Battlefield Earth

Why Obama's war with ISIS is bound to fail, and why the "War on Terror" will never end.

In May of 2013, President Barack Obama announced his plan for "wrapping up" the "War on Terror." While his supposed end-game for the now 13-year-long, Cold War-style conflict seemed more rhetorical than substantive, Obama has now dropped even his efforts at the former and recommitted the U.S. to the nebulous, open-ended battle.

Last week, the president outlined his "strategy" for defeating the al-Qaeda offshoot, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. I put the word "strategy" in quotes because, despite what Obama and the corporate media would have you believe, there is nothing at all unique about Obama's plan for destroying this latest incarnation of al-Qaeda. His solution is the same as that of George W. Bush: More war.

In his address, the president went to great lengths to stress his intention not to have "boots on the ground," in Syria or Iraq. Instead, his strategy relies primarily on air-strikes and drones. Perhaps he believes this will make his plan for defeating ISIS more palatable to an American public largely fed-up with endless wars.

But whatever empty military jargon we use to describe this latest American combat mission--"Targeted strikes," "Coordinated attacks," "Surge," etc.--the end result will be the same: Innocents slaughtered, families torn apart, neighborhoods obliterated, and a further stoking of anti-American sentiments.

As the editors of the Socialist Worker note in a recent Op-Ed ("The U.S. won't fix the disaster it caused in Iraq," 09/10/2014), "Revving up the war machine will only add to the suffering and violence."

They write:

...That war [the latest campaign in the "War on Terror"] will be waged in the name of stopping more horrors in the Middle East and protecting the security of the U.S. But the American empire will do nothing of the sort. As they have for more than 10 years already--not to mention a century of imperialist aggression before that--the warmakers of Washington will only make the world more unstable, more oppressive and more violent.

It is worth noting, as the SW editors point out, that ISIS--or, for that matter, any incarnation of al-Qaeda--was not present in Iraq before the United States' 2003 invasion. Just as we originally armed and trained Osama bin Laden during the Soviet-Afghanistan war, the so-called Islamic State is a product of our own imperialist overreach.

Like Othello's Iago, we are blinded by hubris, power, and greed. We sow the seeds of our own destruction. "This is the night," the manipulative Iago acknowledges, "that either makes me or fordoes me quite."

And so it goes. Thirteen years after the brutal--yet perversely romanticized--Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States has not relinquished its war posture one iota.

Obama "ended" Bush's illegal and unfounded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (if we take "ended" to mean he scaled them down slightly), only to provoke further "dirty wars" in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, and Syria. Where Bush utilized quasi-legal doctrines of "pre-emptive strike," and private military forces, Obama prefers unmanned predator drones. Where Bush and his sadistic sidekicks attempted to legally justify the most heinous acts of torture, Obama simply kills the bad-guys--even if they are U.S. citizens.

Then, for good measure, he kills their kids, too.

The "War on Terror" is, perhaps by design, a war against an ambiguous, ever-changing enemy. This enemy--be it al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, or al-Shabaab--has no central country or base of operations. It is everywhere. "The world is a battlefield." And this is to say nothing of the utter inanity of waging a war on an abstract--and subjectively defined--tactic.

As such, the "War on Terror" is potentially endless--which is, as George Orwell noted in 1984, the entire point. "The war is not meant to be won," Orwell wrote of Oceania's state of permanent war, wherein the enemy-nation constantly changes, "it is meant to be continuous."

Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance... In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and the object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact. 

By keeping its citizens in a state of perpetual fear, the power elite are better able to control them. This constant, often irrational fear (of terrorism, communism, another economic crash, etc.) makes citizens more willing to trade-in their freedoms and civil liberties for the facade of security. As a result, we have become the most photographed, video taped, and otherwise surveilled nation in human history.

Thirteen years after 9/11 (which, curiously, has yet to earn itself any other, more proper-sounding historical name like "Pearl Harbor," or "D-Day") we continue to promote this infantile notion that we were attacked because the Islamic world, "hates our freedoms."

Putting aside whether the prolonged wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, etc. have actually made us any appreciably "freer" as a nation, the truth is the 9/11 hijackers were likely motivated more by anger over nearly a century's worth of U.S. invasions, occupations, coup d'etats and imperialism in the Middle East.

But this sort of critical self-reflection falls outside the sphere of what Noam Chomsky calls "acceptable discourse," and is, therefore, immediately dismissed by the corporate media, which prefers to keep things simple.

Erstwhile presidential candidate, Ron Paul, discovered this the hard way during a 2008 Republican presidential "debate." Say what you will about Paul's libertarian economic philosophies--many of which are admittedly frightening. While a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, he was a consistent voice against war, military-spending, and the relentless rollback of our civil liberties.

Through our unending military invasions, drone attacks, and imperialist slaughter of innocents, we inflict the same barbaric violence upon others that we so vehemently decry when unleashed upon ourselves. And with this latest campaign of military aggression, Obama has all but solidified his codification of the "War on Terror."

