Rahm Emanuel is a National Disgrace: He Represents Every Worst Instinct of the Democratic Party

Rahm Emanuel

He exemplifies a particularly loathsome breed of Democratic politician—the constantly triangulating, plutocrat-courting, privatizing so-called “centrist,” that so dominated the Bill Clinton years. Thanks in part to Rahm Emanuel, Clinton became known for his ability to "out Republican the Republicans." (Illustration by Ronald David Jackson)

_________

The Chicago mayor's ties to a shocking police cover-up get stronger by the day. This should come as no surprise

By Jack Mirkinson
The scandal surrounding Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel’s grossly corrupt and negligent handling of police violence in his city keeps getting worse and worse.

Ever since Chicago was forced in November to release video showing the gruesome police killing of black teenager Laquan McDonald, Emanuel has been on a quest to save himself from being driven out of office. He has publicly shed tears over McDonald’s death and announced a raft of new measures intended to show that the Chicago Police Department is reforming itself.

Yet events, many of them of that same police department’s own making, continue to disrupt Emanuel’s plans to evade responsibility.

Emanuel’s proposed reforms actually came after yet another police scandal. As 2015 drew to a close, he decamped to Cuba, hoping for some rest and relaxation. He was forced to cut that vacation short when police killed two innocent black people—Quintonio LeGrier, a 19-year-old college student with a history of emotional instability, and his next-door neighbor, Bettie Jones, a 55-year old mother, grandmother, cancer survivor and activist. LeGrier was shot seven times. The CPD said it had “accidentally” killed Jones, and provided no more detail than that. The incident made a mockery of any notion that the department had changed since the McDonald crisis first hit. Emanuel announced his reforms—which, as Heather Digby Parton wrote at Salon, leave a great deal to be desired—some days later.

Then, earlier this week, it was announced that Chicago has paid reparations to 57 people who had been subjected to torture and abuse by the CPD in decades past—a reminder that the misdeeds of the department stretch back generations.

But it’s not just external actors making Emanuel’s grip on power more tenuous. There’s also increasing evidence of just how deeply involved he was in the response to the McDonald scandal. Like any half-intelligent post-Nixon politician would, Emanuel has taken assiduous care to ensure that no paper trail directly links him to the city’s 13-month effort to suppress the footage showing McDonald being slaughtered in the street. But a series of document dumps has shown that virtually everyone around him was focused on the issue, with an eye on Emanuel’s re-election campaign in early 2015.

Read More

Koch Spy Agency Targets Liberals and Unionizers — And It's Led by a Voter Fraud Huckster

By Brendan Fischer
The Kochs have been complaining about a "lack of civility in politics" as they seek to boost their public image--but one of their top operatives helped propel perhaps the most egregious case of race-baiting voter fraud hucksterism in recent years.

At the same time that the Kochs have been on a PR blitz, publicly spinning an image of themselves as well-intentioned patriots trying to make the world a better place and decrying "character assassination," they've been quietly ramping up a clandestine surveillance and intelligence gathering operation focused on their perceived political enemies, Ken Vogel reports at Politico.

At the helm of this "competitive intelligence" operation is a man named Mike Roman, Vice President of Research for Kochs' Freedom Partners and who was paid $265,000 last year, according to Freedom Partners' recent tax filing.

But who is Mike Roman? He's been described generally as a longtime GOP operative. However, he's also the guy who was behind the release of the 2008 "New Black Panthers scaring old white ladies at the polls" video. The clip dominated Fox News for months and went on to fuel unfounded allegations that the Obama administration's Department of Justice was biased against white people.

Roman made a name for himself by releasing the video, which showed a New Black Panther Party (NBPP) member holding a billy club outside a Philadelphia polling place, on his voter fraud-peddling "Election Journal" website. He then worked with Republican vote fraud conspiracist J. Christian Adams to try uncovering evidence that voters were intimidated--which they could not find. But that didn't stop Roman, along with Fox News and the conservative echo chamber, from conjuring up a vast racist conspiracy inside the Obama administration, a theme that continues today.

As the conspiracy theories grew, Roman was given a column at Breitbart.com, where he continued to push a "scandal" narrative and to suggest a wide-ranging conspiracy involving ACORN, NBPP, and the Obama administration to steal elections. (Roman even launched a voter fraud app.)

In 2010, another vote fraud conspiracy theorist, the Wall Street Journal's John Fund, put right-wing video hitman James O'Keefe in touch with Roman for intel about a purported SEIU voter fraud scheme in Boston, which turned out to be bunk.

During this same period, the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was similarly targeting ACORN and pushing a model "Voter ID Act" to combat the nonexistent scourge of voter fraud--but which had the documented impact of disenfranchising potentially millions of students and voters of color who do not have the limited forms of IDs required under the law.

In 2010, Roman was named chief of staff to Rep. Bobby Schilling (R-IL) when he was elected to Congress for one term. Koch Industries and John Fund were among Schilling's top donors.


It is not clear when Roman was formally folded-in to the Koch network. Freedom Partners' new tax filing for 2014 is the first where he appeared as Vice President of Research. But tax filings as far back as 2012 describe Roman as the trustee of the mysterious "Public Engagement Group Trust," which has the same address and suite number as another Koch group, the Center for Shared Services Trust.

Apparently Roman's years of stoking unfounded paranoia about stolen elections prepared him for a high-ranking position in the Koch operation.

In his role as the Kochs' top spy, Vogel reported, Roman has "worked to keep himself and his activity low-profile even within the discreet Koch operation."

"They act all cloak and dagger–like the CIA," one source told Vogel. "There was a joke about how hardly anyone ever met Mike Roman. It was like, if you wanted to find him, he'd be in a trench coat on the National Mall."

Roman's GoodReads profile fits his carefully-cultivated cloak-and-dagger persona.

His favorite reads include books like "Data Mining and Analysis" and "Intelligence Analysis: a Target-Centric Approach," as well as Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, the left-wing organizer's manual that has gained traction on the right in recent years.

Mike Roman's favorite author? Charles Koch.

__________
CMD Executive Director Lisa Graves contributed research to this article.

Reprinted with permission from PRWatch.

______________

Do the Kochs Have Their Own Spy Network?

By Jane Mayer
Five years ago, when The New Yorker published my piece “Covert Operations,” about the ambitious and secretive political network underwritten by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, the Koch brothers complained mightily about the story’s title, protesting that there was nothing at all covert about their political activities. Since then, the two have embarked on an impressive public-relations campaign meant to demonstrate their transparency and openness. But today, the Politico reporter Kenneth Vogel came out with a blockbuster scoop suggesting that the brothers, whose organization has vowed to spend an unprecedented eight hundred and eighty-nine million dollars in the 2016 election cycle, are more involved in covert operations than even their own partners have known.

