-wing, anticommunist character, was to depress Trump’s support among older Cuban-American voters in south Florida, a critical “battleground” state where polls show a tight race between Trump and Clinton.

Meanwhile, the parade of prominent Republicans who have either denounced Trump or endorsed Clinton, or both, continues to swell. The latest was former Senator John Warner of Virginia, a former secretary of the Navy with close ties to the military-intelligence apparatus.

The Clinton campaign continues to highlight endorsements from former Republican congressmen and officials of the administrations of George W. Bush and his father, George H. W. Bush. A conference call Thursday featured former commerce secretary Carlos Gutierrez, former secretary of the Air Force Mike Donley, former deputy White House Chief of Staff Jim Cicconi, and three former congressmen.

The increasingly right-wing appeal of the Clinton campaign was underscored in an op-ed column by billionaire Steve Case, former CEO of AOL Time Warner, who cited as one of his major reasons for backing the Democratic candidate: “I agree with Clinton on the need to control the deficit.” He added that Clinton was “our best hope to remain the most innovative and entrepreneurial nation in the world.”

Nearly all of the newspaper editorials and endorsement statements have cited foreign policy and Clinton’s greater reliability as US “commander-in-chief” in a future confrontation with Russia. This has been particularly the standpoint of the bevy of former Bush administration officials who spearheaded the war in Iraq, including neo-conservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Eliot Cohen and Robert Kagan.

A driving force behind this outpouring of ruling class support for Clinton is concern that the former secretary of state is so unpopular, as the personification of wealth, privilege and the reactionary status quo, that she could actually lose the election to Trump.

Trump makes an appeal, albeit of an entirely demagogic and right-wing character, to layers of the working class and lower middle class devastated by plant closures, declining real wages and deteriorating social conditions. He says crudely what millions are experiencing in their own lives: America is sinking into ever-deeper social and economic crisis. Clinton’s complacent pledges to continue the “progress” made under Obama only further discredit the Democratic Party and her campaign.

Stop Trump! Stop Clinton! Stop the Madness (and Let Me Off)!

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Source: Stop Imerialism

“That’s the real issue this time,” he said. “Beating Nixon.  It’s hard to even guess how much damage those bastards will do if they get in for another four years.”

The argument was familiar, I had even made it myself, here and there, but I was beginning to sense something very depressing about it.  How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame, but “regrettably necessary” holding actions?  And how many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?

Now with another one of these big bogus showdowns looming down on us, I can already pick up the stench of another bummer.  I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing this year is Beating Nixon.  But that was also the big thing, as I recall, twelve years ago in 1960 – and as far as I can tell, we’ve gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same.

—Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72

 

Another bummer indeed. It’s been nearly four and a half decades since His Majesty, Dr. Gonzo, wrote those words…and my oh my has the rot turned putrid, the stench overwhelming.

Were it only the fact that a corporate imperialist sociopath and a raving pseudo-fascist gasbag are competing to become the Murderer-in-Chief, one could simply retreat to the friendly confines of the Hobson’s Choice Inn.  There, among the carpets and curtains carrying the stains of elections past, one would watch the political circus in peace while doing the work of organizing against both Tweedle Bum and Tweedle Bummer.

But this time, there’s something even more sinister afoot, something far worse than mere cardboard cutouts in formal dress. No, this time it’s the pompous arrogance and vacuous prattling of “leftists,” “anti-imperialists,” and other assorted mental contortionists doing their damnedest to browbeat everyone within earshot (eyeshot?) that THIS TIME it’s important!

“How can you sit aside so smug and allow the fascist Trump to win? You’re being irresponsible,” they chirp.

“How can you attack Trump and let the Warmongering Witch of the West become President? You know what she’ll do,” they drone.

