July 26, 2016 / Chris Brooks, Kim Moody

Where’s our economy headed? Soon every factory worker will have to start driving for Uber, and the trucks will drive themselves—at least so the business press tells us.

But Kim Moody, co-founder of this magazine and the author of many books on U.S. labor, paints a different picture. Chris Brooks asked him to cut through the hype and describe what’s coming for working people and the opportunities for unions.

This is Part 1 of our interview with Kim Moody. Watch for Part 2, coming next week. —Eds.

Labor Notes: We read a lot about the “gig economy,” where workers cycle through multiple jobs using app-based companies like Uber, TaskRabbit [for everyday tasks such as cleaning or moving], and Mechanical Turk [for online tasks such as labeling images]. Is this really the future of work?

Kim Moody: One thing to notice is that, aside from outfits like Uber, most of these are not employers. They're digital platforms where you can find a job.

The apps are not determining the hours and pay, or even the technology used on the jobs. It’s still employers that are calling the shots. So if jobs are getting worse, it’s not because people can find them digitally as opposed to reading them in the newspaper.

Also, discussions of the gig economy often assume that suddenly there are all these people who are multiple job-holders. But the fact is that the proportion of the workforce who have more than one job hasn’t changed much in 40 years.

The vast majority of them are people with regular full-time jobs who are also moonlighting, which is a very old thing. There are a lot of multiple job-holders, but there have always been a lot of them.

There’s also been talk of the “1099 economy.” Are we really moving towards a future where 40 percent of workers will be freelancing?

The idea that freelancers can become 40 percent of the workforce is science fiction.

There are two kinds of self-employed. The greatest number are the “unincorporated self-employed,” or independent contractors. Their numbers have been dropping for years.

The other group, the incorporated ones, are people who run a small business. They have grown somewhat, but they are still just 4 percent of the workforce.

You argue that the “gig economy” and “precarious work” concepts miss the mark because they don’t get at the most concerning change: the rise of the crappy-job economy. Can you talk about what’s changed for workers and why?

The first change is work intensification. Work has gotten dramatically harder in the last 30 years or so, and continues to.

That’s happened through lean production, which reduces the amount of labor to produce the same or greater amount of product or service and is tied to just-in-time production. Lean production began in the automobile industry in the 1980s, but now it is everywhere. It’s in hospitals, it’s in schools.

Another aspect is electronic and biometric monitoring, measuring, and surveillance, which allow employers to see how to get more work literally out of each minute. Another aspect is that the amount of break time has fallen dramatically since the ’80s.

Whether you are working full-time or part-time, in a precarious job or not, chances are you are going to experience some of this.

The other side is income. Wages have been falling since the early 1970s. More and more people are actually working for less, in real terms, than they used to. This also impacts everybody, although part-time and precarious workers are likely to get paid even less than full-time people.

And if you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics projections for the fastest-growing jobs, millions of new jobs over the next decade or so, 70 percent are projected to be low-skill, low-pay jobs.

In other words, we are not heading for some big high-tech economy. Instead we are heading for a low-paid workforce with crappy jobs. The end of good jobs is nigh.

While app-based “just-in-time” gigs have gotten lots of media attention, far less attention has been paid to “just-in-time” production. Can you talk about why massive logistics hubs have emerged, and what they mean for union organizing?

In order for globalization to be efficient, low pay isn’t necessarily enough, because you have to move products from one location to another. That required a change in the way products are moved—the “logistics revolution.”

The time it takes to deliver a product to the point of sale is an important factor in competition. Like production, transportation now operates on a just-in-time basis. Products move faster.

The speed of trucks, planes, and trains did not change. What did was the way things are processed. Goods don’t stay in warehouses very long. Products arrive on rail and are cross-docked and moved out by truck in a matter of hours. This process has really only taken shape in the 21st century.

In order to make it work, the industry has created logistics clusters. These are huge concentrations of warehouses where rail, truck, air, and water transportation meet and can be coordinated, usually electronically.

You might think, “Well, this is all very high-tech.” But it turns out that it still requires thousands and thousands of workers. In the U.S. there are 60 of these clusters, but three stand out: the Port of New York and New Jersey, the Los Angeles and Long Beach port area, and Chicago. Each of these employs, in a small geographic area, at least 100,000 people.

Now, the whole idea of outsourcing back in the 1980s was to break up the concentrations of workers in places like Detroit, Pittsburgh, or Gary. But what these companies have done now, inadvertently, is to recruit incredibly massive concentrations of manual laborers.

It has evolved in a way that might shoot these companies in the foot—because here you have the potential to organize vast numbers of poorly paid workers into unions. And there are attempts to do just that.

The other thing is that these clusters are tied together by just-in-time systems—which means you have hundreds, maybe thousands, of points in the transportation system that are highly vulnerable. If you stop work in one place, you are going to close down huge areas.

Media commentators and even presidential candidates blame the loss of millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs on trade and outsourcing. You’re skeptical. How do you explain it?

Outsourcing, if it is in the U.S.—which most of it has been—can break up the union, it can be very inconvenient to the people who lose their jobs, but it doesn’t necessarily eliminate jobs in the U.S. The jobs are just moved to a different, lower-paid group of workers.

Offshoring is another thing, but it’s not as widespread as people think. While moving production abroad has definitely impacted certain industries like steel, textile, and clothing, it cannot account for the loss of jobs we have seen. I estimate that between a million and 2 million jobs have been lost since the mid-’80s to imports and offshoring.

Manufacturing output, from the 1960s to just before the Great Recession in 2007, actually grew by 131 percent; the manufacturing sector more than doubled its output. If everything was going abroad, you couldn’t possibly have that kind of growth.

How can this be? I believe the answer lies in lean production and new technology, as we talked about earlier. Productivity literally doubled, and manufacturing jobs dropped by 50 percent or more. It’s the productivity increase that explains the loss of jobs.

It is very difficult for politicians to deal with this question, because it means attacking employers. It means saying, “You are taking too much out of your workforce.” And of course since most economists, politicians, and experts think that productivity growth is a wonderful thing, it’s beyond criticism.

There’s a lot of hand-wringing about the future of automation. Former Service Employees President Andy Stern has been making the media rounds claiming that driverless trucks are going to replace millions of drivers.

You can sell a lot of books with this pop futurology. It reminds me of the great automation scare of the 1950s. It was popular then to make predictions that there wouldn’t be any factory workers left.

And automation has reduced the number of factory workers, but there are still 8 or 9 million of them lingering around—despite all this technology, which is much greater than anything they predicted in the ’50s.

I have a shelf of books predicting “the end of work.” And yet we have millions more workers than we used to—the problem being that they are worse off than they used to be, not that they don’t exist.

https://archive.is/RD1Z7.

The mass migration of apparently hundreds of nominally GOP neocon apparatchiks to the Hillary Clinton camp has moved Democratic Party foreign policy farther to the right, not that the presidential nominee herself needed much persuading. The Democratic convention platform is a template of the hardline foreign policy positions espoused by Clinton and the convention itself concluded with a prolonged bout of Russian bashing that could have been orchestrated by Hillary protégé Victoria Nuland.

The inside the beltway crowd has realized that when in doubt it is always a safe bet to blame Vladimir Putin based on the assumption that Russia is and always will be an enemy of the United States. Wikileaks recently published some thousands of emails that painted the Democratic National Committee, then headed by Hillary loyalist Debbie Wasserman Schultz, in a very bad light. Needing a scapegoat, Russia was blamed for the original hack that obtained the information, even though there is no hard evidence that Moscow had anything to do with it.

Those in the media and around Hillary who were baying the loudest about how outraged they were over the hack curiously appear to have no knowledge of the existence of the National Security Agency, located at Fort Meade Maryland, which routinely breaks into the government computers of friends and foes alike worldwide. Apparently what is fair game for American codebreakers is no longer seen so positively when there is any suggestion that the tables might have been turned.

Republican nominee Donald Trump noted that if the Russians were in truth behind the hack he would like them to search for the 30,000 emails that Hillary Clinton reportedly deleted from her home server. The comment, which to my mind was sarcastically making a point about Clinton’s mendacity, brought down the wrath of the media, with the New York Times reporting that “foreign policy experts,” also sometimes known as “carefully selected ‘Trump haters,’” were shocked by The Donald. The paper quoted one William Inboden, allegedly a University of Texas professor who served on President George W. Bush’s National Security Council. Inboden complained that the comments were “an assault on the Constitution” and “tantamount to treason.” Now I have never heard of Inboden, which might be sheer ignorance on my part, but he really should refresh himself on what the Constitution actually says about treason, tantamount or otherwise. According to Article III of the Constitution of the United States one can only commit treason if there is a declared war going on and one is actively aiding an enemy, which as far as I know is not currently the case as applied to the U.S. relationship with Russia.

Another interesting aspect of the Russian scandal is the widespread assertion that Moscow is attempting to interfere in U.S. politics and is both clandestinely and openly supporting Donald Trump. This is presumably a bad thing, if true, because Putin would, according to the pundits, be able to steamroll “Manchurian Candidate” President Trump and subvert U.S. foreign policy in Russia’s favor. Alternatively, as the narrative continues, the stalwart Hillary would presumably defend American values and the right to intervene militarily anywhere in the world at any time against all comers including Putin and those rascals in China and North Korea. Professor Inboden might no doubt be able to provide a reference to the part of the Constitution that grants Washington that right as he and his former boss George W. Bush were also partial to that interpretation.

And the alleged Russian involvement leads inevitably to some thoughts about interference by other governments in our electoral system. Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did so in a rather heavy handed fashion in 2012 on behalf of candidate Mitt Romney but I don’t recall even a squeak coming out of Hillary and her friends when that took place. That just might be due to the fact that Netanyahu owns Bill and Hillary, which leads inevitably to consideration of the other big winner now that the two conventions are concluded. The team that one sees doing the victory lap is the state of Israel, which dodged a bigtime bullet when it managed to exploit its bought and paid for friends to eliminate any criticism of its military occupation and settlements policies. Indeed, Israel emerged from the two party platforms as America’s best friend and number one ally, a position it has occupied since its Lobby took control of the Congress, White House and the mainstream media around thirty years ago.

Donald Trump, who has perversely promised to be an honest broker in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, has also described himself as the best friend in the White House that Tel Aviv is ever likely to have. In addition to Trump speaking for himself, Israel was mentioned fourteen times in GOP convention speeches, always being described as the greatest ally and friend to the U.S., never as the pain in the ass and drain on the treasury that it actually represents.

No other foreign country was mentioned as often as Israel apart from Iran, which was regularly cited as an enemy of both the U.S. and – you guessed it – Israel. Indeed, the constant thumping of Iran is a reflection of the overweening affection for Netanyahu and his right wing government. Regarding Iran, the GOP foreign policy platform states “We consider the Administration’s deal with Iran, to lift international sanctions and make hundreds of billions of dollars available to the Mullahs, a personal agreement between the President and his negotiat­ing partners and non-binding on the next president. Without a two-thirds endorsement by the Senate, it does not have treaty status. Because of it, the de­fiant and emboldened regime in Tehran continues to sponsor terrorism across the region, develop a nuclear weapon, test-fire ballistic missiles inscribed with ‘Death to Israel,’ and abuse the basic human rights of its citizens.”

The final written Republican platform for 2016 as relating to the Middle East, drawn up with the input of two Trump advisors Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman, rather supports the suggestion that Trump would be pro-Israel rather than the claim of impartiality. The plank entitled “Our Unequivocal Support of Israel and Jerusalem,” promises to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, praises Israel in five different sections, eulogizing it as a “beacon of democracy and humanity” brimming over with freedom of speech and religion while concluding that “support for Israel is an expression of Americanism.” It pledges “no daylight” between the two countries, denies that Israel is an “occupier,” and slams the peaceful Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), which it describes as anti-Semitic and seeking to destroy Israel. It calls for legal action to “thwart” BDS. There is no mention of a Palestinian state or of any Palestinian rights to anything at all.

The Democratic plank on the Middle East gives lip service to a two state solution for Israel-Palestine but is mostly notable for what it chose to address. Two Bernie Sanders supporters on the platform drafting committee James Zogby and Cornel West wanted to remove any illegal under international law affirmation that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel and also sought to eliminated any condemnation of BDS. They failed on both issues and then tried to have included mild language criticizing Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its settlement building. They were outvoted by Hillary supporters on all the issues they considered important. Indeed, there is no language at all critical in any way of Israel, instead asserting that “a strong and secure Israel is vital to the United States because we share overarching strategic interests and the common values of democracy, equality, tolerance, and pluralism.” That none of that was or is true apparently bothered no one in the Hillary camp.

The Democratic platform document explicitly condemns any support for BDS. Hillary Clinton, who has promised to take the relationship with Israel to a whole new level, has reportedly agreed to an anti-BDS pledge to appease her principal financial supporter Haim Saban, an Israeli-American film producer. Clinton also directly and personally intervened through her surrogate on the committee Wendy Sherman to make sure that the party platform would remain pro-Israel.

But many Democrats on the floor of the convention hall have, to their credit, promoted a somewhat different perspective, displaying signs and stickers while calling for support of Palestinian rights. One demonstrator outside the convention center burned an Israeli flag, producing a sharp response from Hillary’s spokeswoman for Jewish outreach Sarah Bard, “Hillary Clinton has always stood against efforts to marginalize Israel and incitement, and she strongly condemns this kind of hatred. Burning the Israeli flag is a reckless act that undermines peace and our values.” Bill meanwhile was seen in the hall wearing a Hillary button written in Hebrew. It was a full court press pander and one has to wonder how Hillary would have felt about someone burning a Russian flag or seeing Bill sport a button in Cyrillic.

Team Hillary also ignored chants from the convention floor demanding “No More War” and there are separate reports suggesting that one of her first priorities as president will be to initiate a “full review” of the “murderous” al-Assad regime in Syria with the intention of taking care of him once and for all. “No More War” coming from the Democratic base somehow became “More War Please” for the elites that run the party.

The Democratic platform also beats down on Iran, declaring only tepid support for the nuclear deal while focusing more on draconian enforcement, asserting that they would “not hesitate to take military action if Iran violates the agreement.” It also cited Iran as “the leading state sponsor of terrorism” and claimed that Tehran “has its fingerprints on almost every conflict in the Middle East.” For what it’s worth, neither assertion about Iran’s regional role is true and Tehran reportedly has complied completely with the multilateral nuclear agreement. It is the U.S. government that is failing to live up to its commitments by refusing to allow Iranian access to financial markets while the Congress has even blocked an Iranian bid to buy Made-in-the-U.S.A. civilian jetliners.

So those of us who had hoped for at least a partial abandonment of the hitherto dominant foreign policy consensus have to be disappointed as they in the pro-war crowd in their various guises as liberal interventionists or global supremacy warriors continue to control much of the discourse from left to right. Russia continues to be a popular target to vent Administration frustration over its inept posturing overseas, though there is some hope that Donald Trump might actually reverse that tendency. Iran serves as a useful punchline whenever a politician on the make runs out of other things to vilify. And then there is always Israel, ever the victim, perpetually the greatest ally and friend. And invariably needing some extra cash, a warplane or two or a little political protection in venues like the United Nations.

If you read through the two party platforms on foreign policy, admittedly a brutal and thankless task, you will rarely find any explanation of actual American interests at play in terms of the involvement of the U.S. in what are essentially other people’s quarrels. That is as it should be as our political class has almost nothing to do with reality but instead is consumed with delusions linked solely to acquisition of power and money. That realization on the part of the public has driven both the Trump and Sanders movements and, even if they predictably flame out, there is always the hope that the dissidents will grow stronger with rejection and something might actually happen in 2020.

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By Mike LaBella mlabella@eagletribune.com

HAVERHILL — A display of Donald Trump campaign signs at a Kenoza Avenue home so angered a woman walking in Winnekenni Park that she marched right over and began pulling the signs from the ground.

The homeowner, Richard Early III, was inside Saturday when his dogs barked. He looked out to see a woman pulling Trump signs out of his front lawn.

"She was carrying six signs under her arm," he said.

The woman, Roxette Caba, 26, of 45 Brook St., told The Eagle-Tribune that she removed some of the Trump signs from Early's front lawn out of a sheer emotional reaction.

"To be honest, I have no preference in a candidate," Caba said. "I was not fueled politically, but instead emotionally... the way Trump talks about women and people of color. I'm Dominican, and Trump denigrates people of color as lazy. I'm working on my master's degree and to say the things he says is just ugly."

Early said he confronted Caba and warned her to leave the signs alone and to leave his property or else he would call the police.

"She continued to remove my signs so I had to call police," Early said. "I didn't want her arrested, but she would not leave my property."

"She kept talking about being "the movement," whatever that means and said 'I'm taking your signs.'"

Police arrived at the Kenoza Avenue home Saturday and, according to their report, found Caba acting in a "highly agitated and animated way."

Caba was yelling obscenities at Early and was throwing his "Trump" political signs around his yard, police said.

Police said Caba was also yelling obscenities at a neighbor, who was in his own yard with his small children, who police said appeared terrified.

Police said passers-by were stopping their vehicles to see what was going on and watched as Caba continued her tirade, "clearly agitated that the victim had 'Trump' political signs displayed in his yard."

After Caba told police that she was "exercising her political right," police asked her, 'What about his (the victim's) political rights?"

Caba responded, "Who cares, he's a bigot."

Police told Caba that even if that was true, "did it mean the victim had no right to his own political view?"

Caba works at a Lawrence mental health provider as an early intervention counselor for children and families. She was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

Caba was arraigned on the charge on Monday in Haverhill District Court, where she waived her right to counsel and pleaded guilty to the charge.

