Iraq crisis: the people suffer, US vultures circle

This article originally appeared on The Kasama Project on 14 June 2014. Reposting here to preserve a broken link. It can also be accessed here.


By ISH

Imperialism's chickens are coming home to roost in Iraq, and once again it is the people of the region who will pay the price.

In a week of events that is in some ways shocking and in other ways not even slightly surprising, a radical Islamic fundamentalist group called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, sometimes translated as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or referred to by the Arabic name Da'ish) seized Iraq's second largest city of Mosul, and capturing more cities along the way, has advanced as far as Baquba, just 50 kilometers from Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

In the face of a sudden advance by the black-clad, black-flag bearing fighters, lightly armed and driving around in open trucks, the massively US-funded and trained Iraqi army melted away. The unravelling of the Iraqi army in the north seems to have been a combination of demoralization and, at least according to some sources, a revolt by former Baathists loyal to the deposed Saddam Hussain.
In any case ISIS seized control of city government, immediately announced the imposition of a strict Islamic law, and reportedly began executions of civilians and other opponents. It also apparently seized millions of dollars from Mosul banks. Hundreds of thousands of civilians including the large Iraqi Christian population of Mosul reportedly fled immediately to the neighboring semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan Region.
Fighters from that Iraqi Kurdistan Region quickly seized the moment and occupied the nearby city of Kirkuk, strategically located amidst the northern oilfields and long coveted by Kurdistan as its capital, despite being one of the most multi-ethnic cities in Iraq. Iraqi Kurdistan first carved out some autonomy in the 1990s after the first US war against Iraq; it's been pushing towards possible independence ever since. (Kurdish independence would certainly be just, despite the massive oil-company induced corruption that now rules the autonomous zone.)

In the face of the ISIS surge, the central Iraqi government led by Nouri al-Maliki has been seemingly paralyzed. Its parliament has been unable to make a quorum. The leaders of Iraq's Shi'a Muslim community have started to rally support to defend Baghdad: Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and the militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr have called for Iraqi Shi'ites to form militias to defend Shi'ite-populated cities against the ISIS advance. And the government of the neighboring Islamic Republic of Iran, ironically now the chief backer of the Maliki government, is reportedly already sending in troops to defend its fellow Shi'ites from the ISIS attack. One report suggested that Iraqi soldiers lining up to defend the Baghdad “Green Zone” are wearing civilian clothes under their uniforms should they need to make a hasty retreat and discard any signs of allegiance to the government.

What is ISIS?

ISIS is one of the militias that has come out of the bloody civil war in neighboring Syria. While apparently funded by wealthy interests in the Gulf, it competes in the civil war against the Syrian government with forces like the so-called Free Syrian Army, and while it shares a Sunni Muslim identity and a hard right-wing sectarian ideology, it has been deemed too extreme even by Al-Qaeda. It has also been opposed by the Syrian Kurdish movement. Its goal is a unified Islamic state across a wide swath of what is now several different countries.

While from a communist perspective one might be tempted to welcome the success of ISIS against corrupt capitalist governments and former US puppets, it is clear its ideology and practice is deeply sectarian and brutally repressive against the people. Disturbing videos can be seen online showing that ISIS has a policy of horrifying, random terror against those deemed to be its enemies. One video, shot from inside an ISIS vehicle, shows fighters in a speeding car randomly gunning down passing civilians.

ISIS's advance in the north of Iraq is not actually their first major victory. They already control portions of northern Syria, and most of Iraq's Anbar province, having seized the long-suffering city of Fallujah several months ago. Fallujah was of course the scene of brutal battles between Iraqi Sunni insurgents and the US occupation army; it's notorious for being dosed by “depleted uranium” weapons which have left a horrible legacy of health problems for the local population.

Triple legacy of imperialism, Zionism and revisionism

When British and French imperialism co-opted the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire a hundred years ago during WWI, they created a patchwork of states that didn't really correspond to real ethnic or religious divisions in the Middle East. States like Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq were created to the advantage of imperialism, which understood the growing importance of oil and therefore their strategic imperatives in the region. As in Africa, divide and conquer was their watchword. Soon nationalism and anti-colonialism grew in response to the regional imperialist mandates, forces of rebellion appeared all over the Middle East. Communist parties and militant labor movements blossomed.

But with the creation of the Zionist entity of Israel in the late 1940s, suddenly the obvious divisions of class were not the only faultlines. Palestine was occupied and a whole nation dispersed. Iraq before Israel had a large Jewish population, and this population was a backbone in fact of the Iraqi Communist Party. As Israel insisted on the “Israeliness” of Jewish Arabs, suddenly sectarian identity became crucial, pushing rifts in contradictory societies to the fore. Jewish Arabs fled to Israel en masse. Arab nationalist forces kicked out direct imperialist rule across the Middle East and tried to forge secular societies, often using at least the rhetoric of socialism. Leftists (perhaps best identified as “revisionists”) subordinated their politics to those of the nationalists in country after country, and over the decades found themselves in turn co-opted or brutally repressed. Meanwhile, the State of Israel, opposed by radicalizing, communist-influenced guerrilla armies of Palestinian fedayeen, quietly began to foster the development of Islamic social movements to subvert the influence of secular nationalism and communism.

But with the victory of the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 and the collapse of Soviet influence in the region ten years later, nationalism and leftism buckled ineffectively against the continued injustice and brutality of the Zionist state. All of a sudden the sectarian and ethnic tensions began to flare, first with the Lebanese civil war, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, then the Iran-Iraq war, and eventually three invasions by US imperialism. Islamic fundamentalism gained new legitimacy as an effective form of opposition to local corruption, to imperialism and to some extent Zionism, and suddenly secular ideologies, including Marxism, seemed irrelevant. (Islamic fundamentalism also gained a fortune in aid from the US as it positioned itself against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan; even Osama bin Laden was America's best friend for a hot minute in the 1980s).

ISIS, like Al-Qaeda, is a product of this new reality. Social revolution, though vastly different than what how we communists define it, is now the watchword of the religious far right. Of course the Middle East is not the only place where that is increasingly true: there's a serious warning embedded here for leftist revolutionaries. The social revolution promised by ISIS involves a repressive, deeply conservative view of Islam.

Today's Iraqi government was created by US imperialism in the aftermath of its unprovoked invasion in 2003. The government was set up in a power-sharing arrangement between Iraq's Sunni, Shi'ite, and Kurdish populations, inverting the dominance from Sunni under Saddam to Shi'a under al-Maliki. The US stopped a Sunni insurgency through a combination of mass violence and bribery. And then the US left.

The blood-soaked arrogance of US imperialism

Let's be direct: responsibility for the violence in Iraq can now be laid squarely at the feet of US imperialism. The US broke and shattered the country of Iraq by invading and dismantling the existing secular state. Without shedding tears for the anti-communist dictator Saddam, it's important to recognize what happened when the most powerful country in the world (allied with a host of the world's reactionary forces from British imperialism to local reactionaries like the Saudi Arabian monarchy) steamrolled over Iraq. By destroying nation-states and replacing them with cesspools of corruption they have unleashed the worst kind of intercommunal violence.