And the response to the denizens of both camps remains the same: If you’re not opposing both Janus faces of Dillary Crump while working to guillotine the many-headed hydra of the ruling class, then what the hell are you really doing?  Oh, right, I forgot – this is all “strategic,” it’s about avoiding a calamity by accepting a disaster.  I’m sure the children of Libya or Muslim-American and Mexican-American immigrants will understand as they are crushed under the bus beneath which they were thrown by a “progressive left” so quick to speak for them.

But perhaps it might be useful for the Left, of which I consider myself a part, to reflect on just what the sort of ‘sophisticated’ and ‘pragmatic’ politics of lesser evilism hath wrought: the continued evisceration of the working class by both the red team and blue team of the single ruling party, perpetual war for profit and Empire, an immutable rightward drift that makes Richard Nixon look like Eugene Debs, and a parasitical ruling class of finance capital whose greatest trick has been convincing the people that it doesn’t rule them.

And where are the victories?  What can we point to as the great breakthrough justifying the tactical vote?  [crickets]…[a single tumbleweed rolls along an empty desert landscape]

Have we seen anything but an acceleration of the worst aspects of imperialism and capitalism?  The climate is in crisis and we’re told by leftist royalty like the great Noam Chomsky that we should vote for Clinton because she at least recognizes the peril of climate change while Trump wants to put a lump of coal in Pachamama’s stockings.  But the obvious question then becomes: so what?

So what Clinton pays lip service to the global threat? She was an ardent supporter of the “All of the above” energy policy of Obama while promoting fracking around the world, taking massive campaign donations from energy industry lobbyists, and tacitly supporting the construction and expansion of the Keystone XL pipeline until it became politically untenable (thanks in no small part to the Bernie Sanders campaign).  And, of course, who could forget the votes she cast in support for expanded offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, a shameful vote which directly contributed to the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010.

I suppose the question should be asked of Chomsky: Is a begrudging vote for Hillary to be cast solely on the grounds of her having appropriately progressive and focus-grouped talking points?  It seems that’s just about the size of it. So then the inevitable follow-up question would be: Why f*cking bother rewarding her for knowing the importance of lying well?

And how about that pesky little World War III problem?  I can almost hear the “Oh, don’t exaggerate…Hillary doesn’t want to start a war with nuclear-armed Russia” cries from the tastemakers of the liberal unintelligentsia.  Well, let’s allow the Queen of Chaos to speak for herself.  In a raving, Strangelovian speech given before the mouth-breathing jingos of the American Legion, Clinton explained:

We need to respond to evolving threats, from states like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea…We need a military that is ready and agile so that it can meet the full range of threats — and operate on short notice across every domain — not just land, sea, air, and space, but also cyber space…You’ve seen reports — Russia has hacked into a lot of things, China has hacked into a lot of things — Russia even hacked into the Democratic National Committee! Maybe even some state election systems, so we’ve gotta step up our game…Make sure we are well defended and able to take the fight to those who go after us. As president I will make it clear that we will treat cyberattacks just like any other attack…We will be ready with serious political, economic, and military responses.

Did anyone else feel a shiver run down their spine, as I did?  Clinton literally advocates for war with Russia, arguing that a cyberattack which may, or may not, have originated in Russia be treated as an act of war.  Nuclear-armed Russia should expect a military response from the United States over allegations of hacking?  It’s sort of a pot calling the kettle black and trying to smash it with a goddamn sledgehammer kind of situation.

Now, of course, there are plenty of good people on the Left – Adolph Reed, Noam Chomsky, Arun Gupta, and many others – arguing that Clinton is a necessary evil to block Trump from bringing to fruition a full-fledged fascist movement that would have dire ramifications for social justice movements.  And there is undeniably an element of truth in that.

However, the wisdom of the logic relies on a false premise: Trump represents an existential threat while Hillary does not.  This basic assumption is undeniably flawed as global war with countries like Russia and China is indeed one of the great threats to humanity; this is precisely what Clinton’s belligerent foreign policy leads toward.  And there was a time when anti-war still was synonymous with Left activism.  What happened that we are now told that the pro-war position is necessary in order to stop, er, um, fascism?  How far we’ve fallen.