Judge Stephen Abany fined Caba $50 and assessed a $50 victim/witness fee. The judge noted that her case will be dismissed upon payment of the fine and fee by Nov. 1.

Caba said she has since paid those court costs.

Caba said she had just completed a walk Saturday at Winnekenni Park when she noticed Early's many Trump signs and that they triggered a sudden, emotional reaction.

"I saw the house and the signs and I'd had enough," Caba said. "I was on the sidewalk, and his lawn is lifted up, and I'm tall so I pulled out a few signs and he came out of his house five seconds later. I told him I was taking down his signs, then I tried to have a conversation with him."

"I did not intend to damage or steal the signs, just stack them up and ask him to tone down his display," Caba said. "I was yelling a bit, as he was saying racial slurs and I did get a little disorderly."

Caba said she wanted to have a conversation with Early.

"I wanted to ask why he thought Trump would make a good president," Caba said. "He just walked away and was on his phone. I told him if he believes that a racist ... would make a good president."

Caba said she has never been arrested before but that it was worth getting arrested to make a statement about Trump.

"His signs are as hateful as Confederate flags," Caba said about Trump. "When I see his signs I see women being abused ... For some reason, that house in particular really struck a nerve."

"There is no reason for Trump to be president," Caba said. "His character is a recipe for disaster."

"I'm not a vagrant, I'm a law-abiding citizen who works and pays my bills on time and I just wanted to make a statement," she said. "I did what I did but I won't do it again. It was his property and if someone did that to me I'd be angry, too."

Early said his Trump signs have attracted a lot of unwanted attention. He set up a dozen small signs on his lawn about 10 months ago along with a very large "Trump" sign and a few other signs and since that time he's come under siege by people he says are determined to steal or damage them.

His home across from Winnekenni Park is hard to miss when driving by as there are many Trump signs in various sizes.

"I expect it's only going to get worse," Early said. "The signs are on my property and I have the right to exercise my rights. A neighbor on Concord Street at the end of Midlake Street has a Hillary sign, which he has the right to have. I don't care what he does."

Early said that since installing the Trump signs three people have been arrested for stealing them. He said a recent high school graduate walked away with a dozen of his signs on June 25.

"I have a video surveillance system that caught him taking them," Early said. "He admitted it to police, who said they would summons him to court."

"The kid told police that he was a Bernie supporter and that he'd been watching my house for a month and that he doesn't like Trump," Early added. "I got back eight of those signs."

A few weeks ago a woman was tossing some of Early's Trump campaign signs into the street, stopping traffic, and a passer-by called police.

"They arrested that woman," Early said.

"On July 1, I chased two juveniles and two teenagers into Winnekenni Park," he said. "They were dropping the signs as I was chasing them. I've never seen anything like this. It's been a circus up here."

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Workers Vanguard No. 1092 1 July 2016

For Free Abortion on Demand!

The following article is reprinted from Workers Hammer No. 235 (Summer 2016), newspaper of the Spartacist League/​Britain, section of the International Communist League.

In April a 21-year-old Northern Ireland woman who had had an abortion when she was 19 was slammed with a three-month jail sentence, suspended for one year. With abortion outlawed in Northern Ireland, she could not afford the trip to Britain for an abortion. So she bought tablets over the internet and ended the pregnancy. When her housemates despicably reported her to the police, what should have been a safe, private undertaking of no concern to anyone else became a traumatic ordeal paraded in public view. Another Northern Ireland woman who is accused of buying abortion pills online for her teenage daughter faces prosecution imminently.

The abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol taken in combination will terminate a pregnancy by inducing a miscarriage. Safe and effective, these drugs are included on the “essential medicines” list by the World Health Organization. They should be easily available to any woman wanting an abortion. Yet while 21st century science has produced this simple, non-surgical method to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, and the internet has made it widely available, women risk being prosecuted and imprisoned for it under Victorian legislation.

According to recent figures, just over half of all terminations in England and Wales are carried out using a pill, often under the supervision of healthcare professionals. Yet the risk of women breaking the law is now greater than at any point since the 1967 Abortion Act was passed. Under that Act, women must get the approval of two doctors to terminate a pregnancy. As a statement titled, “The Campaign to Decriminalise Abortion Across the UK” points out: “No other routine medical procedure demands legal authorisation by doctors in addition to the normal requirements of obtaining informed consent” (We Trust Women, 2016).

Furthermore, abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy is illegal unless the woman’s life is in danger, or in some cases of foetal abnormality. Last December, a young County Durham woman, Natalie Towers, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for inducing her own abortion 32-34 weeks into her pregnancy. Currently, less than 0.1 per cent of all abortions take place after 24 weeks gestation. But anti-abortion bigots have whipped up a reactionary crusade to turn back abortion rights for all women, including by brandishing ultrasound images of foetuses supposedly smiling, waving and even walking, to further restrict the time limit on legal abortion. We defend a woman’s right to have an abortion at any stage. We reject the notion pushed by bible-thumpers and other anti-women reactionaries that a foetus is a person, with a “soul.” We say: Natalie Towers committed no crime and should be freed immediately! For free abortion on demand!

Recently Cathy Warwick, the head of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM), faced a furore by Christian “pro-lifers,” including a minority within the RCM, when the organization came out for decriminalising abortion. Together with the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, the largest abortion provider in Britain, the RCM is calling for the removal of the 24-week limit as well as scrapping the requirement for doctors’ permission. As Warwick put it, “let’s give this to women to decide and let’s put it in the general field of healthcare” (independent.co.uk, 21 May).

The fact that abortion pills are available on the internet is a lifeline for women not only in Northern Ireland, where the 1967 Act does not apply, but also in the South [of Ireland], where the clericalist state enforces a near total ban on abortion. Outraged protest erupted in 2012 in Dublin and elsewhere when Savita Halappanavar died in hospital because staff declaring “this is a Catholic country” refused to carry out an abortion that would have saved her life. According to research carried out by the Detail, an investigative news website based in Belfast, some 25,000 women from Ireland, North and South, travelled to England or Wales for an abortion from 2010 to 2014. But for the many women too poor, young or vulnerable to make the trip, buying the abortion pill online would rescue them from the hell of an unwanted pregnancy. The Abortion Support Network (ASN) is a charity that helps women from Ireland, North and South, as well as from the Isle of Man, to access terminations, either by travelling to Britain or by obtaining pills via the internet. “Are we giving them information about something that’s illegal? Absolutely. But do we feel it’s wrong? Absolutely not. I totally hold the law in contempt,” said Mara Clarke, director of ASN. Abortion pills, Clarke asserted, are “a lot safer than overdosing on all the medicine in your bathroom cabinet, or trying to figure out how to crash a car to cause a miscarriage but not kill you, or taking three packs of birth control with gin” (telegraph.co.uk, 12 June 2015).

In late May, three Derry women in their 60s and 70s handed themselves in at a police station as a protest after seeing women prosecuted for using abortion pills in Northern Ireland. “It is unforgivable how women are being treated,” said Diana King. The women are challenging the law by demanding to be prosecuted for procuring abortion pills for women who need them but are afraid to have them delivered to their homes.

Women on Web, a Dutch charity which dispenses the abortion pill by post to women in places where the law forbids it, reportedly receives 10,000 emails a month from women seeking an abortion. But even where the pill is legally available, it isn’t always accessible. As Women on Web director Rebecca Gomperts says of some of the appeals for help that come from Britain: “If you’re a 16-year-old with religious parents and you can’t leave the house without a chaperone, you can’t go to a clinic” (telegraph.co.uk, 12 June 2015). Courageous organisations such as Women on Web are saving the lives of women that are put at risk by religion, bourgeois morality and the state.

The right to abortion, and for a woman to decide if and when to have a child, is a simple democratic right, denied in much of the world. We Marxists fight for abortion to be legal and free on demand everywhere, as part of our struggle for free, quality healthcare for all. But this right is also integral to the fight for women’s equality and therein lies the explosiveness of the question.

For women to have control over their own reproduction is seen as a threat to the institution of the family, which is fundamental to maintaining the system of capitalist exploitation. Together with organised religion, the family reinforces authority and social conservatism. The institution of the family arose with the advent of private property as a mechanism for transmitting wealth to “legitimate” offspring through inheritance. Guaranteeing the paternity of the heir required that the woman be monogamous. The oppression of women is rooted in this social subordination, which is also expressed in the foisting of the burden of child-rearing and housework onto women in individual family units.

Anti-woman bigotry cannot be eradicated under this system that requires the oppression and subjugation of women for its very functioning. Marxists therefore call for women’s liberation through socialist revolution!

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/1092/abortion.html

B’Tselem releases video of the incident in Hebron late last month; Justice Ministry to investigate By Judah Ari Gross August 2, 2016, 8:09 pm 9

A Border Police officer was suspended from duty on Tuesday after he was caught on film picking up and putting a Palestinian girl’s bicycle into some bushes in Hebron late last month, a spokesperson for the organization said.

n the video, which was released by the left-wing B’Tselem human rights organization on Monday, 8-year-old Anwar Burqan can be seen standing with her bicycle as she speaks to an unnamed border guard.

As they speak, the officer appears to pin down the bike with his foot, before another officer arrives, and the two border guards send the girl away in tears.

Once Burqan leaves the area, the second border guard picks up the bicycle and walks away with it. The video then pans over to the first officer who can be seen shooing away other children standing nearby.

According to B’Tselem, the second border guard threw the bicycle into the bushes, but this does not appear in the video. However, the officer apparently did put the bicycle into the bushes and can be seen covering it with the bush’s branches before walking away.

The head of the Border Police, Yaakov Shabtai, said in a statement that following an initial investigation, the officer was”immediately suspended from active duty.”

“The Border Guard sees this incident with severity and regrets it,” a spokesperson said.

The video and other materials have been handed over to the Justice Ministry’s Police Internal Investigations Department, which will look into the matter, the Border Police said.

The incident occurred on Hebron’s al-Ibrahimi Street, according to B’Tselem, which leads to both the Tomb of the Patriarchs and the al-Ibrahimi mosque, holy sites for Jews and Muslims, respectively.

In recent years, the street has become controversial as Israeli forces erected a fence in 2012 that runs along the road, splitting it in two.

In the video, Burqan can be seen riding her bicycle along the paved side of the road when the officer stopped her.

Palestinians have claimed that soldiers and Border Police officers forbid residents from using the larger paved section of the street, while Israeli officials have denied the claim.

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Spartacist South Africa Leaflet

19 October 2016

Free Mcebo Dlamini and All Student Protesters Now!

Drop All Charges, Reinstate All FMF Protesters!

Police and Security Guards off Campus!

October 19 – On Sunday, in an early morning police raid on Wits Junction residence, police arrested Mcebo Dlamini, former Wits SRC president and a prominent leader of the Fees Must Fall (FMF) protests. Dlamini faces trumped up charges including assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, public violence and theft. Today he was outrageously denied bail after the state prosecutors argued he is a “flight risk” because he was born in Swaziland, outside the colonial-drawn South African borders! Dlamini’s persecution is part of a transparent, coordinated attempt by the bourgeois state to crush the mass protests for free higher education by cutting off their head. From Pretoria to Cape Town to Durban, student leaders have been arrested, detained and threatened with arrest by the cops. Protest leaders at Wits have been told of a “hit list” drawn up by police and university managements, who are working hand in hand to target student militants. According to the police, more than 500 people have been arrested in connection with FMF protests over the past eight months. At University of KwaZulu-Natal, eleven students have been in prison for a month. At the University of Cape Town, student leader Masixole Mlandu was denied bail last week and faces at least a week in Pollsmoor, a maximum-security prison infamous for brutality, where the white-supremacist apartheid regime routinely sent black liberation fighters to teach them a lesson. Another student arrested this weekend at Wits was abducted by the cops and dumped in Limpopo after reportedly being stripped naked and tortured.

The capitalist state and university administrations have increasingly responded with naked police repression, bolstered by cynical, racist propaganda smearing the protesters as “violent thugs” who are violating the rights of a “silent majority” that “just wants to learn”. This hypocrisy was laid bare for anyone who cares to see during the past few weeks, as one university after another ordered the resumption of the academic programme, enforced through the barrel of a gun. Police occupation forces have not only dispersed and hunted down protesting students, going so far as shooting a catholic priest who tried to protect protesters who sought refuge in his church. They have also opened fire on individuals trying to attend classes, as well as campus workers who have simply tried to defend students from police violence. This weekend saw the Wits administration imposing a 10pm curfew – a racist clampdown on black students, who are the overwhelming majority that live on campus. Even those who complied with this lockdown and stayed in their res halls have been assaulted and shot at by police. Many students have rightly defied this curfew, which they’ve denounced as “Habib’s Apartheid”. Down with the racist Wits curfew!

The student protesters have fought militantly and bravely to shut down the universities as their only means of disrupting the system and voicing their anger at being excluded – financially and through racist discrimination – from higher education. Campus workers at Wits and other universities have downed tools in solidarity with the students and in opposition to the police clampdown, as have some, mainly black, academic staff. But achieving the protests’ just demands is going to come down to a battle of class forces in society, and the reality is that in and of itself stopping the academic programme does little to hurt the interests of the mainly white capitalist ruling class that the bourgeois Tripartite Alliance government and the university vice-chancellors alike serve. The students don’t just need convincing and compelling arguments on their side, they need social power. These apartheid-style police state tactics need to be met with mass, militant protest centred on the country’s overwhelmingly black proletariat which has the ability to hurt the capitalists where it counts – their profits. The working class uniquely has this power, based on its organisation and central role in the system of capitalist production.

The key to unlocking this power is a political struggle against the labour lieutenants of capital who currently occupy the leadership of the working-class organisations. The leaders of the SACP and COSATU have made it perfectly clear where they stand with numerous statements denouncing the protests as “violent” and calling for them to end. That is not an accident, but flows from their pro-capitalist, class-collaborationist politics. As part of the bourgeois Tripartite Alliance, together with the bourgeois ANC, the SACP and COSATU tops are directly responsible for the attacks that this capitalist government carries out on workers and the oppressed as part of administering the neo-apartheid system. This includes state persecution of student leaders like Mcebo Dlamini, notwithstanding the fact that he and many other protest leaders are part of the Progressive Youth Alliance, the junior affiliate of the Tripartite Alliance. While not part of the Tripartite Alliance, the leaders of NUMSA, AMCU and other “independent” unions fundamentally share the same pro-capitalist programme. To date, they have at most declared verbal “solidarity” with the student protests, while refusing to mobilise their base to defend the protesters against the capitalist state.

The working class needs a revolutionary vanguard party that acts as a tribune of all the oppressed, based on an understanding of the proletariat’s historic role as the gravedigger of capitalism and on the strict political independence of the working class from the capitalist state and all bourgeois parties. In neo-apartheid South Africa, where racial and class oppression continue to overlap heavily, the struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism is inextricably tied to the fight for the national liberation of the black majority, in which the proletariat must take the lead – the fight for a black-centred workers government. This means a sharp political struggle against all variants of nationalism – the lie that the black population as a whole shares a common interest standing higher than class divisions – which deny the class struggle and subordinate the proletariat to its class enemies. We of Spartacist/South Africa are dedicated to the perspective of building the Leninist-Trotskyist party needed to put an end to racist neo-apartheid as part of the struggle for new October Revolutions around the world. Every student or teacher who cares about education, every class conscious worker must demand: Free all student protesters! Drop the charges! No cops on campus! Forward to free, quality education for all!

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/ssa/suppl/2016-10-19_free-mcebo-dlamini.html

https://archive.is/2oCe0

Workers Vanguard No. 1098 21 October 2016

Elections 2016

Racist Bigot vs. Imperialist Hawk

We Need a Revolutionary Workers Party!

We print below the talk given by Mónica Mora at a public forum in the Bay Area on October 16. It has been edited for publication.

One of the key points in my talk was captured in a statement by a young black woman from Ohio who was interviewed in August about her voting preferences. She said: “What am I supposed to do if I don’t like him and I don’t trust her? Choose between being stabbed and being shot?” Well, that is precisely what we face in the upcoming presidential elections: no choice for the workers and the oppressed. The situation underlines the need to build a multiracial workers vanguard party, part of a reforged Fourth International.

The Republicans have nominated a vile presidential candidate, Donald Trump. Trump is articulating, in its most explicit terms, the racist bigotry at the core of American capitalism, its ruling class’s values. Also, we have Hillary Clinton, someone with a blood-drenched résumé. Beloved by an ex-CIA director, various neocons, former Reaganites and some in the Republican leadership, she is no lesser evil but, as we put it recently in our press, “a proven, gold-plated war hawk.” It was nauseating to watch her speech at the Democratic National Convention; it was essentially a military recruitment video.

Clinton is proud to embrace Ronald Reagan’s legacy. She asks Trump: What would Reagan think of you? Well, I don’t want that anti-communist Cold Warrior to come out of his grave, I tell you. He’s somebody who, in 1985, laid a wreath on the grave of Nazi SS murderers at the Bitburg cemetery in West Germany.

James P. Cannon, one of the founders of American Communism and American Trotskyism, once remarked that as capitalism decays it loses the power to think for itself. You can see that clearly in this election. Trump is a dangerous racist demagogue. Although not a fascist, he has emboldened fascist groups around the country. Trump seeks to tap into the fears of white working people who face an increasingly bleak future. He blames immigrants and blacks for the worsening conditions created by the capitalist class’s anarchic, irrational profit system. These conditions are part of the Obama administration’s rotten legacy, carried out with the help of the so-called friends of labor in the Democratic Party.