American media, pundits, and most politicians all cheered the drive to war in the aftermath of 9/11. They ignored the simple fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11; they wrapped themselves up in falsified evidence and lies; and they ignored a mass antiwar movement inside the US. So sure of themselves and their superiority in a one-superpower world, they lead the US into a war that cost uncountable thousands of Iraqi lives, and made the daily lives of the Iraqi people a dangerous hell. They bolstered the reactionary Al-Qaeda they claimed to be fighting, sending thousands of Iraqis into its arms as a rallying point for resistance.

The US adventure in Iraq was simply a failure for imperialism. Aside from its atrocious but futile toll in Iraq itself, it had a devastating effect on the US economy. It damaged US hegemony over Europe. And the weakness it revealed in US imperialism's resolve to sustain an extended conflict has emboldened a resurgence of Russian imperialism, which seems to no longer be particularly concerned about US intimidation, witness events in Syria and Ukraine. And now the US is faced with the ignoble prospect of simultaneously bullying and threatening Iran over its nuclear program while watching Iranian ground forces forestall an ISIS sweep into Baghdad. And as further evidence of the wreckage of imperialist policies, US allies have poured millions into Syria to arm reactionary armies including ISIS that the US is now trying to figure out what to do about.

When ISIS swept Iraq last week, all the familiar stinking vultures of the US political scene started squawking. Everybody from ideologue-fantasist Kenneth Pollack and disgraced government media agent Judith Miller who both stoked the 2003 invasion to actual war criminal John McCain have started to offer their opinions and demand US action. The Republican speaker of the house, John Boehner, virtually called President Obama a “lazy ni**er” for failing to send in the bombers. When Obama finally spoke up, he outrageously lectured the Iraqi government about how it should be respecting Iraq's religious diversity better. He says he has not yet decided how to respond to the ISIS advance. It is certainly possible he will unleash his war machine, which is good news for nobody but imperialism.

Obama was elected in large part due to his vote against the Iraq war; and while he has long ago come to own the US adventure in Iraq and Afghanistan, he knows that as disinterested in international affairs as Americans seem, they're not eager to put up with another military adventure that puts boots on the ground; especially on the same ground that so many lives were already thrown away. Probable presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who voted in favor of George Bush's 2003 invasion, has also chosen the grotesque path of lecturing the Iraqi government. She dared to say, “Because you’d be fighting for a dysfunctional, unrepresentative, authoritarian government and there’s no reason on earth that I know of that we would ever sacrifice a single American life for that.”

Really these politicians are shameless, disgusting pigs. Their path is a nightmare for the people of the Middle East and indeed the whole world.

No US intervention!

US imperialism cares absolutely nothing for the people of Iraq. They don't care how many lives are wasted. They don't care if their victims are Shi'ite or Sunni or atheist. They just care about their power. We must stop any further US intervention in Iraq: no invasion, no bombing, no drones, no proxies or "contractors," no mercenaries, no "no fly zones," no advisers, no bases.

The antiwar movement after 9/11 was significant. It dissipated in the face of the 2004 elections. Occupy in 2011 was a significant challenge to the domestic status quo. It dissipated in the face of the 2012 elections (and in the face of coordinated repression directed from Washington). President Obama went from being a supposedly anti-war candidate to the master of drones that have killed thousands of civilians in over a half dozen countries across the Middle East and Africa. Hillary Clinton's record of support for war is perfectly clear. Liberal darling Elizabeth Warren has already indicated her hawkishness on Iran and Israel.

The next elections, including the upcoming 2014 midterms and the following 2016 president elections are a loser's game where the people are guaranteed to lose no matter who wins. Just like the previous elections, they're a trap for social movements in the US.

It's time to stop worrying about those creepy, lying politicians and start to build and sustain a real anti-war movement to stop the machinations of the empire. The best way those of us inside the belly of this beast can help the beleagured Iraqi people is to destroy US imperialism from within. The mess imperialism has left behind in Iraq and Afghanistan suggests how weak imperialism actually is. It's dangerous, it's intimidating, but it's not invincible. We need to stand up and oppose any further US intervention in the middle east, Africa, or anywhere else.

The movement against the Vietnam war back in the 1960s and 1970s revolutionized US society. It obviously wasn't successfully transformed into a movement to defeat capitalism itself, but it shows us how things can begin.

Are you as disgusted at what's happening now as I am? Let's get to work!

New article on Iraq

The sudden victorious assault of the disturbing "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" on northern Iraq is the jumping off point for my new article on Iraq. It's over on the Kasama site. It begins:

"Imperialism's chickens are coming home to roost in Iraq, and once again it is the people of the region who will pay the price.
In a week of events that is in some ways shocking and in other ways not even slightly surprising, a radical Islamic fundamentalist group called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, sometimes translated as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or referred to by the Arabic name Da'ish) seized Iraq's second largest city of Mosul, and capturing more cities along the way, has advanced as far as Baquba, just 50 kilometers from Baghdad, the Iraqi capital."

The article gives background and history of ISIS, a hundred years of Middle East history, and ends with a discussion of why building an antiwar movement in the United States is such a crucial imperative. Check out the whole article and let me know what you think.

NO US INTERVENTION IN IRAQ!

Remember the Charge of the Light Brigade!

In a war between Russian and US imperialism, the only side the people should be on is their own. 

President Obama got on TV last night to say that there would be "consequences" to Russian military involvement in Crimea. While the Ukraine is certainly a complicated issue what with the involvement of a host of fascists and right-wing fake communists, opposing American saber-rattling must be key for those of us in the United States. 

No to Obama's Crimean Adventure! The main enemy is at home — Down with US imperialism!

Kim Jong-Il and the U.S.: Of Tyrants Great & Small

As the whole world knows now, the "Dear Leader" of the self-proclaimed Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kim Jong-Il, died this weekend.

By all accounts Kim, the son of North Korea's first leader Kim Il Sung and the father of the supposed next leader, was a dictator who didn't stint on his own luxury while his country suffered the effects of international isolation — much of it self-inflicted — in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union. Starvation, malnutrition, poverty, and technologically backward conditions are said to be the rule in the northern half of the Korean peninsula.

With his chubby, gnomish build and his poofy bouffant hairdo, Kim was easily caricatured; the personality cult built on his father that was grafted onto his own relatively gloryless history seemed to outsiders as particularly bizarre and forced. The rule of Kim's Workers Party is by most reports brutal and harsh; while Kim's taste in fine liquors seems corrupt and despotic. Defended politically by a homegrown nationalist ideology with only tenuous links to the Marxist-Leninist ideology that spawned it, the DPRK is big on mass spectacle, dramatic gesture, preposterous claim, and closely guarded secrecy. Once a technological overachiever, North Korea fell behind the South in most areas excluding perhaps weapons technology: under Kim Jong-Il the DPRK seems to have developed working nuclear weapons.

I don't expect history to be particularly kind to Kim Jong-Il. But that said, I'm finding much about the blogosphere's celebration of his passing to be a self-righteous frenzy of pro-imperialist propaganda.

Even satirical website Gawker called out the internet commentariat for its widespread promotion of the song "I'm so Ronery" from the animated film "World Police: Team America" that features a puppetized Kim Jong-il character: "Twitter Relates to Death of Kim Jong-il By Endlessly Referring to Stupid Racist Song."

