Here is an interesting article from Sam Webb. Please feel free to make comments.

By Sam Webb

Via: http://peoplesworld.org/bernie-sanders-2012-and-fighting-the-oligarchy/

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders is the people’s tribune. In a recent appearance before a Senate committee where he spoke about the current assault on democracy, that quality of Sanders was on display. But before I elaborate on his speech, a few general observations on democracy are in order.

Democracy is a contested idea and practice. It was never a gift bestowed on the multitude by the top layers of our society, either at the country’s founding or in its subsequent history.

Historically speaking, the boundaries of freedom and democracy have been fluid. Gains in popular democracy secured in one period and thought to be permanent more than once were rolled back in the next period.

The movement toward a more inclusive democracy was never a smooth stroll forward. It always met resistance from entrenched power blocs, fixated on maintaining the status quo and the privileges therein.

In these battles each side attempted to appropriate and give content to the idea and practice of freedom and democracy (freedom for the slave, freedom for the slaveholder, etc.). Even those opposing inclusiveness claimed to be advocates of democracy and freedom.

The outcome ultimately rested on which side could amass enough power – political, economic, ideological, and sometimes military – to scatter, demoralize, and push back its opponents. In other words, force, not necessarily in its violent form, became the final arbiter in settling the conflict over the political content of democracy.

Compared with earlier pre-capitalist class systems, capitalism opened up some democratic space not formerly afforded to exploited classes of earlier times. But at the same time, its over-arching, unending, built-in drive for capital accumulation and profit-maximization inexorably and from the beginning gave rise to structural and social constraints on democratic development, including the democratic character of the state.

And yet, as restrictive and class-determined as the democratic space and institutions of capitalist society were and are, it would be a mistake either in the past or present to take a standoffish attitude toward them. Indeed, it is imperative for the forces of popular democracy to turn those democratic spaces and institutions that are available into a platform for expanding their limited content and narrow bounds. That ultimately includes getting rid of the capitalist shell in which democracy is now confined and restricted.

Which brings me back to Senator Bernie Sanders’ appearance before the Senate committee. In his speech, he warned the country of the increasing dangers to democracy in today’s political and economic climate.

” … we are now facing the most severe attacks, both economically and politically, that we have seen in the modern history of our country. Tragically … we are well on our way to seeing our great country move toward an oligarchic form of government – where virtually all economic and political power rests with a handful of very wealthy families.”

How true!

He went on to say, “This is a trend we must reverse.”

Indeed, we must! But the vexing question is: how and where to begin?

In my view it won’t happen if the democratic movement does nothing but complain about the Obama administration and abandons the electoral arena of struggle in the name of political purity.

The stakes are too high to do either.

Let’s face it. The outcome of the November election will not simply determine who will occupy the White House and Congress.

This election is about more than that.

It is about the balance of power between the class and social forces of democracy and those of anti-democratic reaction. It is about which side gains the initiative and leverage in the post election period. It is about which outcome will best position the people’s movement to struggle against the economic crisis and for democracy and equality in the years ahead. And it is about striking an absolutely necessary blow against right-wing extremism – the main organizing vehicle of the oligarchic trend in U.S. politics.

To say that it makes no difference who wins in November is to take leave from reality. It amounts to substituting the politics of self-gratifying outrage and broad generalizations for solid class politics – that is, politics that makes a careful and concrete assessment of which political grouping is the main danger to democracy and class advance, given the balance of class and social forces at this moment.

Bernie Sanders, I suspect, is well aware of the dirty laundry on both sides of the aisle and of the motley character of the two-party system, just as he is undoubtedly fully conscious of the exploitative and oppressive nature of the system of capitalism and the 1 percent that it serves.

But he has also made it clear that he knows who the main political obstacle to social progress is in this era of unprecedented wealth-taking, and has no intention of sitting out this election on the basis of some “higher” political-class-moral principle. Neither should anyone else who is concerned about our country’s democracy and future.

By Darrell Rankin

People’s Voice, August 1, 2012

This will be posted in a few days at http://www.peoplesvoice.ca/

Hiroshima Day, August 6, is humanity’s chance to reflect on the danger of world nuclear war and recall what today would be a serious war crime – the obliteration of two cities in Japan by atomic bombs in 1945.

As the U.S. threatens Iran for its alleged intention to develop a nuclear weapon, another danger is the move of 60 per cent of U.S. naval power to the Asia-Pacific region by 2020. This is the “pivot to Asia,” announced earlier this year as a result of a major military strategic review.

