The "truthers" are at it again

After the events of 9/11, it was likely only a matter of minutes before somebody, somewhere, starting talking about how it was an "inside job." The idea of a small group of Arabs hijacking an American plane and flying it into an American landmark was just too much. It had to have been an inside job; only we are capable of doing such a thing.

We are seeing a similar sort of twisted nationalism at work again.

Now many of these same folks would have us believe the people in Iran are incapable of standing up to their own brutal fundamentalist regime. The C.I.A. must have orchestrated the Revolution, as Iranians simply couldn't do such a thing. The Basij, Iran's friendly neighborhood paramilitary thugs, are really being framed by crafty old Uncle Sam. Damn us! We are so conniving! The United States is the supreme controller of all the worlds and universes known and unknown! Alas, if only we were a force for good...

Essentially, this group has a world view akin to George Bush's, only they disagree on who the good guys are.

Of course the United States is the world's foremost imperialist power, and the C.I.A. is a very important part of that imperialist apparatus- I'm not trying to make light of this fact. It is also a near certainty that the C.I.A. has its dirty hands in Iran's business and is trying to spin the situation in a way that is favorable to American imperialism. This is true. But the idea that the Iranian masses, who are literally risking their lives on the streets, have all been duped by the United States is ridiculous. Are we then to believe the thousands of trade unionists that the Islamic Republic has murdered have also been fooled? Are the homosexuals that Iran has executed simply misinformed? Perhaps some of these Western "leftists" will enlighten them so they can all crawl out of their graves?

What's going on in Iran is the beginnings of a Revolution (which is a process, not an event). The elections were simply a spark that set off a fire that has proven much more difficult to control than the regime, as well as a host of others, ever expected. Alan Woods, who has been on top of this issue from day one, said this:

What we have witnessed over the last two weeks is only the first act in the revolutionary drama. It is a scenario that is very familiar to all students of the history of revolutions. At the beginning of every revolution, when the working class does not play the leading role but is submerged in the “masses”, the latter bring their prejudices into the movement, creating a phase of “democratic illusions.” This is an absolutely inevitable phase in the Iranian Revolution, as was the February Revolution in Russia, April 1931 in Spain and even the first eighteen months of the Great French Revolution.

While the working class has started to take a more pronounced role, as of yet there have been no calls for a general strike. Iran's working class lacks revolutionary leadership strong enough to have an immediate influence. That, however, doesn't mean the Revolution is doomed. It is helpful to remember it was only thirty years ago that the Iranian working class booted out the Shah. The Mullahs, who stole that Revolution, have been shown to be just as corrupt and repressive as the Shah. Now, as the people continue to press for change, it will become clear that the entire establishment, as well as the societal structure, must go in order to implement any sort of fundamental change. This will clash with the will of both the reformers within the regime and the liberals outside of it. Inevitably, the people will need to take direct control of the State, as well as industry, to fulfill their demands. In other words, a socialist Revolution must happen. This is what the United States, and its allies, really fear. There is no conspiracy theory needed.

Iran

Marxist.com has been on top of the situation in Iran from the start, and in my opinion, is offering the best analysis. Unfortunately, we have seen some on the "left" come to a tacit, if not outright, support of the Islamic Republic (this is interesting). I ran into similar views at a recent forum on North Korea. This position is completely incorrect. If the enemy of your enemy is the enemy of the working class, they are also the enemy of you. Without this principled stance, you are quickly discredited by the masses.

Down with the Islamic Republic and long live the Revolution in Iran!

Iranian Revolutionary Marxists' Tendency

Iranian Workers' Solidarity Network

UPDATE: Statement from the Revolutionary Marxist Current in Venezuela.

The Workers' State

I used to think of the State in very abstract terms. The State was an idea represented by a flag and arbitrary borders; a symbolic existence that has largely outlived its usefulness. While all this is all true, there is also a much more tangible aspect to it. The State is also involved in governing, providing services, taxation, etc. But, as anyone who has been through our justice system can attest, the State is not neutral. Naturally, the State is controlled by the ruling class. It is, at its roots, a tool for one class to dominate another.