After culling through the latest legally required disclosures, Vogel unearthed a new front group within the Kochs’ expanding network of affiliated nonprofit organizations—a high-tech surveillance and intelligence-gathering outfit devoted to stealthily tracking liberal and Democratic groups which Politico calls the “Koch Intelligence Agency.” The sleuthing operation reportedly includes twenty-five employees, one of whom formerly worked as an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, and follows opponents by harvesting high-tech geodata from their social-media posts.

According to Vogel, the effort is so secretive that very few people know of it even within the Kochs’ own sprawling political operation. Housed with other Koch nonprofit organizations in a bland office building in Arlington, Virginia, the outfit is managed by a limited-liability partnership called American Strategies Group, LLC. The company is part of the Kochs’ main political group: a circle of ultra-conservative donors called Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, which describes itself as a “business league” and so claims that it can legally hide the identities of its members.

Reached for comment, James Davis, the spokesman for Freedom Partners, described news accounts comparing the organization’s operation to espionage as “inaccurate.” Davis said, “Like most other organizations, Freedom Partners has a research department that benchmarks our efforts against other organizations.”

While it’s big news that the Kochs are now running their own private intelligence-gathering operation in order to track political opponents, including labor unions, environmental groups, and liberal big-donor groups, it actually isn’t surprising, given their history.

For decades, there have been reports suggesting that Charles and David Koch and Koch Industries have employed private investigators to gather inside information on their perceived enemies, including their own brother, Bill Koch, with whom they fought over control of the family business and fortune. My forthcoming book, “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right,” which will come out in January, builds on earlier reporting about this, including my 2010 New Yorker piece. In fact, again and again, those who have challenged the Kochs and Koch Industries—whether they are federal officers, private citizens, or members of the press—have suspected that they have been under surveillance.

Read More

Donald Trump Slammed in Two New Attack Ads by 'Conservative' Group

Trump is accused of being a "closet liberal" and "against property rights"

______________

Democrats 'Have Moved Too Far To the Left' — The New York Times is Promoting That Laughable Notion

The New York Times illustrated Peter Wehner’s piece with a stretched-out donkey.
A load of bull would have been more appropriate. (graphic: Matt Chase)

By Jim Naureckas
“Have Democrats Pulled Too Far Left?” asks a New York Times op-ed (5/27/15). Because this question is always answered affirmatively by corporate media, you don’t even have to note that the author, Peter Wehner, “served in the last three Republican administrations” to know that the answer is going to be yes.

Despite the predictable thesis, however, the column still manages to surprise with its degree of intellectual dishonesty. Wehner’s thesis is that Barack Obama has “moved to the left” compared to “centrist New Democrat” Bill Clinton. But whenever Wehner makes a claim that can be checked—that isn’t simply empty rhetoric, like his assertion that Obama “has often acted as if American strength is a problem”—again and again it turns out to involve some numbers game.

Take Wehner’s claim that while Clinton

"endorsed a sentencing policy of “three strikes and you’re out,”…Obama’s former attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., criticized what he called “widespread incarceration” and championed the first decrease in the federal prison population in more than three decades."

You’d never know from that that the federal prison population is 48 percent bigger under the “left” Obama than it was when centrist Clinton left office.

“Mr. Clinton lowered the capital-gains tax rate; Mr. Obama has proposed raising it,” Wehner says. Clinton lowered the rate capital gains were taxed at to 20 percent; under Obama it went up—to 20 percent.

“Mr. Clinton cut spending and produced a surplus,” writes Wehner. “Under Mr. Obama, spending and the deficit reached record levels.” From 1993 through 2000, Clinton reduced the US budget imbalance as a proportion of US GDP by 6 percentage points; from 2009 through 2014, Obama reduced it by 7 percentage points.

Wehner adds as “another bellwether” the fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton “is decidedly more liberal than she and her husband once were.” One example of this: “She has remained noncommittal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the free-trade agreement that has drawn ire from the left”—but which has been strenuously pushed by Barack Obama, though Wehner does not acknowledge this as evidence of Obama’s centrism.

But perhaps the most deceptive part of Wehner’s op-ed is when he blames Obama’s supposed shift to the left for the failing fortunes of the Democratic Party:

"After two enormous losses by Democrats in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections, Republicans control the Senate and the House of Representatives. There are currently 31 Republican governors compared with 18 for Democrats…. The Obama years have been politically good for Mr. Obama; they have been disastrous for his party."

Surely Wehner remembers that after the first half of Clinton’s first term, Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate for the remainder of his administration—exactly as happened under Obama. There were 30 Democratic governors when Clinton took office, and 19 when he left; there were 29 when Obama took office, and currently there’s 18.

It’s true that Obama has been been bad news for his party—but as FAIR has long pointed out, that’s true of Clinton as well. An honest appraisal of the administrations of both Clinton and Obama, with their emphasis on deficit-cutting and corporate-friendly trade deals, reveals both Democrats to be establishment centrists—and centrist politics, contrary to what the punditocracy would have you believe, do not have a particularly winning record at the ballot box.

__________
You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com, or to public editor Margaret Sullivan at public@nytimes.com. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.

Reprinted with permission from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

The American Liberal vs The Revolutionary: Exposing the Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

Liberals, despite their protestations, remain wedded to U.S. imperial rule in the world. They wish only that it morph into a kinder, gentler imperialism. A Revolutionary knows that the only way change will ultimately come is by way of a sustained social revolution, one that engages a critical mass to work collectively in dismantling injustice and oppression.”






By Solomon Comissiong

“Liberals will frequently use pronouns such as, ‘we’ or ‘our’ in reference to the United States' deadly militaristic actions.”

One of the many ways to easily tell the difference between an American "Liberal" and a Revolutionary-minded American is on the topic of war. Liberals will openly use money as a primary reason why they oppose the war. They say things like, "The financial costs associated with these wars are taking away much needed resources from our schools, public works and even health care!" This is very much true, however it is not the most important reason to oppose the United States' imperialist wars. The most important reason would be that these wars destroy innocent lives and decimate entire nations. These wars rip the lives of women, children, men and elderly off of the planet. The Liberal loves to speak about the financial costs of war, however what about the human costs of these wars of aggression? Ultimately the loss of life can never be paid back. And when it comes to the United States government, they routinely get the most “bang” for their buck, slaughtering innocent civilians wholesale. In the most duplicitous manner they call it “collateral damage,” however this is mass murder – plain and simple!

