THE NEW CAPITALIST PYRAMID

THE OLD CAPITALIST PYRAMID

A cartoon from the early part of the 20th Century by an IWW artist gives a power analysis in graphic form. It also underlines the slogan “We are the many, and they are the few!”

It is a graphic some of you may have seen before, but how many of you knew it was a IWW original?

A short history of the US branch of the most revolutionary mass organisation in American history, the Industrial Workers of the World union, the IWW.
The IWW changed American trade unionism forever, being the first big union to organise black and white across entire industries, and calling for the abolition of the wage system and industrial democracy. It was largely defeated by a massive campaign of repression launched by bosses and the government

A ‘Wobbly’ Century

INFORMATION CONTROL OR MARKETING STRATEGY

Interesting. This week (March 27, 2007), Time's cover story is an essay arguing in favor of teaching the Bible in schools, which can be boiled down to this: "Of course the Bible should be taught in schools. Duh. It's religion that shouldn't be." On the cover of its international edition is a story that is less easily boiled down: "The Truth About Talibanistan," about the resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan (and also, Pakistan), and how it's "the next battleground of the war on terrorism." The story is in the U.S. edition of the magazine but not on the American cover, presumably because Rick Stengel & co. think the Bible will do better newsstand (even though it is a singularly unattractive cover).



Newsweek brass in October (2006) when the international editions all ran a cover called "Losing Afghanistan: The Rise of Jihadistan " about the resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan (and also, Pakistan), and how it's a place from which "Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups [can] hatch the next 9/11." The American cover? An exclusive cover shot and story on Annie Leibovitz entitled "My Life In Pictures" (which was also controversial for whitewashing her life as a lesbian); presumably Jon Meacham & co. thought it would do better on the newsstand.

MR BUSH IN THE STANDS

MR BUSH IN THE SANDS

.

GEORGIA

clipped from: www.wsws.org
the attempt by Georgia to militarily seize control of the enclave of South Ossetia
Russia’s armed intervention to counter this assault.
US imperialism’s drive to establish hegemony over the vast energy resources of Central Asia and the Caucasus through the assertion of American military power in the region.
The Russian ruling elite, for its part, is seeking to reassert its grip over a region that was ruled by Moscow for two centuries
the Bush administration’s drive to incorporate Georgia into the NATO alliance
Moscow sees as part of an attempt to establish a military encirclement of Russia
President Mikheil Saakashvili sent massed military units into South Ossetia on Thursday morning
violating a unilateral cease-fire declared by Tbilisi.
the Georgian regime
launched an all-out military offensive aimed at conquering the region.
the Georgian military laid siege to the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali.
the town is practically destroyed,
more than 1,400 civilians had been killed in the Georgian military assault.
Georgia with utilizing massive violence with the aim of forcing the Ossetian population to flee.
a policy of ethnic cleansing
among the dead were ten Russian peacekeepers
30 more were wounded in the shelling of their barracks
The peacekeepers were deployed
as part of an agreement reached between Moscow, Tbilisi and South Ossetia to end the fighting that erupted following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the subsequent bid by the peoples of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to separate from Georgia.
Russia
sending a tank column and infantry into South Ossetia, where they have become engaged in fierce combat with Georgian units for control of Tskhinvali.
Georgian authorities charged that Russian warplanes had struck the country’s military bases, airfields and the main Black Sea port of Poti late Friday and early Saturday,
Bombs reportedly fell on the capital of Tbilisi and on the area of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.
The timing of the Georgian incursion
the opening of the Olympics in Beijing
The Georgian president
“looking with hope”
“is not about Georgia anymore. It’s about America, its values... America stands up for those freedom-loving nations and supports them. That’s what America is all about.”
Under the Bush administration
US-backed “Rose Revolution” that paved the way for Saakashvili’s rise to power
Georgia is as an American bridgehead into the oil and gas-rich Caspian Basin
strategic transit route for funneling energy supplies out of the region, while bypassing Russia.
Washington has provided hundreds millions of dollars in military aid,
sending in large numbers of US military trainers for the country’s growing armed forces.
Georgian troops
participating in the US occupation of Iraq, numbering some 2,000
Tbilisi indicated Friday that it would seek US help in bringing at least 1,000
Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov
declaring, “Now we see Georgia has found a use for these weapons and for the special forces that were trained with the help of international instructors.”
Last month, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid a provocative visit to Tbilisi, denouncing Russia and reiterating US backing for Georgian NATO membership.
Washington has stopped short of providing explicit support
backs the position of its client state in the Caucasus.
United Nations Security Council failed
because of Washington’s opposition to a clause calling on all sides to “renounce the use of force.”
US is backing Georgia’s right to take military action.
Secretary of State Rice
“We call on Russia to cease attacks on Georgia by aircraft and missiles, respect Georgia’s territorial integrity, and withdraw its ground combat forces from Georgian soil,”
the end product of the increasingly aggressive policy pursued by US imperialism in the wake of the dissolution of the USSR nearly 17 years ago
to further its own aim of military and economic hegemony. This began with the bloody wars in the former Yugoslavia.
All of the arguments used by Washington to justify its support for Bosnia and Kosovo and its military assault on Serbia during the Balkan wars of the 1990s could be employed just as effectively to condemn Georgia’s intervention and defend South Ossetia, as well as Russia’s military intervention on its behalf.
In this case, however, Washington has elevated Georgia’s “territorial integrity” as the paramount principle
justifying Georgia’s military intervention and an assault on the province’s Russian population that Moscow has branded as “ethnic cleansing.”
The apparent contradiction
underscores the fact that US imperialism’s supposed aversion to ethnic cleansing and the suppression of ethnic enclaves is entirely dependent upon who is doing it and whether or not it serves US strategic interests.
There is a direct link between this latest war and those waged by the US in the Balkans. In February, the US and the West recognized Kosovo’s “independence” based on its unilateral secession from Serbia
The aim in backing this secession
its support for the suppression of similar secessionist entities in Georgia
to further US military plans for the encirclement of Russia and the securing of access routes to the Caspian Basin.
In the run-up to Kosovo’s unilateral declaration
Moscow had repeatedly warned that it would set a precedent
Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in particular. In its aftermath, the Russian regime stepped up its support for both territories.