In atomic diplomacy, it is important to “follow the weapons” to gain a true understanding of the nuclear danger. The pivot signifies the transfer of much of the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal half way around the world.

Essentially, the U.S. is shifting its military focus from the Middle East to Asia, from oil to people. The shift is seen by some U.S. strategists as “overdue” because of concern over China’s emergence as a regional power. This, of course, is nothing but a canard against China and an excuse to dominate Asia.

The pivot helps position U.S. military forces to attack both China and Russia. But the more important reason for the shift is to augment U.S. influence and power in the region, especially the all-important U.S. corporate investments in China and other Asian countries, including by force if necessary.

In fact, the long history of U.S. nuclear policy in Asia is one of proliferating nuclear weapons, starting with Hiroshima and continuing with its anti-China nuclear threats during the Korean war. The nuclear arsenals of China, India and Pakistan are puny compared to the U.S. arsenal.

The pivot also needs to be placed in the context of capitalism’s deepening global crises. U.S. ruling circles are counting on their war machine to save their overseas investments from revolutionary change. The pivot is a direct threat to an “Asian Spring.”

The pivot places U.S. naval forces closer to its new Africa Command and ready to assist its re-established Fourth Fleet whose purpose is to dominate and frighten South America.

U.S. imperialism is re-positioning itself to crush social change anywhere it may occur.

The crime of Hiroshima, the long history of US atomic threats against China, and the present pivot underline the racist nature of U.S. imperialism. If an Asian nuclear war takes place, U.S. ruling circles may expect that North America will escape serious loss of life or that they will escape political and legal responsibility. This is both misguided and criminally dangerous.

Without a large and serious campaign to abolish nuclear weapons, the world will continue to soar towards nuclear Armageddon, accidental or deliberate, triggered by doctrines such as those of the U.S. that allow for “first use” of nuclear weapons, including by U.S. naval commanders who may use such weapons without the president’s permission.

The U.S. openly proclaims the need for military force to protect U.S. foreign investments, a doctrine that equally infuses its nuclear policy. Until overseas investment, the material basis for global domination, disappears it is unlikely we will rid the earth of nuclear weapons.

As Hitler’s generals found out after the last world war, humanity will never permit doctrines that allow for the murder of tens of millions. Those controlling the U.S. nuclear arsenal have doctrines that could kill billions. After all, the reality is that war is merely the continuation of foreign policy by violent means, and foreign policy in the age of capitalist imperialism aims at domination, not equality among nations.

The inhumanity of the capitalist social system cannot be erased from history. In 1945, U.S. leaders 1945 chose to use atomic bombs on cities to display the overwhelming danger of such weapons on civilians, not on a more remote, less populated part of Japan. Imperialism’s nuclear strategy is the most important reason why socialists say disarmament is our ideal.

By Zoltan Zigedy

Via: http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2012/07/well-there-is-no-reason-to-read-nation.html

Alexander Cockburn has died. Nearly thirty years ago, I began borrowing copies of The Nation magazine from a friend in order to read Cockburn’s weekly column. In a publication then notable for its determination not to completely surrender to Cold War hysteria, Cockburn stood out as a stubborn and fearless champion of reason and fidelity to leftist values—not the values that pass as leftist today, but genuine values of internationalism and advocacy for those on the bottom.
Later I learned of Cockburn’s familial roots: his father was the estimable Claud Cockburn who wrote for the UK Daily Worker, was a partisan reporter on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, and served as a thorn in the side of the puffed-up English upper classes for most of his life.

Claud authored the novel that served as the basis for the obscure, but delightful John Huston movie, Beat the Devil, a cinematic parody that relentlessly poked fun at nearly every stereotype and prejudice.

Alexander’s writing carried the same level of disdain for self-satisfaction and smugness. Cockburn, the elder, famously remarked that one should “Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.” Alexander Cockburn’s writing reflected even broader truths: Never believe anything uttered by your nation’s public officials or their media hand maidens. And always regard with a measure of respect the claims of their opponents. This motto would serve the journalism profession far better than the usual hypocritical nonsense about fairness and objectivity. It would also well serve a public that readily identifies the media lies when it is itself the specific target, but exhibits a blind, groundless, and sheep-like trust of the media on other matters (think of Syria!).