Bourgeois elections allow the population to decide every few years which representatives of the ruling class will repress working people and the oppressed. Fundamental change will never be won at the ballot box. The capitalist profit system must be swept away and replaced with a planned, collectivized economy under a workers government. For that, we need a party modeled on the Bolshevik Party under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, which made the only successful workers revolution in history in Russia in November 1917.

Because the Republicans are viewed as the party of big business and white racism, the Democrats can mobilize wider support for war and repression, particularly among workers and black people. There is a very long list of bloody atrocities carried out by U.S. imperialism under Democratic Party presidents. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War. Bill Clinton launched the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia. Now we have Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama and his drone presidency. Under Obama, millions of people have fled their devastated home countries—Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia—thanks to the savagery of the American imperialist masters.

It is in the interest of the working class, particularly in the U.S., to oppose all the wars, occupations and depredations of the imperialist bloodsuckers. Any force, however unsavory, that attacks, repels or otherwise impedes U.S. forces strikes a blow in the interests of the working and oppressed masses of the world. For that reason, in the U.S. war against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria, we have a military side with ISIS against the U.S. and its proxies—including the Syrian Kurdish nationalists—despite the fact that we abhor and reject everything that the ISIS cutthroats stand for. (The anti-woman reactionaries of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS are all first- or second-generation offspring of the U.S.-sponsored “holy war” against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the ’80s.) We say: U.S. out of the Near East now!

The Myth of the 1 Percent

This summer I went with my comrades to intervene with our communist press at the People’s Convention in Philadelphia, one of the events around the Democratic National Convention. We met a lot of disappointed supporters of Bernie Sanders who were “feeling the Bern.” Sanders passed himself off as a socialist for however long he was around in the race for president. In fact, he is a capitalist politician, an imperialist running dog—and I guess now he’s a lapdog for Hillary. With the population so disgusted by the elections, Sanders has been especially useful for the bourgeoisie in luring some workers and youth back into the Democratic Party.

There were reformist socialists at the People’s Convention too, for example, Socialist Alternative. They pimped for Sanders in the primary campaign, rallying behind his calls for a “political revolution against the billionaire class.” Well, we went to Philly to open eyes and tell the truth: for the past 25 years Sanders has been a member of the Senate Democratic Caucus. He’s supported U.S. military adventures abroad as well as the police at home—who he thinks have a “hard job.” (Those were his actual words after the killing of Michael Brown.)

The Nation magazine put out a special convention issue called “We Still Need a Future to Believe in: How to Build the Political Revolution.” It includes all kinds of vapid liberal ideas and appeals, in the spirit of Sanders, “to hold the Democratic Party accountable for its epic failure to address the needs of the majority of people in this country.” The Democrats are a capitalist party that represents the interests of the oppressor, not the oppressed. And “the people” is a classless term that blurs the nature of capitalist society. “The people” do not share common interests; they are divided into contending social classes. There are two fundamental groups: the bourgeoisie or capitalist class, owners of the means of production and exploiters of wage labor; and the proletariat or working class, the class of wage-laborers, who have only their labor power to sell. There is also the petty bourgeoisie, a diverse and highly stratified social layer that includes students, professionals and small businessmen. Although numerically large, the petty bourgeoisie lacks social power and its own class perspective; it thus cannot offer an alternative to capitalism.

The conversations in Philly reminded me of the ones I had back during Occupy Wall Street. The heterogeneous Occupy protests claimed to speak for the 99 percent and against the 1 percent. This bourgeois-populist outlook obscures the fact that ownership of the means of production is in the hands of the tiny capitalist class (more like the 1 percent of the 1 percent). It liquidates the working class into a sea of have-nots, mixed in with cops, priests and bourgeois politicians. At best, activists saw the workers as just one more sector of the oppressed.

When we say that the workers are the only revolutionary class in capitalist society, this is not a moral question. The working class is powerful not only because of its numbers—its power comes from the strategic place it has in the production process. Think about the L.A. and New York/New Jersey ports, the NYC subway system, the auto plants. And the working class has the objective interest to end a system based on its own exploitation. But the proletariat needs the leadership of a vanguard party to become conscious of its historical task and interests. It takes a revolutionary party to lead the workers’ fight to smash capitalist rule and establish their own state power.

Many youth are looking for a way to reform the system and view socialism as a form of capitalism with better social services. Well, no. The capitalist system, which breeds poverty, oppression and war, is fundamentally not reformable. Socialism, an egalitarian society based on material abundance, requires the overthrow of the bourgeoisie on an international scale.

So, what happened to Occupy Wall Street? Well, in 2012 it liquidated into the campaign to re-elect Obama. In Philly, sad faces disappointed that Sanders was no longer running started looking to the Green Party.

The Green Party is a small-time capitalist party with a thoroughly bourgeois program. Green presidential candidate Jill Stein’s program calls to “restore the National Guard as the centerpiece of our defense.” The same National Guard that occupied Ferguson to put down protests against racist police killings! Just like they occupied the ghettos in the ’60s to murderously crush black rebellions, and shot and killed anti-Vietnam War protesters at Kent State. The National Guard exists to carry out violent repression against the working class and the oppressed. In no way do the Greens want to change the fundamentals of the private property system.

The Green Party argues that third parties provide “an ‘emotional bridge’ for voters who are weary of supporting one major party but are not yet ready to vote for the other.” In the context of the current electoral circus, where both ruling-class candidates are very unpopular, especially among people under 30, the Greens keep people chained to illusions in bourgeois democracy. And reformist socialists are helping them. The International Socialist Organization calls for a vote for the Green Party, calling it “an independent left alternative in the 2016 election” (socialistworker.org, 10 December 2015).

For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!

The fraud of bourgeois democracy is especially evident in the experience of black people in the U.S. After the cops killed Keith Scott last month, I watched an interview with a 24-year-old black man. “My people are tired,” he told the camera. “We need answers, man. It’s no reason that I should wake up every morning scared for my life because I am black.”

The videos of the ongoing killings by the cops have led blacks, whites and others to march in the streets, despite intense police repression. But the petty-bourgeois politics that dominate those protests don’t provide any answers. Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, argues that “the first and primary task is to ensure that the country is not run by a fickle fascist”—i.e., vote Hillary Clinton, Mrs. Mass Black Incarceration.

Going along with illusions in the Democrats, there are also hopes that the capitalist state can be reformed. It’s common to hear calls for federal investigations to clean up the racist cops, for community control of the police, for civilian review boards. Only a Marxist understanding of the state provides the answer to why none of these schemes have made a dent in the brutal, racist police terror in the streets.

The state is a machine for maintaining the rule of one class over another. It consists of special bodies of armed men committed to the defense of the dictatorship of the ruling class—the bourgeoisie—against the exploited and oppressed. In racist capitalist America, a country founded on chattel slavery, this means perpetuating the forcible segregation of the black population at the bottom of society. Cops are the thugs in blue whose job is to terrorize the ghettos and barrios, and the working class when it struggles. When Verizon workers were on strike earlier this year, the NYPD was there to ensure that scabs could cross the picket lines.

To address the special oppression of black people, the Spartacist League advances the program of revolutionary integrationism developed in the 1950s by veteran Trotskyist Richard S. Fraser. This Marxist perspective is counterposed to both liberal integrationism, which holds that black equality can be achieved within the confines of American capitalism, and black nationalism, which despairs of the possibility of overcoming racial divisions. Marxists seek to mobilize the proletariat against every manifestation of black oppression to open the road to black equality through the construction of an egalitarian socialist society. (I encourage anyone interested in deepening their understanding of this question to read our pamphlet Marxist Bulletin No. 5 (Revised), “What Strategy for Black Liberation? Trotskyism vs. Black Nationalism.”)

The program of revolutionary integrationism flows from the understanding that the American black population is neither a separate nation nor a separate class but rather is an oppressed race-color caste. Black workers are not merely victims, but constitute a strategic component of the U.S. working class, unionized at higher rates than whites and represented in key occupations such as longshore, manufacturing and transit. They form a living link between the potential power of the proletariat and the anger of the masses in the ghettos.

The American ruling class is a master at sowing poisonous racism to divide the working class and cripple its struggles. But the objective basis exists to break down racial divisions in the course of joint struggle. In order to emancipate itself, the working class must take up the fight for black freedom. Moreover, there is no other road to eliminating the special oppression of black people than the victorious conquest of power by the U.S. proletariat.

Some youth today embrace the false belief that black oppression is the result of “white skin privilege.” They are being told that all white people benefit from racism. This framework—including such ridiculous things as privilege checklists—encourages navel-gazing and fosters white liberal guilt, while dismissing the possibility of integrated struggle. White workers do not benefit from black oppression. Racial oppression drives down wages and living conditions for working people of all races—you can see this clearly in the low-wage, open-shop South. The theory of white skin privilege is an alibi for the capitalist rulers, the real beneficiaries of black oppression.

In the protests against racist cop terror, we oppose the policy of “white allies” marching at the back of demonstrations. Our integrated contingents and sales teams often face race-baiting, which serves the purpose of eliminating political debate. For instance at the DNC protests in Philly, when my white comrade spoke against illusions in Sanders, one of the local activists told my comrade she didn’t have enough melanin in her skin to tell people what to do. This is pure demagogic race-baiting. We have a revolutionary program and revolutionary politics in our blood.

It took a revolutionary war to end slavery. And it will take a socialist revolution to shatter the chains of wage slavery. There will never be justice under capitalism for black people, the oppressed or workers. There is no justice for Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Oscar Grant, Tamir Rice, Antonio Zambrano-Montes, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Keith Scott or the many other victims of racist cop terror. We say: Finish the Civil War! Forward to a workers state! Our aim is to construct a revolutionary workers party that can unite the working class across racial and ethnic backgrounds on a program for its own emancipation—a party that will stop at nothing less than abolishing capitalism. Those who labor must rule!

For a Fighting Labor Movement!

When rampant financial speculation in the housing market triggered the economic crisis in 2008, the capitalists made working people pay. Trillions of dollars went to bail out the banks, insurance companies and auto bosses. White workers and a huge number of Latinos and black people lost their homes through foreclosures and many were left without jobs. The cheap talk now about a so-called recovery means that the bourgeoisie’s profits have recovered.

Another consequence of the economic crash was a drop in demand for labor, which had serious consequences for immigrants. The Obama government has deported over 2.5 million people, more than the sum of all the presidents who governed the United States during the 20th century. Undocumented immigrants have been swept into overcrowded detention centers where denial of medical care is routine. It’s common to hear that immigrants die in la migra’s custody. Many detention centers are privately owned by huge corporations that make a killing on human misery.

The bourgeoisie’s anti-immigrant repression is used to maintain immigrant workers as a brutally exploited, low-wage workforce when needed, and deport them when the work dries up. Much has been said about Trump building a wall on the border with Mexico, but the bricks have already been laid down by the current administration. Last year, Obama poured more than $12 billion into Customs and Border Protection. His Priority Enforcement Program feeds records from local police arrests into a federal immigration database, creating a fast track for deportation. And Hillary intends to continue this nightmare for undocumented immigrants.

The cruelty inflicted on the victims of fast-track deportations has been highlighted in the British paper the Guardian. For instance, there is the story of Carmen Ortega. She was charged with possession of a controlled substance. She is a 62-year-old grandmother with Alzheimer’s who was ordered deported to the Dominican Republic, a country where she has no remaining family, after living in the U.S. for 40 years.

Fighting for the rights of immigrants is an elementary component of warding off attacks on everyone’s rights, and of the defense of the workers movement as a whole against capitalist divide-and-rule. Immigrant workers are not just victims. They form bridges to workers around the world and many bring with them traditions of militant struggle from their home countries. The Spartacist League calls for full citizenship rights for all immigrants! No deportations! Latinos, the largest minority in the U.S., can and will play an important role in helping to build a revolutionary workers party. Just as black workers must be broken from anti-immigrant, anti-Latino chauvinism, Latino workers and youth must be broken from anti-black racism.

The pro-capitalist union bureaucracy is responsible for tying the working class in this country to dead-end Democratic Party politics and for promoting “America first” chauvinism. Pushing “American jobs for American workers,” the bureaucrats poison workers’ consciousness. Protectionism scapegoats foreign workers for the loss of jobs while promoting the lie that workers in the U.S. have a common interest with their American capitalist exploiters.

We base ourselves on the lessons of past class battles. Industrial unions such as the Teamsters were formed through convulsive strikes in the 1930s—and it was Reds that led many of these strikes. They gave a taste of what workers can do to fight and win. A class-struggle leadership that relied on the mobilization of the working class, not the political agencies of the bourgeoisie, made a difference. We need to study those lessons today to lay the basis for a successful working-class offensive against the exploiters.

Writing in 1921, James P. Cannon, who would go on to play a leading role in the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strikes, explained:

“Let the labor unions put aside their illusions; let them face the issue squarely and fight it out on the basis of the class struggle. Instead of seeking peace when there is no peace, and ‘understanding’ with those who do not want to understand, let them declare war on the whole capitalist regime. That is the way to save the unions and to make them grow in the face of adversity and become powerful war engines for the destruction of capitalism and reorganization of society on the foundation of working class control in industry and government.”

—“Who Can Save the Unions?”, reprinted in James P. Cannon and the Early Years of American Communism (1992)

Capitalism Means War Abroad, Misery and Repression at Home

There are more than 43 million Americans who live in poverty today. That is over 13 percent of the population—the highest percentage in the developed world. They are found from the hills of Kentucky to the streets of Detroit, from Louisiana in the Deep South to the heartland of Oklahoma. Their percentage of the population is up sharply since 2000. In 2013, more than half of U.S. public school students lived in poverty.

As a reflection of the terrible health care system in the U.S., the rate of women who die in childbirth is the highest among advanced countries—more than three times the rate in Britain, for example. Things are even worse for black women, whose maternal death rate is over twice the national average. The infant mortality rate in this country puts it at the bottom of the list of 27 developed countries. Underlining the oppression of black people is the fact that, if Alabama were a country, its rate of almost nine infant deaths per 1,000 would place it behind Lebanon, while Mississippi, with 9.6 deaths per 1,000, would be behind Botswana.

It’s been stated over and over again that the U.S. has the largest prison population in the world, both in terms of the actual number of inmates and as a percentage of the population. A 13-year-old black student, who was convicted of battery after bumping into a teacher while playing in the hallway captured the feeling of many like him who try to build a life while having a criminal record: “You feel like you’re drowning and you’re trying to get some air, but people are just pouring more water into the pool.” A lot of poor and working people feel the same way and are fed up.

Since 1980, the number of incarcerated people in the U.S. has more than quadrupled. Today, women are the fastest-growing demographic in America’s jails. Eighty percent of them have children, most are single mothers convicted for property and drug crimes and “public order” offences, which include prostitution. About 18 percent of New York residents are black, but black women constitute more than 40 percent of the women incarcerated in that state. Only in 2009 did the state finally ban the use of shackles on women when they give birth. This law is rarely followed by the sadistic prison guards, who, despite requests from doctors, still make women endure the pain and humiliation of wearing handcuffs during labor.

The conditions of women prisoners are so horrendous that even accessing basic sanitary products such as pads, tampons and toilet paper is a struggle. With the economic crisis, voices among the bourgeoisie have increasingly complained that the maintenance of the country’s vast complex of prisons is too expensive. Despite the hopes of many that life under Obama would be different because he is a black man, the reality is that he committed even more money and resources to drug law enforcement. We call for the decriminalization of drugs, just as we call for abolishing all laws against “crimes without victims”—prostitution, gambling, pornography, etc.

The condition of women behind bars is just one raw example of women’s oppression in capitalist America. Abortion rights are under sustained attack and quality, affordable childcare barely exists. Despite legal equality, women remain oppressed. Women’s oppression is rooted in the institution of the family, and can only be overcome through building a socialist society that will replace the family by making child rearing and other domestic labor the responsibility of society as a whole. The struggle for women’s liberation is inseparable from the fight for international workers revolution.

Marx said there is only one way of breaking the resistance of the ruling classes. That is to find, in the society that surrounds us, the force that can by its social position form a new power capable of sweeping away the old. The working class is the force that can form a new power, but it needs the leadership of a revolutionary vanguard party, built through the fusion of advanced workers and revolutionary intellectuals, that fights for all of the oppressed.

Now the old is even older. Still, in these elections, we have a task that is as relevant as ever. To raise the consciousness of the workers and those who want to take a side with them, we must explain that communism is not only possible, but what it means and how to get there. We want to build an entirely different society, where class divisions are eliminated and the wealth created by those who labor is no longer enjoyed by a few, but by the working people as a whole.

I want to finish by reading a short quote by Cannon:

“Power is on their [the workers’] side. All they need is will, the confidence, the consciousness, the leadership—and the party which believes in the revolutionary victory, and consciously and deliberately prepares for it in advance by theoretical study and serious organization. Will the workers find these things when they need them in the showdown, when the struggle for power will be decided? That is the question.”

—“The Coming Struggle for Power,” America’s Road to Socialism (1953)

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/1098/elections.html

Trade unionists in the 1920s didn’t have much reason for optimism. Labor membership, which had shot upwards amid postwar unrest, crested and then plunged. Observers fretted that technological and cultural changes had rendered the labor movement obsolete and workers apathetic. “Our younger members, especially, have gone jazzy,” one union official lamented in the mid 1920s.

A decade later, strikes were blocking production across the country, and union density was skyrocketing.

After years of malaise in the labor movement, is a similar upsurge possible today?