Amidst all the encomia for a new era in Korea and for freedom for the people of the DPRK, one must ask the question, who exactly will be bringing that freedom to the north?

Because here are truths that should not be overlooked: for the past sixty years North Korea has been parked between the three most powerful military nations in the world. The American military fully occupies South Korea with massive military might including nuclear weapons aimed right at the people of the DPRK. Goaded on by the US the South Korean military has a long history of provocation against the North.

On the radio this morning I heard a government official of the DPRK, distraught over Kim's death, defending his country against its international ill repute. One of the things he said was that the U.S. that threatens his country is one of the worst human rights violators in the world. It came across as a laugh-line, a punchline to show how removed from reality the North Koreans are. But put yourself in their shoes. There is plenty of evidence that the scale of American tyranny dwarfs anything that the DPRK is capable of, especially when you consider how the U.S. treats the world around it as its exclusive reserve.

During the American war on Korea, two million Koreans were killed; including hundreds and hundreds of thousands of civilians. While history doesn't point to any clean hands in that conflict, the U.S. is absolutely guilty of thousands of war crimes against innocent civilians, and the South Korean dictatorship propped up by the U.S. for years after the war ran death squads against suspected Communists in the south.

Consider the wave of repression in this country against #OWS encampments. Students and workers beaten and gassed with chemical weapons? That wasn't in Pyongyang.

Consider this angry OpEd piece in the New York Times this weekend, by a law-abiding, gainfully-employed young African-American man named Nicholas Peart who has been repeatedly stopped, harassed, frisked, and thrown to the ground by the NY city police as part of the "stop and frisk" campaign that sees all young black men as potential criminals: "It feels like an important thing to be part of a community of hundreds of thousands of people who are wrongfully stopped on their way to work, school, church or shopping, and are patted down or worse by the police though they carry no weapon; and searched for no reason other than the color of their skin..."

Consider this fact also reported in the New York Times: "The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners....The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London. China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison.... "Far from serving as a model for the world, contemporary America is viewed with horror," James Whitman, a specialist in comparative law at Yale, wrote last year in Social Research. "Certainly there are no European governments sending delegations to learn from us about how to manage prisons." Prison sentences here have become "vastly harsher than in any other country to which the United States would ordinarily be compared..."

The U.S. has overthrown or helped overthrow the governments of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya in the past decade. It attacks people with utter impunity in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. It supplies weapons to repressive governments around the world: weapons that are actually used, as in Egypt and Palestine. If you were in the DPRK wouldn't you feel threatened?

The U.S. has a habit of portraying the rulers of countries it doesn't like "madmen," or "insane." This as half of our own country prepares to rally around someone like Newt Gingrich? It's easy to call attention to Kim Jong-il's eccentricities. But isn't that just awfully convenient? The U.S. learned long ago that if you dehumanize your enemies you can eliminate them as carelessly as they do with stray kittens at the Humane Society.

The DPRK is a one-party state. Do you feel that our acclaimed two-party state, our supposed democracy, actually represents you? I sure don't.

Life is probably much easier in the United States than in the DPRK. The fact that this is the richest country in the world, courtesy of the exploitation of the world's resources, kind of helps make that so. It's true I can write this blog here while I couldn't in Pyongyang: But we'll see how seriously the government starts applying before the NDAA makes that no longer true. The NDAA is certainly full of repressive laws that Kim Jong-Il would love. Not sure what that makes Barack Obama...are you?

Anyway my point is not to glorify North Korea, nor to lionize the late Kim Jong-Il. He's certainly not my dear leader.

But it's not that simple. Don't believe the hype. The so-called "Free World" is about as accurately named as the "People's Democratic Republic" of Korea. This isn't the occasion for gloating. We in the U.S. have serious work to do before we can be calling the kettles of the world black.

Our enemy is here at home, first.

Image shows a sheet of stamps from the DPRK, 2011, showing achievements of Kim Jong-Il.

I See Dead People

Dead Metal Toy Sudanese Mahdists from John Jenkins Co.

When I was growing up in Chicago in the mid-1960s my best friend was named Nancy Lee. I don't remember what her father actually did for a living, but I knew he dreamed of returning to his native Kentucky and settling into an academic career and writing about his life's fascination, the American Civil War; which at some point he actually did, ending my friendship with little Nancy Lee. Anyway in Nancy Lee's basement her father Jim had a huge collection of plastic civil war toy soldiers. They were made in pale blue and pale gray colors, thus despite the similarity of uniform and pose casting no doubt about which side they were meant to represent. He had everything spread out on a jumble of tables. There were plastic Southern mansions and plastic trees and plastic bridges and tiny cannons scattered about the clashing plastic armies. It was quite the scene, and I was quite jealous, never being invited to play with what seemed irrationally to my mind an adult man's toy. Nancy Lee, being very young and a girl to boot, was not allowed to do more than look at this awesome display. Her older brother was initiated into the mysteries of these toys, but he was much older than Nancy Lee or I, so I was never invited to watch her father at play either: I don't know if he rearranged the lines of battle by whim of mood, whether he made whooshing, booming, spitting sounds as he moved the figures about, or whether he was aiming merely for the perfect just-so arrangement of some historic moment in time.

Did I mention I was jealous? I developed quite a fascination of my own with little toy historical figures, some of which I have written about here before. In the end I eventually boxed up my own collection of little toy soldiers, giving most of them away. As I entered adulthood I occasionally and wistfully bought myself a little model soldier, evoking some childhood romance with history and adventure and lost innocence no doubt, but I never seriously contemplated becoming one of that rare and undoubtedly dying breed of gentlemen hobbyists, the adult toy soldier collector.


Metal Toy Dead Zulus from Conte Collectibles.

Which is not to say that I am not still fascinated by the idea of toy soldiers: capturing and miniaturizing historical violence without worry over the lives of real men, without the stain of blood or the curse of collateral damage. Over the years with the onset of the internet I was happy to discover that I could pursue that fascination voyeuristically, nostalgically (and economically) by window-shopping hobbyist websites; which I have done now for years.

Although I have not met such a person in my adulthood, there are apparently lots of people, presumably men, who do still engage in this time-honored hobby. Fueled in part by cheap manufacturing in China, toy soldiers aimed at adults seem to be quite a stable niche market. And unlike my youth when toy soldiers were mostly devoted to Cowboys and Indians, Civil War soldiers like my friend Nancy Lee's father had, knights in shining armor, and WWII GIs, today's toy soldiers seem to have reached all level of exotic historical subjects covering thousands of years of human history.


Plastic Toy Dead Sioux from Toy Soldiers of San Diego.

But I have noticed a trend, something that really creeps me out: toy dead people. Your plastic cowboys and plastic Custer and metal Redcoats can now be matched up with dead and dying little toy Indians in a variety of agonizing poses. Your tiny British imperialist highlanders defending your model of South Africa's Rorke's Drift can now be surrounded by "clumps" (not exaggerating, see above) and "piles" of toy dead Zulus. And your Four-Feathers-style British heroes heading off to rescue a tin version of General Charles "Chinese" Gordon in the Sudan can now avenge themselves against crumpling, dying black African Mahdist tribesmen. While as near as I can tell there is the occasional toy white corpse to be had, the overwhelming number of these toy dead people are black and brown. Indeed you can get dying toy white people being scalped by fiendish looking toy Indians, so you will need those piles of dead Indians for your act of proper revenge.