In that spirit, Alexander Cockburn’s column pierced the inflated egos of wind bags, charlatans, and courtiers from Henry Kissinger through the financiers Jamie Dimon and Robert Diamond, the subjects of his final column.

I don’t know that Alexander considered himself a Marxist, though he acknowledged that his father flirted with and perhaps embraced the views of the old Moor. Certainly Alexander came closer than any other contemporary writer in English, despite his occasional eccentricities, to the acerbity and intolerance for hum-buggery of our beloved KM.

As The Nation moved away from its legacy of popular front progressivism and anti-anti-Communism and towards drawing-room liberalism, Cockburn became more of an internal critic. He began to take shots at Nation writers and columnists who were more comfortable reporting conversations at dinner parties than in reporting on Appalachia or big city ghettos. He rightly called out writers whose views seemed to unerringly march in lock step with the Democratic Party leadership.

Though The Nation editors would deny it, his punishment was to see his popular column reduced from every issue to every other issue.

Nonetheless his column persisted despite the magazine’s further ideological acceptance of the tighter and tighter Democratic Party leash. In recent years, the taming of The Nation forced me to discontinue my twenty-five-year subscription when I concluded that even Cockburn could not hold me.

But a ten-dollar desperate renewal offer (the way of all print magazines starving for support) brought me back recently, a happy move since it delivered me Alexander Cockburn’s last column. But o how far The Nation has sunk! The funeral issue contained three tortured and embarrassingly pandering defenses of Obama’s grossly misnamed Affordable Care Act (four if you count Katha Pollit’s lame cheer-leading in her column: “Obamacare(s) for Women”), all a transparent call to vote for Obama in the fall election. Poor Alexander Cockburn’s last column was sandwiched between these crude political ads.

The rest of the issue included a bizarre “vindication” of right-wing scumbag David Frum (his mother was a feminist!), a pathetically and needlessly “scholarly” critique of Charles Murray’s scurrilous attack on working class white males, and a Princeton professor’s paean to Jurgen Habermas’ vapid pontifications on the meaning and future of the European Union.

Pity poor Eric Foner, who joins Cockburn with an article in such dreary company.

Needless to say, I will not be renewing my Nation subscription (unless the price comes down even further!). I’ve had enough and, with Cockburn gone, I can catch the occasional significant article from friends on the ‘net.

I will miss Alexander Cockburn—more than a little. I regret that I never followed him closely on Counterpunch, but I trust that its archives are full of his sterling and stirring writing. I’m sure collections of his essays and articles will soon appear. I look forward to reading them. I hope others will as well.

Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Here are some photos of the North Devon Communist Party Britain at the Green Man festival in the UK:

https://picasaweb.google.com/109438333523241042509/23July2012#

By Zoltan Zigedy

Via: http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2012/07/no-time-for-illusions.html

No, I didn’t get it quite right. More than two years ago, I wrote:

Renault, like Peugeot-Citroen, received government bailout money from the French people under the condition that they would maintain employment: “The companies pledged in return to protect French jobs.” The industry minister stressed, “The state will have its say. When a French car is destined to be sold in France, it should be made in France.” This is, of course, in sharp contrast to the US President, allegedly a progressive and friend of labor, whose policies dictated that US auto companies would close plants and lay off workers in exchange for bailout money. The difference, quite clearly, is the militancy and class consciousness of labor. French unions, unlike their US counterparts, have consistently and without relent, refused class collaboration. (“The Class War: Where Things Stand,” 2-14-2010)

Today, it is a bitter mockery that Peugeot announced two days before the French national holiday and only shortly after the Socialist Party sweep of French elections that the company would lay off 8,000 workers. At the bottom of a severe downturn, a virulently conservative president, Sarkozy, and his minions feared that the French labor movement and its friends would pounce if public bailout funds were offered to companies responding to the crisis with layoffs and plant closings. Yet Peugeot now feels confident that it can close a plant and reduce employment at another plant even with a “socialist” government in power. Hollande, the new Socialist President of France pronounces the move “unacceptable;” the French unions are indignant.

What has changed in two years?

In the depths of the crisis, fear gripped Peugeot and most of the rest of the corporate world. The threat of devastated profitability or even insolvency brought them to their knees. Without generous help from outside, from the public trough, and with the public agreement to take on the risk of pending corporate failure, Peugeot and its corporate brethren might have collapsed.