Revolutionary-minded Americans oppose the US government's wars because they are imperialist and because they destroy human lives, and destabilize entire nations. Ending these wars would save countless lives and would bring us one giant step closer to peace. Naturally, this would free up trillions of dollars that could also be used to save lives (healthcare) and to empower communities (i.e., universal education, livable wages, affordable housing). We must always be primarily motivated by humanity, not simply capital. Most Liberals fail in doing this because they, like their conservative counterparts, are also devoted capitalists. There is nothing revolutionary about capitalism. Capitalism is counter-revolutionary.

“We must always be primarily motivated by humanity, not simply capital.”

These Liberals will frequently use pronouns such as, "we" or "our" in reference to the United States' deadly militaristic actions. A Revolutionary knows that this government never asked their approval when making decisions to invade and bomb other countries. They know the US government does not represent their vested interests in peace, justice and humanity. The Revolutionary knows damn well that they oppose imperialism! The average Liberal is continually stuck in an emotional quagmire desperately wanting to believe that this is ‘their’ government and not a government of and for Plutocrats. They believe they can change society by reforming the US government. A Revolutionary knows that the only way change will ultimately come is by way of a sustained social revolution, one that engages a critical mass to work collectively in dismantling injustice and oppression. They then must build a new society (and government), upon a foundation that puts humanity first and people before profits. The Revolutionary also knows that they are citizens of the world, first, and not of the United States of Imperialism! The average American Liberal has been trained to see things radically different (and not in a good radical way). They are so polluted with Americanism; they are beholden to a set of fraudulent ideals they have been indoctrinated with since childhood. Humanity is much lower on their list of priorities than their manufactured nationalism.

“Liberals scorned Bush for his war crimes, however they champion Obama’s wars, aggression and mass murder.”

The American Liberal is often a willing cheerleader for imperialism, so long as a Democrat is orchestrating that war. We need to look no further than the most recent historical example with US president Barack Obama. Since becoming president of the United States Empire, Obama has launched numerous drone strikes (far more than George W. Bush), and vastly expanded the theater of war, bombing at least seven different nations. George W. Bush lied about Iraq as a justification to bomb, invade and destabilize that country. President Obama lied about Libya, stating Muammar Gaddafi was mass killing his people, as a justification to initiate a US and NATO led bombing campaign in the North African nation. Tens of thousands of people were killed as a result. Liberals scorned Bush for his war crimes, however they champion Obama’s wars, aggression and mass murder. Ostensibly the American Liberal adores imperialism so long as it is a Democrat overseeing it. It was doubly pathetic to witness countless African-Americans supporting, or remaining silent in regard to Obama’s imperialist actions. White liberals in Democratic Party clothing have politically domesticated African-Americans. African-Americans used to oppose the United States’ imperialist wars, however since the rise of Obama they now support them. Barack Obama was the white liberal’s most perfect Trojan horse.

The American Liberal is a fraud. And as Malcolm X admonished us, liberals are foxes in sheep clothing. It is especially important that people of color recognize this simple fact: Liberals/Democrats are not our friends anymore than Conservatives/Republicans are. It is long past due that more of us develop a more revolutionary-minded way of thinking. Our humanity depends on it.

“The white conservatives aren't friends of the Negro either, but they at least don't try to hide it. They are like wolves; they show their teeth in a snarl that keeps the Negro always aware of where he stands with them. But the white liberals are foxes, who also show their teeth to the Negro but pretend that they are smiling. The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the ‘smiling’ fox.”—Malcolm X

________________
Solomon Comissiong (www.solomoncomissiong.com) is an educator, community activist, author, and Founder of the Your World News Media Collective (www.yourworldnews.org). Solomon is the author of A Hip Hop Activist Speaks Out on Social Issues. Solomon is also the writer and producer of the documentary, Hip Hop, White Supremacy & Capitalism: Why Corporations Infiltrated RAP Music. He can be reached at: solo@yourworldnews.org

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.

The Destructive Legacy of Arab Liberals: Attempts to Compromise With Western Interests Amounted to a Sellout

Demonstration through Norwich City Centre (UK) against the Israeli massacres of Palestinians in Gaza -
January 10, 2009. (Photo by Roger Blackwell)

By Joseph Massad
It has become commonplace to present Arab Islamists of all political stripes (liberals, conservatives, radicals, neoliberals, moderates, extremists, nonviolent, violent, etc.) as a most, if not the most, dangerous political force in the Arab world since the 1967 War.

In fact, and as the following will show, it has been a new brand of Arab liberals — secularists and Islamists (though the former have been far more dangerous) — who have been and continue to be a most dangerous and destructive political force in the post-1967 Arab world.

The Western, Israeli and Saudi war against Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and anti-imperialist Arab nationalism required the birth of a new liberal intelligentsia. Their emergence on the scene in the late 1950s and in the 1960s, before the war, was part of the American-sponsored “cultural Cold War,” which financed intellectuals across the world for the anti-communist and anti-socialist liberal imperial crusade that also targeted anti-imperialist Third World nationalisms.

This was part and parcel of the Eisenhower Doctrine, which the Americans inaugurated in 1957 to intervene militarily and in every other way in the Middle East to fend off Soviet influence. It was in this context that the US intervened in Lebanon in 1958 against Arab nationalism with Saudi- and US-funded Lebanese liberals cheering on in the liberal press.

Many of these liberal Arab intellectuals were lackeys of US intelligence and they and their newspapers were financed by the US and Gulf regimes, especially the Saudis. They would exalt the virtues of the liberal West against Soviet and non-Soviet forms of communism and socialism and would attack Nasserist Arab nationalism.

While some would argue that Arab liberals are not true to the liberal tradition, I am less concerned with how well they approximate an imaginary Western liberalism, or whether they are “true” or “false” liberals, than with the fact that they present themselves and are presented by others as adhering to “liberal” principles. These include free parliamentary and executive elections, freedom of expression and of the press, freedom of association, civilian control of government and the military, a capitalist economy and varying degrees of separation between government and religious authorities.

Out of Egypt

In the post-1967 War period, the emergence of this new brand of Arab liberals was seen as confined to the Egyptian Sadatist intelligentsia whose main aim was to combat Nasserism in both its socialist and nationalist aspects and promote pro-Americanism. As the new century dawned, the Egyptian example became widely generalized across the entire Arab world.

The 1970s Egyptian liberals sang the praises of American power and imperialist capitalist penetration of their country and pushed for full surrender to the Israeli Jewish settler-colony under the banner of the “peace” negotiated by Nasser’s successor, President Anwar Sadat.

They insisted that Israel should be forgiven all its sins and that rendering Egypt its lackey and the lackey of the US would bring about many economic and political benefits to Egyptians. The Muslim Brotherhood, whose liberal transformation in the 1970s allowed them a seat at the Sadatist table, would join the political contest on the side of the liberal secularists against the Nasserist legacy.