This is where confusion sets in and tempers flare. Traditionally, the main disagreement between Anarchists and Marxists is on the question of the State. While Anarchists insist on immediately abolishing it, Marxists argue for taking State power in order to implement Socialism. It was fairly easy for me to understand the Anarchist position (although not so easy to understand what they would replace the State with). It was, however, a bit more difficult for me to understand the Marxist position. By taking State power wouldn't a "red bureaucracy" form, as what happened in the Soviet Union? Instead of Capitalist cops beating us over the head, are we now to have "Marxist" cops beating us over the head?

To answer these questions first we have to understand what Marxists, from Marx and Engels to Lenin and Trotsky, understand as the State. While writing on the Paris Commune, Marx tells us a State controlled by the working class would have to be fundamentally different than a Capitalist controlled State. This has always been the case from one historical epoch to another, with those in charge of the State using it to further their interests:

But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.

The centralized state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature – organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labor – originates from the days of absolute monarchy, serving nascent middle class society as a mighty weapon in its struggle against feudalism. Still, its development remained clogged by all manner of medieval rubbish, seignorial rights, local privileges, municipal and guild monopolies, and provincial constitutions. The gigantic broom of the French Revolution of the 18th century swept away all these relics of bygone times, thus clearing simultaneously the social soil of its last hinderances to the superstructure of the modern state edifice raised under the First Empire, itself the offspring of the coalition wars of old semi-feudal Europe against modern France.

During the subsequent regimes, the government, placed under parliamentary control – that is, under the direct control of the propertied classes – became not only a hotbed of huge national debts and crushing taxes; with its irresistible allurements of place, pelf, and patronage, it became not only the bone of contention between the rival factions and adventurers of the ruling classes; but its political character changed simultaneously with the economic changes of society. At the same pace at which the progress of modern industry developed, widened, intensified the class antagonism between capital and labor, the state power assumed more and more the character of the national power of capital over labor, of a public force organized for social enslavement, of an engine of class despotism.

After every revolution marking a progressive phase in the class struggle, the purely repressive character of the state power stands out in bolder and bolder relief. The Revolution of 1830, resulting in the transfer of government from the landlords to the capitalists, transferred it from the more remote to the more direct antagonists of the working men. The bourgeois republicans, who, in the name of the February Revolution, took the state power, used it for the June [1848] massacres, in order to convince the working class that “social” republic means the republic entrusting their social subjection, and in order to convince the royalist bulk of the bourgeois and landlord class that they might safely leave the cares and emoluments of government to the bourgeois “republicans." (Marx, The Civil War in France, Chapter 5)

So, what would this State controlled by the workers look like? How would it operate? How would it be different from the State controlled by the "bourgeois republicans?" Marx outlines a Workers' State when he describes the Paris Commune later in that same chapter:

The first decree of the Commune, therefore, was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people.

The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time.

Instead of continuing to be the agent of the Central Government, the police was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workman’s wage. The vested interests and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves. Public functions ceased to be the private property of the tools of the Central Government. Not only municipal administration, but the whole initiative hitherto exercised by the state was laid into the hands of the Commune.

Having once got rid of the standing army and the police – the physical force elements of the old government – the Commune was anxious to break the spiritual force of repression, the “parson-power", by the disestablishment and disendowment of all churches as proprietary bodies. The priests were sent back to the recesses of private life, there to feed upon the alms of the faithful in imitation of their predecessors, the apostles.

The whole of the educational institutions were opened to the people gratuitously, and at the same time cleared of all interference of church and state. Thus, not only was education made accessible to all, but science itself freed from the fetters which class prejudice and governmental force had imposed upon it.