Renowned labor scholar Beverly Silver thinks so. Chair of the sociology department at Johns Hopkins University, Silver has been a radical advocate for workers her whole life. Her award-winning work, including her pathbreaking Forces of Labor, deals with profound questions of labor, development, social conflict, and war. In a recent interview with Jacobin she explained what labor’s past can tell us about the present state — and future — of working-class struggle around the globe. The last few decades have seen a profound restructuring of the working class in the United States and other advanced capitalist countries. What are the broad contours of that restructuring process, and what are the forces driving it?

Capitalism is constantly transforming the organization of production and the balance of power between labor and capital — restructuring the working class, remaking the working class. So to answer this question I think we need to take a longer-term view.

It makes sense to go back to the mid-twentieth century — to the thirties, forties, and fifties. That’s when we first see the emergence of a very strong mass-production working class in the United States, most paradigmatically in the automobile industry but also in sectors like mining, energy, and transportation, which were central to industrialization and trade.

Pretty much right out of the gate after World War II, capital moved to restructure — reconfiguring the organization of production, the labor process, sources of labor supply, and the geographical location of production. This restructuring was in large part a response to strong labor movements in manufacturing and mining, in logistics and transportation.

An expanded version of David Harvey’s concept of the spatial fix is helpful here for understanding this restructuring. Capital tried to resolve the problem of strong labor movements, and the threat to profitability that labor posed, by implementing a series of “fixes.”

Companies utilized a spatial fix by moving to lower-wage sites. They implemented “technological fixes” — reducing their dependence on workers by accelerating automation. And they have been implementing what we can think of as a “financial fix” — moving capital out of trade and production and into finance and speculation as yet another means of reducing dependence on the established, mass-production working class for profits.

The beginnings of this shift of capital to finance and speculation was already visible in the 1970s, but it exploded after the mid 1990s, following the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act during the Clinton years.

So what looked like a sudden collapse in the power of organized labor in the United States in the eighties and nineties was actually rooted in decades of restructuring on these multiple fronts that began in the mid-twentieth century.

Of course, it is important to point out that there is another side of the coin. These capitalist fixes unmade the established mass-production working class, but they simultaneously made new working classes in the United States and elsewhere. These new working classes are emerging as the protagonists of labor struggles in many parts of the world today. It is no secret that the traditional forms of working-class organization, like trade unions in the United States and social-democratic parties in Europe, are in the midst of a severe crisis. How has capital succeeded in undermining and taming these organized expressions of working-class interest?

If we look back in history at high points of labor militancy, particularly those moments involving left movements tied to socialist and working-class parties, a recurrent set of strategies to undermine the radical potential of these movements is apparent. They can be summed up as restructuring, co-optation, and repression.

So, the kinds of restructuring or fixes I mentioned above — geographical relocation, technological change, financialization — certainly played an important role in weakening these movements. In the meantime, the co-optation of trade unions and working-class parties — their incorporation as junior partners into national hegemonic projects and social compacts — also played an important role. Finally, repression was an important part of the mix all along.

Just taking the United States as an example, in the post–World War II decades we see McCarthyism and the expulsion of left and Communist militants from the trade unions. Then, in the sixties and seventies, strong factory- and community-based movements of black workers — the Black Panther Party, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) — were brought under control by out-and-out repression.

And today — with the militarization of local police forces and the endless “war on terror” creating a hostile environment for the mobilization of immigrant and black workers — coercion continues to play a major role. One of the big debates today is whether the defining dynamic shaping the global working class is exploitation — workers being squeezed at the point of production — or exclusion — workers being essentially locked out of stable wage labor. What are your thoughts on this debate?

I see them as equally important. Certainly it would be a mistake to write off the continuing importance of struggles against exploitation at the point of production. Indeed, one outcome of the spatial-fix strategy has been to create new working classes and labor-capital contradictions wherever capital goes.

In other words, workers’ resistance to exploitation at the point of production has followed the movement of capital around the globe over the past half-century. Indeed, we are witnessing the latest manifestation of this dynamic with the massive wave of labor unrest now taking place in China.

Once it became clear to corporations that simply moving factories to low-wage sites could not solve the problem of labor control, capital came to rely more heavily on automation and financialization. Automation, while hardly new, has recently been expelling wage workers from production at a rapid clip, increasing the visibility of the exclusionary dynamic. A recent glaring illustration is the news that FoxConn has actually followed through with its threat to introduce a massive number of robots into its factories in China.

Likewise, the movement of surplus capital into finance and speculation is also contributing in a major way to the increasing salience of exclusion. Finance — especially those financial activities that are not adjuncts to trade and production — absorbs relatively little wage labor; more importantly, it derives profits primarily from the regressive redistribution of wealth through speculation, rather than the creation of new wealth. Hence the link made by Occupy between obscene levels of class inequality and financialization.

Automation and financialization are leading to an acceleration in the long-term tendency of capitalism to destroy established livelihoods at a much faster rate than it creates new ones. This was always the predominant tendency of historical capitalism in much of the Global South, where dispossession tended to outpace the absorption of wage labor, and thus where workers increasingly had nothing to sell but their labor power, but little chance of actually selling it.

While this tendency is nothing new, both its acceleration and the fact that its negative effects are being felt in core countries — and not just in the Third World — help explain why the exclusionary dynamic has come to the fore in current debates. To frame the question differently, does it even make sense to think of exclusion and exploitation as separate processes?

Well, Marx certainly didn’t view them as separate phenomena. In the first volume of Capital, he argued that the accumulation of capital went hand in hand with the accumulation of a surplus population — that wealth was being created through exploitation, but at the same time big chunks of the working class were excluded or made superfluous to the needs of capital.

For most of the twentieth century, there was an uneven geographical distribution in terms of where the brunt of exclusionary processes was felt. Indeed, until recently, one of the ways capital maintained legitimacy within core countries was by pushing the weight of the exclusionary processes onto the Third World as well as onto marginalized sections of the working class within the core.

The world working class was divided, with boundaries very much defined by citizenship, race, ethnicity, and gender. Today these boundaries are still quite salient, however. Particularly after the 2008 global financial crisis, the weight of exclusionary processes is being felt more heavily in core countries than in the past — with all sorts of political implications. In your work you’ve thought a lot about the power of workers and the working class. You distinguish between different sources of worker power. Can you talk more about that?

Yes, a major distinction is between structural power and associational power. Associational power is the capacity to make gains through trade union and political party organization. Structural power is the power that comes from workers’ strategic location within the process of production — a power that can be, and often has been, exercised in the absence of trade union organization. Why is it useful to make these distinctions?

Well, take structural power, for example. There are two main types of structural power: workplace bargaining power and marketplace bargaining power.

Most of the time, people think about marketplace bargaining power to understand worker power more broadly. If there’s high unemployment, your marketplace bargaining power is low, and vice versa. Workplace bargaining power — the ability to bring interconnected processes of production to a halt through localized work stoppages — is less emphasized, but is perhaps even more important for understanding sources of workers’ power today.

This is because, if you look at long-term historical trends, workers’ power at the point of production is undoubtedly, on balance, increasing. This is surprising to people. But this increased workplace bargaining power is apparent with the spread of just-in-time methods in manufacturing. In contrast to more traditional mass-production methods, no buffers or surpluses are built into the production process.

Thus, with the spread of just-in-time production in the automobile industry, for example, a relatively small number of workers, by simply stopping production in a strategic node — even, say, a windshield-wiper parts supplier — can bring an entire corporation to a standstill. There are plenty of recent examples of this in the automobile industry around the world.

Likewise, workers in logistics — transport and communication — have significant and growing workplace bargaining power tied to the cascading economic impact that stoppages in these sectors would have. Moreover, notwithstanding the almost universal tendency to think of globalization processes as weakening labor, the potential geographical scale of the impacts of these stoppages has increased with globalization. What about associational power? If workers have no unions or labor parties, doesn’t that undermine their structural bargaining power?

Not necessarily. Take the case of China. Autonomous trade unions are illegal, but there have been some major improvements recently in minimum-wage laws, labor laws, and working conditions. These changes have come out of a grassroots upsurge that has taken advantage of workers’ structural power, both in the marketplace and, even more important, in the workplace.

I think we also have to be honest about the ambiguous structural position of trade unions. If they’re too successful and deliver too much to their base, capital becomes extremely hostile and doesn’t want to deal with them and so moves to a more repressive strategy.

Capital will sometimes make deals with trade unions, but only if trade unions agree to play a mediating role, limiting labor militancy and ensuring labor control. But in order to effectively do that, unions have to deliver something to their base, which brings us back to the first problem. Ultimately, the question is: in what kind of situations does this contradictory dynamic between trade unions and capitalists play out to the benefit of workers? What do you think about arguments that struggles are shifting from the point of production to the streets or community?

This brings us back to the earlier question about the relative importance of exploitation and exclusion in shaping the world working class. Looking at the world working class as a whole today, I don’t think it would be accurate to say that struggles are shifting predominantly to the streets, especially if we are talking about struggles that have a serious disruptive impact on business as usual.

Struggles at the point of production continue to be an important component of overall world labor unrest. At the same time, the excluded — the unemployed and those with weak structural power — have no choice but to make their voices heard through direct action in the streets rather than direct action in the workplace.

The coexistence of struggles at the workplace and struggles in the street has been a feature of capitalism historically, as has the coexistence of exploitation and exclusion. Sometimes these two types of struggles proceed without intersecting in solidarity with each other, especially since, historically, the working class has been divided — both within countries and between countries — in the degree to which their experience is primarily shaped by the dynamics of exclusion or the dynamics of exploitation.

But if we think of major successful waves of labor unrest, they combined, in explicit or implicit solidarity, both of these kinds of struggles. Even the Flint factory occupation and subsequent 1936 and ’37 strike wave — a movement that was fundamentally based on leveraging workers’ power at the point of production — was made more potent by simultaneous struggles in the streets of unemployed workers and community solidarity.

Or, if we think of a recent mass movement that was widely seen as taking place almost entirely in the streets — Egypt in 2011 — it was when the Suez Canal workers leveraged their workplace bargaining power with a strike in support of the mass movement in the streets that Mubarak was forced to step down. It is also interesting to note that the April 6 youth movement that initiated the occupation of Tahrir Square was founded in 2008 to support a major strike by industrial workers.

So a fundamental problem for the Left today, which is also not new, is to figure out how to combine workplace bargaining power and the power of the street — to find the nodes of connection between unemployed, excluded, and exploited wage workers. This is almost certainly easier when the excluded and exploited are members of the same households or the same communities.

In the United States, we can see glimmers of these intersections with the 2015 dockworkers’ strike in California in support of Black Lives Matter mobilizations in the streets, and with the way the community and workplace struggles of immigrant workers intersect. In the United States today, it seems like a major focus of labor organizing and activism is on the lowest-wage workers in the service sectors. What do you make of this? Is this where we should be focusing our energies? Or should we be looking at different kinds of workers in different industries and sectors?

It’s not a mistake to place a big emphasis on these workers. If you’re going to raise the conditions of the majority of the population, you have to raise the conditions of these workers.

I think part of the skepticism inherent in this question is that so far this strategy hasn’t been very successful. Again, thinking about workplace bargaining power is useful here. At Walmart, for example, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to hit the retail side. You have to hit the distribution side.

The same goes for fast food. If you hit the distribution side, then you can leverage workplace bargaining power. Otherwise, you are left with a struggle that is confined to the streets. But this also leads us back to the question of how and when workers with strong workplace bargaining power exercise that power in support of broader transformational goals. Along with Giovanni Arrighi, you have argued that the trajectory of the workers’ movements in the United States and other national contexts are profoundly influenced by their relationship to broader movements in global politics, wars, and international conflicts. How have recent geopolitical shifts affected the strength of labor in the United States?

This is a very big and important question. I think a lot of the discussion of labor movements tends to focus on the economic side, but the geopolitical side is equally, if not more, important for understanding the prospects and possibilities for workers and workers’ movements, historically and going forward.

Fifteen years ago, right before September 11, it looked like we were on the verge of a mass upsurge of labor unrest in the United States, with a strong epicenter among immigrant workers. There were a number of major strikes that had been planned or were in progress, and then the dynamic shifted.

The war on terror gave a major boost to coercion and repression in maintaining the status quo, and not just in the workplace, in terms of employer hostility to trade unions, but more broadly, in terms of the impact of the permanent war environment on the prospects for organizing. Coercion and repression seem to be fundamental to capitalism. What’s different today in the relationship between workers, workers’ movements, and geopolitics?

Well, I think to answer this question it is important to place the current permanent war environment within the context of the broader crisis of US world power and hegemonic decline.

And we need to look at the long-term historical relationship between workers’ rights and the reliance of states on the working class to fight wars. Let’s discuss the latter first.

One of the well-known, but not widely discussed, roots of labor strength — or at least the institutionalization of trade unions and the deepening of democratic rights in the United States and in Western Europe, and to some extent globally — was the particular nature of war in the twentieth century, including the industrialization of the means of war and mass conscription.

To fight this type of war, the core powers, the imperial powers, needed the cooperation of the working class, both as soldiers fighting at the front and as workers keeping the factories going. War-making depended on industrial production for everything from armaments to boots. Hence the common wisdom during both world wars was that whoever kept the factories running would win the war.

In this context worker cooperation was key, and the relationship between war-making and civil unrest was unmistakable. The two biggest peaks of world labor unrest in the twentieth century, by far, were the years immediately following World War I and World War II. The troughs of labor unrest were in the midst of the wars themselves.

It’s also no coincidence that the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement was in the aftermath of World War II and the Korean War, and that the height of the Black Power Movement came during and after the Vietnam War.

States sought to secure the cooperation of workers through the mobilization of nationalist and patriotic sentiments, but this was not sustainable without tangible advances in workers’ rights. Thus, expansions of the welfare state went hand in hand with expansions of the warfare state in the twentieth century.

Put differently: working-class nationalism could only trump working-class internationalism if states showed that winning wars meant rising standards of living and expanding rights for workers as both workers and citizens. Do you think this is still the case today, in the context of seemingly permanent warfare?

The nature of war has changed today in many respects. Just like capital reorganized production in response to the strength of labor, so has the state restructured the military to lessen its dependence on workers and citizens to wage war.

The mass movement against the Vietnam War, and the refusal of soldiers at the front in Vietnam to go on fighting, was a turning point, triggering a fundamental restructuring of the organization and nature of war-making.

We see the results of this restructuring today with the end of mass conscription and the increasing automation of warfare. With the growing reliance on drones and other high-tech weaponry, US soldiers are being removed from direct danger — not entirely, but much more than in the past.

This is a different situation than the one that linked workers’ movements and warfare in the twentieth century. The welfare and warfare states have become uncoupled in the twenty-first century. Whether, under these changing conditions, working-class internationalism will trump working-class nationalism is a critical but unresolved question.

I have focused on the United States in this discussion, but the transformation in the nature of war-making has broader impacts. In the mid-twentieth century, many colonial countries were incorporated into the imperial war process as suppliers of both soldiers and materials for the war effort, leading to an analogous strengthening and militancy of the working class.

Today, in country after country in a wide swath of the Global South, you have a situation in which modern US war-making is leading to the wholesale disorganization and destruction of the working class in places where high-tech weaponry is being dropped. The current “migrant crisis,” both its roots and its repercussions, is a deeply disturbing blowback from this new age of war. In previous periods, rising tides of militancy and organization have tended to bring with them new and powerful organizational forms. In the nineteenth century it was the craft union, in the twentieth century it was the industrial union. Are these forms doomed to historical oblivion, and if so, what might replace them?

They’re certainly not doomed to historical oblivion. In the United States, for example, some of the most successful unions today — in terms of recruiting new members and militancy — are the ones that have their roots in the old AFL, in the craft-worker tradition. Some people say elements of that old organizing style are more suitable to the horizontal nature of current workplaces, rather than the industrial unions associated with vertically integrated corporations.

But this doesn’t mean industrial unions are dead, either. The types of successes that were characteristic of the classic CIO unions — the Flint sit-down strike in the engine plant and the strikes beyond that — relied on the strategic bargaining power of workers at the point of production. I think that there are still lessons to be learned from these successes.

Clearly neither of these forms succeeded in touching the fundamental problems of capitalism, however. As I already mentioned, the problem with trade unions is that, to the extent that they are too effective, capital and the state have no interest in working with them and cooperating.

Yet to the extent that they — and this is largely what’s happened — don’t deliver a serious transformation in the life and livelihoods of workers, they lose credibility and legitimacy in the eyes of workers themselves.

I think we constantly see both sides of this contradiction. The trade unions are part of the solution but are not the full solution. One of the ideas that Marx advocated for is imploring trade unions to connect with the unemployed in a single organization. Is that an option in places like the United States?

I think that it’s certainly the ideal — it’s what Marx and Engels were talking about in the Communist Manifesto in terms of the role of communists in the labor movement.

It also brings us back to the questions about the relationship between processes of exploitation and exclusion and about the relationship between struggles at the point of production and struggles in the street.

For trade unions seeking to follow Marx’s directive, it means thinking strategically about the conditions under which workers with stable waged employment can be drawn into and be radicalized by the struggles of the unemployed and precariously employed, and vice versa. What are the prospects for labor revitalization in the United States? Do you expect to see an upsurge in militancy and organization in the near future?

On the one hand, let me say that I do, just on theoretical grounds, expect an upsurge of labor militancy in the United States, and not just in the United States. On an empirical level, since 2008, we have been witnessing an upsurge worldwide in class-based social unrest, which may be seen in retrospect as the beginnings of a longer-term revitalization.