Metal Toy Dead Woodland Indians from Sierra Toy Soldier Co.

Sure, who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men and all that. Gore is a stable part of fantasy: violent movies, violent video games, plastic guns, murder mystery novels. Why shouldn't toys based in the actual violence of history add a little realism? As far as I can tell it's not like these items are aimed at children, as if in today's world one could keep images of violence from kids anyway. I played with these things and I'm a pacifist. But I remain unsettled.

Why in this virtual body count is black and brown "life" so cheap? I suppose it could be argued that an abstract hobby is coming to terms with the real, genocidal costs of the history being reenacted in miniature. For sure to reflect anything like real history you'd need to match up your pile of tin cowboys and redcoats with a mountain of dead tin Indians. But it feels so.... disrespectful.

I mean, can you imagine the outrage at little toy concentration camps with little toy skeletal Jews and miniature gas chambers? "Oh here's my little dead Great Grandmother Esther...look at the fine detail! Doesn't she look real? And see the tiny armband with its precious little star?" It's bad enough that there are indeed little tin Nazis: there is a questionable leap of taste if I've ever seen one. But isn't it damning that there aren't model "clumps" of Holocaust victims to match the molded puddle of imaginary exterminated Africans?

I'm not seeing that same nostalgia here that used to conjure up excitement in what remains of my little boy heart and imagination. It's impossible given the tenor of the times to not wonder if the nostalgia being conjured up by these "toys" isn't nostalgia for a time when white people were happily conquering the world in the name of manifest destiny, Britannia ruling the waves, and that historical favorite of white people, the noble pursuit of civilizing the "savages."

I can't look at these miniatures as toys anymore. I see dead people. Maybe time to put away childish things, eh?

Gay Rights ARE Human Rights.... But They're Also NOT a Weapon for Imperialism

President Obama's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a speech today at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, at an event marking the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was the immediate and carefully orchestrated followup to an announcement today by the President himself that the United States would use diplomacy (and foreign aid and the threatened restriction thereof) to promote rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people worldwide. In many ways it is a fairly remarkable speech: "Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct, but in fact they are one and the same.” It's worth the thirty-minute listen. (Text link here and here).

It's hard to imagine such words being uttered from the podium on a world stage just a few years ago, and it's certainly impossible to imagine such a speech coming from a potential Republican administration in Washington. Indeed Republican presidential candidates like Rick Perry immediately went into a fury, attacking the Obama administration for "promoting the homosexual lifestyle."

While there is something to admire in Mrs. Clinton's measured, almost pedagogical delivery of the reasoned and undeniable message that gay people are entitled to the same human rights and dignity as all people, I am left unsettled by this speech, or perhaps, by what is left unsaid. Of this speech a friend of mine left this note on Facebook: "Re Obama/Clinton LGBT foreign aid restrictions. What if a country has some gay rights but denies some residents fair trails, equal education and basic citizenship and employs racial supremacy, imposes one religious paradigm and runs illegal and immoral wars? Oh wait, that's us."

And further, I'm reminded of nothing so much as President Jimmy Carter's vintage late-1970s "human rights" foreign policy campaign, which used professed defense of human rights as a cover for restoring an aggressive and even militarily interventionist foreign policy in the aftermath of defeat in the war against Vietnam. The clarion call of "human rights" was used to ratchet up support for whatever the government wanted to do internationally from a population still reeling from war fatigue. Which is of course the same place the American population is today after a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. For all Carter's professed commitment to human rights at the time, under his presidency the U.S. failed to renounce the white racist Apartheid regime in South Africa, and continued to play cold-war games in Africa and elsewhere, sacrificing those same human rights on the altar of fighting communism and the Soviet Union.

Because of course there is plenty more of that same hypocrisy floating around. If the Obama administration is claiming a campaign for human rights and dignity, this apparently does not include the rights of Palestinians watching their land and homes being stolen daily, regardless of their sexual or gender identity. It does not include the rights of Arab spring protesters in countries like Bahrain and Yemen where the local repressive government and the the U.S. government are deeply engaged in washing each other's backs. It does not include the human rights of people across the Middle East and Central Asia to be safe from invisible but deadly predator drone attacks and alleged "collateral damage." And it does not include the human rights of the thousands of peaceful Occupy movement protesters who have been violently assaulted in coordinated nationwide paramilitary attacks.

And as a gay person I resent being used as an instrument of renewed American imperialism. Having robbed and exploited them for years, the nations of the "West" owe the poorer nations of the world plenty of restitution by way of foreign aid. But linking this aid to a segment of the population already viewed with suspicion by some segments of society seems shortsighted and dangerous: While I'm certainly angry at the treatment of queer or gay people by many repressive foreign governments, I'm not at all convinced that making gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered people into pawns of neocolonialism is doing them any kind of favor. I'm reminded of nothing so much as the Israeli policy of pinkwashing: where gay people have been recruited to whitewash Israeli's apartheid policies against the Palestinians by way of promoting relatively social liberal domestic policies. In the end pinkwashing doesn't help anybody but the repressive Israeli government: it certainly doesn't help Arab gay people in Gaza or the occupied West Bank.

Mrs. Clinton, it should be remembered, supported George Bush's brutal and unprovoked attack on Iraq; and both she and President Obama have sacrificed what most people presume is their actual support of marriage equality for American lesbians and gays in favor of the political/electoral gain of saying they remain opposed to it. History shows us that the morals of these politicians come and go with the weather. Which means of course this speech is in part meant to shore up domestic electoral support from a gay community that has been fairly quick to criticize the President.

It's a hard truth but one can't view this speech without contextualizing it. I wish this was about somebody just standing up in front of the world and saying gay people should have human rights. You can't see it in this clip, but right behind Hillary Clinton is the blood-drenched arsenal of the American war machine, a two hundred year record of violent aggression against the peoples of the world, a world economic system that sucks the world dry of resources for the benefit of American business, and the mailed fist of retaliation.

Gay people in the United States have our improved if mixed bag of legal rights because we came to consciousness and fought for those rights, and there's plenty of work still to be done. We won over the people we needed to win over, and defeated those we needed to defeat. For all those queer people who live in countries where harsh laws and cultural practices remain the norm, while we can extend a helping hand as brothers and sisters, we can't fix the problems for them. That has to be the patient and brave achievement of people in those countries themselves.

Dear American government: my hard-won rights are not a weapon for you to use.

(Thanks to JMG for finding the link to the speech.)

Crimes Against Humanity

When reminded of today's grim anniversary, I thought I had something to add on the topic. I re-read my entry last year, and realize the same exact thing needs to be said again. We as Americans have this strange idealized image of ourselves: ever quick with a qualification or an excuse for the actions of our nation and its politicians that conflicts with our imaginary view of ourselves, I think we'd be happier if we'd go with our first gut impulse. Killing hundreds of thousands of people in an instant is just wrong. Start from there and work backwards. There's no rationalization for atomic weapons that holds up, if you're honest with yourself and any reasonable sense of morality. When you start to make an excuse, work forward again to the incineration of thousands of innocent children and find your way back. From last year:


One nation has actually used the ultimate weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons. That nation is the United States of America.