The judicial functionaries were to be divested of that sham independence which had but served to mask their abject subserviency to all succeeding governments to which, in turn, they had taken, and broken, the oaths of allegiance. Like the rest of public servants, magistrates and judges were to be elective, responsible, and revocable. (Marx, The Civil War in France, Chapter 5)

In many aspects, particularly in my more abstract understanding, a Workers' State isn't much of a State at all. The army and police are to be disbanded and replaced by armed citizens; the governing bodies are to be made up of worker councils; all public officials are not to receive a higher wage than an average worker; all laws protecting corrupt clergy are to be abolished; all public officials are to be recallable at any time; and so on. Lenin, who is still a boogieman to many, also talked about such measures in his writings about a Workers' State (e.g., The State and Revolution). The following is Lenin writing in 1917, a few months before the October Revolution:

What is the class composition of this other government? It consists of the proletariat and the peasants (in soldiers’ uniforms). What is the political nature of this government? It is a revolutionary dictatorship, i.e., a power directly based on revolutionary seizure, on the direct initiative of the people from below, and not on a law enacted by a centralised state power. It is an entirely different kind of power from the one that generally exists in the parliamentary bourgeois-democratic republics of the usual type still prevailing in the advanced countries of Europe and America. This circumstance often over looked, often not given enough thought, yet it is the crux of the matter. This power is of the same type as the Paris Commune of 1871. The fundamental characteristics of this type are: (1) the source of power is not a law previously discussed and enacted by parliament, but the direct initiative of the people from below, in their local areas—direct “seizure”, to use a current expression; (2) the replacement of the police and the army, which are institutions divorced from the people and set against the people, by the direct arming of the whole people; order in the state under such a power is maintained by the armed workers and peasants themselves, by the armed people themselves; (3) officialdom, the bureaucracy, are either similarly replaced by the direct rule of the people themselves or at least placed under special control; they not only become elected officials, but are also subject to recall at the people’s first demand; they are reduced to the position of simple agents; from a privileged group holding “jobs” remunerated on a high, bourgeois scale, they become workers of a special “arm of the service”, whose remuneration does not exceed the ordinary pay of a competent worker. (Lenin, The Dual Power, Marxists Internet Archive)

Obviously, both Lenin and Marx had similar ideas. It is also obvious that neither man advocated any sort of "red bureaucracy" or "bureaucratic totalitarianism." (It is worth noting Lenin's use of the word "dictatorship" is different than our modern usage. It essentially means majority rule. In a Workers' State there would be a true majority rule, a "dictatorship of the proletariat." In a Capitalist State, like the United States today for example, there is a "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.") Most of all, by quoting Marx and Lenin side by side like that, I wanted to point out that neither of them invented the Workers' State! This is extremely important. Both men based their ideas on the Paris Commune. Once again, the ingenuity of the working class comes up with a solution for their situation. In the hands of leaders like Marx and Lenin, these solutions became a formulated plan of attack.

Now, with an understanding of a Workers' State, it isn't hard to see how nationalization has a completely different meaning. This is another topic that many on the left seem to be confused about. Of course nationalization of any industry under a Capitalist State, or a State run by a bureaucratic caste, is not going to give workers control over that industry. This is not what Marxists advocate. In fact, I'm personally not too thrilled with even describing the working class seizure of industry as "nationalization." In many respects it isn't any sort of "nation" taking over industry, but a worldwide class. This brings up another extremely important part of worker control: Internationalism. The Workers' State has no interest in chest-thumping, flag-waving chauvinism. As Marx and Engels so famously said, "Workers of the world unite!"

Unfortunately, due both to Western and Stalinist governments, much of the history of the Workers' State has been distorted or suppressed. Many Stalinist States claimed, among other things, that they had achieved Socialism and were building Communism. In reality, Stalinism, in all its different variations, has little to do with a Marxist conception of Socialism or Communism. Western governments were quick to point out the shortcomings of these bureaucratic caricatures of Socialism in order to discredit anyone advocating a worker controlled society. Tellingly, both the "Communist" and the Capitalist parts of the world didn't have to stretch the truth to come up with horrible abuses committed by the other side.