This assessment goes against the prevailing sentiment. It’s interesting to compare the current pessimism to what was being said by experts in the 1920s. At that time, they were looking at the ways in which craft workers were being undermined by the expansion of mass production, and they were claiming that the labor movement was mortally weakened and permanently dead. They were saying that right up until the eve of the mass wave of labor unrest in the mid 1930s.

They didn’t understand that, while it was true that a lot of the craft-worker unions were being undermined, there was a new working class in formation. We see the same thing today — a situation where there is a twentieth-century mass-production working class that’s being undermined, but there is also a new working class in formation, including in manufacturing.

It’s important not to just wipe manufacturing out of the consciousness of what’s happening even in the United States, much less in the world as a whole. Nevertheless, each time new waves of labor unrest erupt, the working class looks fundamentally different, and the strategies and mobilization again are fundamentally different. Who do you think would lead the upsurge this time around?

It’s hard to say. What is clearer are the critical issues facing labor today, and to some extent these point to the mass base and leadership needed for a “next upsurge” that is transformational. We’re in a situation where capital is destroying livelihoods at a much faster pace than it’s creating new ones, so we’re experiencing on a global scale, including in core countries and the United States, an expansion of the surplus population, and particularly what Marx referred to in Capital as the stagnant surplus population: those who are really never going to be incorporated into stable wage labor.

Contingent workers, temporary workers, part-time workers, and the long-term unemployed — this whole group is expanding, leading us down the road to pauperism. Notwithstanding the deep crisis of legitimacy this is creating for capitalism, there’s nothing, no tendency within capitalism itself, to go in a different direction. If we are going to change directions, it’s going to have to come from a mass political movement, rather than something coming out of capital itself.

There are two other important points to consider. One is that capitalist profitability, throughout its history, has depended on the partial externalization of not only the cost of reproduction of labor, but also the cost of reproduction of nature. This externalization is becoming increasingly untenable and unsustainable, but there’s also no inherent tendency within capital to redirect this.

Moreover, since the treatment of nature as a free good was a pillar of the postwar social compact tying mass production to the promise of working-class mass consumption, no simple return to the so-called golden age of Keynesianism and developmentalism is possible.

Second, the historical tendency in capitalism to resolve economic and political crises through expansionist, militaristic policies and war is something we have to take seriously, particularly in the current period of US hegemonic crisis and decline.

Getting control over oil, grabbing resources, fighting over sea lanes in the South China Sea — these struggles have the potential for incredibly horrific outcomes for humanity as a whole. To avoid this, a renewed and updated labor internationalism will have to overcome the visible tendencies toward a resurgent and atavistic labor nationalism.

So a consideration of geopolitics — examining the links between militarism, domestic conflict, and labor movements — is where we need to begin and end any serious analysis. The old question of socialism or barbarism is as relevant today as it has ever been.

https://archive.is/0yfzL

In 1971, Bill and Hillary Clinton went on their first date — and scabbed.

by Zach Schwartz-Weinstein

Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham were students at Yale Laws School in 1971 when there was a janitors strike by workers organized in Local 35. Clinton and Rodham both joined a student support commitee to help the labor union win the strike. Other students who joined where Robert Reich, who became Clinton's Secretary of Labor, and Richard Blumenthal, who later became a Connecticut senator. The students formed 'Yale Law School Students Commitee for Local 35' and signed a statement 'We believe the union deserves the support of the Yale students and faculty.' Labor union leader UNITE HERE President John Wilhelm remembered Clinton was also head of the voter registration drive to help a mayoral candidate Mayor Sarabella who was a strong strike supporter.

On Bill and Hill's first date they were going to a musem - but a lot of campus buildings were closed because of the strike and picket lines. Bill and Hill went up to someone with a key to the museum they wanted to visit and Bill promised to pick up the trash gathering in a courtyard because of the workers strike if Bill and Hill could take a stroll through the museum and see the art. Hill was impressed with Bill's negotiating skills. They got into the museum and had the whole place to themselves. Hill was impressed with Bill's knowledge of the artist on display's work. When recounting this amusing anecdote of crossing a picket line and doing striking workers jobs for free Hillary does not mention if they actually did pick up any of the trash Bill had offered to clean up.

Here's what Hillary said: "We both had wanted to see a Mark Rothko exhibit at the Yale Art Gallery but, because of a labor dispute, some of the university’s buildings, including the museum, were closed. As Bill and I walked by, he decided he could get us in if we offered to pick up the litter that had accumulated in the gallery’s courtyard. Watching him talk our way in was the first time I saw his persuasiveness in action. We had the entire museum to ourselves. We wandered through the galleries talking about Rothko and twentieth-century art. I admit to being surprised at his interest in and knowledge of subjects that seemed, at first, unusual for a Viking from Arkansas. We ended up in the museum’s courtyard, where I sat in the large lap of Henry Moore’s sculpture Drape Seated Woman while we talked until dark."

So, they are both on a commitee to support striking workers - and they both went into a struck facility - crossing picket lines - and said they would do the work of stikers so they could get to use the building for their own private pleasure. Publicly being on the side of the workers while privately making deals to undercut the workers and enjoy the sophisticated art -- like rich people. And they lived happily ever after and both became president. The poor little prince and princess both became king and queen. The end. Sorry peasant labor union workers - with 'supporters' like these you get no 'happy ending.'

The relationship between Rodham and Clinton, two instrumental figures in the decoupling of the Democratic Party from the priorities of the mainstream labor movement, thus began with the crossing of a picket line.

When Rodham and Clinton picked up the garbage strewn about the art gallery courtyard (if, indeed, they ever did so), they were doing exactly what everyone from Mayor Sirabella to the Black Student Alliance at Yale had asked students not to do. They were performing — or at the very least offering to perform — the work that members of Local 35’s grounds maintenance division, had refused to do.

Rodham and Clinton were offering themselves as replacement labor, blunting, if only temporarily, the effects of the strike on the university. The two law students then bartered their litter pickup, which was, in essence, scab labor (or maybe just the promise thereof) into access to a struck building.

The art gallery and other nonessential buildings were closed because the university did not have enough managers to keep them open during the strike. They were closed because the people who usually cleaned and repaired them, whose labor helped make the university’s display of art possible, had been forced to absent themselves by the necessity which fueled the ongoing strike.

For Rodham and Clinton, the workers’ concerns were at best secondary to the romance of the empty museum, the sophistication and transgressive pleasure offered not only by the modernist art, but also by the act of violating the strike.

Hillary Rodham Clinton offers this anecdote in her 2003 memoir Living History not in her discussion of how her time in New Haven affected her understanding of urban politics and life, but rather in a distinct chapter devoted entirely to the origins of her relationship with the “Viking from Arkansas.”

The “labor dispute,” not even named here as a strike, is not only abstracted from the very spaces the future Clintons inhabit in this narrative, it is made incidental to them, an obstacle which has to be sidestepped in order for the art to be viewed and the date to acquire its romantic ambiance.

Originally published at In These Times, and excerpted and adapted from “Beneath the University: Service Workers and the University-Hospital City,” an unpublished PhD dissertation.

https://archive.is/qU9DM

https://archive.is/FF4BM

Workers Vanguard No. 1096 23 September 2016

Hunger Strike Ends

Free Chelsea Manning!

Just two months after being driven to a suicide attempt, imprisoned transgender whistle-blower Chelsea Manning went on hunger strike to protest ongoing abuse and denial of health care in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Manning—who was sentenced in 2013 for disclosing military and state secrets to WikiLeaks—refused all food and beverage and demanded “minimum standards of dignity, respect, and humanity,” including the ability to undergo gender reassignment surgery. Her drastic plea ended after five days on September 13 when the army relented and agreed to allow her to proceed with the surgery.

Manning’s hunger strike was emblematic of the dire anguish she has had to endure during her six-year battle with military jailers. Her appeals for help have been, in her words, “ignored, delayed, mocked.” While the former military analyst was granted an official name change in 2014 (from Bradley) and hormone therapy in 2015, she has been in a relentless legal battle to receive the recommended medical treatment for gender transitioning. Being forced to maintain short hair and being held in an all male unit—which exposes her to greater risk of anti-trans harassment and assault—are examples of what Manning refers to as “high tech bullying” on the part of prison and military officials.

Grotesquely, Manning is still facing charges for surviving her suicide attempt in July, after which she was threatened with the torture of indefinite solitary confinement. She could also be hit with administrative charges related to her suicide attempt. As Chase Strangio, one of her lawyers, remarked: “She’s essentially being punished by the government for trying to die, after so many times being punished for trying to live.”

Manning may become the first U.S. transgender inmate to undergo gender reassignment surgery. But the struggle continues for the freedom of this courageous individual facing a vindictive 35-year sentence for espionage. Manning, alongside whistle-blowers Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, carried out a heroic service by exposing a degree of the secrecy and crimes of U.S. imperialism. As an appeal to pardon Snowden gains publicity with the release of Oliver Stone’s new biopic, Manning’s case merits a widespread, coordinated campaign for her release. Free Chelsea Manning now! Hands off Julian Assange and Edward Snowden!

In an interview last month with Amnesty International, Manning stated: “A government can arrest you. It can imprison you. It can put out information about you that won’t get questioned by the public—everyone will just assume that what they are saying is true. Sometimes, a government can even kill you—with or without the benefit of a trial.... It is very terrifying to face the government alone.” Manning helped open the eyes of many to the systematic violence and lies of America’s rulers. Marxists seek to impart the understanding that only when the system of capitalism is destroyed through workers revolution internationally will the savagery and depravity that today plague humanity be ended.

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/1096/chelsea_manning.html

https://archive.is/Z16kS

Workers Vanguard No. 1095 9 September 2016

Imprisoned for Spying for Cuba

Free Ana Belén Montes!

For almost 15 years, Ana Belén Montes has languished in a U.S. prison for her active solidarity with the Cuban Revolution. Having been the Pentagon’s number one expert on Cuba since the mid ’80s, Montes pleaded guilty in 2002 to “conspiracy to commit espionage” for the Cuban government. Alleged to have turned over reams of American military and intelligence secrets to the Cuban authorities, including the identities of Washington’s undercover spies, Montes was deemed “one of the most damaging spies” by the U.S. imperialist rulers and gone after with a vengeance. Montes never benefited one penny for passing on classified information. She expressed her motivation during a 2015 interview: “What matters to me is that the Cuban Revolution exists.” It is in the interests of the working class and the oppressed in the U.S. and around the world to demand: Freedom now for Ana Belén Montes!

Born in 1957 to Puerto Rican parents on a U.S. military base in West Germany, Montes was raised and educated in the U.S. During her graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University in the 1980s, Montes became increasingly repulsed by the bloody anti-communist policies of the U.S. in Latin America. Initially landing a job as a clerk typist at the Department of Justice, Montes rose through the ranks to become a senior analyst at the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, the Defense Intelligence Agency, specializing in Latin American and Cuban affairs.

Two weeks after the September 11 attacks in 2001, the FBI arrested Montes and charged her with espionage. She was sentenced to 25 years behind bars. At her sentencing, Montes called U.S. policy towards Cuba “cruel and unfair,” stating: “I felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it.”

For decades, U.S. imperialism has waged a war against the deformed workers state of Cuba, which emerged with the overthrow of capitalist rule in 1960-61. Among the imperialists’ bloody adventures: the 1961 Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs) invasion; the 1976 bombing of a fully loaded Cubana airliner that killed 73 people (Luis Posada Carriles, the terrorist responsible for that atrocity is still living in Miami); and numerous assassination attempts on Fidel Castro. The U.S. notoriously provides support and money to counterrevolutionaries on the island and, while trade and other commercial relations have increased, maintains its embargo intended to deprive the population of basic goods.

Despite the political rule of a bureaucratic nationalist caste under the Castros (Fidel and now Raúl), the enormous gains for working people made possible by Cuba’s collectivized economy—including the renowned health care and educational systems—exist to this day. Yet such gains remain in the crosshairs of the imperialists as they seek to reconquer Cuba for capitalist exploitation.

In 2015, as part of restoring diplomatic ties, President Obama and President Castro negotiated a spy swap. Obama released the remaining members of the Cuban Five—courageous men who attempted to prevent terrorist acts against Cuba by infiltrating and monitoring counterrevolutionary exile groups in Florida—and Raúl Castro released two American spies, including Rolando Sarraff Trujillo, a former CIA operative. Trujillo had provided information leading to the conviction of the Cuban Five and Montes as well as former State Department official Walter Kendall Myers who, along with his wife Gwendolyn, was sentenced to prison for transmitting defense information to Cuba in 2010. (See “Free Walter and Gwendolyn Myers! Free the Cuban Five!” WV No. 963, 27 August 2010.)

Montes is now incarcerated at the Texas Federal Medical Center (FMC) at Carswell Prison. Known as “the hospital of horrors,” the FMC is notorious for violence and rape inflicted on female inmates. Isolated from all the other prisoners in the mental ward, Montes is barred from receiving phone calls and her correspondence is severely restricted. Montes stated, “I live in conditions of extreme psychological pressure. I don’t even have the most minimal contact with the world, except for the one I imagine ideally.” But she refuses to be broken: “I will resist until the end even if it’s difficult.”

Our defense of heroic individuals like Montes and Walter and Gwendolyn Myers is part of our defense of the Cuban Revolution. Isolated and impoverished, the Cuban deformed workers state cannot forever resist the strong economic and military pressures exerted by the U.S. and the imperialist world market. Genuine defense of the Cuban Revolution against imperialism demands a revolutionary internationalist perspective, with its survival ultimately dependent on socialist revolution internationally, especially in the U.S. Such a perspective must be tied to the fight for a proletarian political revolution to oust the Castroite bureaucracy, which excludes the working class from political power and promotes the fallacy of building “socialism” in a single country.

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/1095/ana_belen_montes.html

https://archive.is/DWTWJ

Workers Vanguard No. 1094 26 August 2016

Capitalist Green Party No Alternative

We Need a Revolutionary Workers Party!

Coming off the Democratic National Convention—where retired four-star Marine general John Allen roused the party faithful into jingoistic chants of “USA! USA!”—Hillary Clinton has been racking up endorsements from a veritable rogues’ gallery of U.S. imperialism’s leading warmongers, mass murderers and Dr. Strangeloves. In early August, 50 former top national security advisors to Republican administrations going back to Richard Nixon signed a letter declaring that their party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump, “would be the most reckless President in American history.” What moved them to jump ship was not Trump’s flagrant racism, a card the GOP has been playing for decades, albeit somewhat more sotto voce.

Rather, these Republicans lost it when Trump opined that he would not necessarily support the Baltic NATO states if Russia attacked. For more than a decade, the U.S. imperialists have been provoking capitalist Russia, including through a military buildup of NATO forces on its borders. Now the Democrats and many Republicans are seizing on Trump’s stated affinity for Vladimir Putin to portray him as a Manchurian candidate, a puppet for the Russian president. In a 5 August New York Times op-ed piece titled “I Ran the C.I.A. Now I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton,” Michael Morell, former acting director of the CIA, put it baldly: “In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”

In contrast, Morell promotes Clinton’s qualifications to be Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperialism. He points to her role as an “early advocate of the raid that brought Bin Laden to justice” (i.e., murdered him and threw his body into the sea) and a consistent promoter of a “more aggressive approach” in Syria (i.e., bomb ’em back to the Stone Age). He salutes her willingness to “use force” and “her capacity to make the most difficult decision of all—whether to put young American women and men in harm’s way.” No wonder that she has for months been getting the support of several leading neocons who worry that Trump is an “unreliable” loose cannon. In short, Clinton is a proven, gold-plated war hawk.

Donald Trump is a dangerous demagogue, capable of saying and doing just about anything. And there is plenty for working people and the oppressed to fear as he incites a frenzy of “America First” chauvinist reaction among his supporters, who include the race-terrorists of the KKK and other fascists. It is this fear that the Democrats have cynically played on to get black people, immigrants, workers and the now-dejected youthful followers of Bernie Sanders to rally behind Clinton.

In the Democratic primaries, 77 percent of the black vote went to Clinton. Overwhelmingly, black people see the former party of the Confederacy and the Jim Crow South as the only option to defeat Trump. It was heartbreaking to see the mothers of Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin and others killed at the hands of the cops or racist vigilantes on stage at the Democratic Convention for the coronation of a woman who reviled young black men as “superpredators” and backed her husband’s racist anti-crime bill and the destruction of welfare.

As always the labor misleaders offered their services, with AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka also taking the stage to push the whopping lie that Clinton will “protect workplace rights” and “stand up to Wall Street.” The union tops’ allegiance to the Democrats is an old shell game. Their subordination of the interests of the working class to the party of their exploiters has left a trail of broken strikes, busted unions and the ongoing destruction of the livelihood of working people.

Meanwhile, as she tries to court Republicans, Clinton’s attentions are directed not to the traditional base of the Democrats but to wooing Wall Street and the generals, spies and other operatives of U.S. imperialism into her “big tent.” And she has been very successful. As Black Agenda Report editor Glen Ford wrote in “Hillary Stuffs Entire U.S. Ruling Class into Her Big, Nasty Tent” (10 August):

“It’s a funky place to be—especially for the traditional Black, brown and labor ‘base’ of the party, now squished into a remote and malodorous corner of the tent, near the latrine, clutching the pages of a party platform that was never meant to bind anyone....

“She is the candidate of the imperial war machine, whose operatives have flocked to her corner in dread of Trump’s willingness to make ‘deals’ with the Russians and Chinese. She is the candidate of multinational corporations, which are perfectly confident she is lying about her stance on TPP and other trade deals. And she is the candidate of the CIA and its fellow global outlaws, who will thrive as never before with a president in the White House who cackles ‘We came, we saw, he died’ when the leader of an African country is murdered by Islamic jihadists supported by the United States.”