Aside from state intellectuals, prominent litterateurs and artists pushed for this campaign. These extended from writers Yusuf Sibai to Naguib Mahfouz, and lesser figures like playwright Ali Salem, not to mention famous composer and singer Mohammed Abdel Wahab, intellectuals and academics of the ilk of Anis Mansour and Saad Eddin Ibrahim and many others. While Mahfouz and Abdel Wahab belong to an earlier generation of Egyptian liberals that have little in common with the post-1960s liberals, including mediocre state functionaries like Mansour, who edited the state-owned magazine October, they all joined the Sadatist ideological project in one way or another.

In this context, it should be mentioned that while the earlier generation of Arab liberals that emerged in the early part of the twentieth century and prospered in the 1920s and 1930s were mostly pro-European in their “civilizational” outlooks, they were not always pro-colonial, though a good number of them were. Indeed some, like Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed, the “father of Egyptian liberalism” and anti-Arab Egyptian nationalism, were even friendly to Zionism. Al-Sayed would go as far as attending the celebrations of the opening of Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1925.

While the Sadatist liberals were condemned and excommunicated across the Arab world (indeed Sibai, who served as minister of culture under Sadat, was assassinated by the Abu Nidal group on account of his visit to Israel and his support for the Sadatist surrender), their alliance with the US and Israel and their promotion of the selling out of Egypt to a new business class would not bring prosperity. Rather, it brought enormous poverty to most Egyptians and destroyed whatever achievements in education and healthcare the pre-liberal Nasserist order had achieved.

The only thing that increased and became more advanced in this liberal-supported Egypt was the level of political and economic repression for decades to come and the alienation of millions of Egyptians who lost even the possibility of an economic future, except for the hundreds of thousands (later upwards of four million Egyptians) whose employment was subcontracted to neighboring countries — Libya, Jordan, Iraq and the Gulf states. Meanwhile, tens of millions of Egyptians languished at home in dire poverty.

Liberalism spreads to Palestine

Soon, and by the late 1980s, the political and economic line the Egyptian liberals pushed for, let alone the international alliances they favored, would be adopted wholesale by a new class of Palestinian, Iraqi and, to a much more limited extent, Algerian intellectuals, who had until then been solid anti-imperial leftists and socialists.

In this vein, West Bank and Gaza-based Palestinian intellectuals pushed for a two-state solution that would grant those territories an independent state at the expense of diaspora Palestinians and Palestinian citizens of Israel.

It was the rights of the latter two groups of Palestinians that these intellectuals, under the sponsorship of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), wanted to barter for an independent state granted exclusively to the one-third of the Palestinian people that lives in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Indeed, many began to predict that the US-sponsored “peace process,” which they supported, would turn the West Bank and Gaza into a new “Singapore,” an economic miracle that would transform the lives of these Palestinians at the expense of the rest.

Once the PLO adopted this line of thinking fully, Palestinian liberal intellectuals became advisors, consultants, negotiators and ministers in the Palestinian Authority and brought about more massive poverty across the West Bank and Gaza, the erosion of international support for Palestinian rights and multiplied the forces of repression of the Palestinians by adding the PA security forces to the Israeli occupation army. This has led to the squandering of Palestinian political and economic achievements during the first intifada.

Read More

Al Sharpton: He Has Tax Problems That Would Have Destroyed Other Public Figures — So Whose Got His Back?

As Sharpton Rose, So Did His Unpaid Tax Bills

Al Sharpton at a voting rights march in 2011. (Photo by Michael Fleshman)

Actor Wesley Snipes was given a three-year jail sentence for failing to file federal tax returns, a misdemeanor.  Singer Lauryn Hill was sentenced to three months for failing to file federal tax returns. The New Times claims Sharpton and his organizations owe millions — yet no jail time for Sharpton. The only other folks with Sharpton-style immunity are the executives on Wall Street who deliberately crashed the global economy in 2008.—Ronald David Jackson

By Russ Buettner
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who came to prominence as an imposing figure in a track suit, shouting indignantly at the powerful, stood quietly on a stage last month at the Four Seasons restaurant, his now slender frame wrapped in a finely tailored suit, as men in power lined up to exclaim their admiration for him.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo hailed him as a civil rights icon. President Obama sent an aide to read a message commending Mr. Sharpton’s “dedication to the righteous cause of perfecting our union.” Major corporations sponsored the lavish affair.

[...]

Records reviewed by The New York Times show more than $4.5 million in current state and federal tax liens against him and his for-profit businesses.

RELATED STORY: Al Sharpton Was Accused of Trying To Lead the FBI To Exiled Activist Assata Shakur — Shakur Was Recently Placed on the FBI's 'Most Wanted Terrorist' List

And though he said in recent interviews that he was paying both down, his balance with the state, at least, has actually grown in recent years. His National Action Network appears to have been sustained for years by not paying federal payroll taxes on its employees.

With the tax liability outstanding, Mr. Sharpton traveled first class and collected a sizable salary, the kind of practice by nonprofit groups that the United States Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration recently characterized as “abusive,” or “potentially criminal” if the failure to turn over or collect taxes is willful.

Mr. Sharpton and the National Action Network have repeatedly failed to pay travel agencies, hotels and landlords. He has leaned on the generosity of friends and sometimes even the organization, intermingling its finances with his own to cover his daughters’ private school tuition.

Read More

New York's 'Working Families Party' Is A Fraud — It's Used To Elect Phony Liberal Democrats Like NY Governor Andrew Cuomo

It is time to admit that leftists have no influence in the Democratic Party: Known as Governor 1%, Cuomo was elected in 2010 with the endorsement of the WFP, a union-financed party who can run their own candidates but instead give Democrats an additional ballot line. Despite the endorsement, Cuomo made good on his threat to lay off state unionized workers and cut their salaries... The WFP is nothing but the Democratic party rebranded to appear more progressive than it actually is.

By Margaret Kimberley
Here in New York state, the uselessness of the Democratic Party “progressive” wing is on full display. The Democrat in name only governor, Andrew Cuomo, was not only re-elected but did so by knocking the phony progressives down a peg and down a line on the ballot. The Working Families Party (WFP) has suffered a well deserved comeuppance, having spent the past year betraying the causes it claims to support.

Known as Governor 1%, Cuomo was elected in 2010 with the endorsement of the WFP, a union-financed party who can run their own candidates but instead give Democrats an additional ballot line. Despite the endorsement, Cuomo made good on his threat to lay off state unionized workers and cut their salaries. Cuomo said nothing when corrupt Democrats in the state senate switched sides and gave Republicans the majority in that chamber. He has made no secret of his liking for this arrangement and his disdain for other Democrats and for the WFP.