"PSST, HEY LOOK BILL, THAT SUMBITCH OVER THERE IS LAUGHING AT YOU"

A BROTHER SPEAKS

“Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to it’s people & illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue, & honor of it’s solders on the ground. Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send solders to die for illegal invasion they started. Somehow torture is tolerated. Somehow lying is tolerated. Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, & nonsense. Somehow nobody is accountable for this.”

Kevin Tillman
Brother of Pat Tillman

DUELING BANJOS

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

PATRICK COCKBURN

clipped from: www.counterpunch.org

‘the Surge’, the American reinforcements sent to Iraq in 2007 to regain control of Baghdad.

---

if the US strategy did win such an important victory, why do America generals need more soldiers, currently 147,000 of them, in Iraq than they did before ‘the Surge’ started?

---

there are not one but three wars being fought out in the country since 2003:

• the first is the war of resistance against the American occupation by insurgents from the Sunni Arab community.

• The second is the battle between the Sunni and Shia communities as to who should rule the Iraqi state in succession to Saddam Hussein.

• The third conflict is a proxy war between the US and Iran to decide who should be the predominant foreign power in Iraq.

---

The real, though exaggerated, fall in violence in Iraq over the last year is a consequence of developments in all three of these wars, but they do not necessarily have much to do with ‘the Surge’.

---

the bloodbath of 2005-7 when Baghdad and central Iraq was ravaged by a sectarian civil war

---

There were 554 Iraqis killed in the fighting in June 2008, which is only a third of the figure for the same month a year earlier. This is progress, but it still makes Baghdad the most dangerous city in the world.

---

Each district iin Baghdad is

• sealed off by concrete walls.

• There are checkpoints every few hundred yards.

• Sunni and Shia do not visit each other areas unless they have to.

The best barometer for the real state of security in Baghdad is the attitude of Iraqi refugees, particularly the 2.4 million people who fled to Jordan and Syria. Though often living in miserable conditions and with their money running out, the refugees are generally not coming home to Iraq and, when they do, they seldom return to houses from which they have been forced to flee.

---

Baghdad has few mixed areas left and today is 75-80 per cent a Shia city. The demographic balance in the capital has shifted against the Sunni and this is unlikely to change.

The battle for Baghdad was won by the Shia and was ending even before ‘the Surge’ began in February 2007.