Trump: The Fascist “Anti-Imperialist”

In the unending search for the most imbecilic political logic, one comes across that rare breed of obtuse ignoramus who suggests that Trump is the anti-imperialist’s choice.  If that word has any meaning left today – something that is very much open for debate given recent developments – its application to Donald Trump is about as appropriate as referring to Clinton as the anti-fascist’s choice.

Trump doesn’t mean no more imperial wars; he simply means no more pretending our wars aren’t imperial.  He’s not for ending the wars, but rather fighting them with the nakedly neo-colonial intentions made overt that Clinton would only secretly share over candlelit dinners with Huma Abedin, Madeleine Albright, and Mephistopheles.  With people like Walid Phares, Michael Flynn, and Keith Kellogg as advisers, Trump will retain a pro-Israel imperial policy in the Middle East while advocating for NATO’s expanded mission of counter-terrorism.  Oh, excuse me, Trump wants Denmark to pay “it’s fair share” of NATO costs – pardon me while I release to the heavens a flight of doves in his honor.

What anti-imperialist isn’t enamored with a candidate who calls for a full military invasion of Syria and Iraq? And, of course, there’s no connection whatever between imperialism, colonialism and white supremacy, right?  Trump can spout the most virulently racist filth heard in US politics since George Wallace and Barry Goldwater went on a Tinder date to the Old Ebbitt Grill, and yet these anti-imperial mannequins swear up and down that Trump is an enemy of the Empire.  Even his complimentary reach-around to Bibi Netanyahu isn’t enough to shake the cobwebs from the faux anti-imperial noodleheads of the commentariat. Sigh.

And so, where does this leave us on the Left?  Everyone wants to bludgeon leftists into supporting Clinton to stop Trump using the familiar cudgel of “necessary evil”, while offering little to no additional direction other than “once the election is over we will…”  Yeaaaaaah, that’s worked out well for us thus far.

Others secretly root for Trump to upset the apple cart and open a space for the Left, conveniently forgetting that the Left remains a fractured and disunited bloc while the fascist right grows in strength and organization every day.  And commentators of the Left rush to tell their readers and fellow travelers that THIS or THAT is what they should do.

I’ve got an idea. How about we take a breath, drink/smoke/snort something nice and strong, close our eyes and listen close to hear the echoes of Dr. Gonzo reverberating off the walls of the Left echo chamber:

“Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.”

Or, if that’s just too droll:

“In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”

Obama Fears Backlash from Saudi 9/11 Bill — So What?

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By Klaus Marre

Source: Who.What.Why.

Only an idiot would sign an order triggering a process that ends up with them in court. President Barack Obama is not an idiot and that is why he vetoed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA).

The legislation, which allows victims of terror attacks on US soil to sue foreign governments, was very popular in Congress where lawmakers did not want to seem unpatriotic ahead of the election. That is why, to Obama’s great disappointment and consternation, Congress overrode the veto — and immediately showed buyer’s remorse.

Specifically, its purpose is as follows:

The purpose of this Act is to provide civil litigants with the broadest possible basis, consistent with the Constitution of the United States, to seek relief against persons, entities, and foreign countries, wherever acting and wherever they may be found, that have provided material support, directly or indirectly, to foreign organizations or persons that engage in terrorist activities against the United States.

What the legislators had apparently not considered, even though it was Obama’s main argument for not supporting the bill, were the unintended consequences of JASTA. Sure, allowing the families of 9/11 victims to sue the government of Saudi Arabia sounded like a great idea to lawmakers running for reelection.

Yet the law will also open up the United States, its military and intelligence services to the same kind of action abroad. That is something Obama wanted to avoid at all costs — and why the White House called the veto override the “single most embarrassing thing” the Senate has done in decades.

But why? Shouldn’t the United States conduct itself in a way that would prevent it from getting sued abroad? The president, who has access to more intelligence than anybody else, clearly didn’t think so.