But now the same corporate behemoths exploit the public debt incurred in their rescue. They recognize the vulnerability of the French government to the circling financial buzzards and pick this moment to shed workers, reduce costs, and increase profitability. They are gambling that French unions will place their fate in the hands of the new French government which will not have the resolve to thwart Peugeot’s plans. I suspect they are right.

Surely, some must see a parallel with the Obama Presidential campaign and the accompanying Obama-mania that gripped the US in 2008. Like the US electorate, French citizens were euphoric over the prospects of moving beyond an embarrassingly incompetent, right-wing vulgarian. And like their US counterparts, many French voters invested unjustified hope in a candidate never demonstrating an ability to separate national interests from corporate interests. Once again voters cast aside reality for the thin promise of vague change.

Hollande, like Obama, devoted his first days to assuring business interests and European Union rulers that he had no intention to rock the boat too vigorously — even though the boat is sinking.

When the moment is opportune, French “Socialist” Party leaders, their SYRIZA counterparts in Greece, and social-democratic candidates throughout the world step up to offer voters an easy option: class partisanship with no class struggle. Theirs is a make-believe world of advocacy, communication and compromise, a world where corporations and markets are resolutely tamed in parliamentary chambers through speeches and resolutions. Their history in this regard is hardly encouraging.

Just as European parliamentary elections have taken on more and more of the flavor of US two-party campaigns, the trajectory of European politics takes on more and more of that of the US. Thus, the Obama presidency offers a preview of what to expect from his European counterparts: a refreshed ruling class leadership offering more “progressive” style than substance.

After Obama’s election in the US, the “movement” unleashed for change was quickly dismantled and the new administration asserted continuity with ruling class policies, but served up with better articulation and a friendlier face to liberals and labor. As for the campaign promises of peace, labor law reform, health care reform, tax fairness, etc, they were unfulfilled or compromised.

Europeans who choose the easy detour of social democracy will relive the experience of US workers over the last nearly four years of Democratic Party governance. Wages for production and non-supervisory workers in manufacturing, when adjusted for inflation, are down 3.2% from March of 2009. At the same time, output per worker hour has exploded: where compensation has been essentially flat for the last nine years, output has grown by over 30%, rising most dramatically since 2009. For those of us still embracing the Marxist analytical tools, these facts signal a dramatic increase in the rate of exploitation under the watchful eyes of US social democrats and their liberal friends.

At the same time, wages for Mexican workers are rising. And in the Peoples’ Republic of China, wages rose 5% in 2009, 16% in 2010, and 20% in 2011. Already in the first half of 2012 wages for urban households rose 13% against the same time frame last year. So much credence for the myth of slave-labor conditions in China depressing US standards, a view so dear to backward labor leaders and media commentators. It should be transparently obvious that it is not the PRC government or Chinese workers who threaten US workers’ living standards, but corporations and their own government who both associate worker sacrifice with economic recovery.

And pity US steelworkers. With non-farm productivity growth (growth of exploitation) off for the first quarter of 2012 and threatening profit growth, steel manufacturers are looking to squeeze workers even harder. ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel producer is proposing to cut all wages and benefits by 36% and eliminate retiree health care for anyone hired after the expiration of the old United Steelworkers of America (USWA) contract on August 31. According to the USWA, ArcelorMittal hopes to cut $350 million per year from the labor costs incurred by 12,544 union workers, an amount that would transfer smoothly to share holders and top managers. While there is little indication of a plan to fight these moves, one of the USWA’s lead negotiators was quoted by The Wall Street Journal: “We’re very frustrated with the tone in negotiations.”

With ArcelorMittel enjoying $1.1 billion in profits in 2011, the union should be showing more militancy than a mere concern about the “tone” of negotiations. But don’t look for the “friend of labor” US President to show even a word of sympathy for the workers’ cause. Nonetheless, he and his Democratic Party colleagues will readily welcome the money and support of the USWA. Unlike their corporate counterparts, US unions insist on little in return.

Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

By Prof. James F. Tracy

Global Research, July 20, 2012

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31996

Progressive-left media persist in acting as propaganda outlets for the US-NATO destabilization of Syria, thus placating a politically conscious audience that might otherwise be mobilized against acts of imperialism and violence. The historical record suggests how this is not the first time “Progressive publicists” were used to sell a war.

