Corporatism and Fascism

America's Lackluster December Jobs Report

by Stephen Lendman

Headlines belied its weakness. Economist John Williams reengineers economic data based on reliable decades earlier modeling.

U-3 unemployment rose 0.1% to 7.8%. U-6 is broader. It's 14.4%. It includes:

Another NNC Lendman Interview

NNC's Iman Soleimani conducted this and earlier interviews. Each raised major world issues.

NCC is one of Iran's largest media operations. It works collaboratively with major TV and News services.

Questions and answers are below. Editing was done as needed. Final comments follow.

Institutionalized Inequality in America

by Stephen Lendman

Millions of Americans face lump of coal harshness this holiday season. It's no different throughout the year. Annually, things get worse. 

Hard times reflect what growing numbers endure. Bipartisan complicity bears full responsibility.

By Dave Lindorff

I was asked earlier this week by an reporter for PressTV, the state television network in Iran, if I could explain why the US political system seemed to be so dysfunctional, with Congress and the President having created an artificial budget crisis 17 months ago, not “solving” it until the last hour before a Congressional deadline would have created financial chaos, and even then not solving the problem and instead just pushing it off for two months until the next crisis moment.

Fiscal Cliff Postmortems

by Stephen Lendman

Congressional profiles in courage are sorely lacking. Pretenders usually vote party line when asked or pressured. 

No House or Senate member explained what constituents most need to know. Fiscal cliff hype reflects doublespeak duplicity. Previous articles explained.

January 21^st will be an odd day in the United States.  We'll honor Martin Luther King Jr. and bestow another 4-year regime on the man who, in his Nobel peace prize acceptance speech said that Martin Luther King Jr. had been wrong -- that those who follow his example "stand idle in the face of threats."

I plan to begin the day by refusing to stand idle in the face of the threat that is President Barack Obama's military.  An event honoring Dr. King and protesting drone wars will include a rally at Malcolm X Park and a parade named for a bit of Kingian rhetoric. 

That evening I plan to attend the launch of a new book called We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism in 21st Century America.

The Martin King I choose to celebrate is not the mythical man, beloved and accepted by all during his life, interested exclusively in ending racial segregation, and not attracted to activism -- since only through electoral work, as we've all been told, can one be a serious activist. 

The Martin King I choose to celebrate is the man who resorted to the most powerful activist tools available, the tools of creative nonviolent resistance and noncooperation, in order to resist what he called the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism. 

Taking that seriously means ending right now the past five-year-long ban on protesting the president.  At Obama's first inauguration we held Good Riddance to Bush rallies because pressuring Obama to mend his militaristic ways was not deemed "strategic." 

It turns out that refusing to push people toward peace does something worse than offending them.  It ignores them and abandons them to their fate. 

But pushing is not exactly the verb we should be looking for as we strive to build an inclusive peace movement.  Nor is peace exactly the adjective.  What we need is a movement against racism, materialism, and militarism.

To build that, those working to reduce spending on the Pentagon's pet corporations need to also work against the prison industrial complex.  And those working against police violence need to work for higher taxes on billionaires.  And those working to protect Social Security and Medicare need to oppose the murdering of human beings with missiles and drones.

We need to do these things not just because they will unite a larger number of people.  We would need to do them all even if nobody were already working in any of these areas.  We need to do them because we are taking on a culture, not just a policy.  We are taking on the mental habits that allow racism, materialism, and militarism.  We cannot do so with a movement that is segregated by policy area any more than we can with a movement that is segregated by race.

The torture techniques are shared between our foreign and domestic prisons.  Local police are being militarized.  The latest insanity would have us arm our teachers so that when our children are shot up by failed applicants to the U.S. Marine Corps there will be, as at Fort Hood, more guns nearby.  Violence at home and abroad exists through our acceptance of violence.  Plutocratic greed drives both war and racism.  Racism facilitates and is facilitated by war.

We Have Not Been Moved is a book with many lessons to teach.  King spoke against the war on Vietnam despite being strongly advised to stick to the area of civil rights.  Julian Bond did the same, losing his seat in the Georgia state legislature.  African Americans marched against that war by the thousands in Harlem and elsewhere, including with posters carrying the words attributed to Mohammad Ali: "No Vietcong ever called me nigger!"  So did Asian Americans and Chicanos.  SNCC risked considerable support and funding by supporting the rights of Palestinians as well as Vietnamese, urging draft resistance, and stating its disbelief that the U.S. government's goals included free elections either at home or abroad.