If JASTA allows Saudi Arabia to be sued for whatever level of complicity in the 9/11 attacks a US court finds sufficient evidence of, just imagine what the United States government can be taken to court for.

There is already talk of Vietnam War veterans being particularly vulnerable to lawsuits. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Could Pakistanis whose wedding got blown up by a drone take Obama to court? Can one of the many torture victims sue to get the names of their guards, torturers, etc. and then seek compensation from them? Or what about GITMO prisoners who were released without ever being charged? Finally, what about any citizen of a country that was plunged into turmoil as a result of CIA actions?

Maybe an easier challenge would be to figure out who couldn’t sue the United States once this precedent has been established.

But we ask again: Would that really be such a bad thing, especially going forward? It could serve as a deterrent and maybe the United States, as well as the other big players on the world stage, would think twice about intervening in the affairs of other countries if the threat of personal accountability would hang over their heads.

Cutting the Cords of Empire: The Spectacle of US Elections

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By William Hawes

Source: Global Research

“The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist.” -Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

It’s almost time for our quadrennial political distraction, masquerading as the US presidential election. As opposed to previous elections, this one feels quite different. Even with Obama/Romney in 2012, important, basic economic issues were discussed, health care reform was questioned, and foreign policy was given its due.

However, this time, the spectacle of the personalities seems to dominate the conversation: Mrs. Clinton is somehow on a feminist crusade, an inspiration for women everywhere. Going unmentioned are her irredeemable backers, such as the genocidal Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright. As for Trump, his version of America is as naïve, narrow-minded, and delusional as a Leave It to Beaver episode, or a Captain America comic book. In the background, the monstrosity of global capitalism goes unquestioned, and the cries from victims of US institutional racism and structural violence go unheard.

Global warming, broad economic policy, and nuanced foreign policy are simply too much to ask of these candidates. Their stupidity knows no end; their corruption and depravity know no bounds, and many of both of their supporters, as well as media, political, and corporate backers and sycophants can be considered “deplorable”. Many supporters of the two-party system do not bother to think about the damage either potential president would do to people outside the US. Many backers of Trump and Clinton have little to no basic knowledge of world cultures and history.

What are the cords that connect us to these “leaders”, to our American Empire? They are the same ones that the Industrial Revolution, the basis of our civilization, has implanted in each of us since birth, as Alvin Toffler explains in The Third Wave. As our social world became modeled on the factory floors developed in the 18th and 19th centuries, a set of unspoken principles were ironed out, and transferred to the political, social, and economic realms. (1)  As we shall see, these principles spread unchecked, and have infiltrated political discourse and social hierarchies. Toffler identifies these implicit rules as:

1) Standardization: Industry, production, and factory life revolved around endless loops and inputs of metals, fabrics, coal, oil, and specialized parts for trains, cars, etc. The simplification and standard mechanical parts used were mirrored and reflected in the culture at large: eventually, markets, the media, radio and TV, and even great art and literature succumbed to commoditization and homogenization. We now have mass marketing, public relations, and “electioneering”, where our duopoly controls all branches of government.

2) Specialization: With the explosion in the fields of science and engineering, specialized techniques were taught to develop, invent, and maintain mechanical and electric equipment. Yet again, this philosophy infected the general society:  only bureaucrats are able to work in the halls of power, only industrial experts are able to administer federal agencies, creating the disgraceful revolving door phenomena in Washington.

3) Synchronization: As more people flocked into cities with gleaming promises of steady, factory jobs, time and punctuality became of prime importance. Punching timecards and meeting quotas were necessary: there was no room for leeway, as assembly lines demanded strict timelines. The time demands of labor leaked into white-collar work as well: in banking and finance, railroads, time zones, and office jobs, advanced scheduling became the norm. Eventually, synchronization of the political system gained traction, and the imperial system came to resemble a deathly machine, marching in time to bloody footsteps: military, immoral diplomacy and ideology, and industry worked together to lord over Latin America with the Monroe Doctrine, annihilate Native Americans using Manifest Destiny, even as today, the excuse of the “War on Terror” is used to exterminate entire populations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere.

