Torture Photos

My guess is the real reason President Obama will not release the torture photos is that they will create such a stir as to discredit the continuation of the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

War and authoritarianism in general creates sadistic sociopaths so the fact that there were rapes is not surprising.  Also in the U.S., it is commonplace for comics to make jokes about prison rapes.  Such cultural norms helps to desensitize people about this problem.

Not only should there be continued pressure to release of the photos but the demand to end all inhumane torture of all prisoners — domestic and international — especially prisoner rape.

U.S. Zionism and the Left

This is a taboo topic on the “Left” and in fact there are many so-called “leftist” who are apologist for Zionism.  One particular is the “oracle of the Left” — Noam Chomsky.  Because the Left is in such a decrepted state, many people hearing Chomsky’s critique of the United States, believe him to be a “radical”.  He is rightly accredited by many activist with introducing them to anti-imperialism ideas but when you really examine his position, Chomsky is much more reactionary than radical.

The focus by the “Left” on “imperialism” has been a way for it to ignore pressing domestic issues most especially rising Zionism in the United States.  Apparently this form of racism is not too pressing for the Left as it tries to explain all the evils in the world for the U.S. desire to “control” oil and other resources.  However, this explanation doesn’t wash when explaining the war on Iraq.

The oil company are on record being against the invasion as they were on record against the first Gulf War.  However the Left seems to be blind to the push for the war here by Zionist groups as well as Zionist sympathizers on the Left who sabotaged the anti-war movement in an effort obscure the influence that Zionism has on the inducing the U.S. to invade Iraq — and now possibly Iran.

For example Naomi Klein’s book “The Shock Doctrine” was written on the premise that the U.S. invaded Iraq in order to ram down the Iraqi people throats Milton Freedman’s like neo-liberal policies.  The irony is that Milton Freedman was against the war on Iraq.

Klein referred to her books as a thesis which by definition means that if you can find one contraction of the thesis means that the thesis is unsupportable.  Apparently Freedman’s lack of support for the war on Iraq breaks down her thesis.  So what was the real purpose of the book?

The current economic crisis makes Klein’s book appear timely but when she wrote the book it was well before the crisis that the purpose of her book was to obscure the role of Zionism’s influence in the war to make it appear that is was a neo-liberal project rather than a neo-conservative (i.e. Zionist) project.

This kind of intellectual deception by the likes of Chomsky and Klein and other members of the “Left” has been extremely deleterious to activist and to building an ideological foundation whereby the Left can build solidarity and trust among the working class.  Klein who herself says that she supports a”mixed” economy and Chomsky who is an admits to being a Zionist and excuses Israeli apartheid and Zionist influence on U.S. “Imperialism”,  rather than use their capabilities to provide economic and political clarity has unfortunately used their abilities to keep well intention activist confused and off-balance.

Bailout For Deadbeats

The U.S. Government has committed in the neighborhood of 12 trillion dollars in order to bailout the banks.  It amazing that there has been more demands coming from the “Left” demanding a bailout for deadbeats.

With unemployment up and nearly 12% of the American people are behind on their mortgages and clearly falling behind on their credit cards debts. This is not to even mention the growing student loan problems as well which will have a chilling effect for the future.

The real basis of the crisis is due to the past 30 years of stagnant wages and the growing gap between the rich and the working class.  Why is this important?  Because inequality lowers the standard of living of working people because the increasing concentration of wealth forces up prices and create bubbles that leads to crisis.  Working people maintained their demand through borrowing as the cost of housing, transportation, health care, child rearing and education skyrocketed.

Which means that the current crisis is not really a “banking” crisis but a crisis due to inequality.  Since the government found $12 trillion to commit to the banks the government could have offered relief to all deadbeats by simply canceling their debts.  Clearly the banks and the ruling class would abhor such a solution but where is the Left in offering such a demand?  The Left was in the front lines with their protest of debt cancellation for third world counties IMF loans you’d think they would adopt a closer to home demand for working class relief.

It is clear there is enough resources to resolve inequality but unfortunately the working class is just too unorganized and too weak to demand for their own bailout.

Stop Blaming The Victims

Now that Obama has been elected and has moved away from his canard of “hope”  there has been a rash of “I told you so” articles by so-called “leftist” gloating at the “rubes” who voted for Obama.

This kind of elitism and lack of analysis is one of the reason why the “Left” is so alienated from working class people especially people of color.  The assumption being made by these writers is that the Left offered a cohesive alternative.  The Left, unfortunately, is too fictionalize, lacks solidarity, and started out in 2008, in an even weaker position than they were in 2004.  Understanding that the Left was in a weaker position then fielding two candidates, Nader and McKinney, run extremely counter to building a united front.

A Nader/McKinney ticket would not be assured of winning the election but it would have built a more cohesive effort to challenge Obama and the Democrats.  It would have provided a better alternative and helped to bring together the outreach of the McKinney clique who better highlighted issues that concern people of color with the Nader clique and could have consolidated the Green Party.  But alas that didn’t happen.   So what does the Left do?  Blame voters for selecting the Democrats rather than analyze their own missteps and deficiencies.

People of color especially are always the scapegoat of the Republican Party rhetoric.  If there is no real alternative to the Democrats, people of color will vote for the “lesser evil” as a matter of practicality.  Blaming them and offering “I told you so’s” is arrogant and counterproductive to the goal of attracting working people away from the Democrats.

The demographic of the votes told the story.  Obama won 95% of the black vote, 80% of the Latino vote and white voters under 30 years old.  If it was up to white voters only, John McCain would have won the election.  This doesn’t mean the policy would be any better but what the election means is that there is a demographic that the Left can attract into its ranks if it can achieve solidarity and cohesion within its own ranks.