Immigrants rights groups (to a great extent more accurately: refugee rights groups) are sometimes reluctant to challenge the war machine, despite deeper understanding than the rest of us of how U.S. war making creates the need for immigration in the first place.  But, then, how many peace activists are working for immigrants' rights?  Civil rights groups strive to resist rendition and torture and indefinite detention, warrentless spying and murder by drone.  Unless they are brought more fully into a larger coalition that challenges military spending (at well over $1 trillion per year both before and after the "fiscal cliff") the struggle against the symptoms will continue indefinitely.  Environmental groups are often reluctant to oppose the military industrial complex, its wars for oil, or its oil for wars.  But this past year the threat that South Korean base construction and the U.S. Navy pose to Jeju Island brought these movements together -- a process our survival depends on our continuing.

Our movement must be inclusive and international.  The movement to close the School of the Americas has not closed it, but has persuaded several nations to stop sending any would-be torturers or assassins to train there.  The movement to shut down U.S. military bases abroad has not shut them down en masse through Congress, but has shut them down in particular places through the work of the people protesting in their countries.  Where do we find media coverage that sympathizes with domestic struggles for justice within the United States?  In foreign media, of course, in the media of Iran and Russia and Qatar.  Those governments have their own motives, but support for justice corresponds with the sentiments of their people and all people.

Our movement should not oppose attacking Iran purely as outsiders, but working with Iranians.  We should not oppose attacking Iran because all of our own problems have been solved, or because the dollars that will be spent attacking Iran could fund U.S. schools and green energy, or because attacking Iran could lead to attacks on the United States.  We should oppose attacking Iran because we oppose militarism and materialism and racism everywhere. 

We sometimes worry about having too many issues on our plate.  How, we wonder, can new people be attracted to our rally against another war if we unreasonably also oppose murderous sanctions?  How can we welcome new activists who doubt the wisdom of the next war if we unrealistically oppose all militarism?  How can we not turn people off if our speeches demand rights for women and immigrants and workers?  Do people who've never heard of Mumia need to hear about his imprisonment?  Don't we want homophobes to feel they can join our campaign without loving those people?

I think this is the wrong worry.  I think we need more issues, not fewer.  I think that's the genius of Occupy.  The issues are all connected.  They are issues of greed, racism, and war.  We can work with Libertarians on things we agree on.  We need be hostile to no one.  But we need to prioritize building a holistic movement for fundamental change.  Taxing the rich to pay for more wars is not the answer.  Opposing all cuts to public spending, even though more than half of it goes to the war machine is not the answer.  Insisting that banks stop discriminating, while drone pilots do is not the answer.

This is going to take work, huge amounts of work, great reservoirs of patience and humility, tremendous efforts at inclusion, understanding, and willingness to see changed what it is people become included in.  But we can afford to turn off racists.  We can afford to not appear welcoming to bigots.  We are many.  They are few.

The war machine has set its sights on Africa.  Its new name is AFRICOM, and it means business, the business of exploitation and cruelty.  We can better understand 9-11 and everything that has followed from it if we understand the long history of terrorism on U.S. soil.  We need the wisdom of Native Americans, Japanese Americans, Muslim Americans, and everybody else here and abroad who has been paying attention.  We need to move from making war to making reparations, at home and abroad.  We will have less reparations to make the sooner we stop making war.

We Have Not Been Moved includes a never before published speech by Bayard Rustin in which Rustin quotes Ossie Davis saying to the President: "If you want us to be nonviolent in Selma, why can't you be nonviolent in Saigon?"

"All the weapons of military power," says Rustin, "chemical and biological warfare, cannot prevail against the desire of the people.  We know the Wagner Act, which gave labor the right to organize and bargain collectively was empty until workers went into the streets.  The unions got off the ground because of sit-down strikes and social dislocation.  When women wanted to vote, Congress ignored them until they went into the streets and into the White House, and created disorder of a nonviolent nature.  I assure you that those women did things that, if the Negro movement had done them, they would have been sent back to Africa!  The civil rights movement begged and begged for change, but finally learned this lesson -- going into the streets.  The time is so late, the danger so great, that I call upon all the forces which believe in peace to take a lesson from the labor movement, the women's movement, and the civil rights movement and stop staying indoors.  Go into these streets until we get peace!"

Flim Flam Fiscal Cliff Legislation

by Stephen Lendman

Senate members met, debated, negotiated, passed stopgap legislation, and largely delayed deficit cutting for later.

On Tuesday, the House followed suit. Obama will sign it into law or may already have done so.

Beating Up on Iran and Syria

by Stephen Lendman

A new Press TV poll shows 72% of respondents believe ravaging Syria continues "to destroy the (regional) axis of anti-Israeli resistance…."

Responsible Fiscal Cliff Resolution

by Stephen Lendman

Responsible governance isn't rocket science. Nor is effective economic policy. Fiscal cliff resolution is as simple as doing the right thing. Both parties spurn doing so.