4) Concentration: Think of the vast oil and coal stored underground for millions of years, only to be strip-mined, taken up by rigs, and transported by rail and tanker into vast refineries: concentration of energy. Further, every class of people became absorbed and intensified in the industrial system: workers into factories, children into schools, mentally ill into institutions, finance concentrated into New York, London, and Paris. Mega-mergers of corporations: today, it is the Apple, Google, Shell, and BP’s of the world who have coffers of blood money held tidily in banks throughout the world. Further, the concentration of technocrats who we supposedly need to run our societies: in the West, the military-industrialists, just as the Soviets were once told the nomenklatura was necessary.

5) Maximization: Firms were encouraged to grow as large as possible, and expand into as many fields as possible. Companies in Japan in the mid-twentieth century would actually have workers sing of the glory and greatness of their employer. Today, 62 people have the same wealth as half the world’s population. This is concentration and maximizing at its most obscene. Of course, you won’t hear Clinton, Trump, or anyone in Washington talking about this. Maximizing GDP, corporate profits, fossil fuel use, and flexing imperial muscle is what the Feds do best.

6) Centralization: Connected to the first five rules of empire stated above, centralizing power, wealth, and using knowledge for private gain is required to uphold the industrial state. Taxation, subsidies for industry, political debates via the sham Committee on Presidential Debates, the backroom shenanigans of the DNC and RNC, and cloak and dagger lobbying and bribery now dominate our system of government. Further, the Leviathan of state-sanctioned violence now lords over the world from the Pentagon and NATO, and the centralization of information runs through fiber-optic cables straight to the infernal, yet temperature-controlled offices of the CIA and NSA.

The elections have adopted all the patterns of the industrial, imperial state: we have standardized TV, scripted questions, airbrushed candidates, and childlike debates. We’ve seen specialized tactics of gerrymandering, vote-rigging, PR bullshit, and strategists whose careers accomplish nothing for the public good. We all know of the synchronization of Wall Street, defense and oil companies. The concentration of power in the hands of the few hardly needs mention: here’s the study by Princeton and Northwestern professors who conclude that the US is an oligarchy, not a democracy. We’ve witnessed the maximization of endless primaries, debates, press conferences, and town-hall meetings ad infinitum. The centralization of political ideology (triangulation in Clintonite terms, Machiavellian to a rational person) and the limitations of discourse that our candidates display are all too clear.

These are the iron chains holding us down, shackling us in Plato’s cave: our candidates are figureheads, shadows on the wall; they are puppets of the super-elite. The central position they carve out in the mainstream is really a pit, an abyss: one that we all find ourselves in, as we continue to vote for those who don’t fight for our interests.

The two best options for this election seem to be: voting for Jill Stein, or boycotting the election, as Joel Hirschhorn advocates. As for our obscene election cycles, I believe Zach de la Rocha summed it up best:

  A spectacle monopolized

The camera’s eyes on choice disguised

Was it cast for the mass who burn and toil?

Or for vultures who thirst for blood and oil?

William Hawes is a writer specializing in politics and environmental issues. His articles have appeared online at Global Research, Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, The World Financial Review, Gods & Radicals, and Countercurrents. He is author of the e-book Planetary Vision: Essays on Freedom and Empire. You can reach him at wilhawes@gmail.com

Notes:

1.) Alvin Toffler. The Third Wave. Bantam, 1980. p. 46-60.

 

Fascism Trumps Democracy: America, A State of Impunity

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By Norman Pollack

Source: CounterPunch

Notwithstanding my title’s oblique reference to Trump, he is not the greater of the dangers now facing America, but an entirely known factor, representing a gut incipient fascism grounded primarily in capital accumulation, a nymphomaniac drive for ownership, deal-making, undisguised prestige—in short, the very traits becoming to American’s wish for wealth, power, and status on which its system of capitalism is based. Ethnocentrism gives it a psychological heart, sheer ignorance of humane sensibility, a soul, indifference to the humiliation and destruction of others because of capitalism’s workings, a modal personality and societal mental set. We’ve had many examples of The Donald up-and-down the line, from the 10%, 5%, 1%, down to the bottom of the social-class scale, that being how effective false consciousness has been disseminated downward through the American value system. He presently vibrates with what appears to be a significant portion of the working class. So be it; at least the portents and record are there for fighting back.