A recent report in the UK Guardian by Charlie Skelton explains that Western news outlets remain willing victims (or accomplices) in a propaganda campaign for US -NATO led Syrian intervention being carried out by skilled and well-financed public relations practitioners. According to Skelton, “the spokespeople, the ‘experts on Syria’, the ‘democracy activists’ … The people who ‘urge’ and ‘warn’ and ‘call for action’” against the Assad regime are themselves part of a sophisticated and well-heeled public relations effort to allow NATO forces to give Syria the same medicine administered to Libya in 2011. “They’re selling the idea of military intervention and regime change,” Skelton reports,

“and the mainstream news is hungry to buy. Many of the “activists” and spokespeople representing the Syrian opposition are closely (and in many cases financially) interlinked with the US and London – the very people who would be doing the intervening. Which means information and statistics from these sources isn’t necessarily pure news – it’s a sales pitch, a PR campaign.”[1]

If one thinks that a revelation of this magnitude would be cause for other major Western news media to reassess their reportage of the Syrian situation they would be greatly mistaken. Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now is a case in point. Since the beginning of the “Arab Spring” color revolutions the foremost broadcast venue of “independent” progressive-Left journalism in the United States has used its reportage to obfuscate and thereby advance the campaign for regime change in Egypt, Libya, and now Syria. The tactics of disinformation and death squads employed in Libya and Syria should be easily recognizable since they were refined against popular Central American moves toward popular enfranchisement by the Reagan administration during the 1980s.

As Finian Cunningham recently observed [2] Democracy Now’s adherents look to Goodman on a regular basis because of her perceived credibility; she is the self-avowed “ exception to the rulers”—a tireless crusader against the restrictive corporate media where there remains a “deafening silence … around the issues—and people—that matter most.”[3] Today Goodman’s vaunted program is contributing to the very violence being committed by Western-backed mercenaries against the Syrian people.

Goodman and similar Left media are engaging and convincing precisely because of their posturing against corporate media control, economic exploitation and war mongering. Occupying the outer contours of National Public Radio’s milquetoast programming, Democracy Now’s self-described “independent” reportage takes on a certain aura of authenticity among its supporters—mainly progressives with concerns for social justice and human rights.

Such characteristics make Goodman and Democracy Now among the most effective sowers of disinformation. Further, their role in assuaging an educated and otherwise outspoken audience serves only to aid and abet the wanton military aggression Goodman and her cohorts claim to decry. In light of the program’s broader coverage of the “Arab Spring,” such reporting must be recognized and condemned as sheer public relations for NATO and the Obama administration’s campaign of perpetual terrorism and war on humanitarian grounds.[4]

On July 19, shortly after interviewing a mysterious “Syrian activist” who allegedly participated only with the assurance of anonymity, Democracy Now brought on McClatchy’s Beirut correspondent David Enders, who presented the US-NATO-backed mercenary army’s actions that resulted in the deaths of high-level Syrian government officials as part of a spontaneous popular revolution that was gaining momentum.

“We’ve seen the rebellion grow in numbers and as far as its organizational capability. And they’ve attempted to strike at Assad and his inner circle multiple times … I think what we’re seeing is just the government crumbling under the weight of a massive rebellion. It simply can’t put it down.”[5]

Goodman and Democracy Now are in fact upholding progressive journalism’s greatest perversion: consciously using the public’s faith in its performance and moral rectitude to promote the latest war—a tradition that dates back almost one hundred years. At that time journalists with public personae remarkably similar to Goodman’s were employed to persuade the American public on US entry into World War One. This was done with the government’s careful consideration of how ostensibly liberal crusaders were held in high regard by the broader public.

In April 1917, when Democratic President Woodrow Wilson led America into the war that he promised would “make the world safe for democracy,” he called on some of America’s foremost progressive journalists to “sell” the war to a reluctant American population through the greatest propaganda campaign ever put together. Wilson’s anxiety over securing liberal support for the war effort brought him to recognize how well known “Progressive publicists” exercised credibility in the public mind through their previous work in exposing government and corporate corruption. One such journalist was George Creel, who Wilson tapped to lead the newly formed Committee on Public Information (CPI). New Republic editor Walter Lippmann and “father of public relations” Edward Bernays were also brought on board the elaborate domestic and international campaign to “advertise America.”

Because of Creel’s wide-ranging connections to Progressive writers throughout the US, Wilson was confident that Creel would be successful in getting such intellectual workers on board the war effort, “to establish a visible link between liberal ideals and pursuit of the war,” Stuart Ewen observes. “On the whole, Wilson’s assumption was justified. When the war was declared, an impassioned generation of Progressive publicists fell into line, surrounding the war effort with a veil of much-needed liberal-democratic rhetoric.”