Unless "We the People" nonviolently revolt--in whatever ways we can, no matter how seemingly insignificant--we, like the citizens of Orwell's Oceania, will remain forever locked in a state of permanent war.

Marching Towards Oblivion

Bill McKibben leads the "Forward on Climate" march in Washington D.C., in Feb. 2013.

Environmental activists will descend on the United Nations' headquarters in New York on Sept. 21, for a global warming rally billed as the "largest climate march in history."

The so-called "People's Climate March," will feature all of the major environmental advocacy groups--350.org, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Sierra Club--as well as less strictly environmentally-focused progressive groups like Amnesty International, the League of Women Voters, and local chapters of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

The march comes in advance of the U.N.'s "Climate Summit 2014" conference, a gathering of world leaders in preparation for next year's U.N. Climate Conference in Paris. Activists and participants are hoping to call attention to the imperative urgency of a renewed climate change negotiation to dramatically reduce global CO2 emissions.

"With our future on the line and the whole world watching," the People's Climate March website reads, "we'll take a stand to bend the course of history."

I have attended dozens of marches, rallies, vigils and similar street events like this. I have marched in Washington D.C., New York, and in my hometown of Kennebunkport, near George Bush I's vacation home at Walker's Point. (In fact, Kennebunk had a fairly strong anti-war contingent during George W. Bush's presidency. But like so many anti-war factions, it has all but evaporated since Barack Obama's election.)

And I am becoming increasingly convinced these events are largely a waste of time.

Some of them are, admittedly, rather fun--even if the issue allegedly being denounced is quite somber (war, illegal wiretapping, torture, the imprisonment of Chelsea Manning, etc.).

But these pseudo-protests rarely entail any genuine sense of risk for protesters. They are often so meticulously prearranged--with those few protesters who wind up getting arrested typically having planned to do so ahead of time--they amount to little more than glorified street theater.

Consider:

As a rule of thumb, these events occur exclusively on the weekend--when Congress is not in session. In keeping with this rule, the People's Climate March is scheduled for a Sunday. While march facilitators' desire to maximize turnout is understandable, what good is any sort of rally if there is no government present to shut-down, disrupt or otherwise protest?

Participants march along a predetermined route via police escort often with rally facilitators running ahead to coordinate traffic. This portion of the event usually follows an interminable lineup of speakers--some of them famous, celebrity-like figures of the left, like Michael Moore or Rev. Al Sharpton--whose job is to "work the crowd" like a football coach.

During the march, protesters recite cheerleader-style chants ("The people/United/Will never be/Defeated!") and wave semi-witty homemade signs like "Go Frack Yourself!" or "Bush + Dick= Screwed." In what seems to be a fairly recent trend, some protesters will even dress up (the Guy Fawkes mask inspired by V for Vendetta is a popular choice of attire). Earlier this year, I attended an anti-GMO, "March Against Monsanto" where many people dressed up as bees.

Far be it from me to impinge on anyone's creativity. But seriously, people--is this a political demonstration or a Halloween party?

Actually, I should back up.

Before the rally can even take place, event facilitators must first obtain a permit from the city or town. I have no idea how this permit process works, but I assume city officials could conceivably deny permit-seekers for any reason. I am trying to envision Thomas Paine waiting calmly to receive written permission from the British monarchy before circulating copies of Common Sense--an incendiary document that, mind you, was calling for colonial revolution.

As a result, these events have become completely symbolic. They are, in the words of Macbeth, so much "sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Much of the problem lies with the liberal environmental groups that typically coordinate these rallies--groups like Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and the aforementioned 350.org.

As I wrote last year, while these "non-profit" groups are generally staffed by well-intentioned progressive activists, they are, at the end of the day, completely beholden to the Democratic Party. The liberals that run these groups generally have disdain for the Green Party, Ralph Nader or any other environmentally-conscious third-party.

Therefore, the entire premise that outfits like MoveOn or 350 can effectively make any sort of genuine demands of President Obama and congressional Democrats is laughable. The fact is, Bill McKibben and his 350 followers will remain loyal to Obama no matter what he does or does not do.

Indeed, all of the "Big Green" groups endorsed Obama for re-election as early as April of 2012, hailing him as the "greenest" president in history despite his penchant for nuclear power and something called "clean coal."

The fact that many recent global warming marches have appeared more like campaign rallies--complete with protest signs that unapologetically ape Obama's campaign logo--does not help matters.

If we are to create a truly effective and formidable movement to save the planet, we must move beyond these empty street theater rallies. Perhaps they were genuinely effective at one point in time. But that time is long gone. The corporate state, along with the progressive NGOs who have been all too eager to play by the rules, has successfully neutered these marches, rendering them impotent. We must create our own grassroots movement, independent of the Big Green Groups that are essentially lobbyists for the Democrats.

We must engage in massive acts of nonviolent civil disobedience to literally disrupt business as usual. We must, in the words of Mario Savio, put our "bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you have got to make it stop."

This is where, I believe, Occupy Wall Street got it right. Occupy can still offer us a blueprint for how to seriously take on corporate power and mitigate the climate crisis.