He temporarily said all the right things to win another WFP endorsement in 2014 and then promptly formed a rival party in order to punish them. The Women’s Equality Party (WEP) has a similar name which confused some voters, as it was meant to do. Cuomo didn’t need the new party to get re-elected but he did want to show the WFP who was boss.

The Obama Disaster: President Flim-Flam Leads Dems to Midterm Massacre

Illustration by DonkeyHotey.

“The Republican victory does not represent a shift by the American population to the right, but demonstrates the bankrupt and reactionary character of the Democratic Party and the mass disillusionment with the Obama administration. In the absence of any progressive alternative to the two right-wing, corporate-controlled parties, the majority of potential voters stayed home. Voter turnout hit another record low, with only 38 percent going to the polls….Voter participation by young people fell particularly sharply. Barely one-third of eligible voters went to the polls in California, the most populous state.”–Patrick Martin


By Mike Whitney 

The White House has denied claims that the midterm elections were a referendum on Barack Obama, but the polling data shows that they were. According to a CBS News exit poll:

“Fifty-four percent of those surveyed said their opinion of the president influenced their vote… 34 percent said they wanted to make a statement in opposition to Mr. Obama, while 20 percent said they voted in support of him.”

Those differences were more stark among Republican voters “61 percent (of whom) said they cast ballots to take a stand against the current administration. (Only) Thirty-five percent of those who voted for GOP candidates said Mr. Obama didn’t play a role in their decisions at the polling places.” (2014 midterm elections look like a referendum on Obama, CBS News)

There’s no doubt that antipathy towards Obama played a significant role in Tuesday night’s bloodbath. Even so, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest insists that, “Most voters are deciding who to vote for based on the name that’s on the ballot, not the name that’s not….It’s up to those individual candidates, those Democratic candidates, to make decisions for themselves about how best the president and his support can be used to their benefit in the elections.”

In other words, the Democratic candidates that went down in flames on Tuesday, can only blame themselves. While that might be a good way to deflect responsibility, it certainly doesn’t square with the facts. Just get a load of these exit poll results from Forbes:

“45% of voters said the economy was the most important issue facing the country. It was the top issue of four listed on the exit poll ballot. Voters were generally pessimistic about it. Only 1% checked the box that said the economy’s condition was “excellent.” 70% said it was not so good or poor. 78% were worried about its direction in the next year. In another question, voters split pretty evenly: around a third of voters said it was getting better, getting worse, and staying about the same.

More voters expected the life for the next generation of Americans to be worse rather than better, 48 to 22%.” (Election Results From A To Z: An Exit Poll Report, Forbes)

What a damning survey. What a damning indictment of Obama. The vast majority of the people think the economy still stinks and that living standards for their kids are going to get a whole lot worse. And you wonder why the Dems got their heads handed to them on Tuesday? It’s because they failed on the number one issue, that’s why.

Read More

Democrats Must 'Move To The Right' — Again: The Usual Advice Offered by Corporate Media Pundits After Republicans Win Elections

By FAIR Media Advisory
With the Democrats suffering substantial losses in the 2014 midterm elections, it is likely that the advice from pundits and political journalists will be the same as it always is: Move to the right.

This has been the counsel almost any time that Democrats lose at the polls (Extra!, 9/92, 1/95, 1/11), rooted in the assumption that when the party veers too far leftward, the public reacts.

The advice is already coming in; USA Today (11/4/14), for instance, used an interview with a former adviser to Ronald Reagan to recommend that Barack Obama deliver a "mea culpa" speech along the lines of Reagan's 1987 Iran/Contra address. There's still time, the paper notes, for Obama to "score progress on big issues" if he "launches a concerted effort to build bridges with congressional Republicans."

More outreach to the GOP is in order, say the pundits--but it's more than that. The news site Business Insider (11/5/14) quoted a "Democratic insider" as saying that "the president has 60 days to clean house, regrow his spine, and lay out an aggressive, centrist agenda. If he fails at any of those, he might as well just start writing his memoir."

In the parallel universe inhabited by the New York Times, "Democrats largely
abandoned the more centrist, line-blurring approach of Bill Clinton to motivate
an ascendant bloc of liberal voters." (photo: Pete Souza/White House)

Where to find a model for this kind of "aggressive, centrist agenda"? Many accounts are offering the Clinton years as a recipe for success. As the New York Times (11/5/14) reported:

The Obama years have in effect represented a political trade-off: Democrats largely abandoned the more centrist, line-blurring approach of Bill Clinton to motivate an ascendant bloc of liberal voters. That strategy twice secured the presidency, but in the two midterm races it meant sacrificing the culturally conservative districts and states that had ensured Democratic congressional majorities.

While it's dubious to say that the Obama-era Democratic Party ever really abandoned Clinton-style "centrism" (FAIR Media Advisory, 1/27/11), this conventional wisdom about the Clinton presidency misses some crucial facts. As FAIR founder Jeff Cohen observed (L.A. Times, 4/9/00), Clinton's ideological positioning didn't do much to help the party:

When Clinton entered the White House, his party dominated the U.S. Senate, 57-43; the US House, 258-176; the country's governorships, 30-18, and a large majority of state legislatures. Today, Republicans control the Senate, 55-45; the House, 222-211; governorships, 30-18, and almost half of state legislatures.

One of the more intriguing findings from the 2014 exit polls is that voters overwhelmingly think the economic system favors the wealthy; 63 percent of respondents said so, up from 56 in 2012.

This would suggest that a more vigorous brand of economic populism--often derided as divisive or polarizing--would resonate with voters. Instead, though, various reports suggest the White House seek common ground with Republicans on trade policies--presumably corporate-friendly deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Newt Gingrich: USA Today wants you to think of him
when you think "bipartisan cooperation." (cc photo:
Gage Skidmore)

As USA Today's Susan Page (11/5/14) observed:

To be sure, turbulent midterm elections sometimes have set the stage for more bipartisan cooperation. When Democrats lost control of the House and Senate in 1994, President Clinton recalibrated his strategy, reached out to an energized Republican majority and a new House speaker, Newt Gingrich, and succeeded in balancing the budget and passing a welfare overhaul.

You may remember that post-1994 era of "bipartisan cooperation" as the time when the Gingrich-led GOP forced two government shutdowns in 1995 and 1996.

And it's telling that bipartisanship is illustrated in policy terms by the overhaul of welfare. The idea that bipartisanship is exemplified by making life harder for the poor speaks volumes about the attitude of the corporate press corps. When they talk about politicians finally overcoming Washington "gridlock," these are the policy outcomes they cite as successes.