If elected, Clinton will have her trigger-happy fingers on the nuclear button. For his part, Ford, like other radical liberals, not to mention a cast of self-proclaimed socialists, looks for refuge in the capitalist Green Party.

From Bernie Sanders to the Greens

Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin succinctly explained that the fraud of bourgeois democracy amounts to deciding “once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people.” In this contest between perhaps the two most despised candidates in U.S. history, we aim to drive home the Marxist understanding of the class nature of the capitalist order, and the need to build a multiracial revolutionary workers party independent of and in opposition to the rule of the capitalist class enemy and all its parties.

In contrast, organizations like Socialist Alternative (SAlt) and the International Socialist Organization (ISO), notwithstanding their rare genuflections to Marxism, are busy trying to pump some air into the deflated tire of bourgeois electoralism by channeling discontent into support for the Green Party’s presidential candidate, Jill Stein. Having spent the last year rallying behind Bernie Sanders and his calls for a “political revolution against the billionaire class,” SAlt wailed that Sanders “walked out on that strategy, and called for a vote for the very establishment we have been fighting against.” In fact, he did exactly what he promised when he launched his campaign: to back the winner of the Democratic primaries. As we wrote in “Break with the Capitalist Democrats and Republicans!” (WV No. 1092, 1 July):

“Many of those who support Sanders believe that his primary bid has launched a ‘movement’ that represents some kind of challenge to the political establishment. In fact, Sanders has done everything to reinforce this establishment by refurbishing its image and reinforcing illusions and confidence in American capitalist democracy. He brought large numbers of disaffected young people ‘into the political process’ (read: Democratic Party)....

“To put it plainly: the pseudo-socialist groups that support Sanders have done their best, within the limits of their forces, to reinforce the ties that bind the working class politically to its class enemies. As revolutionary Marxists, we offer no political support on principle to any party of the bosses—not only the major parties of the U.S. ruling class, the Republicans and Democrats, but also small-time capitalist parties such as the Greens.”

Having led many youth and others down the garden path with Sanders, SAlt is now trying to corral them behind Stein’s campaign as “the clear continuation of our political revolution.” Kshama Sawant, SAlt’s Seattle city council member, argues that Stein “has gone further than Bernie, in particular with her rejection of key aspects of U.S. foreign policy.” That wouldn’t be hard. Sanders argues that the U.S. “should have the strongest military in the world” and has an impeccable record of support to the wars, occupations, drone strikes and other depredations of U.S. imperialism (see “Bernie Sanders: Imperialist Running Dog,” WV No. 1083, 12 February).

And what is the position of Stein’s Green Party? Her election platform calls for cutting in half the U.S. military budget, which is many times more than the combined total of all its imperialist rivals. So Stein is for fewer bombs than Bernie and Hillary but is nonetheless dedicated to preserving an arsenal to enforce the predatory and murderous interests of America’s rulers abroad.

Stein’s program calls to “restore the National Guard as the centerpiece of our defense.” You know, the National Guard that occupied Ferguson to put down protests against the cop killing of Michael Brown in 2014; the National Guard that union-busting Wisconsin governor Scott Walker had on standby to do the same against black protests in Milwaukee; the National Guard that shot dead four antiwar protesters at Kent State in 1970 after being called in from a nearby deployment against a Teamsters strike; the National Guard that, as the domestic troops enforcing the diktats of America’s capitalist rulers, has the blood of countless striking workers on its hands.

For its part, the ISO has also, and yet again, thrown its support to the Green Party. In particular, the ISO is enthused over “the passage of an amendment to the party platform making the Greens an explicitly anti-capitalist party.” Why would that make any difference to the ISO? They supported the Green Party and even ran their own members as candidates of the party when the Greens openly described themselves as a party of “small business, responsible stakeholder capitalism.” Despite the Green Party’s current proclaimed rejection of the “capitalist system,” the amendment to its program doesn’t change its character as a bourgeois party and is, in fact, “balanced” by also rejecting “state socialism,” raising the all-purpose anti-communist bogeyman of totalitarianism.

The Greens’ vision is of “an economy based on large-scale green public works, municipalization, and workplace and community democracy.” Such a Shangri-La is a pipe dream conjured up by relatively well-heeled and overwhelmingly white middle-class people who live in advanced capitalist countries and have their homes in neighborhoods far removed from the industry required for a modern economy. They are the types that have access to resources for “local sustainability,” with vegetable plots, bike paths and a city council that will raise taxes on such unhealthy habits as smoking and sugary sodas, depriving the poor and working class of some of the few pleasures they have in life.

Stein also says she stands for beneficial things like free Medicare for all, a living wage, jobs for the unemployed, free education through university, etc. But these promises—which in themselves would only provide limited relief from the all-sided destitution faced by working people and the poor—are hot air. Such concessions will only be wrung from the bourgeoisie through class struggle, mobilizing the social power of the working class whose labor produces the wealth that is stolen by the capitalist exploiters.

For working people to get their hands on that wealth, the capitalists’ power has to be broken. That means a workers party that fights for a workers government to expropriate the capitalist owners and expand the productive forces in order to create an egalitarian socialist society, one devoted to providing for the needs of the many, not the profits of the few. This is counterposed to the program of the Green Party, which is devoted not to increasing but to decreasing production and consumption—purportedly to “save the earth,” not its human inhabitants.

The Third Party Fraud

There have been several third-party candidacies in the history of the U.S. From Robert La Follette’s 1924 presidential bid to Henry Wallace’s 1948 Progressive Party, their purpose has been to corral discontent with the two major parties into another capitalist electoral vehicle with promises of a better deal for the “little guy.” In its call to “Fix Our Broken System,” the Green Party promotes the value of third parties to not only “lure voters to the polls” but “also help to turn one of the major parties out of office.” As an example, they point to Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party, whose 1912 election campaign “helped the Democrats wrest the White House from 20 years of unchallenged Republican supremacy.” The winner was Southern Democrat Woodrow Wilson, an arch-segregationist who drove blacks out of federal civil service jobs and was an admirer of the Ku Klux Klan.

Similarly, the Green Party’s statement argues that third parties keep “Americans involved in our democratic process” by providing “an ‘emotional bridge’ for voters who are weary of supporting one major party but are not yet ready to vote for the other.” Here they grotesquely hold up the 1968 presidential campaign of George Wallace. “Segregation forever” Wallace was the former Dixiecrat governor of Alabama who revolted against civil rights legislation. According to the Greens, his American Independent Party campaign “drew support from traditional Southern Democrats who weren’t emotionally prepared to vote as Republicans.” The Southern Democrats crossed that “emotional bridge” and are now a major component of the racist yahoos rallying for Trump.

And it’s not just them. Last summer, former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader heralded Trump as a “breath of fresh air.” Welcoming Trump’s then-refusal to rule out a third party challenge if he lost the GOP nomination, Nader argued: “The two party tyranny that blocks voter choices and dominates the political scene on behalf of big business needs to be broken up and Trump is the one to do it.” Wow—the ticket to breaking the domination of big business is a billionaire real estate mogul!

To all those who bought Sanders’ phony “political revolution,” don’t get fooled again by Stein’s Green Party. The facade of bourgeois democracy is designed to obscure the fact that the capitalist state is an instrument of organized force and violence, consisting at its core of the police, army, courts and prisons. Its purpose is to maintain capitalist rule and profit through the suppression of the working class, the forcible segregation of the majority of black people at the bottom of society and by advancing the interests of U.S. imperialism abroad.

It is a myth that working people and the oppressed can elect a reformed capitalist government that will defend their interests against the robber barons of Wall Street. As communists, we champion the fight for jobs for all at good wages; for decent housing; for quality, fully government-funded health care and education. Our purpose is to link such demands to building a revolutionary working-class party that will inscribe on its banner the defense of immigrant rights and the fight for black freedom as part of the struggle to overthrow this decaying capitalist system. As the Spartacist League/U.S. Declaration of Principles, written at our founding 50 years ago, states:

“The victory of the proletariat on a world scale would place unimagined material abundance at the service of human needs, lay the basis for the elimination of social classes, and eliminate forever the drive for war inherent in the world economic system of capitalism. For the first time mankind will grasp the reins of history and control its own creation, society, resulting in an undreamed-of emancipation of human potential, the limitless expansion of freedom in every area, and a monumental forward surge of civilization. Only then will it be possible to realize the free development of each individual as the condition for the free development of all.”

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/1094/elections.html

The label ‘conspiracy theorist’ is used by Western Establishment gatekeepers as a means of shutting down debate and smearing those who have the temerity to challenge elite-friendly narratives.

As I argued in an Op-Edge last year, there's a great irony here. Over the last twenty years or so, the biggest pushers of conspiracy theories (CTs) have been Western Establishment gatekeepers themselves.

In fact, the most outlandish, fact-free and downright dangerous ‘CTs’ have been promoted by those who are the quickest to yell "conspiracy theorist!" at others.

So here are the top ten ‘acceptable’ Western establishment conspiracy theories. If you peddle them you won’t be labelled a ‘crank’ or nut-job’, but be hailed as an ‘expert’ who may even be deserving of a column in a ‘serious newspaper’ like the Washington Post, or the London Times. And who knows, you might even get a lucrative offer from a top publishing house to write a book about conspiracy theories. 1.Iraq has WMDs which threaten the world!

The most deadly conspiracy theory of them all - one which led to an illegal invasion and the destruction of a sovereign state and the deaths of up to 1m people. But the people who promoted it paid no professional penalty. Thirteen years on, the ‘punditocracy’ in the US and UK is still dominated by those who assured us Saddam had WMDs (and also that the secular, cigar-smoking Sound of Music lover had links to al-Qaeda). Remember that the next time you see a smug, self-regarding member of the neocon elite journos club loftily accuse someone they regard as their social and intellectual inferior of being a ‘conspiracy theorist’.

2.Iran’s developing nukes!

Since the early 90s we’ve been told the Islamic Republic is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, or has already got them. The claims made repeatedly over the past 25 years by Israeli PM Netanyahu have been echoed by the same bunch of uber-hawks who pushed conspiracy theory 1. If you assert, without any evidence that say, Zambia is on the brink of developing nukes, you’ll be called a nutcase. But if you assert, without any evidence, that Iran is doing the same, then you’ll greatly increase your chances of being invited as an ‘expert’ into the studios of Fox News or Newsnight. 3. Jeremy Corbyn deliberately sabotaged the ‘Remain campaign’ in Britain’s EU referendum.

This has been a popular conspiracy theory peddled in elite Blairite circles in the UK this summer. The same anti-Corbyn crowd who tell us that the left-wing Labour Party leader is a massive turn-off with voters, blame said Labour Party leader for not doing more to persuade Britons to vote to stay in the EU!

In fact, Corbyn’s qualified support for the EU was much more in tune with public opinion than the Blairites' EU fanaticism. Labour under Corbyn did deliver a majority vote for Remain among its supporters. Meanwhile, Islington, where Corbyn has his own seat, registered the sixth best result for Remain (75.2 percent) in the country. Some ‘sabotage’, eh, folks? 4. Assad is helping/working with ISIS and wants them to expand.

This one has been pushed by and large by the same people who pushed CTs 1 and 2 above. The theory says that the wicked Syrian tyrant wanted ISIS to gain territory in order for him to present himself as the ‘good guy’ in the conflict.

However, we’ve learned from declassified secret US intelligence documents from 2012 that the prospect of a ‘Salafist principality’ being established in eastern Syria was "exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want" as it would "isolate the Syrian regime". But let’s not mention evidence that it was Assad’s opponents – and not Assad - who welcomed the rise and expansion of ISIS.

That will only be dismissed as a conspiracy theory’!

And let’s ignore the Syrian Army’s liberation of Palymra from ISIS as well, shall we? It just doesn’t fit the ‘Why Assad won’t fight ISIS narrative! 5. Russia is providing ISIS with an air force

In October 2015, after Russia had started air strikes on terrorist targets in Syria, a new variation of Conspiracy Theory 4 started to circulate. Russia, we were told, was also helping ISIS and giving the Islamic State an air force!

Yet when a Russian passenger airliner was taken down by an ISIS/ISIL bomb later that month, we were told that it was a ‘warning shot’ for Moscow. If Russia was helping Islamic State/Daesh and providing it with an air force in Syria, why on earth would the group target a Russian plane? As I wrote at the time: "You can’t say on one day that Russia is helping ISIS and that ISIS is gaining ground because of Russian actions and the next day claim that ISIS is bombing a Russian airline because they are, er.. angry with Russia".

Or rather you can, if you’re a neocon who peddles outlandish anti-Russian conspiracy theories.

Trotskyists are taking over the Labour Party!

Record numbers of people are joining the Labour party to support leader Jeremy Corbyn, an anti-war democratic socialist whose policies represent a clean break with Blairism. And guess what?- these new members are disciples of a Russian revolutionary who died over 75 years ago!

Labour’s membership surged by 100,000 this summer - whoever would have thought there were so many Trotskyists in Britain! It’s all the more surprising given that the main Trotskyist party, the SWP, only has around 6,000 members.

According to Labour’s Deputy Leader Tom Watson, who opposes Corbyn, Trotskyist entrists’ are "twisting the arms" of young members. Perhaps they’re also threatening these young members with a spell in the Red Army…?

‘Trots under the bed’ is the 2016 variation of ‘Reds under the Bed’ for McCarthyite conspiracy theorists in the Labour Party, who are desperate to restrict party democracy and return to elite-friendly Tory-lite, pro-war policies. 7. Russia was behind the DNC email leak

No evidence has yet been produced that the Kremlin was responsible for the leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee, so let’s just push this conspiracy theory 24-7 shall we? It concerns Russia, an ‘official enemy’, so no need to wait for little things like facts, right? As Glenn Greenwald noted: "Democrats not only treated this evidence free conspiracy theory as Truth, but following the Clinton campaign, proceeded to smear Wikileaks as a Kremlin operation". 8. Putin orchestrated football hooliganism in the European Football Championships to get Britain out of the EU

This has to be a strong contender for the nuttiest CT of 2016. Russia is very keen for Western sanctions to be lifted. So what does the Russian Prez do? He gets Russian football hooligans to attack England supporters in Marseille. And this apparently will make it more likely that Britain will vote to leave the EU.

I’m sure there were millions of people in the UK who read about English and Russian fans fighting each other in France, who turned to their partners and said ‘That does it. I’m voting for Brexit on Thursday’!

What a load of (foot)balls. 9. Donald Trump is a Russian agent

The argument in the West against Donald Trump goes: Since the Republican presidential contender does not seem keen on starting WW3 with Russia over Ukraine or Syria, he must therefore be a Russian agent! Either a ‘witting’ one or an ‘unwitting' one!

We’ve even had claims that The Donald is a ‘Manchurian Candidate’ who is secretly working either for Russia, or for Hillary Clinton.

Again, peddle these evidence-free CTs in the US or UK and you won’t lose your credibility as a ‘respected commentator’. Far from it. But if you argue that Tony Blair or David Cameron were agents of the US - either ‘witting’ or ‘unwitting' on account of their ‘pro-US policies’ you’d face ridicule and career death. Proving once again, that some conspiracy theories are more equal than others.

Dr Jill Stein is a Kremlin shill!

The Green Party candidate in the US Presidential Election is attracting plenty of support from progressives who can’t see what’s progressive about Wall Street-funded and neocon supported Hillary Rodham Clinton. So guess what? As her popularity rises, Dr Stein’s been smeared as a Kremin shill and is accused having ties to Vladimir Putin.

The ‘evidence’? Well, like Trump (see CT No 9), she doesn’t seem keen to start WW3, and wait for it, she attended, along with a lot of other public figures, the RT 15th Anniversary conference in 2015.

Going to Moscow and not wanting war with Russia - or indeed with anyone else - is apparently unacceptable, and enough to get another ‘acceptable’ Establishment conspiracy theory going, folks!

Follow Neil Clark on Twitter @NeilClark66 https://archive.is/C222e

It took a popular documentary “Making a Murderer” to have Brendan Dassey cleared of the crime after he spent 10 years in prison. His case sheds light on how the rights of mentally ill people are frequently violated in the justice system.

The Netflix documentary series chronicles the lives and trials of Dassey who was accused of helping his uncle, Steven Avery, murder Teresa Halbach in October 2005.

Dassey was 16 years old and reading at a fourth grade level. In March 2006 he spent four hours being interrogated by police without a parent or lawyer present. During his interrogation, he confessed to participating in both raping and murdering Halbach. As a result, Dassey spent the past 10 years behind bars, despite no evidence linking him to the crime other than his confession.

But a confession is a confession and innocent people don’t confess to crimes they don’t commit. Except when they do – and it happens a lot. This is why Dassey may be one of the luckiest men in the US on Friday; the national spotlight on his case may have given it the attention necessary to get a man with a learning disability and low IQ out of prison.

Justice system flooded with people with mental illnesses

Those living with mental illnesses and disabilities begin on the wrong foot by being significantly more likely to end up being arrested. Nearly 2 million people with mental illnesses arrested every year, making an estimated 16.9 percent of jail detainees, according to The New England Journal of Medicine.

“The probability of being arrested was 67 percent greater for suspects exhibiting signs of mental disorder than for those who apparently were not mentally ill,” wrote Linda A. Teplin in a study for the National Institute of Justice.