Well known for his derisive critiques of big business interests, such as the Rockefellers and their infamous role in the Ludlow massacre, Creel was the perfect candidate to lead a propaganda apparatus at a time when suspicion toward “a ‘capitalists’ war’” was prevalent. “When the moment to lead the public mind into war arrived, the disorder threatened by antiwar sentiments—particularly among the lower classes—was seen as an occasion that demanded what Lippmann would call the ‘manufacture of consent.’” [6]

The sales effort was unparalleled in its scale and sophistication. The CPI was not only able to officially censor news and information, but to manufacture it. Acting in the role of an advanced and multifaceted advertising agency, Creel’s operation “examined the different ways that information flowed to the population and flooded these channels with pro-war material.”

The Committee’s domestic organ was comprised of 19 subdivisions, each devoted to a specific type of propaganda, one of which was a Division of News that distributed over 6,000 press releases and acted as the chief avenue for war-related information. On an average week, more than 20,000 newspaper columns carried data provided through CPI propaganda. The Division of Syndicated Features enlisted the help of popular novelists, short story writers, and essayists. These mainstream American authors presented the official line in a readily accessible form reaching twelve million people every month. Similar endeavors existed for cinema, impromptu soapbox oratory (Four Minute Men), and outright advertising. [7]

Creel himself recalls the unparalleled efforts of the thought control apparatus he oversaw to sell the war to a skeptical American public

.”It is a matter of pride to the Committee on Public Information, as it should be to America, that the directors of English, French, and Italian propaganda were a unit in agreeing that our literature was remarkable above all others for its brilliant and concentrated effectiveness.”[8]

Alongside Creel’s recollections, out of their experiences in the CPI the liberal-minded Lippmann and Bernays wrote of their overall contempt for what they understood as a malleable and hopelessly ill-informed public that could not be trusted with serious decision-making. In their view, public opinion had to be created by an “organized intelligence” of technocrats (Lippmann) or “engineered” by “an invisible government” (Bernays), with the average citizen relegated to the role of idle spectator.[9]

Given the backdrop of progressive-left journalists’ lengthy and ardent opposition to the Bush-Cheney policies of Nazi-like atrocities and plunder, venues such as Democracy Now are poised to serve as platforms for disseminating the necessary disinformation to make the Obama administration’s color revolutions and “humanitarian” policy of military interventions seem palatable to the very audiences whose sensibilities are most opposed to violence and imperialism.

The phenomenon attests to the sophistication and efficiency of modern publicity efforts that genuinely alternative news outlets have long pointed to, the gullibility of many on the Left, and the extent to which vintage propaganda techniques never truly die. Rather, they are consistently refined and expanded in anticipation of shifting public sentiment and rationales for deception.

Notes

[1] Charlie Skelton, “The Syrian Opposition: Who’s Doing the Talking?” Guardian, July 12, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/12/syrian-opposition-doing-the-talking

[2] Finian Cunningham, “’Democracy Now’ and the ‘Progressive’ Alternative Media: Valued Cheerleaders for Imperialism and War,” July 13, 2012, GlobalResearch.ca, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31874

[3] Amy Goodman with David Goodman, The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them, New York: Hyperion, 2004, 7.

[4] Fact Sheet: A Comprehensive Strategy and New Tools to Prevent and Respond to Atrocities, White House Press Release, August 4, 2011, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/04/23/fact-sheet-comprehensive-strategy-and-new-tools-prevent-and-respond-atro

[5] Democracy Now! “Back From Syria Reporter David Enders Says Assad Regime Crumbling to ‘Grassroots Rebellion,’” July 19, 2012, http://www.democracynow.org/2012/7/19/back_from_syria_reporter_david_enders. The observation, emblematic of Democracy Now’s overall Libyan and Syrian coverage, stands in stark contrast to the stories from genuine alternative news outlets providing important reports and analyses explaining the root causes of the Syrian unrest. For example, see Thierry Meyssan, “How Al Qaeda Men Came to Power in Libya,” Voltairenet.org, 7 September 2011, http://www.voltairenet.org/How-Al Qaeda-men-came-to-power-in; Tony Cartalucci, A Timeline & History: One Year Into the Engineered ‘Arab Spring,’ One Step Closer to Global Hegemony,” December 24, 2011, Land Destroyer Report, http://landdestroyer.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/2011-year-of-dupe.html; Webster Tarpley, “NATO-Backed Death Squads Basic Cause of Syria Unrest,” PressTV, May 10, 2012, http://www.presstv.com/detail/240482.html; Stephen Lendman, “Syria at the Crossroads: Is US-NATO Contemplating a Plan B? GlobalResearch.ca, April 2, 2012, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30087.