Sixty-five years ago today, the United States bombed the city of Hiroshima in southern Japan. Nearly a hundred thousand lives--mostly civilians--were instantly snuffed out as the city itself was flattened. Tens and tens of thousands of others had their lives cut short, condemned to dealing with painful burns and other injuries and to the slow but equally fatal poisonous effects of lethal radiation exposure.

The big lie of Hiroshima (and Nagasaki, bombed three days later) is that the United States had no choice: it traded the lives of two cities worth of Japanese civilians for the shortening of the war. But for the four years of the war the American government and its loyal cultural institutions had churned out massive amounts of dehumanizing racist anti-Japanese propaganda like the poster at left. Loyal American citizens of Japanese ancestry had been sent to internment camps. It is not surprising that the American military and scientific establishment would use the last days of a war obviously almost over to experiment on a civilian population it had already deemed subhuman. The United States made its deadly mathematical calculation because it believed that dropping the bomb on Japanese civilians would be like crushing so many cockroaches. Many -- though certainly not all -- scholars believe that the Japanese government was ready to surrender, especially anticipating the obviously imminent entry of the Soviet Union into the war. The Japanese imperialists had a record of military cruelty to civilians dating back to the attack on Shanghai in 1937; that's undeniable. But with the nuclear attacks on Japan, the United States became fully committed to that same club.

From the story of survivor Setsuko Thurlow:

"I turned around and saw the outside world. Although it was morning, it looked like twilight because of the dust and smoke in the air. People at a distance saw the mushroom cloud and heard a thunderous roar. But I did not see the cloud because I was in it. I did not hear the roar, just the deadly silence broken only by the groans of the injured. Streams of stunned people were slowly shuffling from the city centre toward nearby hills. They were naked or tattered, burned, blackened and swollen. Eyes were swollen shut and some had eyeballs hanging out of their sockets. They were bleeding, ghostly figures like a slow-motion image from an old silent movie. Many held their hands above the level of their hearts to lessen the throbbing pain of their burns. Strips of skin and flesh hung like ribbons from their bones. Often these ghostly figures would collapse in heaps never to rise again. With a few surviving classmates I joined the procession carefully stepping over the dead and dying.

At the foot of the hill was an army training ground about the size of two football fields. Literally every bit of it was covered with injured and dying who were desperately begging, often in fain whispers, “Water, water, please give me water”. But we had no containers to carry water. We went to a nearby stream to wash the blood and dirt from our bodies. Then we tore off parts of our clothes, soaked them with water and hurried back to hold them to the mouths of the dying who desperately sucked the moisture. We kept busy at this task of giving some comfort to the dying all day. There were no medical supplies of any kind and we did not see any doctor or nurse. When darkness fell, we sat on the hillside, numbed by the massive scale of death and suffering we had witnessed, watching the entire city burn. In the background were the low rhythmic whispers from the swollen lips of the ghostly figures, still begging for water."

More survivor testimony can be read at Voices of Hibakusha.

Remember this: when the U.S. campaigns against weapons of mass destruction, when it marches into Iraq, threatens Iran and North Korea, raises the spectre of rogue nukes, this is not because it believes WMD are wrong, it's because it wants exclusive use of these monstrosities for itself and its allies.

WW2 poster snagged from Maximum Advantage in Pictures blog.

DSK & IMF: Rapists not Socialists

This smiling man standing in front of the fisted-rose logo of the French Socialists is Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He, of course, is the incredibly wealthy French businessman currently under house arrest in New York City for allegedly attempting to rape the hotel worker assigned to cleaning his room. I haven't discussed Mr. Strauss-Kahn's arrest here mostly because even the regular media seems ripe with repulsion over his alleged crime, and I didn't think there was much to add. I'm quite sorry he used his considerable wealth to buy his way out of Riker's Island jail: evidence once again of who has the power in our "free" society.

But I would just like to add one thing: Mr. Strauss-Kahn's rape attempt of the as yet publicly unnamed hotel worker is not unique; she herself is apparently an African immigrant, and Mr. Strauss-Kahn has years under his belt raping the people of Africa. Until he resigned in the wake of the charges against him, he was the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, an organization that functions something like a follow-up rapist to the poorer nations of the world. After countries in the second and third world have been robbed blind by international mega-capitalism, the IMF moves in to rape the impoverished corpses of these nations, ensuring that no matter what happens, these nations will remain naked and bleeding slaves to the rich nations of the world.

While I'm gratified to learn that DSK is at least a member of the right wing of the French Socialist Party, the very thought that such a monstrous individual with such a vile career would consider himself a socialist blows my mind. He was even once seen as a possibly successful socialist electoral challenger to the current French president. Here in the United States where "socialism" is something akin to a curse word, many people are confused about what a socialist might be. Let me say loud and clear that DSK is not it.

Let justice take its course. Hopefully he will stand trial and be convicted. Might I suggest he serve his punishment in the poorest prison in the poorest country the world can find?

Manipulation & Disinformation: A Document from a Nest of Spies

It was a very small item on the Angry Arab news service a few days ago: a link to one of the classified documents that have been obtained and published, Wikileaks-style, by the leftist Lebanese newspaper Al-Akbar. A lot of classified documents have been released lately: it's hard to wade through them with their lists of codes and bureaucratic new-speak. It's almost hard to summon up the necessary outrage as the sheer volume of information has a sort of numbing effect. But I read this document, and it's fascinating, instructive, and disturbing. It's probably not a very important document at all, as these things go. But what is clear from this document is how, beyond any far-fetched conspiracy theory, the U.S. goes about specifying talking points for government politicians and media alike in an attempt to propagandistically influence the events of the region.

It dates from 2008, and wasn't supposed to be declassified until 2018. It's from the American charge d'Affaires in Syria, Michael Corbin and was entitled "SARG PRESSURE POINTS IN CURRENT LEBANESE CRISIS." 'SARG' seems to refer to the Syrian government. It's basically a plan to fuck with Syria and by extension its alleged allies in Lebanon and get it in regional trouble by badmouthing the country and claiming it's an Iranian puppet. It goes on to recommend steps to sow regional discord. Here are a few quotes from the document:

". (C) Summary: As Washington assesses options for
pressuring Syria on its Lebanon policy, Post suggests six
possible measures for consideration. We believe Syria is
vulnerable to a PD focus on the Shia/Iran aspect of Syria's
support for Hizballah. Immediate designations of additional
Syrians under E.O. 13460 as a follow up to the Rami Makhluf
designation would send a strong signal and likely resonate
with the Syrian public. Emphasis on the Lebanon Tribunal and
acceleration of its implementation would focus Syrian regime
figures on possible exposure to prosecution and embarrassment
for the regime. We believe Syrian economic vulnerabilities
are a source of pressure, and we may be able to influence
Syria's efforts to establish better trade relations with
Iraq. Syria cares about its relationships with Turkey, the
UAE, Kuwait, and India, and we should pressure these
countries to cancel planned trips by Bashar and deliver a
strong message on Lebanon. Coordinated action with European
countries will signal continuing isolation; EU countries
publicly criticize Syria on human rights practices, and we
should seek to tie this to Lebanon by stressing some Syrian
dissidents are in jail for advocating support of the Cedar
Revolution. End Summary....