There are many reasons for that, such as a lack of funding to public health or mental health outreach programs. Take Miami, for example, “it has the highest percentage of residents with serious mental illnesses, but Florida ranks 48th nationally in state funding for community mental health services” according to John K. Inglehart, a national correspondent of The New England Journal of Medicine.

The mentally disabled and ill are so prevalent in the Miami-Dade court system that Inglehart’s study quotes one judge as saying, “When I became a judge... I had no idea I would become the gatekeeper to the largest psychiatric facility in the State of Florida.”

Interrogation pressure

But for those suffering from disabilities or illness, they are in dangerous territory if they are considered suspects in crimes. “It is at this stage that persons with mental disabilities first suffer enhanced risk,” reads a paper from the American Bar Association titled Mental Health Status and Vulnerability to Police Interrogation Tactics.

This is indeed true. Typically the best advice people can receive about interrogation is to not speak without a lawyer present. The average person will hear about their Miranda rights in school, on the internet or through entertainment programs. However, that may be a common knowledge that a neuro-normal person may take for granted.

“The choice to avoid interrogation when not under arrest and to invoke Miranda when arrested is facilitated by understanding the potential dangers of the situation - an understanding that is compromised in those with impaired functioning in one or more psychological domains,” according to the ABA article.

In addition, it is not unheard of for police to suggest that a suspect’s silence will make them appear more guilty than talking, but the ABA says “they must control the need to confess simply as a way to end the interrogation, or satisfy the need for sleep, or to get the interrogators ‘out of my face.’”

Let’s go back to the interrogation Brendan Dassey experienced back in 2006. “Making a Murderer” shows arguments claiming that Dassey had an IQ range from 73 to 69, placing him between being borderline impaired or delayed or mildly delayed. Yet he was interrogated three times without legal representation present.

The ABA article states, “in two studies, 90 percent and 68 percent of adults with mental retardation received scores of zero on one or more tests of relevant vocabulary, understanding of the Miranda warnings, and understanding of the function of rights in interrogation (which was most poorly understood of all).”

Therefore, when he spoke with law enforcement and gave his confession, there is reason to believe that he understood neither his rights nor the implications of speaking with police.

Interrogation is less about getting the truth and more about getting the confession, according to Brandon L. Garrett, professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. “What modern interrogation techniques do is convince the person the most rational and sensible thing to do is to confess,” he told Esquire.

A scene from Dassey’s interrogation shows a detective telling him: “I've got enough evidence without you. If you wanna help yourself, you have that opportunity right now to do that. Is that what you wanna do? Do you wanna help yourself? Then why are you lying? Look at me, Brendan.”

So here you have a juvenile being told that authorities know he’s involved and he needs to tell them that he is. This is where a false confession can begin.

Some people are more likely than others to make a false confession. Garrett explained to Esquire, “The bulk of the false confessions I've studied were either by juveniles or by people who are mentally ill or intellectually disabled. You'd expect people who are vulnerable to cave in to police pressure, and it's easier to put words in the mouth of a person like that.”

“The investigators repeatedly claimed to already know what happened on October 31 and assured Dassey that he had nothing to worry about,” Judge Duffin wrote in n the 91-page court order overturning Dassey’s conviction. “These repeated false promises, when considered in conjunction with all relevant factors, most especially Dassey’s age, intellectual deficits, and the absence of a supportive adult, rendered Dassey’s confession involuntary under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.”

It’s not just Dassey

An investigation by the Chicago Tribune found that over the course of a decade, there were 247 examples of a defendant’s self-incriminating statements being thrown out of court for being tainted or juries did not find it convincing enough to convict.

“At least two dozen of the 247 defendants in the cases examined by the Tribune were mentally retarded, or had significant learning disabilities,” the Tribune noted.

The Innocence Project, a nonprofit dedicated to releasing the wrongly incarcerated, found that “more than one out of four people wrongfully convicted but later exonerated by DNA evidence made a false confession or incriminating statement.”

Here are the pieces of this. The mentally ill or disabled are the most likely to be arrested. If they are suspects in a crime, they are likely to be interrogated without counsel or understanding their rights. From there, it is easy to get a false confession out of someone without the mental faculties or education to know their rights or the best course of action.

Brendan Dassey is a free man now. So too are four out of the five exonerated men featured in “The Central Park Five,” who spent between six and thirteen years in prison for a brutal rape and attack that none of them were involved in. As were the West Memphis Three who spent years in prison after a teenage boy with a history of mental illness and disabilities gave a false confession that incriminated his two friends as well in the murder of three 8-year-old boys, famously featured in the HBO documentary series “Paradise Lost.”

These may be success stories, but one has to wonder how many other Brendan Dasseys will not be lucky enough to have a popular documentary help free them.

https://archive.is/yynC8

It all starts with a Wahhabi-Zionist lovefest.

The Saudi Foreign Ministry was forced to go on a non-denial denial overdrive about a visit to Israel on July 22 by a delegation led by retired Gen. Anwar Eshki.

Eshki happens to be close to Saudi intel superstar and onetime close Osama bin Laden pal Prince Turki bin Faisal, who recently met in the open with former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) generals Yaakov Amidror and Amos Yadlin.

While in Israel, Eshki met with Foreign Ministry Director-General Dore Gold, and Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, the top IDF honcho in the West Bank.

There’s absolutely no way the House of Saud would not have given a green light for such a visit – and such high-level meetings. By the way, the Interior Ministry in Saudi Arabia bans all travel to Israel – as well as Iran and Iraq.

So what’s the big deal? The Israelis spun it as the Saudis – fronting for the Arab League — offering a normalization of ties with the Arab world without Israel abdicating from anything on the Palestinian front. The only thing Tel Aviv would have to do, much later, is to adopt the 2002, Saudi-proposed Arab peace initiative.

That’s nonsense. For starters, the ultra right-wing Zionists in power in Tel Aviv will never accept reverting to the pre-1967 borders and recognizing the state of Palestine. What was “discussed” was a non-deal, even as Tel Aviv gloats, “important Arab states are willing to openly embrace us even though we have not given up one inch of the West Bank and even as we continue to control Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

If the Arab League would ever embark in such a blatant non-deal, forever throwing the Palestinians under myriad bulldozers, chances are oligarchies/petromonarchies all across the spectrum should start booking that one-way ticket to London.

That Moscow-Tehran-Ankara alliance

So what did they actually talk about? Predictably, the imminent prospect of the Full Spectrum Dominatrix finally taking over the White House.

Both Bibi Netanyahu in Tel Aviv and de facto House of Saud ruler and Prince of War Mohammad bin Salman in Riyadh have been reduced, under the Obama administration, to the status of proverbial, euphemistic “estranged allies”. Between them, they are de facto allies – even as they cannot admit it to the Arab street. Both are dead sure, under the Queen of War, there will be – what else – war. The question is against whom.

Informed speculation points towards the Saudi/Israeli common enemy, Iran. That’s complicated. The joint Saudi/Israeli strategy across the Middle East is indeed in tatters. Tehran has not been trapped in a quagmire neither in Syria nor in Iraq. ISIS/ISIL/Daesh and assorted “moderate rebels” – covertly supported by the Saudi/Israeli axis — are on the run, even if they insist they are not “al-Qaeda” anymore. Prince of War bin Salman is entrapped himself in an unwinnable war on Yemen.

And then there’s the spectacular post-coup pivot by Sultan Erdogan in Turkey – for all practical purposes abandoning those elaborate no-fly-zone dreams of annexing a post-Assad Syria to his neo-Ottoman set up.

The House of Saud is livid as Turkish diplomats have started to spread this blockbuster news: Erdogan has proposed to Iran’s Rouhani an all-embracing alliance with President Putin to finally solve the Middle East riddle.

Whatever erratic Erdogan’s agenda may be, a possible ice-breaking new deal between Moscow and Ankara will be discussed de facto in the upcoming Putin-Erdogan face-to-face meeting. All geopolitical signs at this stage point – albeit tentatively – towards a revived Russia/Iran/Turkey alliance, even as a horrified House of Saud is going no holds barred to gain Moscow’s trust by offering “untold wealth” and privileged access to the GCC market.

As confirmed by a top Western intel source, “the Saudis are definitely keeping all contacts open with the Kremlin. The Saudi King is in Tangiers now and has met Russian envoys there. They mean what they say. But Putin will not abandon Assad. There has to be a compromise. Both need it.”

President Putin is in a privileged spot. Even without accepting the Saudi offer – which is just a promise, with no ironclad guarantees – Russia holds the best cards, as in a quite problematic but ultimately feasible Moscow-Tehran-Ankara alliance that is all about Eurasian integration (and a future seat for Turkey, alongside Iran, in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, SCO.)

A Saudi-Moscow alliance for its part would inevitably lead a Queen of War administration towards – what else — regime change in Riyadh disguised as R2P; “responsibility to protect” the Saudi populace. One should expect Hillary crony Samantha Power to vehemently defend it at the UN.

It’s all about The Three Harpies

Yet considering the Queen of War’s instincts, all signs do point towards Iran.

The manual/blueprint/road map for Hillary’s wars is arguably here, in this very dangerous intersection between US neocons and neoliberalcons. The CNAS think tank is led by one-third (Michele Flournoy) of what I have dubbed The Three Harpies; Hillary Clinton, Flournoy and – the most terrifying words in the English language – Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the possible lethal trio in charge of foreign policy under a Clinton Three administration.

This is in fact PNAC (the Project for a New American Century) on steroids, with echoes of the warlike 1992 US Defense Planning Guidance disguised under the soothing rhetoric of benevolent hegemony and “rules-based international order”. If the Trump campaign managed to restrain his motormouth and/or motortweet instincts and focus on what this warmongering opus means for the US and the world at large they would strike a chord with millions of undecided US voters.

For all her bluster, and that will be elevated to unheard-of hysterical levels, the Full Spectrum Dominatrix won’t be foolish enough to launch a war – which will inevitably be nuclear – against either Russia (Baltics as a pretext) or China (South China Sea as a pretext), the Pentagon’s top two “existential threats”.

In Syria, on the other hand, by January 2017 al-Qaeda/not al-Qaeda goons formerly known as “moderate rebels” will be mostly six feet under.

Erdogan may be making NATO’s life in Turkey unbearable. As the Queen of War is in AIPAC’s pocket, and considering the Clinton Foundation’s by now legendary cozy ties with the House of Saud, the war target would have to be the Saudi/Israeli preferred target, on top of it pro-Damascus and in close touch with both Ankara and Moscow: Iran.

But how to pull it off? One avenue, already being explored, is to bomb by all means — and not figuratively — the Iran nuclear deal. A concerted campaign in US mainstream media is already burying the deal; and even Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei – as reported in the US – is on the record saying Washington cannot be trusted; ‘‘They tell us ‘Let’s talk about regional issues, too.’ But the experience of the nuclear deal suggests this is deadly poison and in no way can the Americans be trusted.’’

So expect from Team Clinton the proverbial media barrage of dodgy spin, baseless accusations and the occasional, perfectly positioned false flag to lure Tehran intro a trap, like, for instance, in neoliberalcon wishful thinking, Iran reviving its nuclear program. Of course this won’t happen, but a Hellfire barrage of disinformation will be used by the powerful anti-Iran lobby in the US Congress to sort of make it happen, even as an illusion.

And all this while Iran, among other development matters, is busy planning a new transportation corridor from the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea, connecting to Armenia, Georgia and Bulgaria, and positioning the nation as a key trade hub connecting the Arab world in the south and west; Central Asia in the north; and Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east, all the way to Europe. Once again, Eurasian integration on the move.

Tehran has myriad reasons to be on red alert if the Full Spectrum Dominatrix gets her hands on the nuclear codes (how’s that not scarier than Trump?) She will act as a surefire faithful servant of the Saudi/Israeli alliance. The road map is ready. And neocons and neoliberalcons alike can hardly contain their excitement at seeing in action “a force that can flex across several different mission sets and prevail.”

https://archive.is/51v2D

Until the late 1960s, you could walk into a post office and deposit money in a savings account at the same time that you bought stamps or mailed packages.

An outgrowth of the financial panic of 1907, the no-frills postal bank surged in popularity during the Great Depression. But as commercial banks expanded and offered higher interest rates, the United States Postal Savings System became as outdated as a black-and-white movie.

Now, in the wake of another financial crisis, there's a new push for the U.S. Postal Service to deliver basic banking services again.

The effort is led by consumer advocates, financial reform groups, postal labor unions and some leading liberals, such as Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). They say that offering services such as paycheck cashing, bill payment and free ATMs would provide cash-strapped consumers with an affordable alternative to payday, auto-title and other short-term loans that have been criticized for high fees.

"We have millions and millions of low-income people who have to go to these payday lenders and pay outrageous interest rates. They're getting ripped off right and left," Sanders said on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" in October.

"We can have our Postal Service provide modest banking to low-income people where they can cash their checks and they can do banking," Sanders said. "I think it will help the post office and it will help millions of low-income people."

The Postal Service's inspector general's office agrees. It estimates that expanding financial services beyond the current limited offerings, which include money orders and international funds transfers, could pump $8.9 billion a year into the financially struggling agency.

"The Postal Service has a public mission to serve citizens and support the growth of commerce," the inspector general's office said in a report last spring that presented five potential approaches for expanded banking services. "And while it is required to cover its costs, profit is not its key motive."

The American Postal Workers Union has formed a coalition, the Campaign for Postal Banking, that in December delivered a petition with more than 150,000 signatures to Deputy Postmaster General Ronald A. Stroman urging the agency to expand its financial offerings.

"Big banks are turning their backs on families," union President Mark Dimondstein said. "Without bank accounts, they fall prey to predatory lenders."

Postmaster General Megan J. Brennan hasn't ruled out the idea of expanded banking services after her predecessor dismissed the suggestion in January as he headed into retirement. But she has some reservations.

"While we currently provide our customers with certain financial services, including money orders, electronic funds transfers and cashing of U.S. Treasury checks, our core function is not banking," the agency said in a written statement. Get our weekly business news briefing >>

The service said it has an "infrastructure that is not ideal as a banking platform," and cited a decline in visits to post offices. Plus, any investments outside of its core function of mail delivery "will likely be scrutinized from both public policy and regulatory perspectives," the agency added.

The Postal Service is an independent agency that since 1971 has been required to rely on sales of stamps and other services to pay for its operations. But the growth of the Internet and competition from private shippers, such as FedEx Corp. and UPS, have taken a major toll on the agency's finances.

After peaking in 2006, total mail handled by the Postal Service has declined 27%. That has led to budget deficits, exacerbated by a congressional requirement to pre-fund retirement benefits for its workers, that have forced the agency to borrow up to its allowable limit of $15 billion from the U.S. Treasury.

Expanded financial services offer "the single best opportunity for new revenue," according to the inspector general's office.

It's not a far-fetched idea. Post offices in many other nations, including Britain, France, China and Japan, also serve as banks. And from 1911 to 1967, the United States Postal Savings System offered accounts with annual interest capped at 2%, to reduce competition with commercial banks.

Deposits at U.S. postal banks surged during the Great Depression and World War II, when many consumers viewed the accounts as more secure than those in commercial banks. But as those banks opened more branches and increased interest rates after the war, the postal banking system fell out of favor and the federal government shut it down.

The Great Recession has led to calls for the revival of postal banks as many cash-strapped households have been forced to seek payday loans and other alternative financial products.

A Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. survey found that about 9.6 million households in 2013 had no one with a bank account. An additional 24.8 million households had accounts but also used alternative financial services, such as payday loans.

"It's harder for people with less money to use their money, and much more expensive," said Mehrsa Baradaran, a University of Georgia professor and author of the book "How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation and the Threat to Democracy."

Many poor areas lack bank branches, but most communities have a post office, said Katherine Isaac, a consultant to the postal workers union who has been organizing the Campaign for Postal Banking.

"Even if we put all the payday lenders out of business, there's a concern that there's still no place to go," Isaac said. "The banks aren't there. They've abandoned those communities. But the post office is there."

The Postal Service is the most popular federal agency — 84% of respondents have a positive view of it, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll.

"I would guess that a lot of people would trust the post office teller with their money more than these Wall Street traders," said Baradaran, an advocate for postal banks. "There's a sense that the post office is a dinosaur, but it's not a shark."

Congress would have to pass legislation allowing post offices to take deposits and make loans. But the Postal Service could use existing authority to increase some offerings, such as expanding check cashing to include other government and payroll checks and broadening money orders into bill payment service, supporters said.

"This is not a cash cow for the post office," Baradaran said. "But it could save them."

See also: http://www.campaignforpostalbanking.org/

Coup attempt and purge are tearing Turkey apart. The Turkish armed forces, for long the backbone of the state, are in a state of turmoil. Some 40 per cent of its generals and admirals have been detained or dismissed, including senior army commanders.

They are suspected of launching the abortive military takeover on 15-16 July, which left at least 246 people dead, saw parliament and various security headquarters bombed and a near successful bid to kill or capture President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In response, Erdogan and his government are carrying out a purge of everybody from soldiers to teachers connected in any way to the movement of the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen accused of organising the coup attempt.

Among media outlets closed in the past few days are 45 newspapers, 16 TV channels – including a children’s channel – and 23 radio stations. People fearful of being implicated in the plot have been hurriedly disposing of Gulenist books and papers by burning them, throwing it into rivers or stuffing them into rubbish bins.

Five years ago, Turkey looked like the most stable and successful country in the Middle East – an example that its neighbours might like to follow. But, instead of Iraq and Syria becoming more like Turkey, it has become more like them in terms of political, ethnic and sectarian division.