[6] Stuart Ewen, PR! A Social History of Spin, New York: Basic Books, 1996, 109-110.

[7] Aaron Delwiche, Propaganda: Wartime Propaganda: World War I, The Committee on Public Information, Accessed July 20, 2012 at http://www.propagandacritic.com/articles/ww1.cpi.html; George Creel, “How We Advertised America, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1920. Available at http://archive.org/details/howweadvertameri00creerich

[8] Creel, 113.

[9] Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, New York: Free Press, 1997 (1922); Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda, New York: Ig Publishing, 2005 (1928); See also Lippmann, The Phantom Public, New York: Transaction Publishers, 1927, and Crystallizing Public Opinion, New York: Bonni and Liveright, 1929.

James Tracy is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University. He is an associate of Project Censored and blogs at memorygap.org.

Los Angeles Metro Club

2437 Centinela Av., #2

Santa Monica, CA. 90405

lamtrocpusa@hotmail.com

www.cpusalametro.org

___________________________

HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM…

We, the members of the Los Angeles Metro Club of the CPUSA write this appeal to you, the National Board of the CPUSA, in the spirit of party unity, fairness, and comradeship. We understand the complexity and sensitive nature of the issues of the most recent flareup in Houston but we do not consider the matter settled. We believe that there must be a fuller discussion within the party about our role as communists in American society and our relationship to the working class, the class we purport to represent. Censorship and intimidation are not conducive to having this discussion.

We have been told that we can’t struggle in the world as we wish it to be. That we must accept the political terrain as it is and that we must “be realistic.” We ask ourselves what if Marx, Engels, and Lenin had said that? What if they lived in a politically “realistic” world. Marx said in regard to this problem, “philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point, however is to change it.” Theory then evolves into a discussion of how fast or how slow society should move. The Chinese with their ‘cultural revolution’ tried to accelarate the pace of their socialist development. History proved them wrong. At the time, our party, the CPUSA supported the CPSU position and rejected the cultural revolution.

Our party did not support Leon Trotsky or his famous theory of ‘permanent revolution’ either. Lenin spoke against Trotsky and his theory several times. Later it was found that Trotsky was not only a spy for Germany, Poland, and Japan up to the beginning of WWII, but was also a rabid anti-communist that had nothing in common with the Bolsheviks. He later worked for the Hearst capitalist press as an expert on Soviet Russia. Some expert! So why is this ancient history so important? Because now, we understand that Bernard Sampson, the Chair of the newly recognized CPUSA club in Houston is a Trotskyite; an anti-communist! A friend of Bernard in Los Angeles, Mr. Grady Daughtery has told us that he was in the Trotskyite Sparticist League in Los Angeles with Bernard and that the Sparticist League campaigned actively against the United Farm Workers union. Further, Bernard advocated that workers should break strikes of the workers because they were lead by a ‘bourgeois union leader’, Cesar Chavez.

How did the Los Angeles Metro Club get involved in the activities of the Houston CPUSA club? Two ways. We are involved in the U.S. Peace Council and we participate with the Houston Peace Council in activities like the anti-NATO campaign. We know about their fine work with the Cuban 5 case. We learned about their website and put a link on our website and became friends with them on Facebook. Although we were told that the problem in Houston was with one individual, we know that this is untrue because of their relationship with us in the U.S. Peace Council. So, you see, there is always more than one side to every story.

We are very disappointed with the decision of the CPUSA National Board to intervene in the internal affairs of the Houston club. We are more disappointed that they have chosen to intervene in our club’s internal matters. We have done nothing but try to carry on the fight against war, fight imperialism, and build proletarian solidarity. Along the way we have met some great comrades. This all seems legitimate to us; on the up and up. There is no conspiracy as intimated by the comrades investigating the problems in Houston. Although, we do wonder why the comrades on the National Board would accept the version of events of known Trotskyites without interviewing others.