---

It was the outcome of the struggle for the capital that caused a large part of the anti-American resistance to make a dramatic change of sides, switching suddenly from fighting to supporting US troops.

---

The attempt by al-Qa’ida in Iraq to take over the whole of the anti-occupation resistance in late 2006 was important in forcing other insurgent groups to ally themselves with the US as al-Sahwa or the Awakening movement. But perhaps a more important reason for the rise of al-Sahwa was that there was no point in the Sunni insurgents attacking the Americans if they were being driven from Iraq by the Shia. There are now some 90,000 former Sunni resistance fighters on the American payroll, but they happily express open hatred and contempt for the Iraqi government.

---

In the Fallujah area, for instance, it is very dangerous for either the Sunni chief of police or the al-Sahwa commander (they are brothers) to enter Baghdad. This is because Abu Ghraib at the entrance to the city is controlled by the much-feared and heavily-Shia al-Muthana Brigade, who might kill either of them on sight.

---

Another reason why violence has fallen

---

is the consequence of the Shia militiamen of the Mehdi Army being stood down by its leader Muqtada al-Sadr.

---

his strategy

---

to avoid direct military conflict with the US armed forces or his Shia rivals when backed by US firepower.

---

In March this year the Iraqi army launched a military offensive to take Basra from the Mehdi Army, an attack which at first failed to make headway until backed by US airpower.

---

Muqtada did not fight

---

For a military confrontation with the Iraqi army and the US he would need the support of Iran and this was not forthcoming.

---

Paradoxically, Iran and the US together are the two main supporters of the present Iraqi government. For Iran, Nouri al-Maliki in power in Baghdad leading a coalition of Shia religious parties allied to the Kurds is as good as it is going to get.

---

“People fail to realise that the success of ‘the Surge’ was the result of a tacit agreement between the US and Iran,”

Iraqis will not accept the occupation continuing indefinitely and Iran will not allow itself to be marginalized.

If McCain were to try to win a military victory in Iraq he could find the supposed achievements of ‘the Surge’ rapidly evaporating.

TWO STATE/APARTHEID

People that know the realities on the ground know that the two-state solution is no longer possible. The fact is that one state controls all of the land, and it has done so for over 40 years, affirming one people's right to live, marry, work and settle by negating another people's right to do the same, on land that two peoples " not just one " call home.

The situation we"re in now is a situation where there"s a country that rules over more or less equal populations of Jews and non-Jews, and it privileges Jews over non-Jews, it gives rights to Jews over non-Jews. An Apartheid.

Because of the kind of aggressive colonization of the Occupied Territories, it"s no longer possible to separate the two populations, if it ever was.

ISRAEL AFTER BUSH YEARS

clipped from: www.huffingtonpost.com

A politician knows that all they have to do is say that they are for Israel, and against the Palestinians, and they will be deemed a "staunch supporter" of Israel and the campaign money will flow their way.

supporting the status quo is

• the path of least resistanceit

• is also the one that only adds to Israel's security problems--

• and America's declining strategic position in the Middle East.

The (Bush) eight years

• some of the bloodiest in Israel's history.

• A second intifada took over a thousand Israeli lives (and three times as many Palestinians)

• U.S. demand for elections in the West Bank and Gaza brought Hamas to power.

• With the United States abandoning the role of Middle East "honest broker," Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were intermittent and fruitless.

• Today, in the summer of 2008, Israelis see a new frightening form of terrorism manifested by two attacks by bulldozer in the streets of Jerusalem.

• the utter destabilization produced by the Iraq War, which has moved Iraq into Iran's orbit, facilitating Iranian trouble-making and making it more of a threat to Israel than ever before.

mainstream Israelis and Palestinians are almost in full agreement about what peace will look like. If George W. Bush can repeatedly endorse "two states, living side by side in peace and security," his successor can make it happen.


M.J. Rosenberg is Director of Policy for Israel Policy Forum, an organization supporting US efforts to advance an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. Previously, he worked on Capitol Hill for various Democratic members of the House and Senate for 15 years. He was also a Clinton political appointee at USAID. In the early 1980s, he was editor of AIPACs weekly newsletter Near East Report.

LARRY CRAIG IS BEING "JERKED AROUND" BY HIS "GAS NOZZLE"

SENDING MORE TROOPS TO AFGHANISTAN?