While liberals continue to invest their energy toward appealing to traditional systems of power--the White House, Congress, the U.N., state legislatures, etc--Occupy correctly understood where real power rests in this country: ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Citigroup, and J.P. Morgan. These are the corporations that are, quite literally, killing the planet. We should be marching on their headquarters.

As Frederick Douglass famously observed:

If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters... Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

A few groups are planning more "serious" actions in conjunction with The People's Climate March. Click here, and here for additional details on the NYC Climate Convergence. And as always, if you want to keep this blog going, please consider making a donation. Any amount is greatly appreciated.

Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos

The shooting of unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo has thrust the topic of race back to the forefront. Many media pundits urge us to "discuss" the incident and racial tensions. "We can talk about Ferguson," a recent headline of the Portland Phoenix declares.

But for many black residents of Ferguson, and other predominantly African American communities, the time for "talk" is long over. Talk, as they say, is cheap.

We do not need another university-style discussion on race and police brutality. These sorts of indiscriminate shootings of unarmed young black men--with the memory of Trayvon Martin still fresh in our minds--have gone on far too long.

What we need now is action.

Nationwide, the unemployment rate for African Americans is nearly double that of whites--at 11.5 percent as of June. Yet, as Demos senior fellow and former New York Times columnist, Bob Herbert notes, in a recent article for AlterNet ("Ferguson Just the Latest in Long Line of Racist Fueled Tragedies," 08/27/2014), soaring unemployment rates have plagued the black community long before Wall Street crashed the economy.

"I remember the stunned reaction of so many Americans back in the summer of 2005," Herbert writes, "when legions of poor black people in desperate circumstances seemed to have suddenly and inexplicably materialized in New Orleans during the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina."

He continues, "...People found themselves staring at the kind of poverty they thought had been largely wiped out decades earlier."

We like to believe that racism is a thing of the past. We think of slavery as an ugly, unforgivable stain on our country's history, but one that we have, in modern times, more or less atoned for. Republican politicians grossly misconstrue Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s call to judge others not by the color of their skin, but "by the content of their character" as a free-market argument against affirmative action programs.

In the years since President Barack Obama's election, some pundits have even gone so far as to claim we now occupy a "post-racial" era.

Last year, the Supreme Court took this suggestion even further by obliterating key parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts echoed the "post-racial" concept, writing, "Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions."

Yet this sort of childish thinking merely allows for the perpetuation of white supremacy--which is likely the point.

Even here in lily-white Maine (94.4 percent of the population is non-Hispanic white according to the 2010 U.S. census), we are not immune to racist bigotry.

When I (briefly) worked at Staples in Falmouth last year, a young co-worker complained that he "didn't see what the big deal" was concerning the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. (These were his exact words. I kid you not.) He suggested that the death of "one black kid," did not, in his mind, compare to the "dozens" of his white friends who were "killed by black people." Can you see now why I quit...?

Yet, in an unqualified display of hypocrisy, this same individual, who is Jewish, threw a fit one night after a customer made what he perceived to be an anti-Semitic remark. Noam Chomsky is correct: "For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit."

Every significant political philosopher has understood the inherent--and inextricable--link between racism and capitalism. Socialism of any sort can never fully take form without eliminating racial as well as income inequality.

Karl Marx observed this link in Capital (Vol. 1), writing of the factors that lead to the rise of capitalism:

The discovery of gold in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of the continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of black skins are all things that characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist production.

He continues later, "In the United States of America, every independent workers' movement was paralyzed as long as slavery disfigured part of the republic."

While the antiquated, overt forms of slavery and racial segregation of the 19th century have been (mostly) done away with, the corporate state now uses more subtle, sophisticated methods to keep African Americans in chains.

The most common apparatus of racial segregation is the U.S. prison-industrial-complex--the largest in the world. Today, the vast majority of young black men are in prison--most of them for petty crimes or minor drug possession charges. Blacks constitute 1 million of the nearly 2.3 million Americans in prison, according to the NAACP. Blacks are imprisoned at six times the rate of whites. In fact, a recent report by the Washington, D.C.-based reform group, the Sentencing Project, estimates one in three black males will go to prison at "some point in their lives."

This system of racial incarceration constitutes the "new Jim Crow," according to author and law professor, Michelle Alexander, in her provocative 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Alexander argues the mass incarceration of black Americans has effectively made them a permanent "under-caste."

"We have not ended racial caste in America," Alexander writes, "we have merely redesigned it."

So, by all means, let's discuss the situation in Ferguson.

But let's also understand that any discussion without meaningful, preferably nonviolent, action to back it up, is meaningless and will change nothing. Let privileged corporatists like Portland musician Samuel James split hairs over whether Brown's death was motivated by "race" or "class," seemingly oblivious to the intricate connection between the two.

Let us return, as Herbert does in his piece, to the words of James Baldwin. In his 1962 classic, The Fire Next Time, he writes:

"I know that what I am asking is impossible. But in our time, as in every time, the impossible is the least that one can demand..."