So is a Workers' State possible? This seems to be the central question. The few times there have been genuine attempts, they have not succeeded. What is to say it ever will? It helps to remember that the bourgeois State is a relatively new invention. And like all inventions, it had to be created. Imagine a commoner arguing for the same political rights as the royalty in feudal Europe. No doubt they were considered radical, "out there" so to speak. But they not only argued for political rights, they fought and took them. They failed many times, but in the end succeeded. There was a material and social basis for this new society. Feudalism was historically rotten. The same applies for Capitalism. Capitalism, and bourgeois society in general, have long ago stopped playing a progressive historical role. They are rotten to the core. Capitalism has continued to "work" because of State intervention, but hardly a decade can go by without a major crisis. These crises are not simply caused by bad policies, or bad leaders, but instead are a result of the internal contradictions of Capitalism itself. (The current crisis, a crisis of overproduction, was explained by Marx well over a century ago.)

It is obvious that a Workers' State is not going to come about overnight. It is also obvious it is not going to form by itself. Of course those who control society today will use all the power they have to fight against any threat to their rule. But despite all their weapons and propaganda, they are on the wrong side of history. This is what convinced me to get involved. I urge you to do the same.

Grizzly Bear

They're coming in June and I've got tickets. Nice.

The Power Question

The Spanish and Russian Revolutions

When I first got involved in "radical" politics, I quickly learned that the Spanish Revolution was the "good" revolution and the Russian Revolution was the "bad" one. While the big names of the "anti-authoritarian" left do a wonderful job of explaining the positive gains in social and property relations during the Spanish Revolution, as well as putting the acts of violence in context, they seem to agree with the Capitalists' version of history regarding the Russian Revolution.

Yes, it is easy to write off such a monumental event if Stalinism is a direct result of "Lenin's vision" and the conflict between Trotsky and Stalin was essentially a conflict of individual personalities. Only understanding the "anti-authoritarian" and Capitalist version of the events, I tended to romanticize the Spanish Revolution (which failed) and had no interest in the Russian Revolution (which succeeded). This didn't allow me to put the our historical situation in its proper context. I, no doubt along with a countless number of others, was setting myself up to expect failure. It is true that both Revolutions were extremely complicated, messy, violent, and full of contradictions; but after reading several accounts of both it is clear the class independent leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, along with the Bolsheviks' willingness to take power, pushed the Russian Revolution forward to success while the class collaborationist leadership during the Spanish Revolution, and their outright refusal to take power, led to its failure.

The "anti-authoritarian" left rightfully wants to distance themselves from the awful degeneration of Stalinism, but in doing so they forfeit the legacy of the greatest event in the history of humanity. This isn't to say the Russian Revolution is a template all subsequent Revolutions must fit into (the Revolution in Venezuela, a Revolution which I fully support, doesn't exactly fit this format), but it does mean that we can learn both positive and negative lessons from the way it was carried out, and it's eventual betrayal.


Power, Leadership, and the Working Class

Power isn't bad. Leadership isn't bad. Although both can be bad, they aren't inherently bad. Like other tools that can be used to restrict the actions of another, they need to be held directly accountable by those who they could potentially affect. Despite the hundreds of essays and books deconstructing both words to the point of them meaning whatever the so-called "expert" desires, the concepts of leadership and power are easily grasped by the average worker. There is no controversy here.

Many also recognize there is a politically advanced layer of the working class. This is an objective fact. For whatever reason, certain people have drawn certain conclusions while others haven't. This doesn't mean the advanced group is better, smarter, or anything of the sort. They do, however, have a more defined role to play. They must be on the front lines making demands Capitalism can't fulfill and simultaneously explain why these demands are only "unrealistic" within the confines of a system that allows a few people dictatorial control over all of industry. It is not their job to "make a revolution." As factory occupations, "bossnappings," and Soviets (worker councils) have shown, workers come up with all sorts of ingenious solutions for their situations. In order to coordinate and best implement these revolutionary changes, the working class needs leaders who are willing and able to take power. Again, despite the babble so many intellectuals have made a career out of spewing, this is common sense to many working people.

It appears for many on the left, largely because of the Stalinist caricature of Socialism, power and leadership have become taboo, something to be avoided. This is a recipe for failure. If our leaders aren't one hundred percent ready to take power, and use that power to implement Socialism, we are forever doomed to activist groups and autonomous movements that offer little more than book opportunities for the usual suspects within leftist circles.