---

Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski is not on board

---

Brzezinski admitted his own role in funding Afghanistan's Mujahadeen in 1979, thereby "increasing the probability" that the Soviets would invade a tough, demoralizing, mountainous theater for combat.

---

"I think we're literally running the risk of unintentionally doing what the Russians did.

---

the Soviets were able to delude themselves that they had a loyal army of communist-sympathizers who would transform the country

---

the conduct of military operations "with little regard for civilian casualties" may accelerate the negative trend in local public opinion

---

He believes Europe should bribe Afghan farmers not to produce poppies used for heroin

---

the tribal warlords can be bought off with bribes, with the endgame being the isolation of Al-Qaeda from a Taliban that is "not a united force, not a world-oriented terrorist movement, but a real Afghan phenomenon."

---

"Well, if McCain is president and if his Secretary of State is Joe Lieberman and his Secretary of Defense is [Rudolph] Giuliani, we will be moving towards the World War IV

---

Asked who he would like to see in a potential Obama cabinet

---

I would say Hagel and [Sen. Dick] Lugar would be very good Republicans [for Obama]."

---

Sen. Joe Biden as a potential Secretary of State

---

"keep [Secretary of Defense Bob] Gates in the job for a few months."

---

because of the very complexity of the issues, for solutions to become polarized and more extreme

---

Republicans move toward neocon-ish formulas, and Democrats [follow] idealistically escapist formulas. In either case you don't end up with the necessary mix of idealism and realism."

BUSH'S HOPE FOR AN EXTENSION OF HIS THIRD TERM

EITHER WAY ITS WAR, SO WHICH CANDIDATE LOOKS BETTER WITH PETREUS

BARACK OBAMA'S WAR PLAN

Barack Obama ... the political vehicle for a significant shift in the focus of US military aggression from Iraq to Afghanistan and Central Asia...

...who won by tapping into popular antiwar sentiment

He is the leading spokesman for an escalation of the war in Afghanistan and its possible extension into Pakistan...

...while the broad antiwar sentiment of the population is ignored

The race of two candidates...whose discernible foreign policy differences reflect tactical disputes over US imperialist policy, centering on where American military violence should be focused.

Obama’s antiwar posturing...a calculated effort to conflate and subordinate principled opposition to the war to those sections of the political and military establishment whose opposition to Bush’s war policy had nothing in common with opposition to US militarism or the neo-colonial designs of American imperialism.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who considered the invasion of Iraq a strategic blunder...

...a fixation on Iraq, they argued, diverted military and financial resources from more important tasks, including consolidating US power in oil-rich Central Asia.

Obama, made clear in his recent trip to Iraq that he

• supported the US stooge regime and

• as president would maintain an indefinite presence of tens of thousands of US troops in Iraq

• to secure American interests in that country (Oil, bases, Israel)

The Democratic Party and its candidates have subverted and undermined antiwar opposition.

• 2002 congressional elections...kept the issue of the drive to war against Iraq out of the election campaign while it promoted Bush’s lies about weapons of mass destruction and supplied the necessary votes in Congress to authorize the invasion.

• In 2004...Howard Dean’s campaign...initially utilized to channel growing antiwar sentiment...was derailed and shut down by the party leadership and the media. John Kerry ran in the primaries as a critic of the war, sidelined the issue once he had secured the nomination...presented himself as a Vietnam War hero who would wage the war in Iraq more effectively than Bush.
  

• 2006...Democrats again did their best to keep the contest from becoming a referendum on the war...mass turnout of antiwar voters defeated dozens of incumbent Republican congressmen and senators and put the Democratic Party in control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1994.

Democratic Congress then proceeded to vote for every war appropriation requested by Bush

Democrats also voted to confirm every top military official nominated by Bush

Democrats succeeded in confusing, demoralizing and dissipating any significant organized expression of antiwar sentiment

the liberal establishment is now set to promote the “right war” in Afghanistan

“Events have conspired to make the strategy

• —set a timetable for shutting down Iraq

• focus attention and resources on the main event in Afghanistan—

the only sane way to proceed....”

NYT Frank Rich chastised McCain for being a year behind Obama in “recognizing Afghanistan as the central front in the war against Al Qaeda.”