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Why There is No Such Thing as a "Humanitarian" War

President Barack Obama became the fourth president in a row to authorize military action in Iraq, on Thursday. Obama ordered airstrikes over the region in retaliation to increased aggression by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or ISIS, a newly-formed branch of al-Qaeda. The president hinted over the weekend of further U.S. actions to come.

But fear not: This is strictly a "humanitarian" mission. We know this because, in addition to the countless Hellfire missiles the U.S. is raining down over Iraq, we are also dropping food packages for the Iraqi people. Hence, the New York Times headline the following day (Fri, 08/08/2014) reads, "U.S. Drops Food Aid to Iraqi Refugees; Militants Bombed." (The headline to the online version of the article differs from the print edition.)

This is what reporters typically refer to as "Burying the lead."

Indeed, given the similarity of Obama's actions to those of George H. W. Bush in the 1991 Gulf War, combined with the fact that the top-grossing movie in the country is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Americans may be forgiven for thinking they may have stumbled into some sort of time-warp. Relax: It's merely a glitch in the Matrix.

Just to review: The hostage situation in Iraq is a "humanitarian crisis," which "necessitates" a U.S. response. Yet, when Israel slaughters close to 2,000 Palestinian women, children, and civilians, well, that is just Israel exercising its "right to defend itself." It is a curious hypocrisy, worth reflecting on.

While many progressive commentators now lament Obama's sudden "shift in strategy" over Iraq, the truth is he never really was the anti-war champion the press has made him out to be. Candidate-Obama said himself, "I don't oppose all wars... What I am opposed to is a dumb war."

In fact, that one vaunted speech essentially constitutes the extent of Obama's supposed "criticism" of the Iraq War. And even despite his misgivings about the war, as a U.S. Senator, Obama dutifully voted for every single supplemental war-funding bill that came up during his term.

Likewise, the media narrative that Obama ended George W. Bush's war in Iraq is also an outright lie. Sure, he pulled some--but certainly not all--of the military forces out of Iraq. But the remaining 30,000 "non-combat troops" as well as private mercenary operatives like Blackwater/Xe, have allowed the brutal U.S. occupation of Iraq to continue all along. 

In fact, it is likely our initial 2003 invasion of Iraq, as well as our unwavering support for U.S. puppet Nouri al-Maliki, led to the creation of ISIS in the first place. Our latest terrorist bogeymen--just like al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden--are born out of our own imperialist overreach and shortsighted alliances. In our insatiable quest for global empire and corporate profits we, like Mary Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein, unwittingly sow the seeds of our own destruction.

The CIA has a term for these sorts of unintended consequences: "Blowback." 

To be certain, the situation in Iraq is dire. ISIS's takeover of the Mosul Dam in the town of Sinjar has sent tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees fleeing the area.

And so the inevitable question arises: "What should we do?" The goal of "humanitarian intervention" is a longstanding "go-to" rationale for waging war. (Comparing the enemy to Hitler is also popular with war-makers.) And it is one traditionally embraced and supported by supposedly "anti-war" progressives. Indeed, Bill Clinton's bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 was sold to the public as just this type of "humanitarian" intervention.

Yet, even when these sorts of humanitarian interventions are launched out of a genuine desire to stop violence, end human rights abuses, and save lives, they rarely achieve any of these goals. If anything, bombing civilians in an effort to save them tends to make matters worse.

As blogger and anti-war activist, David Swanson writes of the Iraq War in his 2010 self-published book, War is a Lie, 

Rather than "spreading freedom" with bombs and guns, what would have been wrong with spreading knowledge? If learning leads to the development of democracy, why not spread education? Why not provide funding for children's health and schools, instead of melting the skin off children with white phosphorous? (96)

Glenn Greenwald, writing at The Intercept.org ("U.S. 'Humanitarian' Bombing of Iraq: A Redundant Presidential Ritual," 08/08/14) concurs, pointing out the historical repetition of the so-called "humanitarian" war. He writes:

"Humanitarianism" is the pretty packaging in which all wars...are wrapped, but it is almost never the actual purpose. There are often numerous steps the U.S. could take to advance actually [sic] humanitarian goals, but those take persistence and resources, and entail little means of control, and are thus usually ignored in favor of blowing things and people up with Freedom Bombs.

Finally, the utter hypocrisy implicit in the very concept of a "humanitarian intervention" is, again, worth noting. Quite simply, if the United States truly desires to be the exalted "Cop of the World," then we cannot pick and choose which victims we save. We cannot, within the span of the same week, bankroll Israel's latest horrific onslaught of the Palestinians, but claim the Kurds are somehow more worthy of our help.

Is the crisis in Gaza not deserving of "humanitarian intervention"? Where are the "targeted airstrikes" and "precision bombings" over Israel? (Cue anti-Semitism accusations in five, four, three...)

The rank hypocrisy of the American military empire--wherein we strategically pick and choose which atrocities to condemn and which to condone as if the globe is one giant chessboard--reminds me of my favorite line in Stanley Kubrick's classic film, Dr. Strangelove. "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here!" declares Peter Sellers's U.S. President. "This is the war room!"

In the end, as Kubrick as well as Catch-22 author, Joseph Heller observed, all war amounts to little more than such contradictory absurdities.