(C) While being careful to avoid crossing the line into
encouraging sectarianism, Post strongly urges more focus on
Syria's close relationship with Iran and Hizballah as Shia
focused on attacking the Arab world. We believe talking
points should emphasize IRGC's material support for
Hizballah's violent attacks on Arabs. The message that Syria
is simply doing the bidding of Shia Iran will tarnish
Bashar's image domestically and in the Arab world and
complicate his attempts to portray himself as a "Sunni" Arab
leader....

6. (C) Syria's greatest vulnerability currently is economic.
We see few levers to pressure the Syrians, since the
Europeans and others are extremely hesitant to invest now,
and Syria has no relationships with international financial
institutions (IFIs). The one area in which we might have
some influence is Syria's attempt to improve its economic
circumstances by cooperating with Iraq....Absent greater security cooperation by the SARG, a subject which has seen no progress, the GOI [Government of Iraq] might be encouraged to deflect these Syrian overtures and even postpone the Committee meetings indefinitely. "

It's clear this so-called American diplomat Corbin was doing his best to subvert the Syrian government. How is that an appropriate job for a diplomat unless he is a spy or agent provocateur? His posting to Syria ended shortly after this set of propaganda instructions was issued...and in fact he's just been nominated to be Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, the same country who it was just revealed has hired the notorious Blackwater/Xe Corporation to build a mercenary army of expatriate Colombians and South Africans to put down any local unrest. The conspiracy theories write themselves, don't they?

It doesn't take a genius — or a paranoid loonytune — to notice that the American newsmedia took the bait offered by this disinformation campaign. The main story the news focused on until the current wave of unrest in Syria has been the alleged axis between Syria, Hizbollah and Iran. It also doesn't take a genius to see that the real story is not nearly that simple, and that the promotion of communal sectarianism by these U.S. spies, despite their disingenuous calls for restraint, is a kind of deadly provocation not unlike the short-sighted blowback-producing idiocy American foreign policy has pursued for decades. Hello Afghan Mujahedeen and Osama Bin Laden. Any news media who followed the manipulations offered by this government campaign to destabilize Syria should be considered something else altogether than reputable news organizations.

Now, three years after this memo, Syria's dictatorial regime is threatened by civil unrest. It's clear many of the demands of the protesters there are just. But one wonders what shit-stirring State Department memos have been issued by the current crop of American spies sitting in Damascus...and how many innocent lives will be lost by its meddling manipulations.

Ladies and gentlemen, your tax dollars at work.

"The Resistance Will Never Be Destroyed"

Leaving work on Friday I ran smack into this small but spirited solidarity protest apparently organized by Bahraini exiles in support of the now silenced revolutionary protest movement in that tiny Arabian Gulf nation. The protest was fenced into a small pen (f.u. NYC police!) on Seventh Avenue right below Times Square. They passed out flyers calling for "Justice for Bahrain!"


Bahrain, you will recall, is a tiny island kingdom that was gripped by a mass democracy protest about the same time as the uprising in Libya began. Hundreds of thousands of people occupied Pearl Square in a very small country, calling for democracy and reform. At precisely the moment the Western powers chose to intervene in LIbya, they greenlighted the crushing of the Bahraini democracy movement by the Bahraini monarchy acting in concert with military forces from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies. The U.S. has a military base in Bahrain and Obama was quick to avert his gaze lest the base be jeopardized. The forces of government repression actually destroyed the national "Pearl" monument at Pearl Square shortly after driving off the protesters to keep it from ever becoming a rallying point again.


The signs carried at the rally were a really interesting bunch: my favorite is the one of the now destroyed Pearl Square monument re-envisioned to show clenched fists holding up the iconic pearl of Bahrain's history. Notable also are the ones shown at top showing the link between the popular uprisings in Libya, Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt and Tunisia; and the one shown above "Not Shia Not Sunni Just Bahraini" giving the lie to the common media claim that the uprising was just a sectarian one (the majority of Bahrain's citizens are Shia though the monarchy is not; but the protesters were from both communities).


The protest called attention to ongoing repression against not only the democracy movement but against medical professionals who witnessed and treated victims of the government violence. And they call out the hypocrisy of the West's professed support of democracy movements elsewhere in the Middle East while remaining silent on the repression of the Bahraini people by the Bahraini and Saudi dictatorships. The organizers of the protest can be contacted on their facebook page, "Voice Against Oppression."

(Photographs by me, April 2011)

Friends & Enemies

The First World War was a watershed for the international left. For decades, socialists had organized in the nations of the industrialized world for the rights of workers, for social justice, for democracy; they exhorted values of international labor solidarity and talked about the common interests of the same classes across national divisions. The First World War was nobody's moral crusade: it was clearly a war for power and territory and economic strength. And yet, all of a sudden major portions of the left in each nation decided that being French or German or English or Russian was the most important thing. Their former class brothers and sisters across each other's borders were now enemies to be shot at; and the governments they were formerly protesting or struggling with were now the embodiments of their national pride. In an instant as socialist parties in the parliaments of France and Germany voted to support the war begun by their governments, the ideals they had bandied about were shown to be virtually meaningless.

Not all the socialists made this shameful turn, and it was from those who refused to surrender their ideals and principles that what became the Communist movement was born. The story of what happened to that movement later after the successful Russian revolution can be rightfully debated. But there was a moment of real heroism as some socialists said "no" to their own ruling classes, and continued to regard their allies as the people, the working classes, of all nations. Karl Liebknecht was one of those heroes. I've quoted this document before, and I'll probably quote it again, but in 1915 as the majority of German Socialists were rallying behind their government and the German flag to support the war, he wrote and distributed this leaflet, called "The Main Enemy Is At Home!" Liebknecht's heroic genius was in recognizing that for the working class, the war changed nothing. The government that was suddenly appealing to them for support, attempting to morally inspire the German people to war, was the same government, the same class force of big business and the aristocracy, that was moments before engaged in ripping them off and oppressing them.

Here's a few key excerpts. Liebknecht is too optimistic about the immediate future, but he's pointing out that the German government is lying when it says it has embarked on a quick and easy war. Italy has just joined the other side in the war.

"The masses in the warring countries have begun to free themselves from the official webs of lies. The German people as well have gained insight about the causes and objectives of the world war, about who is directly responsible for its outbreak. The mad delusions about the "holy aims" of the war have given way more and more, the enthusiasm for the war has dwindled, the will for a rapid peace has grown powerfully all over – even in the Army! This was a difficult problem for the German and Austrian imperialists, who were seeking in vain for salvation. Now it seems they have found it. Italy's intervention in the war should offer them a welcome opportunity to stir up new frenzies of national hatred, to smother the will for peace, and to blur the traces of their own guilt. They are betting on the forgetfulness of the German people, betting on their forbearance which has been tested all too often.