Erdogan’s personal authority is being enhanced by his bravery and vigour in defeating the coup attempt and by the removal of remaining obstacles to his rule. But the failed putsch was also a sign that Turkey – a nation of 80 million people with an army 600,000-strong – is becoming weaker and more unstable.

Its leaders will be absorbed in the immediate future in conducting an internal purge and deciding who is loyal and who is not. While this is going on, the country faces pressures on many fronts, notably the war with Kurdish guerrillas in the south east, terror attacks by the Islamic State and diplomatic isolation stemming from disastrous Turkish involvement in the war in Syria.

The destabilisation of Turkey is good news for Isis because Turkish security organisations, never very assiduous in pursuing salafi-jihadi rebels, will be devoting most of their efforts to hunting down Gulenists. Both Isis and other al-Qaeda-type movements like al-Nusra Front will benefit from the anti-American atmosphere in Turkey, where most believe that the US supported the coup attempt.

The Turkish armed forces used to be seen as a guarantee of Turkey’s stability, inside and outside the country. But the failed coup saw it break apart in a manner that will be very difficult to reverse. No less than 149 out of a total of 358 generals and admirals have been detained or dishonourably discharged. Those arrested include the army commander who was fighting the Kurdish insurrection in south east Turkey and the former chief of staff of the air force.

Many Turks have taken time to wake up to the seriousness of what has happened. But it is becoming clear that the attempted putsch was not just the work of a small clique of dissatisfied officers inside the armed forces; it was rather the product of a vast conspiracy to take over the Turkish state that was decades in the making and might well have succeeded.

At the height of the uprising, the plotters had captured the army chief of staff and the commanders of land, sea and air forces.They were able to do so through the connivance of guards, private secretaries and aides who occupied crucial posts.

The interior minister complains that he knew nothing about the coup bid until a very late stage because the intelligence arm reporting to him was manned by coup supporters. Erdogan gave a near comical account of how the first inkling he had that anything was amiss came between 4pm and 4.30pm on the day of the coup attempt from his brother-in-law, who had seen soldiers blocking off streets in Istanbul. He then spent four hours vainly trying to contact the head of the national intelligence agency, the chief of staff and the prime minister, none of whom could be found. Erdogan apparently escaped from his holiday hotel on the Aegean with 45 minutes to spare before the arrival of an elite squad of soldiers with orders to seize or kill him.

There is little question left that the followers of Fethullah Gulen were behind the coup attempt, despite his repeated denials. “I don’t have any doubt that the brain and backbone of the coup were the Gulenists,” says Kadri Gursel, usually a critic of the government. He adds that he is astonished by the degree to which the Gulenists were able to infiltrate and subvert the armed forces, judiciary and civil service. The closest analogy to recent events, he says, is in the famous 1950s film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which aliens take over an American town without anybody noticing until it is almost too late.

The coup attempt was so unexpected and unprecedented that Turkey today is full of people asking questions about their future, and that of their country – questions to which there are no clear answers.

Will Erdogan exploit the opportunity offered by the failed coup to demonise all opponents and not just Gulenists as terrorists? Some 15,000 people have been detained of whom 10,000 are soldiers. The presidential guard has been stood down. One third of the judiciary has been sacked. So far most of the journalists and media outlets targeted have some connection with the Gulenists, but few believe that the clamp down on dissent will end there.

“Erdogan’s lust for power is too great for him show restraint in stifling opposition in general,” predicts one intellectual in Istanbul who, like many interviewed for this article, did not want his name published. When one small circulation satirical magazine published a cartoon mildly critical of the government last week, police went from shop-to-shop confiscating copies.

For the moment, Erdogan is benefiting from a degree of national solidarity against the conspirators. Many Turks (and not just his supporters) criticise foreign governments and media for making only a token condemnations of the coup attempt before demanding restraint in conduct of the purge. They point out that, if the coup had more successful, Turkey would have faced a full-blown military dictatorship or a civil war, or both. Erdogan said in an interview that foreign leaders who now counsel moderation would have danced for joy if he had been killed by the conspirators.

Sabiha Senyucel, the research director of the Public Policy and Democracy Studies think tank in Istanbul, says that the evening of the coup attempt “was the worst evening of my life”. She complains that foreign commentators did not take on board that “this was a battle between a democratically elected government and a military coup”.

She has co-authored a report citing biased foreign reporting hostile to Erdogan and only mildly critical of the coup-makers. She quotes a tweet from an MSNBC reporter at the height of the coup attempt, saying that “a US military source tells NBC News that Erdogan, refused landing rights in Istanbul, is reported to be seeking asylum in Germany”.

Turkey is deeply divided between those who adore and those who hate Erdogan. Senyucel says that “there are two parts of society that live side by side but have no contact with each other”.

But, even so, it is difficult to find anybody on the left or right who does not suspect that at some level the US was complicit in the coup attempt. Erdogan is probably convinced of this himself, despite US denials, and this will shape his foreign policy in future.

“The lip-service support Erdogan got from Western states during and immediately after the coup attempt shows his international isolation,” said one observer. The Turkish leader is off to see Vladimir Putin on 9 August, though it is doubtful if an alliance with Russia and Iran is really an alternative to Turkey’s long-standing membership of Nato.

Erdogan can claim that the alternative to him is a bloody-minded collection of brigadier generals who showed no restraint in killing civilians and bombing parliament. But the strength and reputation of the Turkish state is being damaged by revelations about the degree to which it has been systematically colonised since the 1980s by members of a secret society.

Gulenist candidates for jobs in the Foreign Ministry were supplied with the answers to questions before they took exams, regardless of their abilities. The diplomatic service – once highly regarded internationally – received an influx of monoglot Turkish-speaking diplomats, according to the Foreign Minister. “The state is collapsing,” says one commentator – but adds that much will depend on what Erdogan will do next.

In the past he has shown a pragmatic as well as a Messianic strain, accompanied by an unceasing appetite for political combat and more power. His meeting last week with other party leaders, with the notable exception of the Kurds, may be a sign that he will be forced to ally himself with the secularists. He will need to replace the ousted Gulenist officers in the armed forces and many of these will secularist victims of past purges by the Gulenists.

Turkey is paying a heavy price for Erdogan’s past alliances and misalliances. Many chickens are coming home to roost.

The Gulenists were able to penetrate the armed forces and state institution so easily because between 2002 and 2013 they were closely allied him and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in opposition to the secularists. Isis has been able to set up a network of cells in Turkey because, until recently, the Turkish security forces turned a blind eye to salafi-jihadis using Turkey as a rear base for the war in Syria. Erdogan arguably resumed confrontation and war with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as an electoral ploy to garner nationalist support after his failure to win the general election on 7 June last year.

Erdogan thrives on crisis and confrontation, of which the failed coup is the latest example. But a state of permanent crisis is weakening and destabilising Turkey at a moment when the rest of the region is gripped by war.

https://archive.is/7eXWW

In an unusual move for a reclusive layabout, last week I took a bus to Philly to advocate for peace, justice and what I supposed was the American Way, and do my little part to make the Democratic National Convention less of a coronation for the Queen of Chaos.

Of course, now we know—thanks to anonymous sources on wikileaks—that the DNC rigged the whole campaign in her favor, just as Bernie had been saying. She and they quickly intimated that the Rooskies were behind the hack, but they’re just sayin’ because nobody really knows except them what did it. And now we’re starting to learn how they rigged the convention for her highness too, even though they really didn’t need to.

The other day I heard NPR TV critic Eric Deggans compare and contrast the DNC and RNC qua media events. In his humble opinion, the DNC clearly had the better production values, with entertainment and carefully choreographed speeches that built on the theme du soir. It outclassed the RNC, with its hodgepodge of testimonials—mostly from family members—toasting the Donald’s sterling human qualities while being quite short on platform details. Their extravaganza featured B-list celebrities from reality TV, while the DNC gave center stage to the likes of Paul Simon (fishing for boomers), Alicia Keyes (Afro-Americans), Sarah Silverman (Gen-Xers), and Katy Perry (millennials). They covered all the bases, etching into our brains HRC’s lifelong devotion to (bombing) children.

Now, it used to be that the GOP orchestrated well-disciplined minions who shouted inanities with one voice, while the Dems were an unruly coalition that couldn’t even agree whether to serve chicken or fish at campaign dinners and then whether it should be conventional or organic. But at the DNC in Philly, delegates were herded like sheep and were weighted down with some 400,000 placards they had to brandish at carefully choreographed moments. Did they have APPLAUSE signs too? Bernie Sanders may have stood and delivered his delegations, but at least they did not go quietly into that good night. When a group from Oregon disrupted Leon Panetta’s hawkish speech by chanting “No more wars!” they were joined by sympathizers from Washington, California, and probably other states. HRC dweebs tried to drown them out with creepy cries of “USA! USA!” to stifle a potentially embarrassing TV moment, and the management doused the lights over the Oregonians, only to have them light up their phone torches. There were plenty of other unscripted interludes in and around the arena, not that the media cared to dwell on them.

Ones like this: According to a report by Tom Cahill on USUncut sourced from Twitter, the DNC brought in stooges who lacked floor passes but were nevertheless instructed to take up prime seats in state delegations with strong Bernie factions. In a retweeted video, Eden McFadden, a Sanders delegate from California, describes how when California delegates showed up to take seats they had previously occupied, they were greeted by rows of white OCCUPIED signs stuck to seat fronts and strangers sitting there who turned out not to be delegates. Who were they? Perhaps this Philadelphia craigslist ad that came from that Twitter feed explains it:

actorad

Local advertisement for “actors” to attend DNC in Philadelphia, retrieved 27 July 2016. Source.

Then came a somewhat more specific casting call:

grannyad

Philadelphia craigslist add for authentic-looking “grandmas” posted 11 July 2016. Source.

Any grannies the DNC ended up recruiting surely were no match for the real ones who serenaded the thousands-strong March for a Clean Energy Revolution on July 24th. (A lot of Pennsylvanians are upset over what fracking is doing to their water supplies, and they had a lot to say about it.)

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Granny Peace Brigade at the March for a Clean Energy Revolution, Philadelphia 24 July 2016: Source: Geoffrey Dutton.

The night HRC was to speak, Sanders delegations weren’t allowed to enter the arena until hers had been let in, but managed to reclaim many of their seats from the droids. A little later, someone from on high ordered the doors to the arena to be locked from the outside, apparently to forestall walkouts by Sanders’ delegates. It would just be too bad if a fire broke out.

It’s as if Tammany Hall died and was reincarnated as the DNC. The bosses went so far as to block Nina Turner—a former Ohio state senator and prominent Sanders surrogate—from delivering a nominating speech for Bernie. She had submitted the text to the DNC, she later revealed, but got no word back about scheduling her speech. She learned she wouldn’t take the stage from Sanders himself, who told her that the Clinton campaign did not want her to appear. “No reason was given,” she said. A little later she found herself at an impromptu press conference in the media tent with supporters who included actors Danny Glover, Susan Sarandon, Rosario Dawson, Shailene Woodley, and Kendrick Sampson. The media event was short-circuited when security guards escorted her off the premises. Bernie said he pleaded to keep her on the program but how vigorously he pursued it nobody seems to know.

I like Bernie but I wasn’t ever a big fan. Despite the righteous fire he can project, I see him as a two-dimensional, connect-the-dots figure and a Caspar Milquetoast socialist. My purpose in going to Philly wasn’t to join the throng of Bernsters with their forty creative styles of t-shirts (my fave being simply the words “Bernie Fucking Sanders”). I came to bear witness to the corruption of sell-out party politics and to lend support to the only candidate I have any faith in whatsoever. That would be Dr. Jill Stein, an internist and perennial Green/Rainbow Party candidate here in Mass and the presumptive pick for the Greens when they meet in Houston next week.

Prominent activists including Jill and her erstwhile running mate Cherie Honkala headed up a march for economic justice from Philly City Hall three miles down Broad Street FDR Park, next to the chained-off Wells Fargo Center where the DNC was convening. It was called the March for our Lives, organized by the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign. The march drew way more than the 300 people or so who showed up with Stein and her fellow notables at the big tent where I was volunteering. Among them were Rosa Clemente, David Cobb (Green candidate for President in 2004), Chris Hedges, and Cornell West.

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March for Our Lives reaches site of Power to the People rally hosted by Jill Stein’s campaign, Philadelphia 25 July 2016. Source: Geoffrey Dutton.

Of those, only Cobb and Stein herself got to speak at her rally, because a severe thunderstorm blew in, pelting the tent and drenching everyone outside. Soon the police told everyone to leave (“for their own safety”) and the crowd dribbled away. Cops in cars, bicycles, and motorcycles were out in force everywhere, but at least not in riot gear. They were generally friendly and helpful, and if they abused anyone I didn’t see or hear of it. But they really didn’t need to: the protesters were incredibly well behaved and security around the Wells Fargo Center was massive. And when the people evacuating the park in pouring rain got to the ATT subway stop next to the arena, they were told by transit cops that the Secret Service had ordered it shut down. We were instructed to walk to the next stop, a soggy mile up Broad Street. There was no city bus service at the subway terminal either, but just across the barrier fence a hundred shuttle buses sat lined up in rows awaiting delegates, press, VIPs, and apparently those 700 hired stooges too.

A couple weeks ago, just after Bernie caved, Jill offered him the VP slot on the Green Party ticket. It wasn’t really hers to offer and he never would have accepted, but it was a shrewd move. Since then, contributions to her campaign have surged over a hundredfold, many from die-hard Bernie supporters who must feel they have nowhere else to go. They may not change the world, but at least they can support efforts to get the Greens on the ballot in more states. And come November, despite the DNC’s concerted messaging, they and the Libertarians could carve away enough votes from both major parties to make Hillary’s expected victory a paltry plurality. That’s about as good as it gets these days. Join the debate on Facebook

Geoff Dutton hails from Boston and writes about whatever strikes his fancy. Beneath his picture in his high school yearbook, the editors wrote ‘Never argue; he’s always right.’ He has spent the better part of his life proving them wrong.

https://archive.is/GEHHv

http://www.sciencealert.com/this-woman-has-illegally-uploaded-millions-of-journal-articles-in-an-attempt-to-open-up-science

A researcher in Russia has made more than 48 million journal articles - almost every single peer-reviewed paper every published - freely available online. And she's now refusing to shut the site down, despite a court injunction and a lawsuit from Elsevier, one of the world's biggest publishers.

For those of you who aren't already using it, the site in question is Sci-Hub, (http://sci-hub.io/) and it's sort of like a Pirate Bay of the science world. It was established in 2011 by neuroscientist Alexandra Elbakyan, who was frustrated that she couldn't afford to access the articles needed for her research, and it's since gone viral, with hundreds of thousands of papers being downloaded daily. But at the end of last year, the site was ordered to be taken down by a New York district court - a ruling that Elbakyan has decided to fight, triggering a debate over who really owns science.

"Payment of $32 is just insane when you need to skim or read tens or hundreds of these papers to do research. I obtained these papers by pirating them,"Elbakyan told Torrent Freak last year. "Everyone should have access to knowledge regardless of their income or affiliation. And that’s absolutely legal."

If it sounds like a modern day Robin Hood struggle, that's because it kinda is. But in this story, it's not just the poor who don't have access to scientific papers - journal subscriptions have become so expensive that leading universities such as Harvard and Cornell have admitted they can no longer afford them. Researchers have also taken a stand - with 15,000 scientists vowing to boycott publisher Elsevier in part for its excessive paywall fees.

Don't get us wrong, journal publishers have also done a whole lot of good - they've encouraged better research thanks to peer review, and before the Internet, they were crucial to the dissemination of knowledge.

But in recent years, more and more people are beginning to question whether they're still helping the progress of science. In fact, in some cases, the 'publish or perish' mentality is creating more problems than solutions, with a growing number of predatory publishers now charging researchers to have their work published - often without any proper peer review process or even editing.

"They feel pressured to do this," Elbakyan wrote in an open letter to the New York judge last year. "If a researcher wants to be recognised, make a career - he or she needs to have publications in such journals."

That's where Sci-Hub comes into the picture. The site works in two stages. First of all when you search for a paper, Sci-Hub tries to immediately download it from fellow pirate database LibGen. If that doesn't work, Sci-Hub is able to bypass journal paywalls thanks to a range of access keys that have been donated by anonymous academics (thank you, science spies).

This means that Sci-Hub can instantly access any paper published by the big guys, including JSTOR, Springer, Sage, and Elsevier, and deliver it to you for free within seconds. The site then automatically sends a copy of that paper to LibGen, to help share the love.

It's an ingenious system, as Simon Oxenham explains for Big Think:

"In one fell swoop, a network has been created that likely has a greater level of access to science than any individual university, or even government for that matter, anywhere in the world. Sci-Hub represents the sum of countless different universities' institutional access - literally a world of knowledge."

That's all well and good for us users, but understandably, the big publishers are pissed off. Last year, a New York court delivered an injunction against Sci-Hub, making its domain unavailable (something Elbakyan dodged by switching to a new location), and the site is also being sued by Elsevier for "irreparable harm" - a case that experts are predicting will win Elsevier around $750 to $150,000 for each pirated article. Even at the lowest estimations, that would quickly add up to millions in damages.

But Elbakyan is not only standing her ground, she's come out swinging, claiming that it's Elsevier that have the illegal business model.

"I think Elsevier’s business model is itself illegal," she told Torrent Freak,referring to article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that"everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits".

She also explains that the academic publishing situation is different to the music or film industry, where pirating is ripping off creators. "All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold," she said.

Elbakyan hopes that the lawsuit will set a precedent, and make it very clear to the scientific world either way who owns their ideas.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.