War--whether it takes the traditional form of ground-soldiers and tanks, or that of modern high-tech weaponry like drones and "precision" bombings--is never a force for good. It does not save or "liberate" citizens, no matter how oppressed they may be.

This is not to suggest we do nothing to squelch the very real and deadly violence carried out by ISIS. But to insist, as so many do, that our only conceivable options are one of two polar extremes--War and Passivity-- constitutes an abysmal failure of imagination. Indeed, it is a damning indictment of civilized man--and so-called human "progress"--when war and mass killing are deemed our only acceptable means of resolving international conflicts.

Albert Einstein put it best. "War cannot be humanized," he said. "It can only be abolished."

Striking Market Basket Workers Rally Behind CEO

The actions of Market Basket workers in the last two weeks have been nothing short of remarkable. They have single-handedly--without any union support--shutdown the Massachusetts-based grocery store chain. Like last year's fast-food worker strikes, and the growing "Fight for $15" campaign, the Market Basket walkout is another encouraging sign that low-wage workers have finally reached their limit.

Employees at Market Basket stores in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Biddeford, Maine are striking in protest of CEO and family heir, Arthur T. Demoulas's ouster. In the latest escalation of a decades-long family feud between Demoulas and his cousin, Arthur S. Demoulas over company ownership, Arthur T. ("Artie T." as Market Basket employees affectionately refer to him) was forced out of the family business in a corporate ouster last month.

The Demoulas brothers are heirs to the Market Basket franchise, which originally opened in Lowell, Mass., as Demoulas Super Market in 1917. Market Basket is known throughout Massachusetts and New Hampshire for its low prices.

The Biddeford store, which opened last summer, was originally intended to be the first of many in Maine. However, the strike has put any plans for additional stores on hold, indefinitely. Striking workers at all 71 Market Basket locations are encouraging customers to boycott the stores until the situation is resolved.

(Given the lack of union involvement, the protest at Market Basket cannot, technically, be considered an actual "strike." Regardless, many employees are refusing to work until their demands are met--which is essentially the same concept as a labor strike. As such, I use the word "strike" here loosely.)

Market Basket associates now worry their worker benefits--which include profit-sharing options, regular bonuses, and generous sick leave/vacation time--may be in danger. These benefits--which are highly uncommon in the retail industry--are not limited to full-time employees. Part-time workers are eligible for them, as well.

But beyond what some may perceive as motivations of purely personal self-interest, Market Basket workers want to retain their boss because he is, by all accounts, a really great guy.

"Artie T. is a man of integrity," Pat Berry, one of the striking workers at the Biddeford store, told me. "He is a humble leader who takes care of his employees."

Berry is clearly not the only one who thinks so. In fact, nobody seems to have anything bad to say about Demoulas.

Instead, I heard repeated stories of him visiting sick workers in the hospital, of attending funerals for employees or their families, and, on happier occasions, watching associates graduate from high school or college. During the Biddeford store's grand opening about a year ago, Berry recalled, it took Demoulas a full hour to walk from the outside ceremony to the inside of the store because he wanted to personally shake hands with every single person present.

Many of the striking workers held signs that read, "Bring back our 'Daddy,'" referring to Demoulas. Another stated, "Arthur T. is for MB & you and me." A number of workers talked of Market Basket as a "family."

To be certain, Demoulas seems like a relic from a bygone era: A sincere, compassionate boss who actually cares about his employees. Indeed, a growing body of evidence suggests most professional managers today are, quite literally, psychopaths. At a time when the average corporate CEO makes 330 times the average worker, according to a 2013 study by the AFL-CIO's Executive Paywatch, it is not hard to see why Demoulas is so loved.

As recent story in the Boston Globe (07/31/2014) notes:

The employee rallies on behalf of Arthur T. constitute an extraordinary show of support for a multimillionaire chief executive in an era when most corporate workers barely know their CEOs and would be loath to risk their jobs on behalf of top executives.

But here is what the corporate media won't tell you: The workers are winning.

Last week, Market Basket's co-chief executives warned it would start laying off striking employees who do not return to work by Monday, Aug. 4. The store is hemorrhaging millions of dollars a day, especially in wasted food. Threats of job-losses--however real--aside, this means the walkouts are having an effect. The Market Basket workers have successfully disrupted business as usual. The corporate chieftains are, predictably, angry.

"On their side the workers had only the Constitution," Mother Jones wrote. "The other side had bayonets."

While I would personally like to see the rallying workers take their demands even further--like pushing for worker ownership of the Market Basket stores, for instance--the protests are nonetheless interesting to watch unfold. Taken alongside the "Fight for $15" campaign, they represent yet another sign Americans are fed-up with low-pay, increased hours for decreased benefits, hyper-corporatization, and even, in some cases, capitalism itself.

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle remains the ultimate muckraking expose of the soul-crushing plight of the immigrant working-class in the unsanitary Chicago slaughterhouses. While the book became best known for its revealing, insider account of the lax health regulations rampant in turn-of-the-century industrial America, The Jungle is first and foremost a searing expose of the social injustice inherent in capitalism.