The enemies of the people are counting on the forgetfulness of the masses – we counter this with the solution:

Learn everything, don't forget anything!...We have seen how when war broke out, the masses were captured for the capitalist aims of the war with enticing melodies from the ruling classes. We have seen how the shiny bubbles of demagogy burst, how the foolish dreams of August vanished, how, instead of happiness, suffering and misery came over the people; how the tears of war widows and war orphans swelled to great currents; how the maintenance of the three-class disgrace, the unrepentant canonization of the Quadrinity – semi-absolutism, junker rule, militarism, and police despotism – became bitter truth.

Offensive are the tirades with which Italian imperialism glosses over its pillaging... More offensive still is that in all of this we can recognize, as if reflected in a mirror, the German and Austrian methods of July and August 1914. The Italian instigators of war deserve every denunciation. But they are nothing but copies of the German and Austrian instigators, the ones who are chiefly responsible for the outbreak of war. Birds of a feather!...

For thinking people, Italy's imitation of Germany's actions from summer of last year cannot be a spur for new war frenzies, just an impetus to scare away the phantom hopes of a new dawn of political and social justice, just a new light for the illumination of the political responsibilities and the exposure of the public danger presented by the Austrian and German pursuers of war, just a new indictment of them.

The main enemy of every people is in their own country!

The main enemy of the German people is in Germany: German imperialism, the German war party, German secret diplomacy. This enemy at home must be fought by the German people in a political struggle, cooperating with the proletariat of other countries whose struggle is against their own imperialists.

We think as one with the German people – we have nothing in common with the German Tirpitzes and Falkenhayns, with the German government of political oppression and social enslavement. Nothing for them, everything for the German people. Everything for the international proletariat, for the sake of the German proletariat and downtrodden humanity. The enemies of the working class are counting on the forgetfulness of the masses – provide that that be a grave miscalculation. They are betting on the forbearance of the masses – but we raise the vehement cry:

How long should the gamblers of imperialism abuse the patience of the people? Enough and more than enough slaughter! Down with the war instigators here and abroad!... Proletarians of all countries, follow the heroic example of your Italian brothers! Ally yourselves to the international class struggle against the conspiracies of secret diplomacy, against imperialism, against war, for peace with in the socialist spirit.

The main enemy is at home!

----

These are important words, far more important than the long-forgotten details of national intrigue in the early days of the First World War. Because once again a large portion of the left who knows better is making the wrong choice of friends.

I read the very disappointing "Open Letter to the Left on Libya" by Middle East Scholar and anti-war activist Professor Juan Cole. And Cole, who's made numerous insightful analyses of the U.S. war on Iraq is now siding with the liberal interventionists and calling the bombing of Libya a "humanitarian" action. The same NATO, the same US war machine, the same neocolonialist European allies, that Cole has criticized elsewhere are now, in his opinion, doing the right thing.

It is more difficult to respond to current events than it is to analyze history. But history's lessons are useful. And forgetting the material class interests of NATO, US imperialism, and European neocolonialism, is an absolutely fundamental mistake of those who think that the current intervention into the Libyan civil war is any way legitimately humanitarian. Even in the possible (but unlikely, in my opinion) outcome of a quick end to this conflict, a low bodycount, the removal of a dictator, and the restoration of civil order, the story does not end there.

The foreign intervention in Libya may ostensibly be in support of the Libyan rebels, but it is most certainly NOT in the support of the tide of revolution sweeping the Arab world. It is an an attempt to control and tame that struggle. Just connect a few dots. US. Arab League. Saudi Arabia. Bahrain. And do the world's protesters really want to empower the US airforce and NATO to act as the world's policemen?

This is grotesque. The left knows better; at least it knew better.

Other recommended readings:
* Zunguzungu blog has an intelligent but ultimately incorrect post on the subject, "Libya, Waiting to See."
* On The Unrepentant Marxist a left veteran analyzes the situation but criticizes left-wing countries in Latin America for supporting Qaddafi, "Libya, Imperialism and ALBA"
* Richard Seymour on the excellent Lenin's Tomb hasn't really written a definitive piece on Libya, but he reminds of his timely book "The Liberal Defence of Murder." I should review that book here.

"Homefront" Video Game: The Bully's Whine

Back in the 1980s in the dying days of the cold war, the right wing had an aggrieved fantasy of the communist threat. In B-movies such as the absolutely hideous "Red Dawn," which depicted homegrown heroes fighting off a Soviet invasion of the United States, the right wing acted out its political paranoia in the cultural sphere. Actually it was more than paranoia: it was a bully's feigned cry of outrage, the bully pretending it was wounded as it laid its jackboot on the neck of its opponent. The end of the cold war revealed what an unequal contest it had been as the Soviet world disappeared into the ether.

A poster in the subway caught my eye this past week; it was a version of the graphic above (click on the image to see it in larger detail). It's a compelling image of a wounded rugged American blindfolded by a North Korean star: in the background North Korean flags hang off the Transamerica building and the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. It's a poster for a new shoot-em-up video game from Kaos called "Homefront." It turns out this a distopian science-fiction video game about a near future where North Korea (!) has taken over the western half of the United States, resisted by brave rebels like the one shown. The game's story is actually written by right-wing activist John Milius, one of the writers behind the old "Red Dawn." Milius is a board member of the National Rifle Association.

Curious, I browsed the elaborate website for "Homefront." It's a slick production. Interspersed with clips from the ultra-violent game itself are fake news documents and films about the North Korean occupation, its brutal oppression of real America, and the war of resistance. Below is a screenshot from an amusing faux propaganda film showing little blonde children in occupied Des Moines wearing North Korean sashes and reciting a pledge of allegiance to the North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un. In another film a professed liberal explains that his wife has just blown herself up in a suicide bombing against the occupying North Koreans and promises to emulate her shortly. There are faked up pictures of North Korean occupation of the U.S. including walls covered with Kim Jong Un's visage. And lots and lots of violence and explosions.


All in good fun, right?

Not so fast. I was reading an excellent post on the "We Are Respectable Negroes" blog ("The Rotten Heart of White Conservatism or Are White Americans Oppressed?") about how white conservatives have a whole elaborate persecution complex that they are the new victims of racism. The pose acts as a cover for their anger and resentment at the changing world. Something similar is well-documented on gay blogs about how the Christianist right plays the oppressed victim at the hands of advocates of gay civil rights or marriage-equality advocates.

Well this game is straight out of those playbooks. It's almost Freudian in what it reveals about right wingers; how they need to justify their worldview in their own minds. And clicking around the slick "Homefront" website, one realizes with some disbelief that the "bad" guys are all Asians and the "good" guys are all white and blonde. It turns out "Homefront" has generated some controversy. It's banned in South Korea, and a Japanese version of the game was scoured of references to North Korea.