December 31 is a nominal deadline. Effectively it's meaningless. New year legislation can be retroactive to January 1. Absent any, here's what's at stake.

Cliff Notes

by Stephen Lendman

Congressional/administration hype, theater, gamesmanship, brinksmanship, and duplicity define yearend fiscal cliff discussions.

Previous articles explained what's at stake. Years ago, Republicans and Democrats conspired to destroy America's social contract. 

Cold War Politics Heats Up

by Stephen Lendman

Previous articles discussed how Washington reinvented the "evil empire." On March 8, 1983, Ronald Reagan coined the term. He addressed the National Association of Evangelicals.

Bahraini State Terror

by Stephen Lendman

Al-Khalifa despots run Bahrain. State terror is official policy. Washington supports it. Generous aid is provided. King Hamad remains a close US ally. Double standard hypocrisy defines America's foreign and domestic agenda.

By Dave Lindorff

New documents obtained from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security by the Partnership for Civil Justice and released this past week show that the FBI and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies began a campaign of monitoring, spying and disrupting the Occupy Movement at least two months before the first occupation actions began in late September 2011.

OWS Activists Called Domestic Terrorists

by Stephen Lendman

US history is littered with repressive laws. Constitutional protections and civil liberties have been targeted. The 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts restricted First Amendment freedoms.

Scrambling for Africa's Resources

by Stephen Lendman

It's more than about oil, stupid. It's for vast African riches. Resource/mineral wars define America's agenda. 

On December 15, 2006, the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) was authorized. On February 6, 2007, it was announced. 

Four More Years of War

by Stephen Lendman

Expect Obama to prioritize advancing America's imperium. He did aggressive in term one. New wars are planned. Current ones won't end. Proxy ones continue. So does increasing America's global military footprint.

Institutionalizing Indefinite Detention

by Stephen Lendman

Since taking office, Obama authorized numerous police state measures. They follow earlier ones under George Bush.

They're heading America for full-blown tyranny. It's already a hair's breadth away. It could arrive any time full force. It's been wrapped in the American flag all along.

Israel's Man at State

by Stephen Lendman

The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) is a pro-Israeli front group. It promotes strengthening US/Israeli ties.

Fiscal Cliff Reality

by Stephen Lendman

Political Washington theater continues. Republicans and Democrats agreed years ago to erode America's social contract en route to eliminating it altogether.

Crisis conditions create opportunities. Former White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, explained. 

Obama/Boehner Two-Step

by Stephen Lendman

Previous articles explained fiscal cliff duplicity in detail. At issue is destroying America's social contract. Both parties agreed early in Obama's first term. They plan killing it incrementally by a 1,000 cuts.

New York Times Fiscal Cliff Duplicity

by Stephen Lendman

A previous article explained what's at stake. Both parties agree on destroying America's social contract. Fiscal cliff hokum conceals their agenda. Media scoundrels don't explain.

Ongoing debate refers to expiring yearend tax breaks and unemployment benefits. Automatic sequestered/largely discretionary yearend $1.2 trillion in cuts address them for starters. Trillions more will follow.

Fiscal Cliff Doublespeak Duplicity

by Stephen Lendman

As issue is destroying social America, increasing the unprecedented wealth disparity, punishing ordinary households, impoverishing growing millions, and providing limitless funding for militarism, imperial wars, and corporate favorites.

Also ahead is toughening police state harshness against non-believers. America's at the precipice of full-blown tyranny.

Washington Targets Syria and Iran

by Stephen Lendman

US policies threaten both nations. Doing so imperils the region and beyond. Syria's now in focus. Iran's turn awaits. 

What's likely should terrify everyone wanting America's imperium defeated and peace restored. Doing so remains a distant dream. Potential worst of times loom.

 As a parent, I shook (not figuratively but literally, I shook) watching news reports today. 

Twenty children started their morning as they always do- maybe they said goodbye to their parent with a loving hug, or maybe they yelled and screamed at Mom and Dad, or got yelled and screamed at (as is wont to happen from time to time in even the families with the perfect holiday postcards pictures). 

By lunch today however, 20 elementary school children were dead.

By Linn Washington, Jr.

A Philadelphia police officer stood outside the front door of the department’s headquarters building next to a “No Smoking” sign, cavalierly smoking a cigarette and ignoring the smoking ban imposed by the police commissioner.

Waging War on US Workers

by Stephen Lendman

America's war on workers dates from the 19th century. Labor learned the hard way what it takes to win. 

It requires organizing, pressing demands, taking to the streets, going on strike, holding boycotts, battling police and National Guard forces supporting management, as wells paying with blood and lives to get results.