Sinclair writes of the plight of the meat factory workers:

Here is a population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers; under such circumstances, immorality is exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it is under the system of chattel slavery.

Solidarity forever!


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In Defense of Cutler (Sort of...)

Eliot Cutler. Photo from the Bangor Daily News.

Maine independent gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler should not drop out of the race. Frankly, I find all calls for him to do so--primarily coming from the Maine Democratic Party and liberal voters--highly anti-democratic.

A recent MPBN report on the candidates'  campaign finances ("Viability of Cutler Campaign Questioned in Wake of Finance Reports," 7/23/2014), finds Cutler trailing Republican incumbent Paul LePage, and Democratic Congressman Mike Michaud, with only $527,000 on hand. Michaud, meanwhile, is leading with more than $1 million, with LePage following close behind, with a little more than $900,000, according to the report.

The independently-wealthy Cutler is largely self-financing his campaign--a fact MPBN reporter, A.J. Higgins makes the focus of the story. In the warped logic of our money-driven political system, Higgins and other local media pundits are using Cutler's comparative lack of campaign cash to further justify calls for him to drop out of the three-way race.

Higgins goes on to raise fears that Cutler will "take away votes," from Michaud (as if the latter candidate is somehow entitled to them) and, thus, "spoil" the governor's race. This accusatory word, "spoiler," holds a unique place in the U.S. political lexicon in that it applies exclusively to third-party candidates. It is the same asinine, discriminatory accusation Democrats continue to hold over Ralph Nader for allegedly "costing" Al Gore the 2000 presidential election.

The truth, of course, is that Gore won that election. It was the conservative-led Supreme Court, in refusing to allow the Florida vote recount to continue, that essentially anointed George W. Bush president.

But, as is often the case in the contemporary world of corporate politics, if voters are fed a false talking-point enough times, most of them come to accept it as true. Besides, why blame the real culprits for a stolen presidential election when you can just blame the long-admired consumer advocate who just happens to be the only candidate talking about corporate crime and single-payer health care?

Thus, this notion that third-party challengers to the corporate two-party duopoly are "spoilers" for the "real" candidate (i.e. the Democrat) persists in the minds' of voters and has carried over to the state-level. As a result, the rage--and that is the only accurate word to describe it--that Maine Democrats display toward Cutler is not much different from that which they hold for Nader.

Cutler, to his credit, says he is giving "zero thought--maybe less than zero, if that's possible--to getting out of this race." He notes, likewise, he has been forced to largely fund his own campaign given how severely Maine's election laws are stacked against third-party and independent candidates. Those same laws are the reason why the Maine Green Party is not running a gubernatorial candidate this year.

Let me be absolutely clear: I am not a Cutler supporter.

In fact, I find Cutler, overall, to be only slightly less conservative than LePage. He supports charter schools and merit-based-pay for teachers. He is anti-union. He talks of "reforming" welfare. His previous career as a corporate lobbyist and his general ties to business are worrisome. And, in his previous bid for governor in 2010, both Cutler and LePage cited New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as a politician they admire.

In fact, Cutler is not all that different from Sen. Angus King: Socially liberal (i.e. they don't hate gays and minorities) and fiscally conservative. But, like King, Cutler does not challenge the fundamental workings of the economy, foreign policy or capitalism. Though both claim to be "Independent," each would fit right in with either the Democrats or the Republicans. (In fact, King may be headed to the GOP himself come November, depending on which way the political winds blow.)

As such, neither King nor Cutler are truly good examples of third-party candidates, which traditionally have operated outside both the two-party structure, and its corporatist ideology.  

That said, Cutler is by all indications not as extreme as LePage. He is clearly an intelligent, articulate adult, unlike the bullish, tantrum-inclined man-child currently representing the state. I do not think we would need to worry about a Gov. Cutler telling the NAACP to "kiss my butt," or making vulgar jokes about Vaseline to his opponents.

But I prefer to stick to the issues. Character traits and personality differences are best left to the cable-news networks to quibble over. While Cutler--and Michaud, for that matter--may not be as openly rude and hostile to the poor, welfare recipients or the unemployed as LePage has been, the two of them would pursue the same corporatist policies.

To that end, it is largely irrelevant who is elected governor in November. Strange as it is to be quoting George Will, the conservative syndicated columnist was correct when he claimed, in 2008, that elections are not about "whether elites shall rule, but which elite."

So, why am I standing up for Eliot Cutler if I do not even really support him, you ask? Because, unlike most liberals, I believe in every candidate's constitutional right to run for office--whether or not I agree with them ideologically. That is kinda the whole point of free speech, in fact.

Beyond that, I have this crazy idea that more candidates--and, thus, a wider range of discussion, debate, and choice--is actually a good thing for democracy. And why stop with just three candidates? I would like to see four, five, six...hell, ten, 15 or even 25 candidates from different parties on the ballot. Indeed, the U.S. remains stubbornly antiquated as the only industrialized democracy in the world that restricts its political choices to two parties. The fact that those two parties have become virtually indistinguishable in recent decades does not help matters.