Here's the truth: the United States is the most powerful military machine the world has ever known. The world is its playground. Its military budget is larger than that of most of the other world's nations--combined. North Korea, run by an unattractive family dictatorship, is nobody's idea of a real socialist paradise. But it's also a tiny, tiny country. Its posture of militant defiance toward the United States might be bravado or might be foolhardy or might be legitimately necessary: the U.S. war machine has been camped out literal inches away from North Korea for fifty years. If the North Koreans may have developed nuclear weapons, it's guessed that they have a half dozen of these weapons. There's no evidence that their missile systems can accurately target anywhere further away than Japan (which it might be mentioned, brutally occupied Korea for fifty years). On the other hand, thousands of American nuclear weapons might be aimed at North Korea with the flip of a switch. Presumably hundreds of these weapons are already pointed at North Korea from American submarines hovering in international waters. It is absolutely laughable to suggest that North Korea might invade the United States. It's also obscene: the United States is actually, in the real world, the country with a record of invasion of smaller weaker countries including Korea.

So what is this game exactly? It's clearly part of the rightwing's propaganda juggernaut, in this case aimed at young people ill-informed about the real facts of world politics and of convenient military recruitment age. This game comes from the same impulse behind Republican rep. Peter King's witch-hunting congressional hearings against "the radicalization of the Muslim community" that began this week. It comes from the same impulse that has white Teabaggers blaming the economic crisis on ACORN and poor people, or blaming high unemployment on immigrants. These rightwingers have a pathological need to pretend to be the victims. But don't be fooled by this deflection: don't be distracted the flashing lights and pretty colors. This is the work of people trying to rationalize their own brutality, racism, entitlement, privilege and pro-imperialism.

For all these rightwingers' professed fear of brainwashing, here is a real example of a brainwashing tool. Just say CTRL-ALT-DELETE.

Egyptian Revolution on the Brink

"All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air." -- Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, 1848

Millions of people have been out in the streets of Egypt for over two weeks. Despite the daily predictions of the western media that the revolution is about to run out of steam, each day brings demonstrations bigger than the day before. According to eyewitnesses, the streets have become a huge festival of mass democracy. And yet the American-backed dictator Mubarak clings intransigently to power.

American diplomats are trying desperately to straddle both sides of the fence. On the one hand Obama claims to support democracy. On the other hand his diplomat sent to negotiate with Mubarak, Frank Wisner, turns out to work for companies with contracts with the Egyptian military and secret police: he's virtually an employee of Mubarak. After negotiations Wisner said, "Mubarak must stay in office in order to steer those changes through... This is an ideal moment for him to show the way forward." Obama proceeded to distance Wisner's position, and has been lining up behind new Vice President Omar Suleiman, head of the notorious Egyptian secret police. While Obama postures about the will of the Egyptian people, clearly he's concerned about letting things get out of control...of the American government and its Israeli allies.

So on the one side Mubarak and his massive security operation and control of the state. On the other the masses of Egyptian people of many classes and religions. In the middle is the Egyptian Army. The west seems to be desperate to find a leader it can impose on the revolution to make things nice.

And now the game has changed. Enter the Egyptian working class. I think it is no accident that today's dramatic events -- the rumor that Mubarak was stepping down, the rumor of a military seizure of power, and ultimately Mubarak's renewed intransigence -- are a direct response to the waking giant which has announced a series of political strikes. Because it is the Egyptian working class, with its hands on the gears of the Egyptian economy that has the power to push this revolution through to its righteous end. More than the rule of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood the rulers of Egypt and their sponsors in Washington and elsewhere fear the power of the conscious and self-aware majority of the Egyptian people, unbeholden to the corrupt arrangements that perpertuate the rule of the dictator and his henchmen. They are terrified by what the unchecked success of the Egyptian revolution might mean for the other despotic rulers in the region. And they are freaking out about what this might mean for the struggle of the Palestinian people held in check by sellouts and betrayals. And the working people of Egypt have the power to break the stalemate; to split the army; to prevent the revolution being derailed by a new, replacement dictator at the helm of the same old same old.

The contrasts are now starker than ever. It's all out in the open. The U.S. must cut the strings to its puppet. The Egyptian people can see that the Americans are trying to attach those puppet strings to someone else and are rightly outraged. What the U.S. can do to help is pull its support from the Egyptian security apparatus and military.

The working class is about to speak. They can bring victory to the revolution. The days ahead are more dangerous than ever, but the prize is there waiting. The following statement was issued by a group of Egyptian revolutionary socialists a fes short days before the current strikes were announced:

"Call to Egyptian workers to join the ranks of the revolution

The demonstrations and protests have played a key role in igniting and continuing our revolution. Now we need the workers. They can seal the fate of the regime. Not only by participating in the demonstrations, but by organising a general strike in all the vital industries and large corporations.

The regime can afford to wait out the sit-ins and demonstrations for days and weeks, but it cannot last beyond a few hours if workers use strikes as a weapon. Strike on the railways, on public transport, the airports and large industrial companies! Egyptian Workers! On behalf of the rebellious youth, and on behalf of the blood of our martyrs, join the ranks of the revolution, use your power and victory will be ours!" -- Revolutionary Socialism Egypt (English translation from Lenin's Tomb.)

Many analysts predict that a massacre is brewing. There is certainly a real confrontation on the way. Who knows what's going to happen: I sure don't. But I'm inspired, and hopeful.

(According to the Angry Arab news service, the Arabic sign above reads "Down with Omar Suleiman, the Man of Israel.")

Foreign Policy Expert Sarah Palin Will Decide Who Can Rule Egypt

In a creepy interview with David Brody at the Christian Broadcasting Network, right-wing quitter and publicity whore Sarah Palin has offered her bizarre views on the situation in Egypt: "We want to be able to trust those who are screaming for democracy there in Egypt, that it is a true sincere desire for freedoms and the challenge that we have though, is how do we verify what it is that we are being told, what it is that the American public are being fed via media, via the protestors, via the government there in Egypt in order for us to really have some sound information to make wise decisions on what our position is. Trust but verify, and try to understand is what I would hope our leaders are engaged in right now. Who’s going to fill the void? Mubarak, he’s gone, one way or the other you know, he is not going to be the leader of Egypt, that that’s a given, so now the information needs to be gathered and understood as to who it will be that fills now the void in the government. Is it going to be the Muslim Brotherhood? We should not stand for that, or with that or by that. Any radical Islamists, no that is not who we should be supporting and standing by, so we need to find out who was behind all of the turmoil and the revolt and the protests so that good decisions can be made in terms of who we will stand by and support."

And she's miffed that Obama hasn't told her who's going to be the next president of Egypt: "It’s a difficult situation, this is that 3am White House phone call and it seems for many of us trying to get that information from our leader in the White House it it seems that that call went right to um the answering machine. And nobody yet has, no body yet has explained to the American public what they know, and surely they know more than the rest of us know who it is who will be taking the place of Mubarak."

Read the whole interview. It's a remarkable exercise in paranoia, arrogant presumption and pretending to know what she's talking about. She also brags about being a journalist. (!) And it's clear she has no idea that leading American politicians are not actually supposed to be saying they have the right to determine who will rule other countries.

Sadly, it is true that, lest things get out of control, President Obama and his diplomats seems to be settling on pushing out Mubarak in favor of the head of the secret police, Omar Suleiman, now appointed Vice President. (The AngryArab is priceless on the subject: "So basically, if you take Mubarak and his head of the secret police, `Umar Sulayman, the US would have been satisfied if only Hitler had appointed Himmler as his deputy."

Note to world: It is the Egyptian revolution and that means the Egyptian people get to decide what happens next.