"Bossnapping" - Workers React to the Crisis of Capitalism

Another piece written for Socialist Appeal. It also appears on Marxist.com.

Luc Rousselet, who works for Minnesota-based 3M, recently told reporters that talks between his company and its employees were a good thing. This, however, was only after he was kept in his office for more than 24 hours by workers he was intending to fire. Rousselet, who manages one of 3M’s French factories, was described as a “scoundrel boss” by the workers, who demanded negotiations surrounding their layoffs. This case, along with similar situations across France and in other parts of Europe, has been dubbed a “bossnapping.”

Bossnappings have quickly caught the attention of the world Capitalist class. Recently, Forbes.com went so far as to post an article on how to avoid such an embarrassing ordeal. The article largely reads like the motherly “don’t talk to strangers” speech given to a young child, and no doubt puts executives’ fears to rest when it offers brilliant advice such as, “escaping rather than freezing in a kidnap situation.” There are at least three Belgian Fiat managers who probably wish they had had access to such valuable insight when the workers decided that their bosses could camp out in their office until they agreed to renegotiate job cuts a few weeks ago.

What the business press won’t explain is that workers’ interests are in direct contradiction with those of their bosses. This is the real reason behind bossnappings and other similar actions. Unfortunately, most of the workers’ leaders seem equally confused – or are downright negligent – as they also harbor fantasies about class harmony. While workers around the world begin to exert increasing levels of revolutionary vigor, their leaders continue to ask for a cuter, greener, friendlier Capitalism.

Yes, winning economic reforms are important, but without any political demands, we are simply begging the Capitalist for crumbs off of his or her table. It is great to get a good severance package – but you’re still without a job. It is wonderful to occupy a factory, but if that factory isn’t nationalized under workers’ control you’re still working at the mercy of the Capitalist system, be it in the form a few large shareholders in a traditional business structure or a group of mini-Capitalists in a cooperative.

Without a clear working class political program, most workers don’t draw the necessary conclusions from their situation. Substituting the conscious action of the masses of workers for the actions of a handful of “self-sacrificing” activists will never solve the problem. This has been proved time and time again. Eventually, the protests end, smashed windows get repaired, black face masks are put away, and economies recover. Without a conscious development of the flame sparked by the current global economic crisis, it will burn down to a mere flicker. This is where the revolutionary party comes in. Not to substitute itself for the masses, but to fight as part of the working class, as its most class conscious and dedicated layer.

As the crisis of Capitalism deepens, we are seeing workers in the industrialized countries, as well as in the less developed, react to the attacks on their conditions of life. From the uprising in Greece, to the factory occupations in the UK, to the large protests in Iceland, to the general strike in France, to the continuing Venezuelan Revolution, to countless other actions all across the world; bossnappings are simply the latest working class innovation to deal with the failure of Capitalism. They are another reminder of the awesome power the working class holds.

We, as Marxists, understand we should not only be in the trenches fighting the battles for reforms, but also be explaining the historical role the working class must play in removing the rotting corpse of Capitalism altogether. Armed with an understanding of this dialectical struggle, another world is not only possible, but is our duty to make a reality.

Worried About the Future?

I wrote the following for Socialist Appeal (issue 46). You can subscribe here.

According to a recent CNN/Research Corp. national poll, only half of all U.S. homeowners are confident they can make their mortgage payments and less than forty percent are confident they can maintain their standard of living in the next year. Moreover, just one in four parents of children less than eighteen feel they can afford their child’s college education, and a scant one in five Americans who have yet to retire are very confident they’ll be able to save enough money to do so comfortably.

This is hardly surprising, as economic uncertainty has reached all levels of society, even those with “white collar” jobs that had previously offered a higher level of security. More and more people, from factory workers to office workers, are realizing that capitalism views them as expendable. Even if not directly affected by the current crisis, they are no doubt indirectly involved and chances are, have family or friends who are struggling to make ends meet.

While some short-sighted academics tried to claim that “history is over,” people are drawing their own conclusions.