If we utilized a ranked-choice or instant runoff voting system as many other countries do, not only would it create more room for a wider diversity of candidates, it would also negate the absurd "spoiler" argument as it would level the political playing-field. Such a system is not as "impossible" to achieve as one may think. Portland already elects its mayor via a ranked-choice ballot. Why not merely expand the procedure to Maine's statewide and Legislative elections?

Maine Democrats are, naturally, not too enthused about this idea. When I contacted Maine Speaker of the House Mark Eves earlier this year about the issue of ranked-choice voting, his assistant was adamant it is not something his party intends to pursue. In fact, the minute I said the words, "ranked-choice" she began yelling, "No! No! No!"

Adopting a ranked-choice voting system, Eves's spokesperson told me, would "ultimately be up to the people."

"But," she added, "it would never work if you didn't have a viable candidate."

Ummm... OK...

Whether the people the Speaker has answering the phones truly understand how ranked-choice voting works or have simply been instructed to stick to tired talking points of "viable" candidates, is not entirely clear.

I had a much less hostile--albeit briefer--conversation with Michaud's Communications Coordinator, Lizzy Reinholt. While she assured me Michaud, as governor, would remain invested in "opening Maine's electoral system to Democrats, Republicans, and Independents," restructuring the state's election system is, nonetheless, something he would approach with caution. Reinholt said Michaud would be particularly concerned about "the price-tag" such a restructuring would entail. She repeatedly stated such a "conversation" about IRV would have to be "serious," as if suggesting there is something inherently "non-serious" about the subject.

Clearly, the biggest hurdle to any sort of electoral reform in Maine--or nationally--is the Democratic Party.

This is ironic, given that it was the Dems' own candidate, milquetoast Libby Mitchell, who "spoiled" the race--to use their own word--in 2010 and got LePage elected in the first place. She received 19 percent of the vote. All the accusations that Cutler is "washed-up," and "incompetent" ignore the fact that he came within 200 votes of becoming governor.

Here is the takeaway: If Michaud is threatened by Cutler's campaign, the solution is not to disparage, demean, and otherwise denounce him into dropping out of the race. Rather, it means Michaud has to work all that much harder to convince voters that he--and not Cutler--is truly the best person to represent Maine.

But the Democrats are not interested in hard work. They think they are entitled to government office simply by virtue of being an Establishment party. Case in point is Nation reporter and standard-bearer liberal, Eric Alterman. In the Nader documentary, An Unreasonable Man, he derides third-party voters as "stupid," and "people who know nothing about politics."

But until we truly open our electoral system to a range of candidates and parties, I tip my hat to anybody who attempts to challenge that Establishment.


Send love letters, advice, hate mail, or other correspondence to adamd.marletta@gmail.com, or via carrier pigeon. If you like what you read here on Guerrilla Press, make a donation via the "Donate" button. Any amount is greatly appreciated. I realize people get sick of being hit up for donations on the Internet. But such is capitalism...  

World War II: Not so Good After All

One of the results of becoming politically conscious is you come to realize 95 percent of what you were taught in history class is simply not true. Columbus did not actually discover America; Abraham Lincoln's allegedly singular role in "ending slavery" is considerably overblown; the Founding Fathers were largely uninterested in democracy; and World War II was hardly the "good war."

Of course, this last one presupposes that any war can be considered "good," "great" or otherwise just. Certainly, there may be times in human history when a nation must resort to military force to defend itself from an invading country that cannot be reasoned with or appeased.

But once you start labeling certain wars with superlative adjectives (World War I & II, The Civil War, The Revolutionary War), it creates a false concept that some forms of mass slaughter are, ultimately, acceptable. The so-called "bad" wars, meanwhile (Vietnam, the Iraq War, Granada, Haiti, Cuba, the Spanish-American War, to name just a few), were not, we are told, so much "wrong" or "immoral" in terms of their justifications. ("We meant well...") These wars were fought for the "right reasons," the wars' architects assure us. They were just poorly executed.

World War II, more so than any other major military conflict, has taken on mythic status in American culture. Acclaimed movies like Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, and Flags of Our Fathers along with realistic (and disturbingly popular) video games like Call of Duty have further reinforced WWII's celebrated status.

Bruce Russett, professor of political science at Yale, sums up the war's unassailable status. "Participation in the war against Hitler remains almost wholly sacrosanct, nearly in the realm of theology," he writes.

Whatever criticisms of twentieth-century American policy are put forth, United States participation in World War II remains almost entirely immune. According to our national mythology, that was a "good war," one of the few for which the benefits clearly outweighed the costs. 

Case in point is the Brick Store Museum in my hometown of Kennebunk. The museum's featured exhibit of the summer is called "Vitamin V: How Food Fought the Second World War." In addition to the exhibit itself, local singer/songwriter, Monica Grabin performed a set of shows at the museum featuring folk songs from the two respective world wars.