Democratic Party exploited the political vulnerabilities of a population subjected to

• decades of right-wing propaganda,

• media disinformation and

• the absence of any genuine opposition to political reaction within either of the two parties.

it was rendered indispensable assistance by the milieu of middle-class protest groups, ex-radicals and left liberals who single-mindedly worked to channel the antiwar movement behind the Democratic Party, insisting that no struggle against the war was permissible or legitimate outside the orbit of the two-party system.

United for Peace and Justice and the Nation magazine

• opposed any struggle that sought to mobilize mass antiwar sentiment independently of the capitalist parties and link it to a socialist program to unite the working class against attacks on social conditions and democratic rights.

• they undermined the very movement they purported to lead.

Now Katrina Vanden Heuvel writes,

• “it is troubling that as he shows sound thinking on Iraq, while Obama also continues to talk about escalating the US military presence in Afghanistan.”

• She pleads with the Democratic candidate to “think long and hard” about “extricating the US from one disastrous war and heading into another.”

Commending Obama’s policy in Iraq as “sound” constitutes support for an ongoing US military presence and the permanent reduction of the country to the status of a US protectorate.

Such appeals serve to encourage illusions that he can be shifted by pressure from below to adopt a less militaristic course, and that the Democratic Party or a section of it can serve as a vehicle for peace.

these elements are incapable of making a class analysis of the Democratic Party, one of the oldest capitalist parties in the world.

The Democratic Party has long been the burial ground of movements of popular protest and opposition, from the Populist movement of the 1890s, to the industrial union movement of the 1930s, to the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be ended, and future wars prevented, only through a decisive and irreparable break with the Democratic Party and the independent mobilization of the American and international working class in a struggle against war and the capitalist system that is its root cause.

MCCAIN'S VIAGRA MONOLOGUES

WILLIAM KRISTOL DELIVERS THE "NEWS" TO GENERAL ODIERNO

from Jim Lobe's Blog

Colonel Pat Lang, the former senior intelligence officer and Middle East expert, is certainly asking the right questions about Bill Kristol’s reference on Fox News today his recent visit to Fort Hood, Texas...

...to talk to Gen. Odierno, who has just been confirmed as...

...Washington’s top military commander in Iraq

...what would Kristol, who reportedly speaks with Sen. John McCain pretty regularly and has long been close to some of McCain’s top foreign-policy advisers (Randy Scheunemann, Bob and Fred Kagan, etc.), tell Odierno about Iraq or military strategy that the general does not already know

...why would General Odierno want to arrange a talk with one of the neo-conservatives’ top polemicists...

Back in the day, The Iraqi Neocon cabal included retired General Jack Keene and the Kagans and their spouses from the American Enterprise Institute teaming up withGrnls Petreaus and his boy Gen. Odierno to produce "The Surge" in reaction to James Baker/Lee Hamilton Iraqi Study Group. "The Surge" was designed to give the illusion of Iraq under control so we could move on to "what real men do" and that is "go to Tehran"

The two military command slots that matter are US Central Command and Commander of Multinationational Forces-Iraq. CentCom controls the theatre from Egypt to Pakistan and has been filled, in the past, with old line military who have no interest or intention of opening up the 3rd Front-Iran, or the 4th Front-Pakistan. The Neocons problem was solved when Admiral Fallows was tossed out of CentCom and replaced with Petraeus. Odierno then took over Petraeus' old post as Commander of Multinational Forces-Iraq. So now, the military positions that matter are filled by the neoconservative's generals who are ready and willing to go to war in Iran or Pakistan or both.

Neoconservatives have now subverted and politicized the command structure of the US military with Petreaus and Odierno. If Obama doesnt toe the line (and he is at least on board for Pakistan and the good war-Afghanistan) then the neocons can push back through the generals. Bush and McCain have already set the groundwork by repeatedly saying that they cannot adjust military war strategy without consulting the Generals in the field.

IRONY WARS: AND THE PRIZE GOES TO...

No one would do such a cover of McCain, playing into the most damaging rumors, but imagine this: a jaunty young John, in his pilot uniform, sitting comfortably and chatting with his Vietnamese captors. Two gorgeous gals serve his every wish. He is smoking a cigar and drinking a martini. In the next room other POWs are being intensively interrogated. Ha ha, Republicans?

Art by Jeremy Glass. See here