Who better to pick up the centrist mantle of the Clinton era than Hillary Clinton herself? The Washington Post's Anne Gearan (11/5/14) contrasted Clinton favorably with Obama, giving a taste of the narrative corporate media is hoping to sell over the next two years:

Clinton has gone public with her disagreement with Obama over his first-term reluctance to arm the Syrian rebels, and is expected to air other criticisms if she becomes a candidate.

That sets up a potential candidacy very much in the centrist Democratic mode that Clinton naturally inhabits, several strategists said: family checkbook issues, job and worker security, women’s pay and healthcare equality, plus a muscular projection of American strength abroad.

Meanwhile, Republicans are getting credit from corporate media for achieving their big win through centrism. Under the headline "Republicans’ First Step Was to Handle Extremists in Party," the New York Times' Jeremy Peters and Carl Hulse (11/5/14) wrote of the GOP's "dogged campaign to purge the party of extremists and regain power in the Senate."

Next to this article in the print edition of the Times was a picture of Iowa's Republican Senator-elect Joni Ernst, who believes, among other things, that the UN is engaged in a conspiracy to round up Iowa farmers and force them to live in cities (FAIR Blog, 11/4/14). Yet she doesn't appear in the Times article about extremist candidates--perhaps she'd been purged.

Reprinted with permission from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

Zionism and Liberalism: Complementary or Contradictory?

The longish episode of left-wing, racist and militarist étatisme, has been replaced by a no less militaristic, neo-liberal racist state, which while professing liberal values, is continuing the illegal occupation and war crimes in Gaza.

Members of Neturei Karta Orthodox Jewish group protest against Israel. (Wikipedia)

By Haim Bresheeth
Like many other ‘national’ movements of the late nineteenth century, political Zionism was originally presented as part of the European liberal tradition, which reaches an important pitch in 1848. Mainly developed into a vibrant political movement by the author and journalist Theodor Herzl, a somewhat typical product of the Viennese Jewish bourgeoisie of the fin de siecle, Herzl was also a typical liberal of his period. It is of course the period which sees general suffrage in some countries (though not that of women), a large number of new nation-states being established in Europe, and also the promising height of modernism, a crucial trend in the arts, theatre, literature, architecture, and also early cinema – the art-form of modernity.

This growing democratisation of the European polis is the fruit of the liberal development of a couple of centuries, at least. The apparent lessening of traditional anti-Semitism and the gradual endowing of Jews with human rights has also been paralleled by the growth of new forms of anti-Semitism, supposedly ‘scientific’ and using such approaches as phrenology to develop new Judophobia for the modern age; such were the attempts of the Action Francaise in France, for example, or the politics of the anti-Semitic Karl Lueger, who became mayor of Vienna just as Herzl was about to publish his Judenstaat, his seminal Zionist text, in 1896.

Typically, liberals in Europe, like Gladstone, supported some freeing of colonial societies, like in the case of the debate about Irish Home Rule during the 1880s, but never opposed new colonial ventures by Britain, such as the occupation of Egypt in 1882. The focus of such liberals was on free-trade, laissez-faire economics, minimal government intervention and individual freedoms. Of course, the individual was European by definition, and most of humanity living elsewhere and in many cases under the control of European powers, were widely considered as ‘natives’ and inferiors - hence not eligible for the same rights as the ‘civilised nations’.

This portfolio of policies suited Herzl perfectly. His Zionism was presented as a project of freeing the Jews of Europe from centuries on racism by removing them to their ancestral home, whereby they will build a liberal European society in the midst of ‘Asiatic despotism’ and will serve as the modern, European imperialist wedge in the backwards Middle East.

As part of taking over Palestine, Herzl describes (in his Complete Diaries (1960) p. 88) the process of emptying the country of its ‘paupers’, meaning most of the indigenous population, in order to create a Jewish state. This blueprint of early Zionism has been the mainstay of political Zionism ever since, and implemented in 1948, when the newly created IDF has ethnically-cleansed four fifths of Palestine of around 750,000 Palestinian inhabitants. In this whole period only the brief episode of Brit Shalom, a left-leaning group of German liberals based in Jerusalem, and advocating a bi-national state and open relationship with the Arabs of Palestine, has offered anything but subjugation to the local population. Alas, they never accounted for more than a hundred people, and had no effect whatsoever on Zionist policies.

On the face of it, Herzl’s political attitude has affected Zionism even after his death. However, this is somewhat inaccurate when one considers the history of Zionism in detail. It was indeed in 1905, a short time after Herzl’s death, that the future route of Zionism was changed dramatically by the arrival of few hundred Jewish socialists from Russia, after the failure of the 1905 revolution. This group, which was to be greatly strengthened over the next two decades, would become the dominant force of Palestine Zionism, pushing the Herzlian liberal Zionism into a historical corner which it only escaped after 1977, when the first Begin government took power.

The interregnum of seven decades would give birth to some innovative social formations, such as the Kibbutz, which were crucial for the capturing of Palestinian land and expanding the land-base of Zionism, as well as to its military expansion. In this long and troubled period, Zionism has abandoned its liberal roots, preferring instead a left-wing rhetoric of the industrial and agricultural working class, but clearly excluding any opportunity of rapprochement with the indigenous population, and acting as the core of a herrenvolk democracy - a democracy for Jews only.

On achieving statehood in 1948, Israel embarked on an anti-liberal agenda – an omnipresent, militaristic state, instigating mass ethnic cleansing, and placing the Palestinians left within its enlarged area under severe military government which lasted until 1964, when the statist (a practitioner of the French politics of étatisme) Ben Gurion left the political scene. During this period, the Histadruth, the federation of trade unions, owned and controlled up to two thirds of all production, export and import, and was the largest employer in the country. The liberal Zionist project seemed at an end, and some naïve European socialists mistook this militaristic colonial state for a socialist polity, unaware of the background described. The Kibbutz gap-year became de rigueur for young European lefties.

The political upheaval of 1977, when the castigated Israeli liberal right has captured power from the collectivist left, has seemingly changed Zionism forever. Even when governments of the ‘left’ were in power since 1977, the (neo)liberal social politics of laissez faire, mass privatisation of socialised resources and services and support of deep inequalities has not been rescinded. Post 1977, the massive social structures of left Zionism were quickly and efficiently taken apart, the union movement decimated, and the Kibbutzim, which helped to steal so much of Palestine’s land, became some of the richest landowners in Israel - employers of gastarbeiters from across the globe, on punitive and inhuman terms.