Not so the Obamas and Clintons in our midst, largely free from serious criticism by a supine, homogenized radicalism, chanting the “lesser-of-two-evils” song on the way, not to the gas chambers (not even Trump has, as yet, gone this far), but a manifestation and structure of liberal fascism, possibly more militaristic, more ensconced deeply in a Cold War mental set, talking a good game on immigration while actively promoting a class-state of monopolism equal to anything Trump favors. We have then a condition of growing fascistization with little internal checks and differentiate primarily by rhetorical flourishes. Obama is the point man, exceeding his predecessors, in global counterrevolution, intervention, regime change, and the steady pressures toward confrontation with, above all, China, but also Russia. Meanwhile, Clinton fits the bill, perhaps more viscerally combative, with Russia, rather than China, the chief ADVERSARY. (Caps. are necessary, because the US cannot exist, much less thrive, without an enemy, whether for the mammoth defense industry, an hegemonic foreign policy, or the social discipline at home, to keep the internal market going, ferret out dissent on policy, favor the already enriched and favored.)

Stealth destroyers, appropriation $4B+, already noticed in today’s Times; the safety net grows more outmoded, environmental degradation and pollution continue apace, the murder rate in Chicago and other major cities climbs, but imperialism is, literally, business-as-usual. And business itself is business as usual: Bank of America last week’s poster boy of questionable behavior. “You break it, you own it” might be the slogan in a small business souvenir shop, but what of the bigger picture? American business, notably, railroads and banking, by the mid-19th century, had already broken the promise of democracy, and fixing the system on democratic lines has grown more remote with time. That is where “fascism” is not an expletive, but reality: the interpenetration of business and government, capitalism and the State, the cozy amalgam of wealth, power, the military, which even the strongest chisel could not pry them apart.

Germany had its form, Italy, its, Japan, its, all signifying cultural and linguistic differences, but not systemic ones, capitalism in each case, and the social structure of hierarchy it created, the determinative factor in shaping the polity and its purposes of Order, deservedly the dirtiest word in the political lexicon. Everyone knows his/her place in a fascist social order. Substantive protest is muted, whether through repression or indoctrination. America now joins the 20th century’s historical Big Three of fascist persuasion, relying more on indoctrination than explicit, overt repression. Fly-over military jets at football games is the Pavlovian reminder of requisite patriotism to be considered, and consider oneself, the Good American. (Trump merely echoes the man-in-the-street, his difference being a silk shirt for a denim work shirt.) But it is Clinton who deserves, and has earned the respect, of all right-thinking Americans, parroting the vitriol of the defense intellectuals, propaganda masters (even Axelrod in today’s paper seems to have become critical), her controlled shrillness, backed by her husband’s man-of-destiny complex, posing more serious risks for putting nails into the coffin of democracy.

Why choose either, Trump or Clinton? Elections are rigged, not by corruption, but, more profoundly, by the political culture and class structure of the society, the candidates merely the façade for several centuries of political-economic-ideological development, cumulative, self-renewing, above all, hubristic, i.e., exaggerated pride, the Chosen, backed by the military force to cram it down the throats of all and sundry, where “friends and allies” become, for these purposes of unilateral global dominance, indistinguishable from adversaries and enemies in successfully maintaining claims of leadership and greatness.

 

Norman Pollack Ph.D. Harvard, Guggenheim Fellow, early writings on American Populism as a radical movement, prof., activist.. His interests are social theory and the structural analysis of capitalism and fascism. He can be reached at pollackn@msu.edu.