Grabin--a dyed-in-the-wool liberal who boasts on her website of having Democratic Maine State Rep. Emily Cain join her on-stage to sing a song last year--regularly performs these sorts of "historical" folk shows. While there is certainly no debating Grabin's talent and musical prowess, her musical history lessons are not altogether different from your high school teacher's. Hers is more a sort of "pop" history, not unlike what one might find on The History Channel. She reinforces all the commonly believed myths surrounding WWI and II, while leaving the very notion of the moral legitimacy of these wars as less than an afterthought.

"But wasn't World War II fought for all the right reasons?" you ask. "Weren't we fighting to save democracy from fascism? Besides, wasn't Hitler just innately evil?"

Certainly, I am not suggesting the U.S. should have remained passive while hundreds of thousands of innocents were sent to death camps. And, while I am not a fan of labeling any human being as necessarily "evil"--or for that matter, especially "good"--there is no denying Hitler and the Nazis' acts were indisputably heinous.

That said, it is no great breach of morality--and certainly not a form of "anti-Semitism" as some may reactively suggest--to question the motives behind U.S. involvement in the so-called "good war."

Indeed, it is difficult to make the case America was fighting for any sort of moral high-ground in WWII (i.e. to "save the Jews") when it deliberately kept half of its own citizens--African Americans--segregated, cut-off from mainstream white society, and otherwise politically, economically, and socially disempowered.

As historian Howard Zinn writes in A People's History of the United States, "...blacks, looking at anti-Semitism in Germany, might not see their own situation in the U.S. as much different" (p. 409).

Ironically, black Americans who did enlist to fight overseas found themselves fully segregated from the white soldiers throughout their training and deployment. And this is to say nothing of the internment of thousands of Japanese-Americans at home.

Hmmm... I wonder how many songs Grabin sang about these racist double-standards?

The fact is, in 1939 while Hitler was rapidly conquering parts of Europe,  Americans were in no rush to enter a second world war. Not only had the devastating economic impacts of the Great Depression generated a strong sense of isolationism among Americans. But they also created a widespread--and conveniently ignored in high school history textbooks--feeling that capitalism had utterly failed.

While Roosevelt's New Deal programs helped stave off this attitude, American involvement in WWII was the real clincher. It was, to put it bluntly, a war to save capitalism. Saving the Jews, protecting democracy, defeating fascism--all of these concerns were secondary to maintaining Western capitalism and ensuring the United States' global supremacy.

As Leon Trotsky observed at the dawn of WWII:

The present war--the second imperialist war--is not an accident; it does not result from the will of this or that dictator. It was predicted long ago. It derived its origin inexorably from the contradiction of international capitalist interest.... The United States must "organize" the world. History is bringing humanity face to face with the volcanic eruption of American Imperialism.

Indeed, after the war, only two nations emerged as the indisputable super-powers of the globe: The United States and the Soviet Union. Less than 50 years later, the latter country ceased to exist, leaving America as the world's sole military and corporate empire.

The post-war era also marked a profound change in America's very identity, as the country shifted from a production-based economy, to one centered on consumption. Public relations pioneers, Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann utilized Sigmund Freud's controversial theories of psychoanalysis to manipulate public opinion, creating false needs and desires that could only be appeased through material consumption, and otherwise "manufacture consent," to use Lippmann's term. The very role of the individual dramatically changed during this time from one of citizen to consumer.

Indeed, one could argue all the various crises that currently plague our democracy--the dominating role of the corporate state; the legal pretense of corporations as "people"; the corroding influence of money in politics; the death of the liberal class and with it, the Democratic Party; the rise of the military-industrial-complex; the overconsumption that is ravaging the planet; the climate crisis, etc--were set in motion during the post-WWII years.

And here I thought we won the war. Seems more like a victory for the corporate state than the American people, if you ask me.

Finally, even if one concedes that World War II was "inevitable," that war with the Nazis was simply "unavoidable," nothing Hitler's armies did justified what was arguably the conflict's most egregious war crime: The use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

All historical evidence suggests the U.S. would have easily defeated Japan without the use of nuclear weapons. In fact, Japan was on the verge of surrendering before the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, on Aug. 6, 1945. And the U.S. was well aware of Japan's impending surrender since they had, by that time, cracked their communication codes.

No, America's use of the first nuclear weapon was less about defeating Japan than about demonstrating military supremacy to the world--to the Russians, especially. As a result, some 100,000 Japanese were horribly killed. Thousands more slowly died from radiation poisoning.

We study history in order to learn from the mistakes of the past, so that they may not be repeated in the future. But how are we to truly learn from the past when so much of what we think we know about it amounts to propaganda, distortion, and outright lies?

More importantly, we need to move beyond this childish concept that some wars are "good,"--even "noble" or "desirable." War is always a choice. Often the choice to go to war is not made by the American people themselves, but by a small, zealous cabal of corporatists fighting for profits, interests and motivations that have no impact on the rest of us. But war is a choice, nonetheless. And it is rarely a wise one.

"War is by definition," said Zinn during a speech titled "Three Holy Wars," "the indiscriminate killing of huge numbers of people for ends which are uncertain.... The means are horrible, certainly. The ends, uncertain."