Israeli capitalism, under this new social regime, became the strongest in the Middle East, controlling massive empires of media, building, armaments and new tech industries. The Israeli neoliberal economy is one of the strongest in the world, based on the captive market of six million Palestinians, two thirds being stateless and lacking any human or employment rights, and the insatiable global thirst for arms and new technologies. The longish episode of left-wing, racist and militarist étatisme has been replaced by a no less militaristic, neo-liberal racist state, which while professing liberal values is continuing the illegal occupation, barbaric war crimes in Gaza and elsewhere and the denial of rights to millions, as well as squeezing its own citizens, while serving the narrow financial elite ruling the country.

All of which never stopped Israeli propaganda using liberal intellectuals as the mainstay of its work abroad, of course. Audiences in many countries are aware of the trio of authors – David Grossman, A B Yehosua and Amos Oz, who are the permanent whitewashers of Israeli policies, travelling around the globe, financed by various Israeli Ministries, as evidence of the open-minded Israeli society, and allowed their mild critical edge as proof. Israel has realised a long time ago that it is better defended by mild critics, than by fervent ideologues.

The attack on Gaza in summer 2014 is a case in point. Throughout the murderous onslaught on a large civilian conurbation, Israeli propaganda used the mantras “Israel has a right to defend itself” and “thousands of rockets are raining over Israel”. These were uttered not only by the IDF spokespersons, but also by the seasoned liberals whose voice carries more weight abroad. Listening to them, one could imagine that Israel was under the Blitz, and had no choice but to react and defend itself.

The realities were different, of course – the ‘thousands of rockets’ harmed some six people in Israel, (66 soldiers were killed in fighting with resistance fighters inside Gaza) while the bombing of Gaza, in 51 days, amounted to twice the weight of high explosives dumped on London during the Blitz, and killing over 1200 people, injuring over 13,000, and making 110,000 people homeless. In the best liberal traditions of disregarding the humanity of indigenous populations, the trio of liberal musketeers and their allies in academia and the arts, found it acceptable to defend the war crimes of their government. It must be a unique object lesson in how far the term liberal may be stretched.

____________________
This article is part of the Gender and Race strand of the Liberalism in neoliberal times series that OurKingdom is running in partnership with Goldsmiths, supported by the Department of Sociology. You can read Gholam Khiabany's introduction to the whole series here.

Liberalism in neo-liberal times - an OurKingdom partnership with Goldsmiths, University of London.

Reprinted with permission from openDemocracy

Western Hypocrisy on Gaza There for the Whole World To See: Sanctions for Russia and a Green Light for Israel to Continue War Crimes

The U.S. is a rogue state whose organs of government at every level are controlled by war criminals and their cheerleaders. That includes “the new liberal darlings Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren” who “give moral and political support to Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity.” Meanwhile, Washington prepares for war against Russia.

By Ajamu Baraka, BAR
“A logic that asserts that the Russians are morally and politically culpable in Eastern Ukraine, also condemns the U.S. as morally culpable for the war crimes being carried out by Israel.”

The moral duplicity in the U.S. political class is breathtaking. Squeezed in between news stories of the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, U.S. President Barak Obama announced expanded economic sanctions against Russia for its' alleged support for what the media calls “pro-Russian separatist forces” in Eastern Ukraine. The U.S. action could not have been a more dramatic illustration of the cognitive dissonance and ethical double standards of the Obama administration and the U.S political class.

This action comes on the heels of unanimous resolutions from the U.S. Congress that placed the blame for the Israeli attack on Gaza on Hamas and defended Israel’s actions as legitimate acts of defense. The U.S. Congress' resolutions stand in stark contrast to the United Nation’s Human Rights Committee vote to conduct an investigation into war crimes in Gaza, as well as positions by Amnesty International and international law and human rights scholars and activists from around the world who determined that the Israeli military assault on Gaza violated most of the norms of international humanitarian and human rights law.

Members of the U.S. Congress and most of the corporate media missed what is obvious to many around the world—charges of Russian support for anti-government forces in Eastern Ukraine are still at the level of allegations, while the military support for the state of Israel is a matter of public record. And since it is undeniable that war crimes are being committed in Gaza, applying the same logic that the U.S. applied to the Russians, a logic that asserts that the Russians are morally and politically culpable in Eastern Ukraine, also condemns the U.S. as morally culpable for the war crimes being carried out by Israel. However, being morally and politically culpable becomes irrelevant when imperialist power translates into impunity for crimes against humanity.

By consigning Palestinian humanity to a lesser category, Democrats, Republicans and still too large a sector of the U.S. population, have once again demonstrated contempt for international law, human rights and a basic tenant of humanitarian principles – the equal value of all human life.

“A process that can lead to a just solution of the Israel/Palestine issue can only be facilitated by the international community (international meaning beyond the U.S. and Europe).”

While people throughout the world are reacting with justifiable revulsion to the inhumane brutality of the Israeli military machine, U.S. politicians, including the new liberal darlings Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren give moral and political support to Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity, positions that further solidify the status of the U.S. as a rogue state. A status of illegality that is embraced as a badge of honor for most U.S. politicians when it comes to Israel. As Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the U.S. Senate asserts – defending Israel is not an partisan issue but an “American principle.”

Therefore, a permanent solution to the conflict will not come from the U.S. or political forces internal to the Israeli colonial state, and with over 80% of Israeli civil society in support of the current military assault on Gaza, nothing of any value toward justice will come from that sector either. This means that a process that can lead to a just solution of the Israel/Palestine issue can only be facilitated by the international community (international meaning beyond the U.S. and Europe).

However, in the short-term, ending the carnage in Gaza should be the immediate priority. The Joint declaration by international Law experts on Israeli’s Gaza offensive represents a framework for that. In that statement they call for the international community:

“…to take action in the spirit of the utmost urgency to put an end to the escalation of violence against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, and to activate procedures to hold accountable all those responsible for violations of international law, including political leaders and military commanders. In particular:

All regional and international actors should support the immediate conclusion of a durable, comprehensive, and mutually agreed ceasefire agreement, which must secure the rapid facilitation and access of humanitarian aid and the opening of borders to and from Gaza.”

Yet, tragically for Palestinians, as long as Israel and the U.S. are not forced to recognize Palestinian humanity and can violate their rights and dignity with impunity there appears to be no end in sight to Palestinian suffering. After three weeks of air strikes, naval and land bombing, and a barbarous infantry assault, the request from Israel to the U.S. to replenish its depleted munitions, a request granted by the Obama administration, is a grotesque reminder of the criminality that conjoins both counties and condemns more Palestinians to death and destruction.


_____________

Ajamu Baraka is a human rights activist, organizer and geo-political analyst. Baraka is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C. and editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report. His latest publications include contributions to two recently published books: Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA and Claim No Easy Victories: The Legacy of Amilcar Cabral. He can be reached at info.abaraka@gmail.com and www.AjamuBaraka.com.

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.