Although many still have illusions in the Democratic Party, increasing numbers realize something is wrong and that the Democrats are incapable of fixing the problem. Most of these people have probably never read a Marxist critique of Capitalism, but have nonetheless grown to harbor increasingly “radical” views. As Lenin once said, “life teaches.” Most workers on the factory floor understand they know how to run the factory better than the boss. Most people working in an office understand this as well. Often, it simply takes a personal experience to crystallize what turns out to be common sense.

Capitalism, despite the massive amount of wealth it has created, can’t even fulfill basic societal needs. Right now there are millions of homes with no one living in them and millions of people with no homes. There are people starving while tons of food rots in storage. There are millions of workers wanting to make thousands of products and millions of people wanting to use these products, but because a small group of people can’t make a large enough profit off of them, these demands go unmet. Until the economy is rationally organized under workers’ control, the chaos of the market will continue to wreak havoc on people’s lives. As their consciousness develops, we must argue loud and clear for socialism!

Human Consciousness

The following, from a piece entitled Canadian Persepectives 2009: The Failure of Capitalism and the Need for a Socialist Alternative written by the Canadian section of the IMT, is a wonderful description of the dialectal nature of human consciousness. Understanding this is key to understanding how societies change, and this excerpt is some of the best writing on the subject I've ever read. (Click here to read the whole piece.)

The most revolutionary observation about human consciousness is that it is inherently conservative. People do not expect or welcome change. The empirical philosophy of "what you see is what you get" is how most people live their lives. For most of their lives, this philosophy is a close enough approximation of reality that it does not cause people too much distress. However, during times of great change and crisis such as the period we are currently passing through, the philosophy of empiricism is woefully inadequate. Capitalism has failed, and yet the psychology of the mass of the population is more reflective of the past than the present. If psychology faithfully kept track with objective reality, we would have been living in a socialist society for at least 100 years.

The relationship between reality and psychology, the objective and the subjective, is not linear. However, there is obviously still a relationship. This relationship is contradictory and dialectical - in other words, after doing everything possible to resist change (taking on increased overtime, a 2^nd or 3^rd job, sacrificing health and family, etc.) a limit is reached where there are no more "individual" solutions. It is impossible to determine exactly when this limit will be reached; people are willing to endure more in some periods than others. But eventually, people start looking for collective, systemic explanations and solutions to the change going on around them. They reject the old justifications (and those who peddled them) and look for ideas that explain reality. Consciousness does not catch up to reality in a gradual, linear, reformist manner; it catches up in a convulsive, sudden, and revolutionary way. A conservative consciousness leads to revolutionary conclusions - dialectical philosophy calls this phenomenon the unity and inter-penetration of opposites.

The "old" discredited idea of socialism is coming back with a vengeance. Newsweek magazine even declared, "We Are All Socialists Now." Those who extolled the virtue of small government and free markets are now spending billions of dollars of taxpayers' money to intervene in the economy. They are even nationalizing banks. The captains of industry, the best and the brightest with their multi-million dollar bonuses, have driven the largest banks, corporations, and the entire economy into the ground. In this environment the ideas of genuine socialism can again get the ear of the masses. When every other "solution" has failed, when the so-called experts have failed, and when workers are faced with the prospect of unemployment and homelessness, the idea of occupying your factory to save your job no longer seems so outlandish. People ask themselves, "Why should the bosses receive billions while there is no money to help workers facing foreclosure and bankruptcy? Why couldn't we use that money to nationalize industry to save jobs? What purpose do these bosses play anyway?" Marxists have long explained that it is not revolutionaries that cause revolutions. It is capitalism that creates the conditions that lead workers to revolutionary conclusions.

Freedom of Expression and Socialism in Cuba

This, from Marxist.com via Havana Times, is one of the most interesting articles on Cuba I've read. Cuba is approaching a crossroads and the revolution needs our critical support, not blind allegiance.

Visteon Factory Worker Occupations in Britain

Click here for more information!

Is the honeymoon over yet?