Our club stands firmly against censorship. Censorship is un-American and a return to the McCarthy era. We don’t want to go there and we don’t want our party to go there. We hope that as Marxist-Leninists our party has matured since then. Are we wrong? We hope not, but we are concerned. Since when does the national party tell clubs what groups they can associate with? Since when does the national party tell clubs what links and other information to put on its website and Facebook page? We are a club of communists with a healthy collective leadership, so why not trust us to decide what groups and clubs to associate with and what to put on our website or Facebook page? We don’t post irresponsible or counter-revolutionary articles or information there. We don’t have any relations with right-wing reactionary organizations. We participate fully in the activities of our district, and support its political line. However, when we receive information from other clubs around the country that don’t fully agree with the thought that is disseminated by the national party centre we feel it is our duty as communists to publish it. There are legitimate concerns about the party’s future and the party’s relationship with the working class. We have written previously on this in another letter to Political Affairs.

We do not see how frank, open discussion of communist history hurts our party. Our history is important to us. Our party’s relationship with the USSR and the CPSU is important to remember. It is a part of us. To deny it is to succumb to anti-communism and plays into the hands of the bourgeoisie. To say that America is somehow exceptional to the rest of the world is not communist ideology and those that hold this point of view are not communists. They shouldn’t be in our party. We do not need to pander to elements that are anti-communist to build the party unless our objective is to destroy the CPUSA: the party of a new type envisioned by Lenin. We are not Social-Democrats. We are not populists. We are not progressives. We are communists: builders and leaders of mass movements that fight for a world beyond capitalism. We are not satisfied with our present situation of high unemployment, cuts in our Social Security and our social safety net and pensions, and of endless racism , sexism, and imperialism. As part of our struggle, we include electoral work. We consider this to be one tool in our arsenal of defense of our class interest, but by no means the only one. There are other things that we must do simultaneously to win workers to our side. We must be seen and we must earn the trust and respect of the workers. There is only one way to do that. We feel that the leadership of our party has forgotten this lesson and has embarked on a cynical downward spiral and that our party has ceased to be a revolutionary party. We see liquidation and retirement on the horizon and are reminded of comrade Hall’s words that “communists don’t retire.” Being in the party is not a job. It is a devotion to our class: the working class. It is a devotion to a historical inevitability. As Eugene Debs said, “socialism is as certain as the setting of the sun.”

Where does this cynicism and sense of entitlement come from? Why do comrades in leading positions in our party feel that their personal status is more important than the ideological health of the party? Why does our party editorialize against other communist nations, namely the DPRK? Don’t these nations have a right to defend themselves against imperialist aggression? Perhaps this is what the leaders of the Houston club are concerned about. Is the CPUSA saying that the Houston comrades have no right to be concerned? Are they saying that to point out weaknesses in our leadership contradicts the party line and promotes factionalism? If they are, they are wrong. We happen to believe that some of the criticisms of the Houston club have merit. We believe that the National Board has acted in its own self interest, and not in the best interest of the whole party. We further believe that there needs to be a wider discussion within the party of why people are not joining the party in greater numbers and why many don’t stay after they join. This discussion would lead to a finding that there needs to be change in the thinking at the top. Democratic centralism is a two way street. It also must work from the bottom up. There can be no top down solution.

When our club discussed the report to us by our club chair concerning his meeting with the directors of the California district about Houston, we were immediately insulted when it was reported that the problems in Houston were “just like Evelina.” Evelina Alarcón was replaced in a similar autocratic manner as was the New York Arts & Entertainment club and Houston club. We were promised by Sam Webb and others that things would be different, that there would be a more transparent approach to party problems. So far, this has not been the case. In fact, it is less transparent now than before. There is less communication, not more. Comrades in the Metro club were used in the battle to remove Evelina and now our situation is much worse. People have lost respect for us since Evelina’s arbitrary removal. We never took a vote on whether or not to remove her, and we never elected the leadership of the Southern California collective that has replaced her.Although we have never met the Chair of the Houston club, we can sympathize with him.

Finally, we say that although we disagree with the demand to remove content from our website, we have done so. We will, however, continue to work on the mass activities that we are involved in and we hope to have many more discussions in the party on the topic of party unity and action. We hope that it is not against policy of the National Board to help our comrades in the former Soviet Union and other people fighting to restore socialism in their countries, and to help in building peace organizations. These activities we will never cease. It is our proletarian responsibility to fight for our our class around the world! We hope that we have your blessing as we carry on this important work.

Communist Party,
Los Angeles Metro Club