Even Left-Wing Politicians Like Bernie Sanders Can’t Quit Israel

'Progressive' politicians like congressman Keith Ellison (right) and senator Bernie Sanders will stand up
to almost anyone - but not Israel. (Left Photo from Keith Ellison; Right Photo from Senate Democrats)

By Tim Mak
Despite grassroots outrage at Operation Protective Edge, left-wing members of the House and Senate won’t criticize Israel’s ongoing incursion into Gaza.

Much of the American left is critical of Israel, particularly since its incursion into Gaza. But in the halls of Congress, even progressive Democrats beloved by grassroots activists are loath to criticize the Jewish State’s ongoing military offensive.

A Pew Research Center poll released Monday showed that a plurality of Democrats across the country, 35 percent, and liberals, 44 percent, said that Israel had “gone too far” in its response to its conflict with Hamas. Meanwhile 47 percent of Democrats told Gallup that Israel’s actions during the current conflict were “unjustified,” compared to just 31 percent who thought the opposite.

But these opinions are nearly impossible to find in Congress. Democrats, when asked a question about Israeli operations in Gaza, had two standard responses: irritation, or else a statement of their broad support of Israel, without going into specifics. It was as if the very mention of Israel turned the question into a hostile interview.

“Look, man, I’m a politician, with multiple constituencies. Why should I alienate one just so that you can write a story?” Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison angrily told The Daily Beast. Ellison, a stalwart progressive, was the first Muslim-American elected to Congress.

Ellison cited a Tuesday op-ed he had written that was critical of the Gaza blockade, but became noticeably agitated when asked to expand on his views. In particular, he did not want to address whether Israel had gone too far during its current operations in the Gaza Strip.


Sen. Bernie Sanders, a darling of the left who identifies as a democratic socialist, was curt. His tone changed suddenly when the topic shifted from the Veterans Administration bill that he had been shepherding through Congress to Israel’s operation in Gaza.

“That’s not where my mind is right now,” he told the Beast.

Read More

The Migrant Crisis and the Dead-End of US Imperialism

“Deporter-in-Chief” Obama’s policies towards Latin American immigrants are incontrovertible proof that both major parties serve the same neoliberal master. Neither party tells the truth about the migration crisis: “US imperialism's dual military and economic assault in the Central American region is the primary reason thousands of youth are being forced to flee from the conditions of their native countries.”





By Danny Haiphong

“CIA-backed mercenaries murdered hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua.”

The hegemony of corporate imperialism, otherwise termed "neo-liberalism" and "globalization," has pushed the liberal paradigm to its limit. Imperialism's crisis in the center of US society and on the world stage can no longer reform itself to satisfy the conditions expected by social-welfare liberals a half a century ago. For the oppressed and exploited of the planet, this means either becoming trapped in the paralysis of bankrupt liberal ideology or building an alternative to a bankrupt system. The left in the US imperial belly is in a crisis of its own, one that directly connects to the crisis of the imperialist system. The dominant mode of preservation for US imperialism is the imprisonment of left ideology within the political theater of the Democratic and Republican Party.

Most of us digest the political theater of the Democratic and Republican Party from the corporate media. The Democratic Party masks itself as the "progressive" force within Washington. However, in the neo-liberal era, "progressive" no longer means policy that benefits poor and working class people. The terms “liberal” and “progressive" are defined merely as digestible rhetoric that contrasts from the Republican Party "extreme" positions. The Republican Party plays the overtly racist and sexist "extreme" right. This posture distracts oppressed people from the fact that both Parties are on the same imperialist page. Washington's game of Republican "bad guys" versus Democrat "good guys" is little more than a face-saving brand for US imperialism in a time where the trajectory of its rule is crisis, crisis, and more crises.

“The terms ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ are defined merely as digestible rhetoric that contrasts from the Republican Party "extreme" positions.”

The coverage of the migrant crisis by the outlet “Democracy Now!” is one recent example of how the liberal wing of the ruling class is doing everything it can ideologically to maintain a "populist" image. Democracy Now! interviewed Illinois representative Luis Gutierrez, focusing on the debate in Washington on the future of the tens of thousands of children entering the US from Central America. Gutierrez did the typical Democratic Party run-around, claiming that President Obama should be "as wide and as broad and as generous as [Republicans] have been small and mean-spirited." Further, the Illinois representative said, in a cruel twist of irony, that he is "tired that Democrats and that my party always brands itself as not being as bad as Republicans." Such statements shed all accountability on the Republican Party of imperialism and legitimize Democratic Party "reason" as the rule of law in the empire.

When critically examined, Gutierrez erases US imperialism's role in the migrant crisis. The Democratic Party under Barack Obama has deported twice as many undocumented peoples than the prior Republican Bush Administration. And given that many of the youth traveling North into the US are from Central America, the question as to why indigenous peoples from the region would travel thousands of miles to escape their native countries needs to be answered. Luis Gutierrez’s dominant narrative of "violence" and "drug cartels" being the driving force of migration is a vast oversimplification of the context of the migrant crisis.

“The Democratic Party under Barack Obama has deported twice as many undocumented peoples than the prior Republican Bush Administration.”

In accordance with nearly 2 centuries of US imperial plunder, the nations of Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and much Central America remain under US imperialism's corporate and military thumb. CAFTA, a “free trade” agreement that mirrors NAFTA, privileges US-Western corporate interests at the expense of sovereign agricultural and industrial development in the region. Furthermore, the US ​maintains a large military presence in Central America to allegedly fight the War on Drugs, a policy that was a product of its own covert intelligence work beginning in the late 70's and early 80's. The continuation of this policy was made explicitly clear in the 2009 Honduran-coup sponsored by the Obama Administration. US military aid and intelligence in the age of Reagan sponsored death squads and counter-revolutionary militaries to destabilize the revolutions in Central America. These CIA-backed mercenaries murdered hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. US imperialism's dual military and economic assault in the Central American region is the primary reason thousands of youth are being forced to flee from the conditions of their native countries.

The fact that Washington’s coverage of the migrant crisis is so divorced from the geopolitical and economic context of the issue is not merely crude deception. Ferocious reliance on the game of chicken between the "good" (or lesser evil) Democratic Party versus the "evil" Republican Party is a sign of crisis in US imperialism's ideological arsenal. There should be no doubt that both parties will continue to act in cohesion for the ultimate master: US capital. A new left movement is needed to educate and mobilize the exploited classes in a way that relates issues like the migrant crisis to the racist imperial order. Either we organize an offensive to overturn US imperialism’s crisis-ridden system or watch history pass us by.

____________________

Danny Haiphong is an activist and case manager in the Greater Boston area. You can contact Danny at: wakeupriseup1990@gmail.com

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.