A few honest liberals have it figured out (Paul Krugman got a famous write up in Newsweek where the author of the piece seems baffled by Krugman's honesty and makes no bones about being "part of the establishment"), but I'm wondering when Obama being a tool of Wall Street will finally sink in with rank and file Obamaites? No doubt there will be some who blindly follow him to the end (Bush had his core group as well), but surely there is a large bloc of Obama supporters who are more interested in actual change than elegant platitudes? Not only was Obama never on the left, he was never even a liberal. Not only does Obama represent the ruling class, he best represents the ruling class. There is a reason why the rich voted for him. They simply voted with their interests in mind. It's common sense.

Does anyone really think McCain would be handling things drastically different? Instead of Keith Olberman pushing the Obama line and sounding like a douche, we'd have Glenn Beck pushing the McCain line and sounding like an even bigger douche.

I've got nothing personal against Obama. He seems like a nice guy, and much more personable than the previous piece of trash that was in the White House, but the bottom line is this: Obama is simply incapable of implementing fundamental change, even if he wanted to (which he doesn't). The sooner we all realize this, the sooner we can have an honest discussion on which way forward.

Go Fargo!

Photo from Reuters

When I read the news, as well as when I talk to family and friends back home, I am reminded of how much we really are dependent on each other. We aren't simply a bunch of individuals out to amass as much stuff as we possibly can. It isn't human nature to be greedy or intolerant.

If thousands of people out in ten degree weather piling bags of sand in front of a complete stranger's home for no money doesn't make you question how we run our society, I don't know what will.

Somalia: Another example of the failed "war on terrorism"

Back in 2007 I argued the US backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia was more about imperialism than it was about "fighting terrorism." The Islamic Courts Union (ICU) was never a monolithic group, they were never even centered around creating an Islamic state let alone spreading political Islam across the region. It is true there was a vocal jihadist minority in the ICU, but the group had gained support from the Somali people by stabilizing areas of Somalia (something the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) had no success in doing), not from banning music and movies. The US throwing their weight behind an Ethiopian occupation and the warlord-led TFG was simply going to create more violence and radicalize a traditionally moderate population.

Now, with the Ethiopian troops gone and US drones more focused on Pakistan, we can see the effects of the scarcely reported American policies. For the first time in Somalia's history we saw suicide bombers being used (with one being a US citizen who lived in Minneapolis). We saw the more extreme fighters, most notably al-Shabaab, separate from the ICU and gain strength. We also saw Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a former leader in the ICU, elected as president (and earn himself the scorn of Osama bin Laden).

So my question is this: Instead of back an occupation that would no doubt kill tens of thousands, displace millions and further extremism, why not praise the stability brought by the ICU and encourage talks between them and the TFG? We know for a fact there were members of the TFG who opposed an Ethiopian invasion and also members of the ICU who were opposed to the hardline factions. Without the occupation, and the death and destruction it brought, extremist groups wouldn't have had their main recruitment tool. (Even within the context of the occupation groups like al-Shabaab are seen by many in Somalia to be foreign influenced extremists.) This, I'd imagine, would be obvious to anyone actually looking to reduce the amount of terrorism in this region. Unfortunately, the US appears more interested in control than limiting violence.

Instead of "fighting terrorism," US policies have created terrorism, strengthening extremist groups at the expense of the vast majority of Somalis. This seems to be the norm during the "war on terrorism."

FMLN victory

The FMLN victory is a collective piss on Ronald Reagan's grave. Photo from the AP

Despite the fear mongering (our comrades, the BPJ, were specifically mentioned by the right wing), and fraud allegations, the FMLN has won the presidency in El Salvador. This, of course, is only a start as the new president has made it more than clear he wishes to be a "moderate" leader. His moderation, however, will soon come head to head with the people's desire for fundamental societal change. This was evident even from watching the elections unfold in St. Paul with the Minnesota FMLN.

Paris 36

"Occupy the theater!"

Paris 36 is a charming film. While clearly meant to be a romantic exaggeration, it doesn't shy away from the class struggles shaping 1936 Paris. Although the political discussions are simple, the fact that they exist (and we clearly know who is right and who is wrong) makes this fairly conventional love story go well beyond being only a nice looking feel-good flick. Along with Renegade Eye, I went to a screening in Edina where both the director, Christophe Barratier, and the star, Nora Arnezeder, answered questions afterward.